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OpenCitations

Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata, University of Bologna
Italy
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About

Launched: 2010
Record Updated: Nov 07, 2024
Open scholarly dataset
OpenCitations is an independent not-for-profit infrastructure organization for open scholarship dedicated to the publication of open bibliographic and citation data by the use of Semantic Web (Linked Data) technologies. It is also engaged in advocacy for open citations, particularly in its role as a key founding member of the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC).
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Mission

As a key infrastructure component for global Open Science, the mission of OpenCitations is to harvest and openly publish accurate and comprehensive metadata describing the world's academic publications and the scholarly citations that link them, and to preserve ongoing access to this information by secure archiving. We provide this information, both in human-readable form and in interoperable machine-readable Linked Open Data formats, under open licenses at zero cost and without restriction for third-party analysis and re-use.

Key Achievements

In 2021, we crossed the threshold of 1 billion citations stored by ingesting data from Crossref; in 2022, we extended the collection of open citations with data from DataCite and PubMed; and, in 2023, expanded the availability of open citation data by adding missing citations from OpenAIRE and the Japan Link Center (JaLC).
We expanded our collection besides the citation data by releasing OpenCitations Meta, a database storing and delivering bibliographic metadata for all the publications in the OpenCitations Index, including the publication’s title, type, venue, volume number, issue number, page numbers, publication date, identifiers and details of the main actors involved in the document’s publication (the names of the authors, editors, and publishers).
In November 2023, we launched a new ingestion workflow, to produce two comprehensive collections: OpenCitations Index and OpenCitations Meta.
Currently, the OpenCitations Index contains information describing 2 billion citations

Technical Attributes

Maintenance Status

Actively Maintained

Open Code Repository

Implemented
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Technical Documentation

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Open API

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Open Data Statement

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Open Product Roadmap

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Technical Attribute Statements

Technology Readiness Level

  • Actual system proven in operational environment

Content Licensing

The text of the web pages that comprise the OpenCitations web site is made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. All our data are released using the CC0 to maximise their reuse.

Standards

Integrations

Figshare, Internet Archive, GitHub, OpenAIRE, RISIS, EOSC, GraspOS

Community Engagement

Code of Conduct

Implemented
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Contribution Guidelines or Fora

Implemented
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Community Statements

User Contribution Pathways

  • Contribute funds
  • Contribute to code
  • Contribute to documentation
  • Contribute to education or training
  • Contribute to working groups or interest groups

Community Engagement Activities

  • Annual meetings
  • Blogs
  • Conference participation
  • Interest, working, user, or advisory groups
  • Social media
  • Staff roles with responsibility for community engagement
  • Webinars and training

Engagement with Values Frameworks

  • FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship
  • Principles for Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI)

SCOSS Participation

Yes

Policies & Governance

Governance Summary

For administrative convenience, OpenCitations is managed by the Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata at the University of Bologna. OpenCitations' governance comprises the following bodies: the Directors; the Council, comprising one delegate appointed by each OpenCitations Member; the International Advisory Board elected by the Council, to guide the future developments of OpenCitations strategically; the Management Team.

Policies

Bylaws

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Privacy Policy

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Governance Records

In Progress

Governance Structure & Processes

Implemented
Website (Opens in new window)

Policy Statements

Board Structure

  • Advisory board or steering committee

Community Governance

  • Formal

Additional Information

Organizational History

OpenCitations started in 2010 as a one-year project funded by JISC with David Shotton as director, with Silvio Peroni (UNIBO) joining as a co-director in 2015. The project aimed to publish open bibliographic citation information in RDF and to make citation links as easy to traverse as Web links by releasing the OpenCitations Corpus (OCC), which was initially populated with the citations from journal articles within the Open Access Subset of PubMed Central. During the first ten years of its existence, OpenCitations’ research operations were supplemented by three grants from Jisc, the Sloan Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, resulting in the development of a number of citation indexes using the data openly available in third-party bibliographic databases. After the selection from SCOSS (2019), OpenCitations has grown in a globally-known and community-based open infrastructure managed by the Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata of the University of Bologna.

Organizational Structure

Business or Ownership Model

Fiscal sponsorship (academic institution)

Full-time Staff

6-10

Volunteers

1-5

Current Affiliations

  • Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata, University of Bologna
Research Centre for Open Scholarly Metadata, University of Bologna

Funding

Primary Funding Source

  • Contributions

Funding Needs

External financial support is required from the stakeholder community to support OpenCitations and enable it to expand its delivery of high-quality comprehensive open bibliographic and citation metadata. Community support is necessary to make it possible for OpenCitations to move from being a 'sustainable infrastructure' (in POSI terms) to being a financially sustained infrastructure upon which the global scholarly community can rely for open bibliographic and citation metadata for many years to come.
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