#blueobelisk

I am catching up on lots of blog posts that I should have done – and this is the oldest. It’s Jim Downing being presented with a Blue Obelisk last summer.

Jim has made an outstanding contribution to our group and to the JISC community in general. Without his vision and persistence we would not have SPECTRaT, CLARION, #jiscxyz etc. and we would therefore not have Quixote or OSCAR4. Jim has also set up a software development infrastructure including https://hudson.ch.cam.ac.uk/ .

And he has created the Lensfield vision which has inspired GreenChain reaction and Quixote.

Jim has gone into IT-driven wealth-creating industry (http://jimdowning.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/changes/ ) and I am expecting this to be a glittering success and one that we can all take satisfaction from.

#pmrsymp #blueobelisk #pmrhack

Wonderful three days. Lots on twitterfall – just follow the hastages. Hackfest achieved a breakthrough with:

• Dave M-R’s Spook Molecules in Cambridge (many people in the audience were able to see them)
• Ami – intelligent fumecupboard
• Kinect molecules – sensational – againd ca. 6 people involved in this hack. Gesturing to molecules to rotate them and change bonds!

PMRSymp was run literarally to the minute – as planned. Real-life talks, recording, skype twitter – everything. Ca 15 people involved in rapid presentations. Spkndid main talks. More later

Three blue Obelisks. Henry Rzepa, Dan Zaharevitz, Sam Adams. Also Jim Downing who got one last summer and I forgot to blog it.

Rushing…

Just about got everything ready. Get latest details from http://www-pmr.ch.cam.ac.uk/wiki/Main_Page.

#pmrhack great success – will demo results in evening

Please follow and tweet. We may take questions from the twittersphere if we can manage it

Must rush

#jiscopenbib

A comment on my latest post on Open Bibliography deserves a full reply

Marius Kempe says:

January 8, 2011 at 7:42 pm  (Edit)

This is very heartening to read. Might I ask for one clarification, which I think you’ve addressed elsewhere but I can’t find: is it actually possible to copyright bibliographic data? Are they not un-copyrightable facts, automatically in the public domain? Or is that in fact true, but we need this effort anyway to combat publisher FUD?

The reason why so much of my effort goes into creating Open tools is exactly this – a mixture of unclarity and default or deliberate FUD.

I believe that many things “are” in the public domain but that many other people think they are not. The problem is that there is generally no simple way of determining the answer. The issue arises mainly from the automatic nature of copyright. If I create a work then the copyright automatically attaches to me. This blog is my copyright. Even if I do nothing it’s my copyright. I don’t have to register it, I don’t have to defend it. Until seventy years after my death (in UK, it varies between jurisdictions) it’s my copyright or my estate’s. Even little bits of it are copyright. If I create a song called “defeding the Public Domain” then that phrase is copyright.

Copyright is generally a civil matter though again this varies between jurisdictions. That means that a breach is not prosecuted by the state, but by an aggrieved individual or organization. If someone violates my copyright then my recourse is to the law. The ultimate decision is in courts with highly paid lawyers – there is not normally a copyright tribunal or office which gives objective judgments.

The copyright symbol does not determine whether or not something is copyright, but it’s a very powerful indication that the person adding the symbol believes they own the control the copyright. Since copyright is a matter of law, violating copyright can be seen as violating law. Most people – like me – believe in the power of the law and have an aversion to breaking it. Therefore if someone claims copyright ownership of something most people will accept that unless they have a direct commercial interest and have the financial and legal muscle to fight it.

Note that if something is “in the public domain” then no-one owns it. Therefore there is no-one to fight for it if someone else claims it is their copyright. It requires a defender of the public domain and this is not easy to get support for. To some extent the EFF and FSF does this for code, but no one does it for bibliography.

So here’s a typical problem. I quote from Wikipedia on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC, also called the Dewey Decimal System) is a proprietary system of library
classification developed by Melvil Dewey in 1876; it has been greatly modified and expanded through 22 major revisions, the most recent in 2003.^[1]

…

Administration and publication

While he lived, Melvil Dewey edited each edition himself: he was followed by other editors who had been very much influenced by him. The earlier editions were printed in the peculiar spelling that Dewey had devised: the number of volumes in each edition increased to two, then three and now four.

