Linked Data for Libraries Project

"Welcome to the Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L) project. The project is a collaboration of the Cornell University Library, the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and the Stanford University Libraries, and is funded by a nearly $1 million two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The goal of the project is to create a Scholarly Resource Semantic Information Store (SRSIS) model that works both within individual institutions and through a coordinated, extensible network of Linked Open Data to capture the intellectual value that librarians and other domain experts and scholars add to information resources when they describe, annotate, organize, select, and use those resources, together with the social value evident from patterns of usage."
Aims to connect entities in descriptive metadata: People, Organisations, Places, Subjects, Events, Works, and Datasets.

The Linked Data for Libraries (LD4L) Project: a Progress Report: http://www.cni.org/pbs/the-linked-data-for-libraries-ld4l-project-a-progress-report/

Authority files: Breaking out of the library silo to become signposts for research information

Knowledge Exchange is exploring the rich field of research information in order to help our partners effectively achieve their objectives. To this end a group of experts collected examples of Authority Files, to demonstrate their working and immense value for information discovery and knowledge creation in the research process.

Authority Files or Controlled Vocabularies are lists of entities (publications, journals, data collections, organisations, etc.). The lists are uniquely identified by a number (identifiers such as ORCID for researchers, DOI for publications, ISBN for books, etc.) and contain information to characterise and qualify the entities (e.g. if a journal is Open Access, which researcher contributed to a specific project, etc.)
The lists are authoritative (maintained by an expert organisation, registry office, etcetera; or authoritative in itself being widely recognised and used by significant audiences, etc.) In this publication experts explain the beneficial value of Authority Files with regards to discovery, trust and reliability, accountability, transactional efficiency, for knowledge creation.

Download the publication: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Default.aspx?ID=708 

Sowing the seed: Incentives and motivations for sharing research data, a researcher’s perspective

Knowledge Exchange have just released a study on incentives and motivations for researchers to share research data based on case studies with researchers from 5 disciplines. They also looked into career stages and implications for willingness to share data.

http://repository.jisc.ac.uk/5662/1/KE_report-incentives-for-sharing-researchdata.pdf

Some interesting recommendations for research funders, institutions and repositories eg

- Provide data resources that combine data and related rich context such as publications and other outputs

-  Develop national registries of research data that link to journals, repositories, etc.

But there are a lot more and worth having a look at.

New surveys reveal dynamism, challenges of open data-driven businesses in developing countries - World Bank

http://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/new-surveys-reveal-dynamism-challenges-open-data-driven-businesses-developing-countries

SUBMITTED BY ALLA MORRISON ON MON, 12/15/2014

CO-AUTHORS: PRASANNA LAL DAS

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Open data for economic growth continues to create buzz in all circles.  We wrote about it ourselves on this blog site earlier in the year.  You can barely utter the phrase without somebody mentioning the McKinsey report and the $3 trillion open data market.  The Economist gave the subject credibility with its talk about a 'new goldmine.' Omidyar published a report a few months ago that made $13 trillion the new $3 trillion.  The wonderful folks at New York University's GovLab launched the OpenData500 to much fanfare.  The World Bank Group got into the act with this study.  The Shakespeare report was among the first to bring attention to open data's many possibilities. Furthermore, governments worldwide now routinely seem to insert economic growth in their policy recommendations about open data – and the list is long and growing.

Geographic distribution of companies we surveyed. Here is the complete list.

We hope to publish a detailed report shortly but here meanwhile are a few of the regional findings in greater detail.

We count ourselves among the believers (even as we roll our eyes over some of the numbers!), but what strikes us most about these reports is their northern focus  ̶  the McKinsey report, for instance, is 'global' but concentrates almost exclusively on North America and Europe.  The Shakespeare report was written for the U.K. government, and the Economist report fails to include any examples from the developing world.  And the Omidyar report is broader and covers the G-20.

Read the rest at the World Bank Blog It has a lot of nice graphics depicting key findings from the data.