This document summarizes a presentation about building a network of open correspondence projects. It discusses why a network is needed, as letters create graphs between people and places like the web. It advocates for open science principles where primary sources, transcriptions, metadata and other materials are digital, online, open and linked. Examples are given of existing open science projects in different domains. The presentation argues that open science allows for "planned serendipity" and changes the direction of knowledge sharing for the benefit of the scholarly community.

1. Open Platforms for Digital Humanities II
Towards a Network of Open Correspondence Projects
Cortona, September 26-27 2013
Building a Network of Open
Correspondence Projects
A model for Open Science
Francesca Di Donato
SNS - ERC
francesca.didonato@sns.it
This presentation is released under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

2. A network of Correspondences:
Why?

3. There are many project on the Web
Letters create graphs between persons/
places
The Web is a graph too

4. Topology of the Network
The existence of a path from a node to another one is a
graph property - it doesn’t depend on our ability to find it
(Euler, 1736)
Direct network
Small world network
Hubs and authorities
Pareto principle

6. Our primary sources (data) must be
Digital On-line Open Linked

7. Access to data
(physical layer: libraries, archives)
Manuscripts (quality, reusability)
Transcriptions (open formats - XML)
Metadata
Critical edition’s criteria
Other results
Documentation

8. What can I do with (legal layer)?
Manuscripts
Transcriptions
Metadata
Critical edition’s criteria
Other results
Documentation
+
+

9. Use of open standards
(technological layer)
Open source software
Shared standards (XML-TEI )
Linked Data

10. Why Open Science?

11. “planned serendipity”

12. Some examples
1. Polymath Project (2009)
A collaborative space for mathematical research
2. GenBank (1996)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/
Genetic data are immediately shared online
3. HapMap (2002) http://hapmap.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
The goal of the International HapMap Project is to develop
a haplotype map of the human genome which will
describe the common patterns of human DNA sequence
variation

13. 4. Galaxy Zoo http://www.galaxyzoo.org/
200.000 volounteers cooperate with a group of experts
in classifying galaxies
5. Wikipedia (2000 - on)
A collaborative Encyclopedia
6. MAPPA Project (2011-14)
Study predictive computational tools applicable to the
archaeological potential of an urban area
Create the first italian open digital archaeological archive
7. Transcribe Bentham http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/transcribe-bentham/
A collaborative transcription project

14. A community of knowledge in a
republic of letters

15. change
the "traffic direction"
of science

16. how groups
can work together to manage
the commons (intangible goods)?

17. 1. Demanding open science

18. Funding agencies policies
(ERC, Horizon2020, National Science Foundation)
Results (OA mandatory)
Data (OA mandatory; fundings only for
digitized documents)

19. 2. Encourage open science

20. How adopting new ways of sharing
can become an imperative for scientists as it is
today publishing an article?

21. What about evaluation?
Altmetrics
http://altmetrics.org/manifesto/

22. "My dear Francesco, I have lately kept praising the age in
which we live, because of the great, indeed divine gift of
the new kind of writing which was recently brought to us
from Germany. In fact, I saw a single man printing in a
single month as much as could be written by hand by
several persons in a year. ... It was for this reason that I
was led to hope that within a short time we would have
such a large quantity of books that there wouldn't be a
single work which could not be procured ... Yet — oh false
and all too human thoughts — I see that things turned out
quite differently [...] now that everyone is free to print
whatever they wish, they often disregard that which best
and instead write, merely for the sake of entertainment,
what would best be forgotten, or, better still, be erased
from all books. And even when they write something
worthwhile they twist and corrupt it to the point where it
would be much better to do without such books [...]"
Niccolò Perotti, Cornucopiae, seu Latinae linguae commentarii, V.Curio, Basileae, 1526, col. 1033
cit. by Robert Darnton, The case for books. Past, present, future, PublicAffairs, 2010

23. Thank you

24. References
A.L. Barabasi, Linked, http://barabasilab.com/LinkedBook/
R. Darnton, The case for books. Past, present, future, PublicAffairs, 2010
M. Nielsen, Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science,
Princeton University Press, 2011.
Images
[slide 2] http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/234447967/
[slide 6] http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimmanleyort/8575656830/sizes/o/in/photostream/
[slide 20] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/
Ready_for_final_exam_at_Norwegian_University_of_Science_and_Technology.jpg
[slide 21] http://thoughtleadershipleverage.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/serendipity-unexpected.jpg