The Online Computer Library Center of Dublin, Ohio, United States, acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the DDC when it bought Forest Press in 1988. OCLC maintains the classification system and publishes new editions of the system. The editorial staff responsible for updates is based partly at the Library of Congress and partly at OCLC. Their work is reviewed by the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC), which is a ten-member international board that meets twice each year. The four-volume unabridged edition is published approximately every seven years, the most recent edition (DDC 22) in mid 2003.^[4] The web edition is updated on an ongoing basis, with changes announced each month.^[5]

The work of assigning a DDC number to each newly published book is performed by a division of the Library of Congress, whose recommended assignments are either accepted or rejected by the OCLC after review by an advisory board; to date all have been accepted.

In September 2003, the OCLC sued the Library Hotel for trademark infringement. The settlement was that the OCLC would allow the Library Hotel to use the system in its hotel and marketing. In exchange, the Hotel would acknowledge the Center’s ownership of the trademark and make a donation to a nonprofit organization promoting reading and literacy among children.

…

Melville Louis Kossuth (Melvil) Dewey (December 10, 1851 – December 26, 1931) was an American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System of library classification, … Dewey copyrighted the system in 1876.

Here is my amateur analysis of the situation. If you take away one fact it should be that nothing is simple, and much is not algorithmic. Let’s assume that the work was created in the US and that Dewey is dead and has been since 1931. That’s 2010-1931 = 79 years dead. Here’s the US copyright law http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html#duration

How long does a copyright last?
The term of copyright for a particular work depends on several factors, including whether it has been published, and, if so, the date of first publication. As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first. For works first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors. To determine the length of copyright protection for a particular work, consult chapter 3 of the Copyright Act (title 17 of the United States Code). More information on the term of copyright can be found in Circular 15a, Duration of Copyright, and Circular 1, Copyright Basics.

So although Dewey copyrighted the system he’s now been dead for over 70 years so the original copyright has expired. The fact that someone bought the copyright doesn’t affect its duration. (BTW distinguish copyright from trademarks). So the original DDC is in the public domain.

Note that in the US A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties. And …

§ 105. Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works³⁷

Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.

So, assuming the Library of Congress staff produced their DDC work as part of their official duties (and I’m guessing they did) then their work is in the Public Domain in the US (and by extension elsewhere).

So, at a first reading the DDC is not copyrighted. However my guess is that every new version is freshly copyrighted and that the copyright subsumes the public domain material so that the copyright will be extended indefinitely. You may believe this is a good idea, or you may feel that it is unjustifiable. If the latter, you’ll have to hire a US lawyer, show you have a case (e.g. that you have suffered financial loss) and spend a lot of time and money.

So my analysis is that it’s unclear whether DCC is copyright. In practice OCLC says that it holds the copyright and most people and organizations go along with that whether they want to or not.

It’s trivial to add copyright symbols to a document. I can write © Peter Murray-Rust on this document. Do I have the right?

• Yes, I wrote it
• Hang on, you didn’t – you pinched some of it from Wikipedia.
  
• Well, yes – but it’s very tedious to acknowledge it. They’re not going to sue me
• You’ve also pinched stuff from the US government
  
• That’s OK it’s in the Public domain
• I suppose you can do that – but only in the US
  

   

By this time everything has become subsumed under my blog.

It’s absolutely universal for content providers to spray copyright symbols on everything – marking their territory. If I ask anyone in academia whether I can re-use it without permission they are all so hexed-out by the magic symbol ©that they will automatically say “no, you can’t use it without permission”. Many of them run in awe or terror of the large content providers, who occasionally sue people. Of course the music industry and the film industry are best known but it also happens in academica and scholarly publishing.

So, Marius, back to your question.

Is it possible to copyright bibliographic data?

Yes – just add your copyright symbol

Is that legal?

