1. Do not be afraid. (I used to be afraid, but there is no need). Nobody has ever made me feel unwanted (there have been robust discussions, but none angry). So I go to WP and search for “Open Data”. (The capitalisation may be important – always start with a capital if you can). There is no such page, but it offers one a start

No page with that title exists.

You can create this page or request it.

So by clicking on the first link you get a fresh page headed “Open Data

2. You don’t have to write the whole page at once. Even the title and a few words is enough. This is a “stub” and others can add to it or modify it. Let’s see how far we get before nightfall. 3. Read some WP pages to get a sense of style. Good ones have an introductory paragraph and then the body, made of several labelled sections. Then there are usually links to other WP pages, and finally references. WP is very insistent on good references. Of course you don’t have to have them all at once. 4. You can always backtrack if you get something wrong. WP saves everything. No-one minds if there are 100 versions of something. Indeed if you are on a flaky connection you may wish to make a number of small changes and save after each. 5. You don’t have to let people know who you are. I do, but I don’t expect it from others. You can use an IP or (if registered) an alias, or a real name. I use “petermr” which is not difficult to crack (use Google). If you are registered then add a signature (~~~~ is the magic) which links to your own WP Talk page.

• Page creation. Note that WP has formatted the page nicely (I simply have to remember that there is no need for a title, that each section has ==foo== and to add {{stub}} at the bottom. The links go in [[..]], e.g. [[Open Access]]. I’ve saved it after a paragraph as it’s dinner time. Any visitor will see that it’s a new page (stub) – they may or may not feel they want to add something. It’s not my page, it’s our page. However it’s probably good manners to wait a day or so before editing a new page.
• Here is the history of the edits. Notice that a Wikipedian has already spotted the article and removed the “stub” before me!
• Here is the latest version. It’s not “mine” – it’s ours. Anyone can edit it – I am sure at least there are typos and many other links and references can be added.
• the real final version tonight.

Implementing an institutional repository

Meredith Farkas has blogged some notes on Roy Tenant’s talk on institutional repositories at Internet Librarian 2006 (Monterey, October 23-25, 2006). Excerpt:

I knew that Roy would be likely to give a very practical nuts-and-bolts introduction to developing institutional repositories and I was certainly not disappointed. Why do it?

• Allows you to capture the intellectual output of an institution and provide it freely to others (pre-prints, post-prints, things that folks have the rights to archive). Many publishers allow authors to publish their work in archives either as a pre-print or after the fact.
• To increase exposure and use of an institution’s intellectual capital. It can increase their impact on a field. More citations from open access and archived materials.
• To increase the reputation of your institution.

How do you do it? … Software options…. Key decisions

• What types of content do you want to accept (just documents? PPT files, lesson plans, etc?)
• How will you handle copyright?
• Will you charge for service? Or for specific value-added services?
• What will the division of responsibilities be?
• What implementation model will you adopt?
• You will need to develop a policy document that covers these issues and more.

Implementation models

• Self archiving – ceaselessly championed by Stevan Harnad. Authors upload their own work into institutional respositories. Most faculty don’t want to do this.
• Overlay – new system (IR) overlays the way people normally do things. Typically faculty give their work to an administrative assistant to put it on the Web. Now, the repository folks train the admin assistant to upload to the repository instead. Content is more likely to be deposited than if faculty have to do it….
• Service provider – not a model for a large institution. Library will upload papers for faculty. The positives is that works are much more likely to be deposited. The negative is that it’s a lot of work and won’t scale….

Discovery options: Most traffic comes from Google searches, but only for repositories that are easily crawlable and have a unique URL for each document. OAI aggregators like OAIster.org have millions and millions of records. They harvest metadata from many repositories. Some may come direct to the repository, but most people will not come there looking for something specific. Citations will drive traffic back to the repository. Barriers to success:

• Lack of institutional commitment
• Faculty apathy (lack of adoption and use)
• If it is difficult to upload content, people won’t use it.
• If you don’t implement it completely or follow through it will fail.

Strategies for Success

• Start with early adopters and work outward.
• Market all the time. Make presentations at division meetings and stuff
• Seek institutional mandates
• Provide methods to bulk upload from things already living in other databases
• Make it easy for people to participate. Reduce barriers and technical/policy issues.
• Build technological enhancements to make it ridiculously easy for people to upload their content….

Mike Cross, Ordnance Survey in the dock again, The Guardian, October 26, 2006. Excerpt:

On one side of an electoral boundary, people might buy sun-blushed tomatoes; on the other, economy baked beans. Retailers like to know such things, so data from the 2001 census is of great commercial interest – and also the subject of the latest controversy in the Free Our Data debate. Last week, the Association of Census Distributors filed a complaint against a state-owned entity, Ordnance Survey, over the conditions placed on the re-use of intellectual property in census data. It is the second time this year that the national mapping agency has been the subject of a complaint to the government’s Office of Public Sector Information….. Technology Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign proposes that the best way to avoid such disputes is for basic data sets collected at taxpayers’ expense to be made freely available for any purpose (subject to privacy and national security constraints). While this would involve more direct funding for agencies such as Ordnance Survey, the economy as a whole would gain. At the moment, says [Peter Sleight of Target Marketing Consultancy], the national good is compromised because of a single trading fund’s commercial needs.

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Pfizer explores data sharing with Science Commons

17:54 24/10/2006, Peter Suber, Open Access News

Pfizer is exploring data sharing with Science Commons. There are no details in this interview with David de Graaf of Pfizer’s Research Technology Center, but it’s a promising prospect to watch. Here’s the key passage:

When you encounter a knotty problem or roadblock in terms of your work in systems biology, who do you call among your peers in the industry? …Everybody keeps running into the same toxicity and we can’t solve it. Actually putting our heads together and, more importantly, putting our data together may be something that’s worthwhile, and we’re exploring that together with the folks at Science Commons right now, as well as the folks at Teranode.