JISC OpenBibliography: progress report

The JISC Open Bibliography project has had some success recently, and is proceeding to build on that success with further development and advocacy. This seems like a good opportunity to recap the project so far, and to consider what is coming next.

Project recap:

1. Advocacy – for open bibliographic data; why it should be freely available, and what it means for it to be so.
2. Agreements – get publication of datasets; examples of organisations willing to share the data, and getting the data out to the community.
3. Developments – show what can be done with open bibliographic data, and identify what improvements / changes are required to do even more.

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Progress so far:

Given that one of the key risks to this project was that there would be no data to work with, it is great that we already have some data – and a commitment to provide more, from CUL. Talks with other groups are proceeding well, and there should be more sources of data available very soon.

The initial data release is limited, but most importantly it provides the impetus to get the ball rolling; and despite this Ben has made progress with analysing the data and has developed an example use case solution to IUCr.

The open bibliography working group, led by the work of Adrian Pohl and Peter Murray-Rust, have also developed open bibliographic principles, with a view to using them as a basis upon which other organisations could provide open access to data.

What next:

The project is now moving into a phase of heavier development; the currently available datasets, and those that should soon become available, will provide the community with something to build on. With this in mind, Peter is taking part in the RLUK conference in November and has issued a request for community engagement.

Although development will increase, advocacy work will continue and will use development examples and open bibliographic principles to negociate for further commitments to provide open bibliographic data.

Summary:

The project has not yet suffered from the potential risks highlighted during proposal, and has already achieved partial success towards advocacy aims and is progressing well towards further successes. Development in the short term will provide the basis required to engage the wider community and to stimulate further development.