[open-bibliography] More needed to define "open"

Tue Apr 23 15:05:55 UTC 2013

All,

We've done a good job of defining the license terms for open 
bibliographic data, but there is another step that seems essential that 
we haven't addressed: making the data openly available, and what that 
means. One can announce a data license of CC0 but if the data itself is 
behind a paywall, or otherwise isn't available for use, then the license 
isn't doing anyone any good.

It seems to me that there are at least 2 ways that data becomes truly open:

1. There is a data dump that is openly available to anyone who wishes to 
download it. This solution has problems relating to updating, however, 
and puts the burden of making the data usable on the recipient. It's a 
solution, but perhaps not the best.

2. The data owner provides an open interface that allows searching and 
linking. Linking needs to be bi-directional -- that the data can link 
out, but also that others can "link in."

I've probably expressed this poorly, but that should just give others an 
incentive to develop this thought further. :-)

kc
-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
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