Open Knowledge Foundation Activity Aggregator

Moving forward with Open Science in Europe

2008-07-24T17:59:48+00:00

Last week I went to the Institut d’Estudis Catalans in Barcelona for the Euroscience Open Forum Satellite Event organised by Science Commons. The event brought together together lawyers, scientists, policy makers, stakeholders and representatives from many different groups and organisations interested in open access and open data in scientific research from across Europe.

The event did a great job at reinforcing the sense of a shared pan-European vision for open science - which was articulated elegantly in their four recommendations:

open access to literature from funded research
access to research tools from funded research
data from funded research in the public domain
invest in open cyberinfrastructure

While all of these areas are related to what we do at the Open Knowledge Foundation, the first third and fourth of these are most relevant to our core remit and activities. We promote the Open Knowledge Definition as a standard for openness in scholarly literature and research data. Our CKAN project contributes to the open infrastructure for finding and re-using knowledge resources.

It was a good stock-taking excercise - to catch up with what other people have been doing in their respective domains, in their respective locations, as well as to try to identify the most significant challenges for the future.

There’s a brief note on the Science Commons blog and Cameron Neylon of Open Wetware has posted some comments and reflections (1, 2, and 3). Below are a few further jottings about the event.

Notes from ESOF Satellite Event

Ricardo Guererro gave introductory remarks about the role and significance of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
James Boyle of the Centre for the Study of the Public Domain gave a keynote about two visions for the future of science. One vision is a series of walled gardens, locked up behind passwords, paywalls and clickwrap agreements - much like the kinds of closed centralised networks that existed before the Web. The other is of a commons - where scientists can share and build on each others’ research. This latter vision is more like the Web, or like language - and may unlock an explosion of progress with respect to some of our most difficult scientific challenges, as well as allowing for new kinds of commercial innovation.
David Prosser spoke about SPARC Europe and the SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals (which we blogged about in April).
Johannes Fournier spoke about what the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Germany’s main public funder of research - has been doing to support open access. He spoke about the importance of making data available for re-use and the value of allowing unexpected re-uses. Efforts to give researchers incentives to publish their data - included the possibility of increased citations.
Christoph Bruch spoke about open access at the Max Planck Digital Library.
Jens Vigen of CERN spoke about the need for new information systems and new e-Infrastructures for scientific research. He said “eScience requires digital shoulders”. He alluded to a study that indicated that 91% of High-Energy Physics researchers used community generated information systems - such as arXiv and SPIRES. This is particularly valuable to know with respect to projects like CKAN - which is effectively a community-driven resource for open knowledge!
Leslie Chan spoke about his work on the Open Oasis project - an educational resource about all aspects of open access. The project is also mapping the history of OA and current OA publications and initiatives.
Carlos Morais-Pires of the EC spoke about the state and future of e-Infrastructure in Europe and various EC funded infrastructure initiatives in different domains.
Wilma Mossink of the SURF Foundation spoke about their work on licensing policies - alluding to their examination of different Creative Commons licenses, and legal tools for opening data such as the PDDL. Their work refers to the OKD.
Michael Day of UKOLN spoke about their research into data - including the 2007 report Dealing with Data. He spoke about supra-institutional consortia of curators for data, and how a bottom up approach seems to be very effective in some domains.
Tom Dedeurwaerdere spoke about his work on Microbial Commons and StrainInfo.net.
Juan Carlos De Martin presented on COMMUNIA.

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-23T13:31:34+00:00

John Bywater dixit: Wikipedia is unfree. That would be "networking service", in my eyes. A "network service" is a service using the network, the networking facilities the ISP provides. Just my 0.02 € //mirabilos

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-23T12:26:22+00:00

_______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list okfn-discuss-6A+mB+4cr9F9rwYpqGo9+w at >public.gmane.org http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss

Re: Second CKAN Package Party?

