ZBW first German member of Open Knowledge Maps

Open Knowledge Maps, a non-profit organisation headquartered in Vienna (Austria), aims to revolutionise the discovery of scientific findings. For this purpose, the organisation develops new and innovative visual interfaces to enable the exploration of existing knowledge and the discovery of new knowledge by means of freely configurable “knowledge maps”.

Open Knowledge Maps pursues a completely open and collaborative approach. All developments are Open Source and reusable. The roadmap for further developments is publicly available and thus transparent. The technology can be tested as a free service at openknowledgemaps.org. In January 2020, the association received the “Austrian Prize for Free Knowledge” award, endowed by Wikimedia Austria. The association uses a supporting membership model to ensure the sustainability of the platform.

The ZBW is one of the initial supporting members and the first German member of Open Knowledge Maps. As a supporting member, the ZBW has a seat on the “Board of Supporters” and is thus involved in the decisionmaking for future developments.

ZBW director Klaus Tochtermann says: “As one of the world’s largest information infrastructures for economics, the ZBW has a clear commitment to openness, e.g. to Open Access, Open Source, Open/Fair Data. We support the Open Science Movement and therefore engage in relevant Open Science initiatives in order to ensure their sustainability. Open Knowledge Maps is one of these initiatives which we consider to be a visionary innovator in the field of “discovery” in open spaces. We are proud to be a member of this initiative and to support it with our best efforts.”