It’s not against the criminal law. Find out by hiring a lawyer.

So this is why we are identifying the problem. Pointing out to the community that there is a problem. That the problem costs us hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That as academia we have to start asserting our rights.

And the first step in asserting our rights is to define them.

Now I am hoping that libraries and their bosses will see that this is in their interests. And support Open Bibliography. And start asserting humanity’s right to it.

#jiscopenbib #pmrsymp

Over the last few months a group of us has been working to create a set of principles [below] for asserting the Openness of Bibliographic data. The initiative was sparked and driven by Adrian Pohl (acka47, also http://www.uebertext.org/ ). Adrian took the ideas of the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science (http://pantonprinciples.org/ ) and edited them to apply to Bibliographic Data. Some bits worked, others didn’t. We (not surprisingly) all had different ideas about what Bibliographic Data was. Gradually more people have been brought into the discussion which has taken place in the OKFN mailing lists , Etherpads, Googledocs, Skype, etc.

It’s worth making it clear that effectively the main discussion has been Open – the Etherpads have recorded much of it. There have been no exclusions – and anyone who follows the lists has been able to join the Skype and Etherpads. The result is seven people (2 Librarians, A Mathematician, An Economist, a Computer Scientist, a Library developer and a chemist. ) working hard to create something they all feel happy with and believe you will.

We believe that the Principles are an important step forward for helping all those involved in managing Bibliography. Currently there is confusion about what Bibliography is, who has what rights and responsibilities, etc. There are many axes – libraries, authors, readers, publishers, arts/humanities, science, etc. and we believe that we have been able to cover all of these. We hope that everyone will be able to agree that Bibliography should be Open and that the principles show the advantages of formally making it so.

We shall be formally launching the principles on January 17^th in Cambridge and on the Internet. In the PMR symposium (http://www-pmr.ch.cam.ac.uk/wiki/Visions_of_a_%28Semantic%29_Molecular_Future ) I shall spend time to introduce the Principles and the people involved. The programme is packed but we intend to have a Skype session sometime during 1630-1700 UTC when as many of the authorsd will be online. Adrian will give a short introduction.

If you are able we would love to see you at the symposium. If not we intend that the symposium is streamed (#pmrsymp and details on the web page) and recorded. There will be a twitterfall so that you can follow the comments.

We’ll get immediate feedback from you (on the Net) and delegates at the symposium. Comments on the Principles are welcome, but we don’t intend changes other than typos in the next week. We’d particularly like to know if you or your organization would be keen to add your support and we’ll see how the OKF could provide an e-page for this…

========================================================================================

Principles on Open Bibliographic Data

Producers of bibliographic data such as libraries, publishers, universities, scholars or social reference management communities have an important role in supporting the advance of humanity’s knowledge. For society to reap the full benefits from bibliographic endeavours, it is imperative that bibliographic data be made open — that is available for anyone to use and re-use freely for any purpose.

Bibliographic Data

To define the scope of the principles, in this first part the underlying concept of bibliographic data is explained.

Core Data

Bibliographic data consists of bibliographic descriptions. A bibliographic description describes a bibliographic resource (article, monograph etc. – whether print or electronic) with the purpose of:

1. identifying the described resource, i.e. pointing to a unique resource in the universe of all bibliographic resources and
2. locating the described resource, i.e. indicating how/where to find the described resource.

Traditionally one description served both purposes at once by delivering information about:

author(s) and editor(s), titles, publisher, publication date and place, identification of parent work (e.g. a journal), page information.

In the web environment identification makes use of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) like a URN, DOI etc. Locating an item is made possible through HTTP-URIs known as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). All URIs for bibliographic resources thus fall under this narrow concept of bibliographic data.

Secondary Data

A bibliographic description may include other information that falls under the concept of bibliographic data, such as non-web identifiers (ISBN, LCCN, OCLC etc), rights assertions, administrative data and more*; this data may be produced by libraries, publishers, scholars, online communities of book lovers, social reference management systems, and so on.