2008-07-22T11:05:37+00:00

Is there anyone else interested in having a go at registering some more packages? If so - please add your name to the wiki list! http://okfn.org/wiki/CkanPackageParty/2 It could also be really useful to use the session to gather feedback about the process of adding things, suggestions for new developments and so on. Jonathan

Re: Data that service users consider private,butwant to publish from the service

2008-07-21T15:42:50+00:00

OK. I suspect then that the wording of this will need clarifying in a future version, as it sounds like it covers only private secret information. "Whose data is open as defined by the open knowledge definition (http://opendefinition.org/1.0/) with the exception that where the data is personal in nature the data need only be made available to the user (i.e. the owner of that account)." But you're right, need to be careful of the YouTube runaround you give below. If you have a list of things to consider carefully for revisions to the definition this should be on it. Francis On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 01:44:27PM +0100, Rufus Pollock wrote:

Changeset [169]: [shakespeare/search][l]: create search package with SearchIndex? object + …

2008-07-19T17:43:05+00:00

[shakespeare/search][l]: create search package with SearchIndex? object + cli interface as first part of integration of xapian search support developed in Iain (next part is WUI).

* search.py (+ test): SearchIndex? class with add_item, search, default_index methods.

* paste_deploy_config.ini_tmpl: new config variable search_index_dir

* cli.py: search methods (search_add, search)

also support for verbose option

* init.py: refactor main docs (in docstring)

make clearer by having separate 'getting started' sections for users and developers plus remove mention
remove mention of concordanc and put in todo about search index

Changeset [168]: [shakespeare/templates][s]: (old) add in new main index.html. Should have …

2008-07-19T17:27:39+00:00

[shakespeare/templates][s]: (old) add in new main index.html. Should have been in r157 (1.5 months ago!) but got left out.

Data that service users consider private, but want to publish from the service

2008-07-19T15:58:24+00:00

_______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list okfn-discuss-6A+mB+4cr9F9rwYpqGo9+w at >public.gmane.org http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss

Re: Data that service users consider private, but want to publish fromthe service

2008-07-18T13:44:27+00:00

Sure in that case you wouldn't be using an 'open' license (or even a 'non-commercial' type license for that matter). Sure and again you'd then want to steer clear of an open license. Hmmm. My first instinct is to say yes. However, i'm concerned this might allow end-runs around the intent of the definition. For example, what about YouTube. If I remember the ToS there basically give YT the right to redistribute but no-one else. Nevertheless, this an example where the material is user's material and so I think we should stick to the line that has been drawn. It is only if it data used as part of the service and *not* supplied by users that one has an obligation to make it openly available (remember that user data must be made available for users to extract in an automatable and complete manner though). Yes I think it would. Sure but I think we need to be clear here what is the service and what is the content. The service here is the gitorious. This service exists to *host* user material. Th

Re: Open Participatory Research

2008-07-18T13:42:16+00:00

Yes this is actually dicussed in the full paper where we explicitly mention that: "a second aspect of filtering is `Quality Signalling' for the purpose of resource allocation (jobs, grants etc)". I have to say that I think that this quality evaluation aspect can be derived at almost no cost once you have a decent filtering system in place and therefore, while in some sense a separate goal, can be seen as in some sense derivative from plain filtering. Sure though I would emphasize that one needs to distinguish reward from evaluation. Filtering will automatically result in simple ways to do evaluation (as just discussed). How that evaluation is transformed into a reward is a distinct, though obviously related, issue. Again I would distinguish filtering/ranking from the decision of which from that set one chooses to fund. The same filtering/ranking algorithm can be used whether one decides to fund 2 or 20 proposals. I've signed. Am doing. Regards, Rufus PS: some grammatical improvements y

Changeset [167]: Includes the search templates search and searchword. These need a little …

2008-07-17T19:04:45+00:00

Includes the search templates search and searchword. These need a little work to get them fully into Genshi.

Changeset [166]: Controllers folder for current Pylons move. Contains a search controller …

2008-07-17T19:03:04+00:00

Controllers folder for current Pylons move. Contains a search controller linked to the search forms and templates.

Changeset [165]: Command line textsearch. Will search the index created by textindex. Needs …

2008-07-17T19:01:52+00:00

Command line textsearch. Will search the index created by textindex. Needs further testing once Milton moved in Shakespeare architecture.

