Author: Amanda Lawrence

I have been working at APO since 2006 and after a few different roles am now the Director of this wonderful public knowledge enterprise.

APO data live in Research Data Australia

After a long project we are very pleased to say that APO as a database as well as all of the datasets we host are now able to be searched and accessed via Research Data Australia.

And we have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for APO so if you want to cite APO as a whole – if you are perhaps writing about the importance of open access databases as a source of evidence for public policy or that you used APO overall for a project –  please include doi.org/10.4225/50/5b15c09dbc286 in your reference as it will help us to to trace this more easily.

Research Data Australia is a project of the Australian National Data Service which helps researchers find, access, and reuse data from over one hundred Australian research organisations, government agencies, and cultural institutions. It does not store the data itself but provides descriptions of, and links to, the data from their data publishing partners such as APO. Research Data Australia caters specifically for researchers but also has broader relevance to others including policy makers, educators and business people. Continue reading “APO data live in Research Data Australia”

APO project brings $2m boost to connected platforms for public policy

APO has received a $1.4m grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) program to fund the Linked Semantic Platforms (LSP) project over 2018 and 2019. Together with contributions from partner organisations the project has an overall budget of around $2m over two years.

visualisation
Key elements of the Linked Semantic Platforms project

By using linked open data, knowledge graphs and collaborations across existing research infrastructure projects, the collaborative project aims to develop the next generation of decision-support tools for interdisciplinary research on critical public policy issues.

Expected outcomes include inter-operability across major social science databases and new analytical tools that will transform the research capabilities for evidence-based policy making.

Outcomes are expected on a number of different areas, including sustainable built environments and transport in urban and regional communities, social care and health in the community, work and wellbeing, digital inclusion and digital health. Continue reading “APO project brings $2m boost to connected platforms for public policy”

Welcome changes to the Copyright Act

ADA copyright principles icons
Icons borrowed from ADA

While copyright reform moves at a glacial pace, it is pleasing to report that in 2017 the Australian Government introduced important changes to copyright law in the form of the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and Other Measures) Act 2017 which came into force on Friday 22 December. The changes it brings about are the most significant to Australian copyright law in over a decade, according to the Australian Digital Alliance (ADA). The ADA report states that the Amendment:

‘…ends the antiquated concept of perpetual copyright for unpublished works, instead applying the same basic terms to all materials, regardless of whether they are published or not. It also applies flat terms to orphan works whose authors cannot be identified 70 years from when they were created or made public (this fact sheet on the changes from the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee explains what all this means).

When these laws come into effect on 1 January 2019 they will apply to all works currently protected by copyright in Australia. This means that literally millions of old unpublished works from our national collections will enter the public domain all at once, including recipes used by Captain Cook, letters written by Jane Austen and endless ephemera. Every year after that, unpublished works whose authors died 70 years earlier will also fall into the public domain, and orphan works created/made public 70 years earlier.’

Continue reading “Welcome changes to the Copyright Act”

APO joins Research Graph pilot project and RDA plenary launch

APO has joined a pilot project being run by the DuraSpace foundation that will assist us to export and connect our data with that of other research systems and standards from around the world and visualise the results as graph databases.

Graph close up
Image: APO data graph (close up view) by Research Graph

Research Graph is an open collaborative effort toward connecting scholarly records across global research repositories. Their work is focused on linking research projects and research outcomes on the basis of co-authorship or other collaboration models such as joint funding and grants.

Research Graph is enabled by adopting the interoperability model created by the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Data Description Registry Interoperability (DDRI) Working Group. The implementation of this model is an open source software system called Research Data Switchboard. It is being leveraged to form a distributed network of scholarly works.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A demonstration is planned for this Friday at the RDA Plenary 11 in Berlin at the end of March. Thanks to generous travel support from the Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Amanda Lawrence, APO Director, is attending the Plenary for the first time.

We are looking forward to working with Peter Vats and Dr Amir Aryani as well as the DuraSpace team and helping turn the roadmap into a reality. This project also aligns closely with the work we will be doing on the APO Linked Semantic Platforms LIEF grant over the next two years.

IMG_0585 MailChimp scaled
APO Director Amanda Lawrence at the RDA Plenary 11 in Berlin

 

Conferences and events coming up in 2018

APO staff have confirmed a few conference presentations and attendances so far for 2018 so we hope to see you there. Please come and say hello.

 

APO Presentation at VALA2018

VALA 2018 in Melbourne from 13 – 15 February 2018, will be the year’s must-attend event for those working and aspiring to work in the fast-changing information and technology environment of the GLAM sector. Amanda Lawrence will be presenting on APO and our developments as a linked data platform.  Continue reading “Conferences and events coming up in 2018”

Contribute to APO for research engagement and impact

tom-gauld-auld-atom-a-recent-cartoon-for-a-newscientist-11294776

Posting your research publications, discussion papers, data, videos and other resources to APO is a great way to find new audiences via our newsletters and Twitter posts but APO is able to value add in many other ways.

When APO hosts your content we can provide metrics on downloads and pages views. We support better citation and interoperability of data and grey literature by applying APO DOIs (digital object identifiers) which act as permanent urls back to record. DOIs are used by other systems such as university research management software, social media monitoring companies such as Altmetrics and Plum Analytics, other identifier systems such as the researchers ID system Orcid etc. so they are becoming a key part of information plumbing. Continue reading “Contribute to APO for research engagement and impact”