Furthermore, libraries and related institutions produce controlled vocabularies for the purpose of bibliographic description, such as name and subject authority files, classifications etc., which also fall under the concept of bibliographic data.

[See addendum for a list of secondary bibliographic data.]

Four Principles

Formally, we recommend adopting and acting on the following principles:

1. Where bibliographic data or collections of bibliographic data are published it is critical that they be published with a clear and explicit statement of the wishes and expectations of the publishers with respect to re-use and re-purposing of individual bibliographic descriptions, the whole data collection, and subsets of the collection. This statement should be precise, irrevocable, and based on an appropriate and recognized legal statement in the form of a waiver or license.

When publishing data make an explicit and robust license statement.

2. Many widely recognized licenses are not intended for, and are not appropriate for, bibliographic data or collections of bibliographic data. A variety of waivers and licenses that are designed for and appropriate for the treatment of data are described at http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/#Data.

Creative Commons licenses (apart from CC0), GFDL, GPL, BSD, etc. are NOT appropriate for data and their use is STRONGLY discouraged.

Use a recognized waiver or license that is appropriate for data.

3. The use of licenses which limit commercial re-use or limit the production of derivative works by excluding use for particular purposes or by specific persons or organizations is STRONGLY discouraged. These licenses make it impossible to effectively integrate and re-purpose datasets.

They furthermore prevent commercial services which add value to bibliographic data or commercial activities which could be used to support data preservation.

If you want your data to be effectively used and added to by others it should be open as defined by the Open Definition (http://opendefinition.org/) – in particular non-commercial and other restrictive clauses should not be used.

4. Furthermore, it is STRONGLY recommended that bibliographic data or collections of bibliographic data, especially where publicly funded, be explicitly placed in the public domain via the use of the Public Domain Dedication and Licence or Creative Commons Zero Waiver. This ethos of sharing and re-use should fit well within the remit of publicly funded cultural heritage institutions.

We strongly recommend explicitly placing bibliographic data in the Public Domain via PDDL or CC0.

Addendum

A non-comprehensive list of bibliographic data.

Core data: names and identifiers of author(s) and editor(s), titles, publisher information, publication date and place, identification of parent work (e.g. a journal), page information, URIs.

Secondary data: format of work, non-web identifiers (ISBN, LCCN, OCLC number etc.), an indication of rights associated with a work, information on sponsorship (e.g. funding), information about carrier type, extent and size information, administrative data (last modified etc.), relevant links (to Wikipedia, Google books, Amazon etc.), table of contents, links to digitized parts of a work (tables of content, registers, bibliographies etc.), addresses and other contact details about the author(s), cover images, abstracts, reviews, summaries, subject headings, assigned keywords, classification notation, user-generated tags, exemplar data (number of holdings, call number), …

Contributors: Karen Coyle, Mark MacGillivray, Peter Murray-Rust, Ben O’ Steen, Jim Pitman, Adrian Pohl, Rufus Pollock

Peter Suber is one of my role models as one of the clearest and therefore most compelling advocate of Openness. He collects almost comprehensive information if what is happening and reports it in a compellingly simple clear manner. He is one of those people whose prose is a joy to read. Where others’ thinking is muddled (or deliberately obfuscated) he cuts it apart clinically and compellingly.

He is passionate about Openness, originally Open Access but now branching out to cover data, government, etc. where appropariate. That passion is always subjugated to fairness and accuracy. So as you read this, read between the lines to see how he really cares.

He’s written a review of 2010 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-11.htm#2010, (long but compelling) and there are countless examples of organizations and people bringing in Open ideas, requirements, practices, content, tools. The involvement of governments is particularly welcome. This is mainly an account of the positive, though he also notes neutral (e.g. hybrid OA is stagnant at best [PMR – I never liked it anyway]) and some retrograde practices or vacillation of some organizations.

Without a denominator (or the true-negatives) it’s difficult to give absolute numbers to the growth in OA. For example how many governments did nothing. How many Universities don’t care about Openness (at least enough to spend money). And IMO Universities are the primary problem in much of this – publishers have built a 10-billion dollar market on the apathy of vice-chancellors and it’s now going to be hard to pull it back.

