Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web and Linked Data initiator, suggested a 5-star deployment scheme for Open Data. This scheme contains the five steps that this entails.
<ol><li>1 star - make your stuff available on the web (whatever format) under an open license</li>
<li>2 stars - make it available as structured data (e.g. Excel instead of image scan of a table)</li>
<li>3 stars - make it available in a non-proprietary open format (e.g. CSV instead of Excel)</li>
<li>4 stars - use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff</li>
<li>5 stars - link your data to other data to provide context (LOD / Linked Open Data)</li></ol>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://5stardata.info/en/">Michael Hausenblas, James G. Kim</a>, five-star Linked Open Data rating system <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html">developed by Tim Berners-Lee</a>.
<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://5stardata.info/en/">http://5stardata.info/en/</a>