Deontec

5-star Open Data

For decades now, Tim Berners-Lee has been pushing the idea of "The Semantic Web".

The Semantic Web isn't just about putting data on the web. It is about making links, so that a person or machine can explore the web of data. With linked data, when you have some of it, you can find other, related, data.

Tim Berners-Lee, Linked Data

To promote this vision, he developed a 5-star rating system for data on the web:

★ make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format) under an open license

★★ make it available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of image scan of a table)

★★★ make it available in a non-proprietary open format (e.g., CSV instead of Excel)

★★★★ use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff

★★★★★ link your data to other data to provide context

Today, most data only gets as far as star 2 or 3, so there's still quite a way to go...

But in the meantime, you can buy 5-star data mugs and other merch from the w3c shop should you wish to support the cause.