The Global Investigative Journalism Network is an association of 90 nonprofit organizations in 40 countries dedicated to investigative journalism https://storify.com/gijn">

Open Journalism

http://gijn.org/ https://datasense.withgoogle.com/course"> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Linked-Data-Connecting-together-the-BBCs-Online-Content">Linked Data: Connecting together the BBC's Online Content linked-data-platform-640.jpg The Linked Data Platform The Linked Data Platform is the natural evolution of DSP. It builds on the idea of applying semantic tags to News and Sport articles by allowing tagging of any BBC content. Dynamic Semantic Publishing (DSP) http://www.vanderwal.net/folksonomy.html">Folksonomy Folksonomy is the result of personal free tagging of information and objects (anything with a URL) for one's own retrieval. The tagging is done in a social environment (usually shared and open to others). Folksonomy is created from the act of tagging by the person consuming the information. The value in this external tagging is derived from people using their own vocabulary and adding explicit meaning, which may come from inferred understanding of the information/object. People are not so much categorizing, as providing a means to connect items (placing hooks) to provide their meaning in their own understanding. In a few conversations around folksonomy and tagging in 2004 I stated, "folksonomy is tagging that works". This is still a strong belief the three tenets of a folksonomy: 1) tag; 2) object being tagged; and 3) identity, are core to disambiguation of tag terms and provide for a rich understanding of the object being tagged. By: Thomas Vander Wal On: 2 February 2007 http://www-ksl.stanford.edu/kst/what-is-an-ontology.html http://kmi.open.ac.uk/">The Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) was set up in 1995 in recognition of the need for the Open University to be at the forefront of research and development in a convergence of areas that impacted on the OU's very nature: Cognitive and Learning Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Semantic Technologies, and Multimedia. We chose to call this convergence Knowledge Media.

Open Web vs. Deep (Invisible) Web

The Open Web is also referred to as the "Surface Web" or "Visible Web." Search engines (such as Google or Yahoo) provide access to the Open Web, which includes Web sites and pages that are freely available to the public. But, according to some estimates: "Approximately 80% of the information on the Web belongs to the 'invisible Web'." List-Handley, C. J. (2008) Information literacy and technology. 4th ed. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, p. 36. Library databases are part of the "Invisible" or "Deep" Web. Like most libraries, ODU purchases subscriptions to these usually-costly resources for our primary users -- including you. For academic research, it is always best if you begin with library resources, for several reasons: Open Web Deep Web (Library Resources) Sources have not been reviewed or evaluated; anything goes Sources and search tools have been reviewed and recommended by experts Identity and credentials of the author or creator are often unavailable Sources are more likely to have been written or developed by experts, who are identified Open to anyone, anywhere Resources are intended for a specific academic community Little organization and limited searching features; information may or may not be updated Databases and other resources are better-organized, updated, and offer various advanced features Web sites can come and go; not always stable and usually not archived Most resources are a permanent part of our collection Think about it ... You may know that Government Resources are among the useful research sources to consult. Which part of the Web do you think they would fall under -- Deep or Open? It's a little tricky. Because they are freely available and published by the government, they are part of the Open Web - however, they are also included in library databases and catalogs as part of the Deep Web. To find government resources, you can use search tools in both the Deep and Open Web.
Reuse, develop and share biological visualisation with BioJS BioJS is a community project aiming to create a collection of JavaScript components to present biological information following a common guideline. This workshop aims to introduce the BioJS project and provide enough skills to use BioJS components. For people interested in contributing to BioJS we will also provide a hello world tutorial to quickly have a taste on how to create a BioJS component.

Toolkit

LibraryStacksRect.jpgOur guides can help you with all the different aspects of software sustainability. We can help you choose software development processes and techniques to protect your software and ensure it has a sustainable future.

Is there something you would like to know more about? We're always happy to provide our expertise on a new subject, so if there's something you would like to know more about, please contact us.

(Click the + to expand the lists.)

  • Starting a community - taking your software to the world - Whether for research, administration, learning or teaching, software is an increasingly valuable tool and output, and needs to be managed as such. Starting a community is, of course, an important step in software sustainability. 
  • How to run a Software Carpentry boot camp - A boot camp is a workshop during which participants learn software skills based on shorts tutorials and hands-on practical exercises. This guide tells you everything you need to know about running your own boot camp. 
  • Building a better community - Building a community around software is an important step for its sustainability. An active community can become self-supporting: answering queries raised by community members and contributing new functionality and bug fixes back to your project.  
  • Recruiting champions for your project - Promoting your software is vital if you want to increase its use and generate interest in your research. Rather than singing the praises of your own software, it is often more persuasive to have a satisfied user spread the word for you.  
  • Recruiting student developers - It's frustrating when you have an idea for improving your software, but lack the resources needed to realise it. Not all is lost! Your idea might be the perfect basis for a student project.
  • Our thanks to the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) for providing links to these guides. The DCC is a world-leading centre of expertise in digital information curation with a focus on building capacity, capability and skills for research data management across the UK's higher education research community.
  • How to Develop a Data Management and Sharing Plan - Planning for the effective creation, management and sharing of your data enables you to get the most out of your work, bear in mind the wider context and consequences of different options, and  helps make the research process easier.
  • How to License Research Data - This guide will help you decide how to apply a licence to your research data, and which licence would be most suitable. It should provide you with an awareness of why licensing data is important, the impact licences have on future research, and the potential pitfalls to avoid.

