OCEAN links can be made to open-access sites where:

the content to which the link is made is serious and authoritative (it may be either an article, or an image seen in a reasonable degree of enlargement, with an explanatory caption and without a disfiguring watermark)

the link can be made to the exact page where the text or image can be found

the user, after arriving at the exact page, can navigate on the linked site

Preferences
In general the preference will be for OCEAN links to sites with .ac, .edu, .net, .info, .org or .gov domain names.

However there is no objection in principle to linking to .com or co.uk sites and others of this kind, provided that they are open-access, meet the criteria listed above, and are not unduly disfigured by ads and offers

Priorities
The aim of OCEAN is to provide a balanced selection of free-access material while avoiding information overload.

This means that we index a maximum of two English-language articles covering the same ground (two biographies of the same person, for example). If we subsequently find another that is markedly better, one of the two will be dropped. We also hope eventually to add an article on each topic in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Recommendations
We welcome recommendations of websites which meet the OCEAN criteria. Please send us your suggestions, inserting the URL of one page on each recommended site (i.e. choose a page of the type to which you are suggesting we should link).

And please let us have your name. We shall be featuring a section called 'OCEAN credits', in which we will list and thank all those who have recommended a site to which we subsequently link.

Remember that any free-access site is eligible if its content is of general interest and to some extent historical in nature, and if its structure facilitates precise links. There are a great many wonderful sites in cyberspace that fit this category. Together we can build OCEAN at impressive speed.

Send your recommendations