... STM publishers have already aligned themselves with the aims of semantic publishing, and are seeking ways to implement these commitments in an affordable manner. Lest some subscription-access publishers be anxious about giving away information associated with their published articles, it may be instructive to look at three examples where giving away data and metadata has brought financial benefit. [Note: omitting the examples.] ...
So what data should the publishers be making freely available? Clearly they should provide the datasets that underlie the figures and tables in their articles, and machine-readable provenance information about the article itself. But machine-readable reference lists should also be made available, so that citation networks can be created, analysed and used to promote reader traffic to both citing and cited articles, to the benefit of the publishers concerned. Furthermore, publishers already have extensive sectional mark-up for their articles within the XML created during the publication process, many using a recognized de facto international standard, the National Library of Medicine's XML document format. It would be hugely advantageous if this information was also made available on line, rather than being discarded upon creation of PDF versions of the articles.
Fortunately, with the introduction of the new ACAP [Automated Content Access Protocol] open standard that enables publishers to express terms under which automated access to website content can be regulated, and the increasing employment of Creative Commons licenses regulating rights for reuse, publishers have the means to specify clearly which data are to be made freely available. The open question of who should host the data published to the Web in this manner – whether publishers should each host the datasets relevant to their own publications, or whether there should be independent data repositories, equivalent to SourceForge for open access [sic] software – will be decided in practice, but this is a secondary concern. The important thing is to get the relevant data onto the Web, no matter where they are hosted! ...
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