And statistics in this area have to be taken very carefully. PeterS repeatedly says that 70% of OA journals make no author-side charges and I am sure that’s true. But it’s also true that 100% of Open Access chemistry journals (there are really only 3) make charges, and they are only ca 1% of the market. And the Green option is pragmatically of almost no relevance in chemistry – the major publisher forbids it. I don’t know about bioscience but my guess is that there are few peer-reviewed OA offerings outside PLoS and BMC and these are author/funder-pays journals. So the paradoz is due to the long tail, where it’s possible for a small journal to manage publication with marginal costs and a lot of dedication and I guess most of these are Arts and Humanities. So I’d rephrase this as:

70% of OA journals make no author-side fees and (I’m guessing) over 70% of Gold-OA articles have to be paid for by the authors.

Anyway to finish here are PeterS’s worst and best of 2010. If you take away nothing else, take Robert Heinlein’s quote. I hadn’t seen it before and it’s a critical guideline to the digital revolution and land-grab.

(10) Some highlights of the highlights

The worst of 2010:

10.  James Murdoch, heir to the Rupert Murdoch news empire.  For objecting to the British Library plan to provide OA to its archive of historical newspapers on the ground that it would be bad for business.

9.  English Heritage.  For claiming to own the copyright on Stonehenge and demanding a cut of the profits from image libraries selling photos of the monument.

8.  Todd Platts, Republican representative from Pennsylvania.  For the bill (HR 5704) he introduced in the US House of Representatives, in 2005 and again in 2010, giving faculty at the US military academies copyrights in their scholarly writings (“in order to submit such works for publication”), and requiring them to transfer those copyrights to publishers. 

7.  A copyright reform bill before the Czech parliament drafted by the Ministry of Culture and the national collecting societies without input from other stakeholders.  For giving effect to the author’s open license only after the author notifies the collecting societies, and for placing the burden of proof for that notification on authors.  For erecting new and needless bureaucratic hurdles in the way of anyone wanting to use open licenses.

6.  The Swiss National Library.  For using public funds to digitize public-domain books, and then selling the digital copies rather than making them OA. 

5.  “Misinformation and gatekeeper conservativism” in the field of communications (in the apt words of Bill Herman and the Ad Hoc Committee on Fair Use and Academic Freedom of the International Communication Association).  For leading a fifth of surveyed researchers in the field to abandon research in progress because of copyright problems, leading a third to avoid research topics raising copyright issues, and forcing others to seek permission before discussing or criticizing copyrighted works.

4.  The majority of OA journals that don’t use open licenses, such as the 81% of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals that don’t use CC licenses.  For failing to realize one of their potential advantages over most collections of green OA.  For missing a golden opportunity to provide libre OA, make their articles more useful, and serve research and researchers. 

3.  The German Association of Higher Education (Deutscher Hochschulverband).  For demanding an “education- and science-friendly” copyright policy that would put copyright protection ahead of education and science, and rule out OA mandates.  For taking a public position without doing elementary research first.  (Like last year’s Heidelberg Appeal, the DHV confuses green OA mandates with gold OA mandates, and doesn’t realize that green OA policies are compatible with the freedom to submit work to the journals of one’s choice.)

2.  BP. For hiring scientists to research the gulf oil spill under a contract that prohibits them from “publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years….[that requires them] to withhold data even in the face of a court order if BP decides to fight such an order…[and that] stipulates that scientists will be paid only for research approved in writing by BP….”  For undermining both the integrity and the availability of research.

1.  The American Psychological Association.  For claiming in a Congressional hearing that requiring public access for publicly-funded research would violate President Obama’s December 2009 memo on government transparency –not the transparency part of the memo, but the exceptions for national security, privacy, and “other genuinely compelling interests”.  For asserting that there is a genuinely compelling interest in putting the financial interests of private-sector publishers ahead of the research interests of researchers, even at government agencies whose mission is to advance research and put the public interest first.

