JISC

Bill Hubbard introduced the session, reminding us that technological developments can drive cultural change. Peter Murray-Rust gave a presentation on discovering and using scientific information, pointing to the huge revolution in the way in which knowledge is being stored and distributed. He sees great value in the use of RDF and Web 2.0, but that the use of these tools may be held back by IPR restrictions. Peter gave two examples of the use of such tools. One is DBPedia, Wikipedia in sematic RDF form, and the other is the SPECTRa Project, which has the potential to capture chemistry data produced by any university in the world. Peter also noted the potential for institutions to recapture power over the use of scientific data by storing and using the data in doctoral theses.

Vic Lyte then described IRS, with its vision to expose the outputs of research and teaching so that it is visible, enabling the UK academic community to benefit from the content of repositories. He emphasised the shift in approach from the content itself to its context in semantics. IRS is studying user requirements for this approach. Participants in the session raised a number of points about both presentations, for example about the domain-specific nature of the systems to extract data and the need to ensure that IPR restrictions by commercial organisations should not hinder the developments discussed in the session.