Changeset [164]: Update of textindex to reflect the change in project architecture under …

2008-07-17T19:00:32+00:00

Update of textindex to reflect the change in project architecture under Pylons. Creates index within project.

Re: Open Participatory Research

2008-07-17T18:09:17+00:00

I completely agree, the possibilities of modern technology (such as the Web, social networks, semantic technologies) are by far not yet exhausted in the scientific world. A crucial aspect of peer-review and filtering is also the reward dimension. Researchers whose work pass a thorough review process and are accepted at a journal or conference with much filtering (aka low acceptance rate) are rewarded with a prestigious publication, which beautifies the CV and the track record. An open peer review would have to provide a similar reward mechanism. Within our ParticipatoryResearch concept there will still be heavy filtering, since grant money is limited as opposed to shelf space on the Web. BTW: Looks like first discussions are currently starting within the EU how FP8 will be tailored - I sent out information and pointers to to some people there, but the matter will be urged a little more if we could get some more support statements at:

Re: Blogging software

2008-07-17T16:38:39+00:00

wordpress.com comes the closest of sites I'm aware of, given the data import/export and the availability of wordpress.org (though the wordpress.org and wordpress.com codebases are not the same, as would ideally be the case.) I'm sure there are probably some others, though (is typepad based on movable type?)- blogging has an explosion of available open source tools, unlike, say, microblogging (one tool I'm aware of) or social bookmarking (none I'm aware of), so it is likely to have at least some OSSD-compliant sites besides wordpress. Luis

Data that service users consider private,but want to publish fromthe service

2008-07-17T10:43:11+00:00

How broad is as "personal in nature" for the purposes of part 1. of the Open Software Services Definition? It seems to only include secret data - for example personal emails, or my private calendar. There seems to me a category of data which is personal/private, but where the data is not secret. It is just the user only wants it using in ways they control. For example: 1) My own blogs posts are data that I'm happy to be publically viewable, but could be sufficiently personal I don't want to give them away as open data (e.g. I might want to tell a personal anecdote in context on my website, but not want it to appear as lines in a broadway musical) 2) I might want to share photos of myself on a photo sharing site for my friends and anybody in the world to look at there, but for privacy reasons not want them to be taken and used as the next face of l'Oreal. Which leads to the more general question - if the users of a service want to manage their own data with the service, but they want that data to be neit

Blogging software

2008-07-17T10:31:22+00:00

What blogging services, if any, comply with the shiny gorgeous new Open Software Service Definition? Francis

Re: Radiohead Release Data For Video (CC-NC)

2008-07-16T21:21:29+00:00

Yes, I understand that. It looks to me, as a lay human :), that it is essentially a performance recording. The recording method is unusual and the recording (ie the data) encodes 3 dimensions rather than 2 and doesn't encode color and the like that a typical video recording does. As above, I don't think content/data is an interesting distinction in this case. They may be the first to semi-openly license content recorded in one particular unusual format. I'd love to be wrong, because that would mean unusual formats would be less restricted than traditional formats (as data rather than content) and CC would have to shame Radiohead for not putting their 'data' in the public domain, where it belongs. :) Mike

Re: Open Participatory Research

2008-07-16T15:58:42+00:00

[snip] [snip] This sounds like a great initiative. Looking at the wiki I was particularly struck by your mention of 'Open Peer Review'. This is something I've recently been thinking about quite a bit in the context of an economics paper I'm writing with an academic colleague on the subject of efficient dissemination of scholarly information. This is still at an early stage but the basic ideas in it are set out in the introduction a portion of which I include below (for those who prefer things with a url I've just posted online at [1]) Regards, Rufus [1]: ## Introduction It is well known that in order to (completely) address a given number of (independent) goals one needs an equal number of instruments. For example, if one is seeking to address both congestion and pollution in relation to road-traffic, a single instrument, for example petrol taxes, will be insufficient. The same issues arise in relation to the

Re: Radiohead Release Data For Video (CC-NC)

