[open-bibliography] (Final?) discussion of the openbiblio principles

Sun Jan 9 10:47:48 UTC 2011

On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 9:41 AM, Adrian Pohl <adrian.pohl at okfn.org> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Jim initially suggested putting into ""Secondary data" "indication
> that one work is derived from, related to, or cited by another work"".
> I don't see a problem to include "indication that one work is derived
> from or related to another work". If this information exists in a
> bibliographic description it should of course be made open too.
>

Clearly anyone can add any secondary data. This secondary data is likely to
be more subjective or local than the core data.

>
> Concerning citations data we might first make clear what we are
> talking about. Wikipedia[1] says (not general enough but ok for this
> purpose):
>
> "Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished
> source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is
> an abbreviated alphanumeric expression (e.g. [Newell84]) embedded in
> the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the
> bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of
> acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of
> discussion at the spot where the citation appears."
>
> I agree with Peter that in this sense citations aren't (and mustn't)
> fully be covered by the principles.

i.e. Principles [of Open Bibliographic Data]

>  But I think that a big part of
> citations data is already included in the principles: bibliographic
> reference lists. A bibliography or reference list of a monograph or
> article identifies/locates all bibliographic resources that are cited
> in a text. It is an aggregation of bibliographic descriptions (as a
> journal data base or library catalog is) in aphabetic order and
> nothing else. (BTW, that is why "scholars" are named in the principles
> as "producers of bibliographic data".)
>
> So citations are already covered in part by the principles but not
> fully because citation counts, citation context etc. aren't included.
> And I don't think that we should include these. We might rather add a
> phrase to explicitely include reference list. What do you think?
>
>
Personally I'd like the boundary to be reasonably clear. I think we would
agree that the Core Data for Bibliography is:
* unique for an item and potentially normalizable
* immutable over time (except for errors and omissions)
* uncopyrightable

by contrast the Secondary data *may*  be:
* subjective (annotation)
* copyrightable in law (e.g. abstract, cover image)
* mutable over time (e.g. links/citations, annotations)
* lists (copyrightable in Europe)

If some authority claims ownership over the Secondary data then they may
have law on their side. Our approach will be to change the culture so that
they realise this is not worth pursuing and they may get more value by
making it Open.

By contrast if an authority claims that they control/own Core data then we
should persuade the community that this is currently unacceptable.

> Karen writes:
>
> > Isn't there also the issue that citations are considered part of the text
> of
> > an article? In thathas to be read as  sense, they are included in the
> copyrightable portion.
> > However, if a third party reads the article and makes the connections
> > between citer and citee, then this may be a separate declaration.
>
> At least bibliographic reference lists aren't covered by copyright. In
> Germany we even have a letter[2] from the "Börsenverein des deutschen
> Buchhandels" - the legal representation of publishers - which makes
> clear that it is legally unproblematic to digitize and disseminate
> bibliographic reference lists. (It says the same about index of
> tables, lists of figures, name, place and subject indexes are listed
> as not protected by copyright.)
>
> This is useful - It is possible that we shall be able to publish material
in some jurisdictions that we can't do elsewhere. There is a limit to which
content owners can reasonbaly pursue this. E.g if we creat an index of
scientific and mathematical bibliographic data then we should probably
publish it in Germany. It will be hard and create marginal returns for a
content provider to try to restrict UK access.

BTW I am glad this is an open list as it's possible - even probable - that
content providers are reading it. Gradually I think they will see that
owning bibliographic content is untenable in the long run. This is not the
music industry. The material is created by publicly funded individuals who
gain no monetary reward. Reselling this and controlling it will not play
well in the court of public opinion. Look at the OS and Open Streetmap...

P.

> Adrian
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation
>
> [2]
> http://www.bibliotheksverband.de/fileadmin/user_upload/DBV/vereinbarungen/Boersenverein_110707_Kataloganreicherung.pdf
>
>
>
>
> 2011/1/8 Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net>:
>  > Quoting Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>:
> >
> >
> >> By contrast the citations are subjective and potentially ambiguous or
> >> "wrong". In an ideal world the bibliographic data are nodes in a graph
> and
> >> the citations are (annotated) edges. In practice many citations point to
> >> non-existent or ambiguous nodes  - and this is in some cases
> irresolvable.
> >> An article can be created (and many are) without citations. An article
> >> must
> >> have a single set of bibliographic data.
> >
> > Isn't there also the issue that citations are considered part of the text
> of
> > an article? In that sense, they are included in the copyrightable
> portion.
> > However, if a third party reads the article and makes the connections
> > between citer and citee, then this may be a separate declaration.
> >
> > It is an unfortunate fact that many citations are "literary" rather than
> > "factual" and Peter is right that a whole lot of citations don't connect
> up
> > to anything in the bibliographic world. One of my dreams is that
> citations
> > would be derived from bibliographic data (rather than being composed by
> > authors) and would therefore contain the actual connections needed to be
> > able to declare them as truly "bibliographic DATA". The capability for
> this
> > almost exists in software like EndNote and Zotero, where citations are
> > merely displays from actual data. Keeping these connections as linked
> data
> > would be ideal.
> >
> > kc
> >
> >
> > --
> > Karen Coyle
> > kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> > ph: 1-510-540-7596
> > m: 1-510-435-8234
> > skype: kcoylenet
> >
> >
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> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-bibliography
> >
>
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-- 
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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