  • Choosing an open-source licence - There are so many useful resources on the web when it comes to open-source licensing that it can be confusing. This guide highlights the best resources that provide clear information about choosing a licence for software.

  • Supporting open-source software - You've written and released your open-source software, and now you've started receiving support queries. How do you support your software, handle questions and resolve bugs? Don't panic! This guide will help.
  • Choosing the right open-source software for your project - A lot of time is invested in setting up new software, and if you haven't done your homework, you could be making an expensive mistake. This guide takes you through the questions you should ask before you invest your time in new software.
  • Approaches to software sustainability - The way that you approach sustainability will be depend on many factors, such as the how important is the software, how mature is it, what is the size of its community and what resources available for achieving sustainability? This guide summarises the different approaches to achieving software sustainability.  
  • How to write a case for a funding a software developer - This guide helps you to make the case for funding a software developer, define their duties, gather evidence of your software’s impact and reassure funders that its benefits go far beyond your project.  
  • Before starting a new software project - Whether for research, administration, learning or teaching, software is an increasingly valuable research tool and output, and needs to be managed as such.  
  • Your project is ending. Don't panic! - To ensure valuable ideas and investment are not lost, decisions need to be made on what is to be done with the outputs from the development process. Just because you’ve finished with it now, doesn’t mean you or someone else won’t want to return to it at a later date.  
  • Sustainability and preservation framework - A key challenge in digital preservation is being able to articulate, and ideally prove, the need for preservation. A clear framework of purposes and benefits facilitates making the case for preservation.  
  • Congratulations: You've inherited some code! - This briefing paper is targeted at software developers and project managers who deal with taking over code that was developed by others, and where no proper handover has occurred.  
  • Choosing project and product names - In this guide, we'll take a look at how to choose a good name and the common pitfalls. We'll also look at searching for already used names (including trademark searches). Finally, we'll discuss our understanding of registered trademarks and passing off - two laws that can affect name choice.
  • Creating videos for software projects - Videos are one of the best ways of showcasing software. This guide gives a few tips on producing videos for software projects.  
  • How to cite and describe software - It can sometimes be hard to understand, reproduce or reuse research done using software due to the way in which software is cited and described in papers. This guide provides recommendations as to how to cite and describe software when writing papers or reports.  
  • Which journals should I publish my software in? - Peer-reviewed publications are still the principal means of recording research. This guide lists the journals which accept submissions which are primarily about software.
  • How continuous integration can help you regularly test and release your software - Continuous integration ensures that your software is built and tested regularly. It can help you to demonstrate that your software does what it claims to do, and that it does so correctly.   
  • Hosted continuous integration - A list of providers delivering hosted continuous integration to save you some of the time and effort in deploying a continuous integration server yourself. 
  • Help! My developer is running away! - This paper provides guidance on how to perform a technical handover, which will ensure that the soon-to-leave developer will impart his or her valuable technical knowledge and identify traps and pitfalls you should avoid.
  • Getting to know Jenkins - A walkthrough of Jenkins to highlight some of the key features of a continuous integration server. While there are many continuous integration servers available, we use Jenkins as it is popular, free and open source.  
  • Choosing a repository for your software project - This guide provides an overview of the different options for repositories, and looks at some of the decisions you will need to make before choosing a repository  
  • Migrating project resources: what to remember - In this guide, we list the steps you should consider before a project migration.  
  • How to create and manage SourceForge projects - SourceForge is a free and well-established open-source project repository. It currently hosts over a quarter of a million open-source projects and is used by over 2.7 million developers. In this guide, we'll provide an overview of SourceForge and a how-to for common SourceForge tasks.  
  • Best practice for using cloud in research - This guide for researchers will help you understand what cloud computing is, the benefits it may be able to offer you as a researcher and the different options available for gaining access to cloud computing resources. It will guide you in assessing whether to use a cloud and in planning the porting of your applications to your chosen cloud.  
  • Best practice for funding the use of cloud in research - This guide for funders, senior managers and research directors will help you to assess requests for funding for cloud computing resources; assess requests to provision cloud infrastructures; and to provision shared cloud computing infrastructures to researchers across a range of institutions.
  • Developing scientific applications using a Model-View-Controller approach - Many scientific codes in research are developed in an organic way: you need a feature, so you code a feature. It works, you understand it (and others can understand it!), and it is well tested. It's good, right? Maybe. But let's take a more thorough look...
  • Software development: general best practice - You will find that development of new code and maintenance of existing code is easier if you adopt established principles and best practices.  This guide shows you how to approach a new software development project.  
  • Ready for release? - To get people using your software as quickly and painlessly as possible, you should invest a little of your time preparing everything your users will need before you release your software. This guide describes some simple things you can do to improve your users' experience of your software.  
  • Developing portlets for multiple portal platforms - Developing portlets to run on a number of portal platforms is a tricky business. Plus. Where should you start, which portal platforms should you support, and what mechanisms are there to help you support them?  
  • Defending your code against dependency problems - Rather than re-invent the wheel, it's a common (and good) practice to develop software that uses third-party software, but problems can occur when a new version of the code causes an incompatibility. In this guide, we describe how to choose software and develop code to avoid dependency problems.  
  • Developing maintainable software - If you want to increase the uptake of your software, make it easy to extend (and fix) and make it maintainable. This guide provides advice on the design and development of maintainable software that will benefit both you and your users.  
  • Writing readable source code - Although it ends up being processed by a machine, source code evolves within our hands. We need to ensure that we can understand what our code does and if it does this correctly, sometimes months after we wrote it. Our peers need to understand how our code works to have confidence in our research. Writing readable code costs only a fraction more time than writing unreadable code, but the payback is immense.  
  • Testing your software - Software development doesn't end when the software is written. How can you, and any developers you work with, be sure that your software meets its requirements? Does your software work as expected, and will it continue to work over its lifetime?  
  • How to frustrate your users, annoy other developers and please lawyers - Sometimes it's good to see a problem from a fresh perspective. We've wound up Mike Jackson into an absolute frenzy and asked him to write an anti-guide. Here's what not to do when writing software.  
  • Software evaluation guide - Assessing the quality of software - either your own or someone else's - is a tricky balance between hard objectivity and the very subjective (but very valid) individual user experience. The Institute provide a software evaluation service based on two complementary approaches developed over many years in the research software arena.  This guide explains how we go about it!

