An Open Knowledge Base for the Netherlands: Report of a Community Workshop
By Cameron Neylon (Curtin University), Magchiel Bijsterbosch (SURF), Alastair Dunning (TU Delft), Bianca Kramer (Utrecht University), Sarah de Rijcke (Leiden University), Clifford Tatum (SURF; Leiden University) and Ludo Waltman (Leiden University) in report
Abstract
The concept of developing a national Open Knowledge Base for the Netherlands (NL-OKB) has been proposed in response to the strategic needs of the research community in the Netherlands. In parallel with the work of the Dutch Taskforce on Responsible Management of Research Information and Data addressing these opportunities and the preparation of a feasibility study by Dialogic, interested stakeholders were convened with the goal of identifying expert and user-community interests in and need for an NL-OKB.
Date
June 2, 2021
Time
12:00 AM
Location
Zenodo
The concept of developing a national Open Knowledge Base for the Netherlands (NL-OKB) has been proposed in response to the strategic needs of the research community in the Netherlands. In parallel with the work of the Dutch Taskforce on Responsible Management of Research Information and Data addressing these opportunities and the preparation of a feasibility study by Dialogic, interested stakeholders were convened with the goal of identifying expert and user-community interests in and need for an NL-OKB.
The goal in convening a workshop was:
- To gather evidence on the feasibility of an NL-OKB
- To test the community interest and appetite for developing an NL-OKB
- To identify a practical pathway forward towards startup and implementation of an NL-OKB
Over two days, 19-20 November 2020, 35 participants representing national and international organisations met in a virtual workshop. This included representatives of VSNU, NWO, NFU, SURF, DANS, CWTS and a range of Netherlands institutions alongside international stakeholders such as Crossref, ORCID, OpenAIRE, DataCite, SPARC North America, Jisc, UKRI and others.
There was strong support for an NL-OKB amongst the assembled group. The group as a whole was strongly in favour of the development of an NL-OKB run on behalf of and controlled by the academic community. Of those present, virtually all indicated they had a direct stake and interest in supporting the development of an NL-OKB. International participants were also keen to see efforts in the Netherlands succeed as an exemplar to be drawn upon. The assembled group reached a series of consensus conclusions, that taken together provide the beginnings of a roadmap for further development.