[open-bibliography] Getting started with the Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data

[Jim Pitman]

> Jonathan Gray wrote:
> > Welcome to the new list for the Working Group on Open Bibliographic
> > Data! A list of current members and the group's purpose is at:
> >
> >   http://wiki.okfn.org/wg/bibliography
> >
> > In terms of next steps, the first instance I propose:
> >
> >   1. We make sure that we have broad representation from existing
> > projects and initiatives interested in open bibliographic data. It
> > would be great if everyone could cast their eyes over the list to see
> > if there are any obvious omissions!
> >   2. We find a regular slot to have monthly virtual meetings. I
> > suggest we do this on a weekday in the late afternoon/early evening
> > GMT, e.g. 1700 GMT / 1800 CET / 0900 PST.
> >   3. Once we have done 1. and 2., we aim to launch the working group
> > in the next few weeks?
> > How does this sound?

Good for me.  What kind of virtual meeting did you have in mind?
How many participants can you handle with various media?
>From my experience, conference call gets out of hand with more than 
about 5 participants.  Some basic questions are: 

How are you planning to control the size and membership of this group?

Do you plan to restrict membership to those with a real commitment
to increasing the quality and quantity of open biblio data?

If so, how are you going to make this determination?

What exactly qualifies as "open biblio data"? (Public domain? CC0, CC BY? with or without NC or SA clauses, ...?

However you respond to the above, here is a list of potential participants 
I would encourage you to invite, all of them associated with the BKN Project:

Thomas Krichel, 
creator of RePEc http://repec.org/
and AuthorClaim Service http://authorclaim.org/
krichel at openlib.org

Fred Giasson creator/maintainer of BIBO http://bibliontology.com/
and developer of BKN people http://people.bibkn.org/
fred at fgiasson.com

Fil Menczer creator/maintainer of Scholarometer http://scholarometer.indiana.edu/
filmenczer at gmail.com

Micah Altman 
Micah_Altman at harvard.edu
Contact for Dataverse , Harvard Scholar's Sites, Harvard/MIT data archive

Lee Giles
giles at ist.psu.edu
Developer of CiteSeer

I could also suggest various industrial contacts (Google, Msoft, Freebase, Couchio, BePress, ... ) but I am not sure how the group feels about having industrial contacts on the list. My own view is that engaging industrial support is essential for success of open biblio data efforts. How this could or should be done 
is very much open to discussion.  Serious consideration of the licensing issues seems essential to resolve this.

There are also many more people loosely associated with the BKN project, but 
affiliated with publishers or sholarly socs which have mixed, apprehensive or 
hostile feelings about open biblio data for various reasons. Which
brings back the issue of criteria for membership of the group, and to what 
extent and how you want to control its size.

with best wishes to all

--Jim

----------------------------------------------
Jim Pitman
Director, Bibliographic Knowledge Network Project
http://www.bibkn.org/

Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
University of California
367 Evans Hall # 3860
Berkeley, CA 94720-3860

ph: 510-642-9970  fax: 510-642-7892
e-mail: pitman at stat.berkeley.edu
URL: http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/pitman