Talis, my employer, has been a big promoter of Linked Data and open-access to information, because we see that new ideas often arise when existing ideas come together. ...
... [M]ost of the world’s data are locked away in silos (prisoners of the cells their databases confine them to). Many organisations may wish to make use of their data in a semantic environment, and many might even embrace the Open-source nature of their data, and make it freely available to the world to recombine and use: there are always more innovations outside an organisation than within! In order to lower barriers to enter this linked data world, Talis has built a Platform with resources to host and utilise these connections, making use of semantic web standards (RDF and SPARQL, the query language of the semantic web) and a developer-friendly environment (a RESTFul API, for example).
However, this innovation is only possible when data are accessible. In order to further lower the barriers, Talis is now offering free access to the Platform to host public domain data. We are calling this initiative the Talis Connected Commons, and the offer is not limited to free hosting: the data access services, including access to a public SPARQL endpoint, are also freely available. To keep this data open, you will need to use either the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License or the recently launched Creative Commons CC0 license to publish data. Anyone will then be able to freely access the stored data using the Platform services, without API keys and without usage limits. ...
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.
