The State of Open Government Data in Dutch Municipalities: Transparency, Accountability & Innovation

This MaRBLe projects focusses on Open Government Data (OGD) in Dutch municipalities. This is government published data that available for anyone to use and reuse without any restrictions and no costs. This type of information is not just published with the aim of enhancing government transparency but is supposed to have positive outcomes on innovation as well. Through interviews with relevant stakeholders in the OGD publication process, such as Dutch municipalities and NGOs, this paper identifies which problems have hampered the potential benefits of OGD from not being fully realized yet. It concludes that in each phase of the publication process there are various problems that obstruct the effective usage of OGD.

Open Data and Data Analysis Preservation Services for LHC Experiments

In this paper we present newly launched services for open data and for long-term preservation and reuse of high-energy-physics data analyses based on the digital library software Invenio. We track the ”data continuum” practices through several progressive data analysis phases up to the final publication. The aim is to capture for subsequent generations all digital assets and associated knowledge inherent in the data analysis process, and to make a subset available rapidly to the public. The ultimate goal of the analysis preservation platform is to capture enough information about the processing steps in order to facilitate reproduction of an analysis even many years after its initial publication, permitting to extend the impact of preserved analyses through future revalidation and recasting services. A related ”open data” service was launched for the benefit of the general public.Peer Reviewe

Collaborative platforms for streamlining workflows in Open Science

Despite the internet’s dynamic and collaborative nature, scientists continue to produce grant proposals, lab notebooks, data files, conclusions etc. that stay in static formats or are not published online and therefore not always easily accessible to the interested public. Because of limited adoption of tools that seamlessly integrate all aspects of a research project (conception, data generation, data evaluation, peer-reviewing and publishing of conclusions), much effort is later spent on reproducing or reformatting individual entities before they can be repurposed independently or as parts of articles.

We propose that workflows - performed both individually and collaboratively - could potentially become more efficient if all steps of the research cycle were coherently represented online and the underlying data were formatted, annotated and licensed for reuse. Such a system would accelerate the process of taking projects from conception to publication stages and allow for continuous updating of the data sets and their interpretation as well as their integration into other independent projects.

A major advantage of such workflows is the increased transparency, both with respect to the scientific process as to the contribution of each participant. The latter point is important from a perspective of motivation, as it enables the allocation of reputation, which creates incentives for scientists to contribute to projects. Such workflow platforms offering possibilities to fine-tune the accessibility of their content could gradually pave the path from the current static mode of research presentation into
a more coherent practice of open science

Why Geospatial Linked Open Data for Smart Mobility?

While the concept of Smart Cities is gaining momentum around the world and government data are increasingly available and accessible on the World Wide Web, key issues remain about Open Data and data standards for smart cities. A better integration and interoperabilty of data through the World Wide Web is only possible when everyone agrees on the standards for data representation and sharing. Linked Open Data positions itself as a solution for such standardization, being a method of publishing structured data using standard Web technologies. This facilitates the interlinking between datasets, makes them readable by computers, and easily accesible on the World Wide Web. We illustrate this through the example of an evolution from a traditional Content Management System with a geoportal, to a semantic based aproach. The Traffic Safety Monitor was developed in the period of 2012-2015 to monitor the road safety and to support policy development on road safety in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). The system is built as a Content Management System (CMS), with publication tools to present geospatial indicators on road safety (e.g. the number of accidents with cars and the number of positive alcohol tests) as Web maps using stardardized Open Geospatial Consortium Webservices. The Traffic Safety Monitor is currently further developed towards a Mobility Monitor. Here, the focus is on the development of a business process model for the semantic exchange and publication of spatial data using Linked Open Data principles targeting indicators of sustainable and smart mobility. In the future, the usability of cycling Infrastructure for vehicles such as mobility scooters, bicycle trailers etc. can be assessed using Linked Open Data. The data and metadata is published in Linked open data format, opening the door for their reuse by a wide range of (smart) applications

Safe to Be Open: Study on the Protection of Research Data and Recommendations for Access and Usage

Openness has become a common concept in a growing number of scientific and academic fields. Expressions such as Open Access (OA) or Open Content (OC) are often employed for publications of papers and research results, or are contained as conditions in tenders issued by a number of funding agencies. More recently the concept of Open Data (OD) is of growing interest in some fields, particularly those that produce large amounts of data – which are not usually protected by standard legal tools such as copyright. However, a thorough understanding of the meaning of Openness – especially its legal implications – is usually lacking. Open Access, Public Access, Open Content, Open Data, Public Domain. All these terms are often employed to indicate that a given paper, repository or database does not fall under the traditional “closed” scheme of default copyright rules. However, the differences between all these terms are often largely ignored or misrepresented, especially when the scientist in question is not familiar with the law generally and copyright in particular – a very common situation in all scientific fields. On 17 July 2012 the European Commission published its Communication to the European Parliament and the Council entitled “Towards better access to scientific information: Boosting the benefits of public investments in research”. As the Commission observes, “discussions of the scientific dissemination system have traditionally focused on access to scientific publications – journals and monographs. However, it is becoming increasingly important to improve access to research data (experimental results, observations and computer-generated information), which forms the basis for the quantitative analysis underpinning many scientific publications”. The Commission believes that through more complete and wider access to scientific publications and data, the pace of innovation will accelerate and researchers will collaborate so that duplication of efforts will be avoided. Moreover, open research data will allow other researchers to build on previous research results, as it will allow involvement of citizens and society in the scientific process. In the Communication the Commission makes explicit reference to open access models of publications and dissemination of research results, and the reference is not only to access and use but most significantly to reuse of publications as well as research data. The Communication marks an official new step on the road to open access to publicly funded research results in science and the humanities in Europe. Scientific publications are no longer the only elements of its open access policy: research data upon which publications are based should now also be made available to the public. As noble as the open access goal is, however, the expansion of the open access policy to publicly funded research data raises a number of legal and policy issues that are often distinct from those concerning the publication of scientific articles and monographs. Since open access to research data – rather than publications – is a relatively new policy objective, less attention has been paid to the specific features of research data. An analysis of the legal status of such data, and on how to make it available under the correct licence terms, is therefore the subject of the following sections