http://licenses.opendefinition.org/">Open Licenses Service - Open Source, Open Data, and Open Content Licenses in JSON and API Friendly Form http://wiki.okfn.org/Main_Page">OKFN Wiki http://wiki.okfn.org/Handbook/Generic_Team_Roles">OKFN Handbook - Generic Team Roles http://assets.okfn.org/"> http://okfn.spreadshirt.net/"> http://okfn.org/events/"> http://explorer.okfnlabs.org/"> http://jehb.github.io/presentations/todd2014/">Open Source vs. Open Data wake county, nc park finder http://terrahub.io/wake-park-finder/ http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/">TimeMapper - Elegant Timelines and Maps Created in Seconds http://forestwatchers.net/index.html"> http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/">Open Society Foundations http://openliterature.net/"> http://www.askopendata.com/">Ask Open Data http://thedatatank.com/ usgs (u.s. Geological Survey The National Map Viewer and Download Platform Use The National Map Viewer and Download Platform to visualize, inspect, and download our most current topographic base map data and products for free. Managed by the USGS National Geospatial Program (NGP), The National Map Viewer provides access to all eight primary data themes of The National Map to include US Topo and historical topographic map products. The viewer platform is extended upon the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency's (NGA) Palanterra x3 Viewer. Data include: Elevation, Orthoimagery, Hydrography, Geographic Names, Boundaries, Transportation, Structures, and Land Cover, while products include: US Topo and Historical Topo Maps. The National Map Viewer also allows visualization and identification queries (but not downloads) of Other Featured Data, to include Ecosystems, Protected Areas, Gap Analysis Program Land Cover, Hazards, Weather, Wetlands, Public Land Survey System, and National Park Service Boundaries. To research and download historical USGS data, such as Digital Orthophoto Quadrangles and Digital Line Graphs, or to access lidar point cloud data, go to Earth Explorer. http://nationalmap.gov/viewer.html" title="The National Map: Viewer and Download Platform">

https://github.com/usgs" title="USGS on Github">usgs on Github http://www.usgs.gov/ngpo/" title="National Geospatial Program"> http://www.tec.army.mil/" title="Army Geospatial Center | US Army Corps of Engineers">Army Geospatial Center http://nationalmap.gov/historical/" title="The National Map: Historical Topographic Map Collection">
The Open Journal Project The Open Journal Projects is a bold initiative that aims to make the world's academic information truly open and accessible - particularly to groups who have lacked access in the past. he Open Journal Project designs, develops, implements and disseminates innovations in Open Access and Open Research. Our aim is to encourage and empower publishers to deliver world's best practice in Open Access. Our pilot innovations are diverse and include: plain language guides, low-bandwidth websites, multi-language translations, disability access and varied distribution models. http://theculturefeed.com/feed/ OpenGLAM http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM">GLAM-WIKI http://theculturefeed.com/ http://www.opendoar.org/">

OpenDataOpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories.

http://databib.org/repository/1136">Databib | Open Science Framework http://okcast.org/feed/"> Civic Patterns CivicPatterns is a catalogue of design patterns for civic technology projects. Anyone who builds public tools needs to make sure that their approach is going to have real effects, and that they avoid common pitfalls. This site tries to establish a pattern language to support a discussion about what works, what fails and why.">