Robert Heinlein responded to the APA position more than 70 years ago (Life-Line, 1939):  “There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”  

The best of 2010:

10.  Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission for the Digital Agenda.  For her much-needed combination of insight and influence.  For her forceful and articulate public statements in support of OA and open data, from a position where she can affect policy and change minds. 

9.  The Obama White House.  For pushing executive departments and agencies to strengthen their data-sharing policies, and for collecting public comments on a plan to extend the NIH policy across the federal government.  True, it could have acted on that consultation in 2010, and didn’t.  (And true, it allowed the ACTA negotations to exclude the press and public-interest NGOs, while including corporate lobbyists.)  But in its OA consultation, it asked the right questions, collected a mountain of supportive comments, and positioned itself to set policy in 2011.

8.  BioTorrents, from Morgan Langille and Jonathan Eisen.  For a data-sharing platform optimized for openness and high volume.  For opening the door to open data in the age of big science. 

7.  The Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC).  For its libre green OA mandate covering SBCTC-funded research at the 34 institutions in the consortium. 

6.  Seven libre green OA policies covering 38 institutions.  For seeing the value of libre OA beyond gratis OA.  For testing the waters to see where and how far libre green policies can succeed.  (Libre green OA policies are far less tested or widespread than gratis green or libre gold policies.)  For exerting leadership to help the idea spread.

5.  The Conference Board of Canada.  For turning around and doing the right thing.  In 2009, the CBC issued three reports with copyright recommendations cut and pasted from the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a US lobbying group.  When the charade was exposed, the CBC returned to the drawing board and in 2010 issued a report calling on Canada to support OA for publicly-funded research.  This was a beautiful double win, for autonomy over ventriloquism and the public interest over private interests. 

4.  The re-introduction of FRPAA in the 111th Congress, even though it died without a vote.   For surpassing its first introduction in 2006 by gathering more bipartisan co-sponsors and gaining entry to both chambers (the Senate in 2009 and the House in 2010).  For making headway in establishing the right principles and a practical policy that would have liberated more peer-reviewed research literature than any other policy proposal anywhere.   From my kudos last year:  “For earning bipartisan support in a degenerate age when nothing has bipartisan support.”

3.  The University of California.  For standing up to an unaffordable 400% price increase on its site license from the Nature Publishing Group.  For using its unrivaled bargaining power, especially against a publisher with its own unrivaled bargaining power.  For pushing back with an effect that smaller institutions simply could not hope to have.  (Today, however, the actual effect is still unknown.)  For acting decisively in the interests of research, researchers, and research institutions, and not leaving publishers
to be the only players in this game who act decisively in their own interests.  For inspiring other institutions to voice a common grievance to take concerted action.

2.  The EUR-OCEANS Consortium.  For adopting the largest consortial OA mandate ever (covering 29 organizations in 15 countries) and the first consortial OA mandate for organizations other than universities.  For a giant step that should inspire other giant steps.

1.  The 38 new funder OA mandates in 17 countries (Section 1) and –depending on how you count– the 72-105 green OA university mandates in 15 countries (Section 2).  For giving us a year in which we averaged more than three funder mandates and 6-9 university mandates every month.  For preserving and extending the momentum.  For bring us closer to the new normal in which research institutions routinely put the interests of knowledge-sharing ahead of the interests of knowledge-enclosure. 

For comparison, see my OA highlights:
–for 2009
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-10.htm#highlights
–for 2008
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-09.htm#highlights

Egon Willighagen has done a tremendous job in setting up and running Chemical Blogspace: http://cb.openmolecules.net/ . It’s a tremendous site, not only aggregating all the blogs but also providing many services on top, such as indexing/ searching for molecules in the blogs. No Egon is moving and his involvement with Cb comes to an end.

Hi all,

some weeks ago I asked if someone was interested in helping Chemical
blogspace online. Once again, the systems needs a reset, but I have no
longer time to maintain the website. It was fun, and I know
appreciated, but it doesn’t help me.

