[open-bibliography] Open Bibliography, the Democratisation of Knowledge at RLUK 2010 in Edinburgh

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I have been invited to run a session at this meeting - see  Open
Bibliography, the Democratisation of Knowledge and the Scottish
Enlightenment at RLUK
http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=2645

This is a wonderful opportunity for the OKF to make a major public
contribution to Open Bibliography. I am suggesting:

   - Participants to get at least one signature from their institution
   supporting the OKF Open Bibliography Principles. (If these are new to you,
   read the last week on this blog and also http://openbiblio.net/ ). All it
   does is ask you to agree that Open Bibliography is a Good Thing. If you can
   get a vice-chancellor or a head librarian that’s great. But if not, just
   sign it yourself. [OKF – TODO we need a signup list]. This can, of course,
   be done worldwide
   - It would be really great to get a Scottish commitment to Open
   Bibliography. Scotland has recently prided itself (rightly) on adopting
   Openness more rapidly than England, and I think this could be done. I can’t
   tell you how to do it, but if it seems achievable, please have a go.
   - Each participant should write to one primary publisher asking for their
   commitment to Open Bibliography. Again the OKF has pioneered this type of
   request mechanism with its IsItOpen(Data) for asking about the Openness of
   scientific information. We’d hope to develop this during the month. In
   principle (since Bibliography is de facto Open) every publisher should be
   glad to sign up as it would mean more exposure for their publications. But
   we shall suggest you choose the most favourable first
   - [UPDATE – how could I have failed to think of this] A communally
   produced Open Bibliography on the Democratisation of Knowledge.

If we are successful – and we shall be since it depends on YOU – we shall
then have:

   - A large and compelling list of institutions worldwide which are
   committed to (or have at least employees committed to) Open Bibliography
   - A united stance from Scotland
   - A growing list of publishers who have asserted that their bibliography
   is Open.
   - A world-class Open Bibliography on the Democratisation of Knowledge

I'm optimistic we can make this happen. A month is long enough.

I have asked that OKF'ers in Edinburgh be able to physically participate in
the session. Though it's not essential - I always plan for levels of success
- it would be great to have a small group of identifiable warm bodies.

There is a commitment for the OKF in general. I think this is manageable but
includes:

   - Etherpads (almost trivial as we do it all the time)
   - Wiki/blog/Trac (we have most of this in generic form). Exactly which
   will be used we don't know
   - IsItOpenBibliography. A tool to ask publishers to assert that their
   bibliography is open. This is probably the hardest and shouldn't be required
   if the cost in effort is too great. OTOH volunteers would be great
   - A signup list for supporting the Open Bibliographic principles
   - A weekly skypecon

The benefits are potentially large. Assuming we manage to generate
significant core resources then OKF Open Bibliography could become an
important tool in world scholarship.

Comments and suggestions - particularly EARLY ones - will be very valuable.
And of course you don't have to be physically in Edinburgh.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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