Two-Stream Model: Toward Data Production for Sharing Field Science Data

Scientific data play a central role in the production of knowledge reported in scientific publications. Today, data sharing policies together with technological capacity are fueling visions of data as open and accessible where data appear to stand-alone as products of the research process. Yet, guidelines and outputs are constantly being produced that impact subsequent work with the data, particularly in field-oriented, data-rich earth science research. We propose a model that focuses on two distinct yet intertwined data streams: internal-use data and public-reuse data. Internal-use data often involves a complex mix of processing, analysis and integration strategies creating data in forms leading to the publication of papers. Public-reuse data is prepared with a more standardized set of procedures creating data packages in the form of well-described, parameter-based datasets for release to a data repository and for reuse by others. While scientific researchers are familiar with collecting and analyzing data for publication in the scientific literature, the second data stream helps to identify tasks relating to the preparation of data for future, unanticipated reuse. The second stream represents an expansion in conceptualization of data management for the majority of natural scientists from a publication metaphor to recognition of a release metaphor. A combined dual-function model brings attention to some of the less recognized barriers that impede preparation of data for reuse. Digital data analysis spawns a multitude of files often assessed while ‘in use’ so for reuse of data, scientists must first identify what data files to share. They must also create robust data processes that frequently involve establishing new distributions of labor. The two-stream approach creates a visual representation for data generators who now must think about what data are most likely to have value not only for their work but also for the work of others. Development of this approach is part of a collaborative project studying site-based data curation in geobiology for geologists, geochemists, and microbiologists at Yellowstone National Park.Ope

Semantic modelling of video annotations – the TIB AV-Portal's metadata structure

The TIB AV-Portal (https://av.tib.eu) is an online platform for sharing scientific videos operated by the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB). Besides the allocation of Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) and Media Fragment Identifiers (MFID) for video citation, long-term preservation of all material and open licenses like Creative Commons, the core feature of the TIB AV-Portal are its various methods of automated metadata extraction to fundamentally improve search functionalities (e.g. fine-grained search and faceting). These comprise of an automated chaptering, extraction of superimposed text, speech to text recognition, and the detection of predefined visual concepts. In addition, extracted metadata are consequently mapped against authority files like the German “Gemeinsame Normdatei” and knowledge bases like DBpedia and Library of Congress Subject Headings via a process of automated named entity linking (NEL) to enable semantic and cross-lingual search. The results of this process are expressed as temporal and/or spatial video annotations, linking extracted metadata to certain key frames and video segments. In order to structure the data, express relations between single entities, and link to external information resources, several common vocabularies, ontologies and knowledge bases are being used. These include amongst others the Open Annotation Data Model, the NLP Interchange Format (NIF), BIBFRAME, the Friend of Friend Vocabulary (FOAF), and Schema.org. Furthermore, all data is stored adhering to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model and published as linked open data. This provides third parties with an interoperable and easy to reuse RDF graph representation of the AV-Portal’s metadata. On our poster we illustrate the general structure of the TIB AV-Portal’s comprehensive metadata both authoritative and extracted automatically. Here, the main focus is on the underlying video annotation graph model and on semantic interoperability and reusability of the data. In particular we visualize how the use of vocabularies, ontologies and knowledge bases allows for rich semantic descriptions of video materials as well as for easy metadata publication, interlinking, and opportunities of reuse by third parties (e.g. for information retrieval and enrichment). In doing so, we present the AV-Portal’s metadata structure as an illustrative example for the complexity of modelling temporal and spatial video metadata and as a set of best practices in the field of audio-visual resources

Research Objects: Towards Exchange and Reuse of Digital Knowledge

What will researchers be publishing in the future? Whilst there is little question that the Web will be the publication platform, as scholars move away from paper towards digital content, there is a need for mechanisms that support the production of self-contained units of knowledge and facilitate the publication, sharing and reuse of such entities.

 In this paper we discuss the notion of _research objects_, semantically rich aggregations of resources, that can possess some scientific intent or support some research objective. We present a number of principles that we expect such objects and their associated services to follow

Open Content in Open Context

This article presents the challenges and rewards of sharing research content through a discussion of Open Context, a new open access data publication system for field sciences and museum collections. Open Context is the first data repository of its kind, allowing self-publication of research data, community commentary through tagging, and clear citation and stable hyperlinks, and Creative Commons licenses that make reusing content legal and easy.The Nov-Dec 2007 issue of Educational Technology magazine is an entire special issue dedicated to "Opening Educational Resources." A series of articles in this issue highlight open educational models, including OpenCourseWare, Connexions and this piece on Open Context, co-authored by Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Eric Kansa