Hi All,

A quick update. We’re in the middle of several new developments for Open Context. These mainly center on:

• Linked Open Data: For all the projects currently published in Open Context, we’re busy referencing some important shared vocabularies using Linked Open Data methods. Linking Open Context data to other relevant data on the Web is now part of publication workflow, and we’re looking forward to demonstrating this development.
• Large new datasets: We’re currently processing, cleaning, and linking (as in Linked Data) some very large datasets. With these published, we’ll more than double the size of Open Context’s overall collection.
• User interface and design improvements: We’re working with a professional designer and user-experience researcher to improve the user interactions and aesthetics. Expect to see some radical changes in Open Context’s look and feel in a few months.

Over the next few months, we’ll be incrementally rolling out these new developments. We’re especially excited about our work aligning Open Context with the wonderful world of Linked Open Data (see Wikipedia introduction). While we’ve been long aware of linked data approaches, we’ve been worried about work-flows on how to align data contributed by other researchers with concepts referenced from the public Web. We’ll make some important announcements about our efforts to enhance data publication workflows issue shortly.