Turning the tables with sustainable infrastructure

What if the academy were actually in control of metadata? When we think about the key places of evidence in scholarly communications we often turn to bibliographic databases provided by third party media organisations. Increasingly these organisations are not only commercial parties outside of the control of academic institutions but are organisations that are entirely unrelated to scholarship. There has been much talk, not least by myself, of ‘community ownership’, and ‘open infrastructures’ but what does it take to make that a reality in practice?