I am pulling the plug in it, so, if you like to take over after the
four first years, and be the next Dr. Who of Cb, please let me know as
soon as possible. Otherwise, the website will go offline soon.

Thanx to all for the positive feedback I got over the years!

Egon

In the Blue Obelisk we have a tradition of people taking over from each other at irregular, unplanned intervals. It’s the heart of volunteer activity and action and is a natural healthy process. I have likened this to the Dr Who regeneration process /pmr/2009/06/06/the-doctor-who-model-of-open-source/ .

Many blogs are personal and aren’t easy to transfer, but Cb is a community resource and has many similarities to OS. It’s a significant commitment, but Egon has built much of the software and it’s a running efficient machine.

Why should anyone do it? Here are some reasons:

• Because you want to. That’s the main and possibly the only reason. You shouldn’t force it
• Because you want to add a dimension to what you already do. Blogging can be fun and addictive. It broadens the mind and teaches you new skills.
• For personal advancement. No, it won’t get you merit equivalent to scientific presentations, but it will get you noticed. And if you want a career which may not be mainstream research there’s lots of chemical and other science bloggers who are doing exciting stuff and – from personal contact – enjoying it. There is (or should be) and increasing demand in all science for people who combine the human and machine aspects of communication and personally I think blogging is a better preparation for life than 5 steps in a multistep synthesis of some little known compound with zillions of chiral centres. And in any case much of that is spent watching reactions bubbling – blogging is a way to pass the time.
• You need something to keep you busy in the Third Age. Blogging is an excellent way of avoiding Alzheimers. (I hope)

And, if you find you (or your supervisor) doesn’t like it – there is no shame in passing on.

We’ve had a very encouraging registration for the hackfest 15/16 and symposium on January 17^th (/pmr/2010/12/23/pmr-events-at-unilever-centre-january-1516-and-17/ ) – there are over 70 registrants and we have had to move lecture theatre. Please register as soon as you know you are coming.

Here’s what we shall send to speakers and registrants today…

#pmrsymp is taking place at an important time in Open Scholarship (much of which has developed in the time since the symposium was conceived) and several speakers and others have remarked on this. #pmrsymp now comes after the emerging success of Open Bibliography, Open Citations and Open Data and we shall pull much of this together on the day. The intention is that #pmrsymp will show the power of semantic science and emphasize that making it Open is a necessary step for the academic knowledge economy.

I have asked Cameron Neylon to “chair” the meeting. Cameron has an excellent interaction with all the speakers and will help to tie the threads together. We deliberately haven’t constrained the invited speakers other than asking them to look forward as to what we could achieve. We know there are barriers to overcome but if the future is sufficiently appealing then the barriers will disappear.

We are hoping to have a variety of ways of communicating including those who cannot physically attend. 2/3 speakers will have remote presentations and we intend that the meeting is streamed and twittered. As always there is a risk of bandwidth problems and we ask everyone to be sympathetic. We intend that the meeting is recorded.

It has now become clear to several of us that we need to identify an ethos of Open Scholarship. This means that – when and however disseminated – scholarship should be created in a semantic manner which allows us – and machines – to make better decisions and bout what we do, and to re-use the material that we create. By transferring the power of semantics to authors we give them greater voice; the costs can be very low and toolsets can be free and transparent. I shall pull this together in my presentation and several of us will have worked to create a first draft of Open Scholarship principles and practice, building on Panton and other initiatives.

The symposium will also highlight the major fruits of colleagues in our group, supported by JISC, EPSRC, Unilever and Microsoft. We have built a number of open-source systems for semantic science and these are at a stage where they can be taken and re-used widely. They link into ideas of semantic authorship, publication of data and reproducible computational science. The key question, which we’d like delegates to consider is how we continue to develop and sustain Open-source tools in science. This is not a new problem, but it’s becoming increasingly important to address.

The group, with extended membership such as Quixote, Bue Obelisk and the Open Knowledge Foundation, will be presenting these products and ideas through posters, demos and videos. We have been asked, and agreed, to make these available as publications in J.Cheminformatics.

