In what is believed also to be a world-first, the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton (ECS) has become the UK’s first university department to release all its public data in open linked data format.

ECS is at the forefront of the open linked data initiative through the work of its professors Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt.

Now, in accordance with the spirit of the initiative, ECS has released all its own data for public reuse. This includes data about research papers in the EPrints archive (announced this in the official global rankings as one of the top ten in the world), people in the School, research groups, teaching modules, seminars and events, buildings and rooms.

All public (RDF) data is now available and can be reused for any legal purpose, including derivative works and commercial use. The School has opted for a creative commons public domain (CC0) license to allow the data to be reused.

More details are available here.