Christopher Gutteridge

The impact of OAI-based search on access to research journal papers

Intuitively, if a product is useful and has both a priced and a free version its total usage rate would be expected to be higher than if there is only a priced version. Evidence is emerging that this is true for online research journal papers. Authors need accessible online sites in which to deposit their published papers, and users need a means of discovering and evaluating those papers. The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) has now produced free software packages for building OAI-compliant institutional archives and OAI search services, including a citation-ranked search and impact discovery service. New data from this service shows that higher usage of free papers leads directly to a higher number of citations and thus greater research impact. Institutional archives need far more papers to be deposited, and one way of bringing this about is to implement institutional and national policies mandating the self-archiving of all funded research output in open access archives. This paper outlines why such policies are beneficial to researchers, their institutions, funders, and to research itself.

Tracing the provenance of linked data using voiD

In the open world of the (Semantic) web, a world where increasingly diverse materials from disparate sources of different qualities are being made available, an automatic mechanism for the provision of provenance information of these sources is needed. This paper describes voidp, a provenance extension for the void vocabulary, that allows data publishers to specify the provenance relationships of their data. We enumerate voidps classes and properties, and describe a use case scenario. A wider uptake of voidp by dataset publishers will allow data consuming tools to take advantage of these metadata providing consumers with the origin, i.e., the provenance, of what is being consumed.

Data Autodiscovery—The Role of the OPD

The importance of open data and the benefits it can offer have received recognition on the international stage with the signing of the G8 Open Data Charter in June 2013. The charter has an early focus on 14 high value areas, including transport and education, where governments have greater influence. In the UK, we have seen the funding of the Open Data Institute (ODI) with a remit to support small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in identifying benefits from using open data, whereas, within HE, open data discussion is in its infancy although is acknowledged as a sector challenge by the Russell Group of universities. There is an evident need for the academic community to influence the adoption of applications using linked open data techniques in data management and service delivery. This article introduces the concept of “data autodiscovery”, highlighting the role of the Organisation Profile Document (OPD) and its contribution to the early success of the UK National Equipment Portal, equipment.data, along with discussing the need for greater dialogue in linked and open data standards development.

A networked registration scheme for enhancing trust

Society has widely adopted use of electronic data without sufficient attention to the problems of non-repudiation (NR). A universal, transparent scheme is needed to replace the traditional paper-based model that people are familiar with. A registration scheme is proposed that uses a network of registration servers run in a way that is robust to legal and technical challenge. Any user can register potential electronic evidence with one or more of these servers. This enables a user to later assert that they had the data at the time. Applications encompass intellectual property (IP) protection, file-download-based e-commerce and corporate shareholder communications. Wide availability should induce proper behaviour between parties whether they use the scheme or not.