 #pmrsymp is also fortuitously placed just before “Beyond the PDF” – a workshop in San Diego run by Phil Bourne and Anita de Waard. There is a natural progression in that #pmrsymp will have an emphasis on the principles and practice of Open Scholarship which we hope can be taken as one of the starting points of BTPDF.

Please also sign up for the #pmrhack if you wish to take part, and also let us know if you want to come on a special tour of the Cambridge University Library to see Open Bibliography in action on manuscripts. #pmrhack is unstructured and we have no expectations other than that people will come and we’ll have a fun time.

#pmrhack

The contents and activities of our hackfest (/pmr/2010/12/23/pmr-events-at-unilever-centre-january-1516-and-17/ ) will be determined by YOUR inventiveness, not our planning. So here’s a typical example of a mashup created in 24 hours. It comes mainly from Dave Murray-Rust (http://mo-seph.com) with minor inputs from the rest of the soporific or slightly sick family.

Dave has found http://www.layar.com which “layers” 3D objects (as Wavefront files) onto reality. It relies on a modern phone (mine isn’t – it’s a year old) which must have a compass and GPS as well as accelerometers. The phone “knows” where it is, and in which direction it’s pointing . If a virtual object is within range and the field of view it’s shown on top of the optical display. Here’s Layar’s example:

The animalcules are built of triangles with material properties and are located somewhere along the current line of sight. All you need to do is walk round the locality and keep orienting you phone and you should be able to locate them.

So we’ve done the same with molecules. Here’s one of the first examples – it’s “in our garden”. If we walked to the other end of the garden we’d see the other side!

For the chemists, what is it? (We hope to brighten the red and blue atoms later).

To create this we need a wavefront file:

QUESTION. Which Blue Obelisk software can create Wavefronts of molecules?

QUESTION. Which readers/volunteers/attendees are able to use Layar Software? Our current guidelines are iPhone >= i3gs or 4 and android >= 1.5

QUESTION: Are there Layar or other augmented reality hackers who’d like to help. You don’t need to know any chemistry.

QUESTION: Can you think of a fun game? At present we plan to locate famous molecules on famous places in Cambridge and see if people can work out the connection (some will have a JMR and PMR theme).

We hope to be coming up with a whole set of ideas for the hackfest so pleaes start thinking now if you want to be involved. Nothing is out of scope (barring legality and contractual law – i.e. we cannot use actual scientific content from Closed Access journals).

As part of the PMR hackfest (/pmr/2010/12/23/pmr-events-at-unilever-centre-january-1516-and-17/) we plan to have a Blue Obelisk dinner and a BlueOb hack.

The Blue Obelisk (http://www.blueobelisk.org) is a group of like-minded chemists/programmers w2ho create and promote ODOSOS (open Data, Open Standards and Open Source) in chemistry and related disciplines. Year on year the BO creates more and better resources and it’s fair to say that much of this is the equal of commercial offerings or even better. (There have been virtually no new fundamental developments in chemical software and cheminformatics in the last ten years, much of it being rehashing, widget-frosting and integration. For a discipline which cares (or should care) about data quality and reproducible science, ODOSOS is the only meaningful way to go in the future.

The BlueOb has no membership, no formal agendas, no minutes. It is an unsociety. It keeps in touch daily through email, Twitter, FriendFeed, Bitbucket, Skype, etc. Everyone knows what the others are doing. There’s no deliberate competition though duplication can be useful (especially on different platforms). For example Jmol and Avogadro are both molecular viewers and they have overlaps and dissimilarities.

Anyone is welcome to the dinner which will be in the Panton arms – simple pub grub before and after which people will be hacking in the Chemistry Dept. We plan to have a BlueOb display on the Monday at the symposium and the hackfect is an opportunity to mashup some of the software and resources.

The Panton is open to anyone (it’s a pub!). If you want to come to the hackfest and/org symposium just register (free) at http://www-pmr.ch.cam.ac.uk/wiki/Visions_of_a_%28Semantic%29_Molecular_Future_Registration