Measuring the success of a project such as LUCERO, investigating innovative and emerging technologies within a short period of time, is not an easy task. We follow three main directions regarding evaluating the results of the project:

  1. through the benefit of developed linked-data based application to students and academics, i.e., how the deployed application have increased access to and usage of data in these communities.
  2. through the successful application and deployment of the devised procedures within the Open University to create sustainable linked data exposure, i.e., having evidence that the rate and quality of linked data exposure will be sustained beyond the project, and that new applications will be developed (possibly by others) on top of this data.
  3. through the adoption of the practices put in place within the project by other education and/or research organizations. Indeed, one of the major goal of the project is to document the experience acquired in setting up such practices within the OU in order to provide guidelines for others to engage with linked data.

Of course, the realization of such a project does not come without risks. Most obviously, like in many technological projects, the availability of key resources, technologies, skills and staff are essential. More specifically, linked data being a very recent set of technologies and principles, the risk of the necessarily underlying infrastructure not being ready and mature enough to support the ambitious goals of the project is non negligible, even if the project include some of the recognized experts in the area, with many connection in the research community. Finally, in relation with the relative novelty of linked data, important considerations will have to be given to the non-technical issues of exposing University resources, included the legal, business and ethical aspects that all raise their own set of specific issues for which very little experience exists until now.

Such risks and issues will be managed through the use of Risks and Issues logs maintained by the Project Manager, discussed at Project Team meetings and reported to Project Steering Group meetings.