Open Context in a Changing Context: Data Publishing, Interoperability and Governance

This paper describes the rationale and strategies behind Open Context, an online data publishing service for archaeology. Launched in 2006, Open Context has published over 2 million records from 191 projects and sub-projects, representing the work of more than 1,600 scholars working across the world. As described in this paper, the current shape of Open Context’s data dissemination and curation efforts reflect our attempts to navigate a landscape filled with diverse and evolving challenges. Responses to professional, institutional, and sustainability issues, some of a global character and some of a United States specific character, have helped shape Open Context’s technological and semantic choices. Though focused on United States specific experiences, we hope that this in-depth discussion of how Open Context responded to these multifaceted concerns will help advance international community wide conversations about information architectures, governance, and social factors in archaeological informatics.