SOAD

Swiss Open Academic Data

About

The SOAD community emerges from a common initiative launched by academic staff working with open databases at EPFL (Gaël Bernard) and ETH Library (Simon Willemin). Anyone active in Switzerland is invited to join the community, please send us an email if you’re interested. More information about the members of the community will be provided in the coming months. In the meantime, do not hesitate to reach out at info@soad.ch.

    Open Academic Data?

    1. What is Open Academic Data?

    In our understanding, Open Academic Data is data about research and includes metadata on research output such as publications, research data and software, and data on funding and grants. Open sources include the platforms OpenAlex, OpenAIRE, ORCID, Crossref, and ETER, among others.

    1. Are Open Academic Data and Open Research Data (ORD) synonyms?

    No. Although some Open Academic Data are used by researchers in bibliometrics, scientometrics, research about research and science on science, and can, as such, be part of Open Research Data (ORD), they are also used in other contexts, for instance by administrative staff, and are hence not systematically part of ORD.

    1. Are there other expressions used to refer to similar kinds of data?

    Usually, Open Academic Data corresponds to what is denoted as Open Scholarly Data, or Open Research Information as defined in the Barcelona Declaration:

    “By research information we mean information (sometimes referred to as metadata) relating to the conduct and communication of research. This includes, but is not limited to, (1) bibliographic metadata such as titles, abstracts, references, author data, affiliation data, and data on publication venues, (2) metadata on research software, research data, samples, and instruments, (3) information on funding and grants, and (4) information on organizations and research contributors. Research information is located in systems such as bibliographic databases, software archives, data repositories, and current research information systems.” Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information