2008-07-16T13:37:44+00:00

I think this was an unusual case in that they were *not* releasing (AFAICT) a normal video but underlying data (3-D scan of Thom Yorke) used to make a video via rendering technologies. Of course. I don't think Rob was suggesting there weren't many other performers who have been releasing open *content* for years (including Rob himself!). I think the point here was more about the data side of things. Though of course I may have misunderstood Rob's meaning :) ~rufus

Open Participatory Research

2008-07-16T03:16:04+00:00

Hi all, A while ago I was already reporting here about our Cofundos.org project for managing end-user driven open-source software development. Our ultimate aim, however, is to explore new ways of open, stakeholder driven research funding and Cofundos is just an initial step into this direction. In the last weeks I was talking with several people involved in science funding and they seemed to be pretty interested in the idea of creating an *prediction market [1] for research ideas* in order to identify the most promising approaches. In order to advance this project, attract supporters and thus finally convince decision makers in research funding an politics we have set up a web site at: I would be very happy to receive your comments and of course support statements at [2]. I'm especially interested in views from different disciplines (e.g. Chemistry, Biology, Social Sciences etc.), since the Participatory Research concept is currently pretty much influenced by our

Re: Radiohead Release Data For Video (CC-NC)

2008-07-15T21:11:24+00:00

I can't say I've looked closely, but I'm not sure it is useful to think of this as 'data' unless you also consider a digital video recording to be 'data' -- this is just more sparse. Of course everything is data, but that's not particularly useful for licensing/access discussions. Noooooooo! Please, let's give credit to artists who have been effectively releasing art as OK for years, even if they aren't as famous as Radiohead. Mike

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-15T19:58:14+00:00

Probably good I didn't -- "software service" is kind of growing on me. Yep. Mike

Changeset [325]: [datapkg/cli][m]: register and install of a package on disk now working.

2008-07-15T16:55:57+00:00

[datapkg/cli][m]: register and install of a package on disk now working.

Re: Radiohead Release Data For Video (CC-NC)

2008-07-15T12:22:16+00:00

Probably not -- though it would depend. Obviously they would have been better off using a data-oriented license here. Exactly. Particularly here I'm not sure what the downside would having a truly open license on the datasets for a music video animation. I would guess it was the general feeling of let's just put on a NC restriction to be on the safe side. ~rufus

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-15T12:16:53+00:00

Thanks -- though that is a general congratulations to the whole community that has helped develop the ideas embodied in the definition. You should have spoken up earlier -- though the danger would be we would have never reached agreement :) Perhaps this is something we can keep open for the v1.1 (or v2.0) which will undoubtedly be necessary as more precise use-cases (and edge-cases) come in over time. It does seem that none of the suggested names were perfect (for example several people I've mentioned Open Network Services too think their about rules for ISPs). The key point is that we get the idea of 'freedom/openness' in relation to services clearly out there together with the reasons why it is important. As you say, while names are important they are certainly not the be all and end all the crucial point is to get across the ideas they represent (and to that end any label, if clearly understood, will be adequate). Regards, Rufus

Radiohead Release Data For Video (CC-NC)

2008-07-15T11:57:45+00:00

http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/ Releasing the data is great, but is it copyrightable and NC-able? Either way, NC on data isn't good. It would have been nice for Radiohead to be the first Open Knowledge performers. ;-) - Rob.

Changeset [324]: [datapkg/docs][s]: (old) start on an FAQ.

2008-07-15T09:57:13+00:00

[datapkg/docs][s]: (old) start on an FAQ.

Changeset [323]: [datapkg/docs][s]: some (old) changes/additions to EXAMPLE.txt.

2008-07-15T09:54:21+00:00

[datapkg/docs][s]: some (old) changes/additions to EXAMPLE.txt.

Changeset [322]: [datapkg][l]: (old - from last week) support for register in cli …

2008-07-15T09:50:37+00:00

[datapkg][l]: (old - from last week) support for register in cli necessitating significant extension/refactoring of package to support loading from disk, better metadata access etc. * package.py: new PackageMaker? class, new from_path method, plus support to normalizing package names.

* cli.py: support for register command.

while testing this discovered that repository init was not initializing repository. This still to be fixed.

* tests/test_datapkg.py: removed as now duplicating other stuff in test_package.py, test_cli.py. Never very important.

