Enabling research with Open Software and Data

The two talks in this session presented research and research practices that have greatly benefited from the availability of Open Source Software and Open data.

Talk 1: David Malone: My Experience of Open Source and Academia

I've been lucky enough to have been using open-source software since my undergraduate days and have managed to use it as part of teaching, learning, research and provision of services to academics. In this talk I'll give brief examples of the different ways I've been able to use and get involved with open-source software.

Speaker: David Malone is a researcher, sysadmin or lecturer, depending on when you talk to him. He's worked various things including dilation equations, FreeBSD, guessing passwords and wireless networks. He works in the Hamilton Institute and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Maynooth University.

Talk 2: Alessandro Adamou: FAIR Linked Data: publishing them, using them and why it doesn't take a giant to do it

Research institutions, governments and sometimes even the industry are promoting a way to publish data that conforms to principles of openness such as being Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

These principles can be adhered to in a multitude of ways: Linked Open Data is one of them; it is favoured by scientific communities, but its adoption is not limited to research contexts. In this talk I will provide an account of how my research projects enjoyed the benefits of being on either side of the FAIR data supply chain and will invite the audience to assess how well existing datasets "fare in being FAIR".

Speaker: Alessandro Adamou is a researcher and digital humanist. He works at the Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome and has previously been a researcher and lecturer at NUI Galway. His core research interest is on semantic linked data and adapting the technologies around them so that various communities can use them. His spare-time curiosity is on how to promote the perception of video games as objects of cultural heritage.