Category Archives: oa.definitions

Open Definition 2.1

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“Version 2.1

The Open Definition makes precise the meaning of “open” with respect to knowledge, promoting a robust commons in which anyone may participate, and interoperability is maximized.

Summary: Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness.

This essential meaning matches that of “open” with respect to software as in the Open Source Definition and is synonymous with “free” or “libre” as in the Free Software Definition and Definition of Free Cultural Works….”

Towards a more diverse and inclusive Open Definition

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“The Open Definition (https://opendefinition.org/od/2.1/en/) is one of the most historically important collaborative works for the open movement. However, over the years and due to the emergence of new technologies, identities and enclosures, we at Open Knowledge feel that this work needs to be expanded, including more voices, diversity, and cultural contexts. We want to invite the Mozilla communities to a hands-on session to create a document about what, why and how the Open Definition should be reviewed. Join us in thinking what “open” means today!…”

Updating the Open Definition to meet the challenges of today – Open Knowledge Foundation blog

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“The Open Definition initiative was a collaborative process led by the Open Knowledge Foundation more than a decade ago that created a consensus among experts by defining openness in relation to data and content, in a collaborative, open process with volunteer leading experts in the field, who did a remarkable job. 

It specified what licences for such material may and may not stipulate to be considered open. It turned out to be one of the most historically important collaborative works for the open movement.   

It was mission accomplished at some point, and there was no pressing need to review it – just to maintain it and observe how the open knowledge ecosystem was adopting it. It got translated into 41 languages by volunteers, it made it to Wikipedia and it influenced state and municipal policies, academia, and beyond. 

However, technology and policy have profoundly changed since the 2.1 version, its last update from 2016. Since then, technology, society and conversations around what should be open and shared have expanded in geography and complexity….”

A Genealogy of Open

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The term open has become a familiar part of library and education practice and discourse, with open source software being a common referent. However, the conditions surrounding the emergence of the open source movement are not well understood within librarianship. After identifying capitalism and neoliberalism as structures that shape library and open practice, this article contextualizes the term open by delineating the discursive struggle within the free software movement that led to the emergence of the open source movement. An understanding of the genealogy of open can lend clarity to many of the contradictions that have been grappled with in the literature, such as what open means, whether it supports social justice aims, and its relation to neoliberal and capitalist structures. The article concludes by inquiring into how librarianship and open can reframe practices that are typically oriented toward mitigation and survival to encompass an orientation toward life and flourishing. 

A Genealogy of Open

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The term open has become a familiar part of library and education practice and discourse, with open source software being a common referent. However, the conditions surrounding the emergence of the open source movement are not well understood within librarianship. After identifying capitalism and neoliberalism as structures that shape library and open practice, this article contextualizes the term open by delineating the discursive struggle within the free software movement that led to the emergence of the open source movement. An understanding of the genealogy of open can lend clarity to many of the contradictions that have been grappled with in the literature, such as what open means, whether it supports social justice aims, and its relation to neoliberal and capitalist structures. The article concludes by inquiring into how librarianship and open can reframe practices that are typically oriented toward mitigation and survival to encompass an orientation toward life and flourishing. 

A Genealogy of Open

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The term open has become a familiar part of library and education practice and discourse, with open source software being a common referent. However, the conditions surrounding the emergence of the open source movement are not well understood within librarianship. After identifying capitalism and neoliberalism as structures that shape library and open practice, this article contextualizes the term open by delineating the discursive struggle within the free software movement that led to the emergence of the open source movement. An understanding of the genealogy of open can lend clarity to many of the contradictions that have been grappled with in the literature, such as what open means, whether it supports social justice aims, and its relation to neoliberal and capitalist structures. The article concludes by inquiring into how librarianship and open can reframe practices that are typically oriented toward mitigation and survival to encompass an orientation toward life and flourishing. 

A Genealogy of Open

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The term open has become a familiar part of library and education practice and discourse, with open source software being a common referent. However, the conditions surrounding the emergence of the open source movement are not well understood within librarianship. After identifying capitalism and neoliberalism as structures that shape library and open practice, this article contextualizes the term open by delineating the discursive struggle within the free software movement that led to the emergence of the open source movement. An understanding of the genealogy of open can lend clarity to many of the contradictions that have been grappled with in the literature, such as what open means, whether it supports social justice aims, and its relation to neoliberal and capitalist structures. The article concludes by inquiring into how librarianship and open can reframe practices that are typically oriented toward mitigation and survival to encompass an orientation toward life and flourishing. 

Conisering Evidence-Based Open-Access Policies

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“As policymakers around the globe move forward with the challenge of making research more accessible, it is crucial that these efforts be based on solid, democratic, fact-based foundations. Particularly, policymakers should pay close attention to what researchers need, what information sharing solutions are already working in the research world (including solutions that do not fit common definitions of open), and the negative unintended consequences of our current open policies….”

When Is It Transformative and Why Does It Matter?

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“With the word “transformation” in open access and open scholarship, context is everything. What is transformative for a publisher may not be to the same degree for the academic research library, even when reaching for similar goals.  This lack of clarity can be confusing without context. This also impacts expectations for how resources and budgets should be used to support open access and open scholarship. So, what’s in a word? Different visions of the future, or potential roles in advancing the goals of open scholarship. This article explores several examples of use and misuse of this word with the recommendation to use sparingly and appropriately and replace with more accurate terminology when available….”

