Talk given at OpenTech 2010 at ULU, on Linked Data, Universities, and Open Bibliographies and Citations.

1. Open Scholarship
&
How (should)
Universities use Linked
Data

2. First of all... why use it in the first place?
Put data into RDF and all problems will be
solved?

3. #1
RDF should encourage data to talk about real
'things' – people, places, items, etc

4. #2
Data within an RDF dataset can refer easily to
other pieces of external data, as well as reference
other parts of itself.
However, this doesn't mean that data encoded in
RDF is automatically “linked”.
Far, far from it.

5. #3
It should encourage them to have working, open
URLs for the things that an institution cares about.
Like researchers, courses, and departments.
(However, all it takes is a few overly cautious
committee decisions to kill the openness and the
usefulness – cf Oxford University's BRII project)

7. What's an easy way for Universities to publish
Linked Data right now?

8. Use Eprints 3.2.1 – supports Linked Data out-of-
the-box

9. What comes first? The URI or the data?

11. What is all this leading to?

12. Open Scholarship

13. Open Scholarship is:
Open Access
- Open Theses
Open Bibliography
Open Citations/References
Open Data

14. Open Scholarship is:
Open Access
- Open Theses
Open Bibliography
Open Citations/References
Open Data

15. Open Access vs. Free Access
(or the ideal vs the reality)

16. Discussion point 1 – Should we try to reclaim the
word Open from 'Open Access' sites?
Rebrand those sites with limited access as being
'Free Access' sites?
How can we get people angry about this?

17. 'Open Access' rarely includes access to the peer
review dialogue.
Should this be the case?

18. Open Bibliography
Aka “Why are we using more of the state's money
to get updates of the list of works produced using
public money?”

19. JISC Open Bibliography Project, #jiscopenbib
http://openbiblio.net
Aims:
1) To find and put pressure on catalog owners to
release their data under an open licence (as in the
http://opendefinition.org)
2) To aggregate the data into RDF and link it up,
at least internally (eg making authors, publishers,
etc first-class citizens)

20. Current bibliographic datasets we are working on:
British Library's “BNB” - the British National
Bibliography (approx 3m items)
Cambridge University Library's catalog (minus the
OCLC-derived or purchased records)
IUCr's Acta Cryst. E
PubMedCentral UK/BioMedCentral
PLoS

21. The British Library and the recent -NC issue.
Whoops.

22. Cambridge University Library
So far, a set of 170,000 unencumbered records
has been found.
(Mostly, these describe manuscripts and old,
more unique material.)
We have also recently earmarked a further +1m
records which might be released soon.

23. Open Citations
Aka “Let me easily review the items that an article
references”

24. JISC Open Citations, #jiscopencite
http://opencitations.wordpress.com
Aims:
1) Persuade/badger/annoy content holders to
release reference lists under a truly Open licence.
2) Provide that data as linked data, having de-
duplicated and matched citation records to the
things they reference (as much as is possible)

25. Currently this project is working with the same
data providers as the JISC Open Bibliography
project, with the notable addition of CrossRef.

26. CrossRef have been allowing publishers to
optionally upload a reference list with their DOI
submissions to provide a 'Cited By' service.
Both the project team and CrossRef are in
agreement that putting this data into the open is
the best way to make more services like this,
driving more access.

27. (We're hopeful that the “carrot” might work better
on publishers than the “stick”, due to the success
of CrossRef's 'Cited By')

28. There is a third aim of the Open Citations
project...
To provide a means to record the purpose of
citation – whether the article references, refutes,
or agrees with the item it cites.

29. Open Data
Aka “Sure, your graphs are pretty, but how do I
know you didn't massage the data?”

30. Open Scholarship is:
Open Access
- Open Theses
Open Bibliography
Open Citations/References
Open Data

31. Discussion points:
Are all these necessary?
Is Open Peer Review necessary?
Do we need more things to be Open?
If all the data is made available in RDF (amongst
other formats), should it be only exposed in a
SPARQL endpoint?
How do we get academics angry about copyright?