In April 2006, we proudly launched the Beta version of Open Context, our new open access publication system that enables researchers to distribute their primary field data, notes, and media (images, maps, drawings, videos) on the World Wide Web. Open Context provides an easy to use, yet powerful, framework for exploring, searching, and analyzing excavation results, survey data, and museum collections. Open Context represents an important advance. For the first time, research data can be pooled, compared and explored in a “Web 2.0” system that enables the community to add value, organization, and meaning to the content. Open Context was developed over two years with a series of grants from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation....
Open Context currently contains over 100,000 items from ten projects, including over 2000 images from sites in Turkey and Iraq. Projects range from comparative collections to archaeological excavation data to slide collections. Of particular interest to users is that each item in the Open Context database can have multiple, high-quality images associated with it. The searchability and easy access to these images provides an excellent resource for teaching. Open Context is currently taking in new projects, including excavation data from Nineveh (Iraq), Petra (Jordan), and a massive zooarchaeological reference collection from Mesoamerica and the southern United States....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/07/2007 06:12:00 PM.
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.