* tests/base.py: provide support for creating standardized non-tempfile based test directories (makes working out problems easier).

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-14T16:56:32+00:00

Congratulations! Well, I guess it is too late, but I don't get "software service". John Bywater wrote a few days ago 'Yet overall, I do feel the name "software service" is much more common than "network service", and as such a much better thing to conjoin with "open" and "definition".' Not if you check authoritative sources, like Google and Wikipedia. :) This is the first I've heard of "software service" to mean SaaS, as opposed to some kind of professional service around software or a daemon running locally. By contrast, "network service" is crystal clear. Maybe SaaS will naturally collapse to "software service" and this will be moot. Hopefully this definition will be wildly successful and help make that happen. Mike

Open Software Service Definition Launched

2008-07-14T15:17:59+00:00

For more than a year we’ve been working with a variety of groups and individuals to fashion a clear definition of ‘openness’ in relation to online, software-based, ’services’ (think: search engines, webmail, online spreadsheets, etc). The result, launched today, is the Open Software Service Definition:

http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd/

Simultaneously released, and to which we are party, the Franklin Street Declaration explicitly encourages those producing network software services to take an open approach.

Background

A software service, also known under the title of Software as a Service (SaaS), is a service provided by a software application running online. Users do not access the software directly but do so over a network (the Internet usually) via an interface (whether common HTML or some other API). Such ’services’ are increasingly common with many of us using the most well-known, such as search engines or online email systems, several times a day.

But software ’services’, in contrast to a traditional software ‘applications’, present problems for those who care about freedom and openness. In particular users no longer have access to the software but instead simply interact across a network with the applications interface (for example via a web-browser). In such circumstances many traditional ideas of freedom or openness in relation to code no longer make sense — and many traditional free/open licenses (e.g. the GNU GPL) become ineffectual since, unlike traditional software distribution, no code is actually being ‘conveyed’ to users (and hence the requirement to make available source or modifications is no longer operative).

At the same time, ’services’ also tend to combine both software and data to a greater extent that with traditional applications (think of most online map services such as Google or Yahoo! maps). Both data and code are necessary for those who wish to run the service for themselves or who wish to extend it. Thus ‘openness’ will require that both code and data are ‘open’.

The Open Software Service Definition takes both these major features of software services into account and ensures that the users (and reusers) of an ‘open software service’ enjoy the same freedoms as those using free/open software. Finally, so that those providing open software services can clearly indicate that they are doing so there are buttons available:

Changeset [321]: Refactoring presentation layers.

2008-07-14T13:55:38+00:00

Refactoring presentation layers.

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-14T13:37:01+00:00

Great. It seems there is consensus. I've updated the page (and renamed it) and I think we can now officially launch the Open Software Service Definition (OSSD): ~rufus On 14/07/08 08:01, Evan Prodromou wrote:

Re: Taking the Open Service Definition to 1.0

2008-07-14T08:01:16+00:00

I'm fine with this. -Evan

Re: Licence approval

2008-07-14T07:18:41+00:00

EFF OAL 2.0 was declared to be CC BY-SA 2.0. I believe the OAL pages are now offline, except in the Wayback Machine -- which itself is not answering for that page right now -- see the link in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Audio_License In addition to the licenses mentioned in this thread, there were a bunch of public content licenses created around 2000. I listed several of them on slide 29 of http://www.slideshare.net/mlinksva/lugradio-live-usa-2008-creative-commons but it would be neat if someone cataloged and summarized (including which ones if any are Free/Open and why, and whether there was any actual use) them all (I'm sure I missed some). Here's the relevant text for convenience, slightly edited: Slide 28: History (iii) Open content licenses (some of them Free): 1998: Open Content License 1999: Open Publication License 2000: GFDL, Free Art License 2001: EFF Open Audio License Slide 29: History (iv) Other early 2000s open content licenses (some of them Free): Design Science License Ethymonic

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2008-07-13T16:30:14+00:00

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WikiStart edited by johnbywater

2008-07-13T16:26:19+00:00

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2008-07-13T16:25:42+00:00

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