The ‘OA market’ – what is healthy? Part 2 | OASPA

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by Malavika Legge The debate begins with the word ‘market’ Talking about open access and a market in the same sentence ignites all kinds of passions and opinions. Of course, a market around OA publishing exists as sized and estimated by Delta Think to be worth ~US$1.6 billion in 2021 versus their $975 million estimate for 2020. Delta Think’s most recent projections are that the OA journals market could be worth over US$ 2 billion in 2024 if current trends continue. But when OASPA talks to stakeholders about an ‘OA market’, what exactly do we mean?  The purpose of OASPA’s ‘OA market’ work is to examine the money flows needed to sustain OA publishing. Any way you look at it, the economics of funding and enabling OA publishing is something we all need to grapple with.  Building on the ‘OA market’ work done in 2021, OASPA wished to learn more about what is felt by those in different parts of the world. Despite considerable effort, there was an overall European weighting to views that were collected in 2021, and so, the purpose of my follow-on work has been to round out and supplement the perspectives that had initially been collected.  Last week I shared some of the perspectives from stakeholders based outside of Europe about the ongoing ‘OA market’ effort from OASPA. Considering the differing philosophies around scholarly publishing across world regions that came to light in these conversations (see my previous post), should OASPA be labelling the prevailing economic system an ‘OA market’? Or should we call it an OA system, the OA landscape, an OA exchange? Or something else altogether?  Debate around the name ‘OA market’ is not new, and the issue was already debated at some length in the 2021 workshops. I continued to unpack this dilemma around the name ‘OA market’ with some of the 15 people from around the world acknowledged in my last post. These stakeholders were willing to provide me with their input and expertise on OASPA’s 2021 issue brief and reflections on the ‘OA market’. In these conversations, opinion remained divided on the use of the term ‘market’ in describing the OA environment. “I would avoid [the term market]…” said one voice, since it presupposes that OA needs “an equilibrium between supply and demand driven by money, which is not the actual central reason why science is done and communicated.” Variations on this thinking were echoed by others. What was even more interesting to me, however, were the ‘anti-market’ forces (and the other things!) that I was told OASPA was missing in its assessment of the ‘OA market’. A distillation of these thoughts are outlined below.  

Community consensus on core open science practices to monitor in biomedicine | PLOS Biology

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Abstract:  The state of open science needs to be monitored to track changes over time and identify areas to create interventions to drive improvements. In order to monitor open science practices, they first need to be well defined and operationalized. To reach consensus on what open science practices to monitor at biomedical research institutions, we conducted a modified 3-round Delphi study. Participants were research administrators, researchers, specialists in dedicated open science roles, and librarians. In rounds 1 and 2, participants completed an online survey evaluating a set of potential open science practices, and for round 3, we hosted two half-day virtual meetings to discuss and vote on items that had not reached consensus. Ultimately, participants reached consensus on 19 open science practices. This core set of open science practices will form the foundation for institutional dashboards and may also be of value for the development of policy, education, and interventions.

 

Diamond open access | Wikipedia

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Diamond open access refers to academic texts (such as monographs, edited collections, and journal articles) published/distributed/preserved with no fees to neither reader nor author. Alternative labels include platinum open access, non-commercial open access, cooperative open access or, more recently, open access commons. While these terms were first coined in the 2000s and the 2010s, they have been retroactively applied a variety of structure and forms of publishing from subsidized university publisher to volunteer-run cooperative that have existed in prior decades.

In 2021, it is estimated that between 17,000 and 29,000 scientific journals rely on a diamond open access model. They make up for 73%[1] of the journals registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals and 44% of the articles, as their mean output is smaller than commercial journals. The diamond model has been especially successful in Latin America-based journals (95% of OA journals[1]) following the emergence of large publicly supported platforms, such as SciELO and Redalyc.

In 2022, new national and international policies, such as the UNESCO recommendation on open science, and the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access promoted by the cOAlition S aim to support the development of non-commercial or community-driven forms open access publishing.

 

Defining open infrastructure in different contexts, 26 Aug 2022 | Turing Way Fireside Chat series

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“For researchers, particularly those working in computational environments, the term “open infrastructure” has emerged to describe the tools and services needed to enable them: from IT systems to funding bodies, research data management protocols to open source software, just to name a few. As these systems have found their home in academic institutions, roles have emerged alongside them to enable innovation and maintenance: roles such as data stewards, research software engineers, and research application managers. With this being said, these socio-technical definitions of infrastructure extend beyond the research community to our broader societies at large: from digital identification to internet connectivity more broadly. This fireside chat brings together different perspectives on ‘open infrastructure’ within and around research environments in order to ask the question: what is open infrastructure anyway, for researchers and otherwise? How do these narratives and definitions of open infrastructure affect what kind of work is valued within them? Chaired by Rayya El Zein (Code for Science & Society) and Anne Lee Steele (The Turing Way), this panel will feature insights from Richard Dunks (Invest in Open Infrastructure), Lillian Achom (Access Plus) and Sarah Gibson (2i2c)….”

Toward a definition of digital object reuse | Emerald Insight

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Abstract:  Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present conceptual definitions for digital object use and reuse. Typically, assessment of digital repository content struggles to go beyond traditional usage metrics such as clicks, views or downloads. This is problematic for galleries, libraries, archives, museums and repositories (GLAMR) practitioners because use assessment does not tell a nuanced story of how users engage with digital content and objects.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reviews prior research and literature aimed at defining use and reuse of digital content in GLAMR contexts and builds off of this group’s previous research to devise a new model for defining use and reuse called the use-reuse matrix.

Findings

This paper presents the use-reuse matrix, which visually represents eight categories and numerous examples of use and reuse. Additionally, the paper explores the concept of “permeability” and its bearing on the matrix. It concludes with the next steps for future research and application in the development of the Digital Content Reuse Assessment Framework Toolkit (D-CRAFT).

Practical implications

The authors developed this model and definitions to inform D-CRAFT, an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant project. This toolkit is being developed to help practitioners assess reuse at their own institutions.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to propose distinct definitions that describe and differentiate between digital object use and reuse in the context of assessing digital collections and data.