Open data
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Open data are
data Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted for ...
that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements such as open-source software,
open-source hardware Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifact (software development), artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by th ...
,
open content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...
, open specifications, open education,
open educational resources Open educational resources (OER) are Instructional materials, teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and Free license, licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" descr ...
, open government, open knowledge,
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
,
open science Open science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessib ...
, and the open web. The growth of the open data movement is paralleled by a rise in intellectual property rights. The philosophy behind open data has been long established (for example in the Mertonian tradition of science), but the term "open data" itself is recent, gaining popularity with the rise of the Internet and
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...
and, especially, with the launch of open-data government initiatives Data.gov, Data.gov.uk and Data.gov.in. Open data can be linked data—referred to as linked open data. One of the most important forms of open data is open government data (OGD), which is a form of open data created by ruling government institutions. The importance of open government data is born from it being a part of citizens' everyday lives, down to the most routine and mundane tasks that are seemingly far removed from government. The abbreviation is sometimes used to indicate that the dataset or database in question complies with the principles of
FAIR data FAIR data is data which meets the FAIR principles of findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR). The acronym and principles were defined in a March 2016 paper in the journal '' Scientific Data'' by a consortium of sc ...
and carries an explicit data‑capable open license.


Overview

The concept of open data is not new, but a formalized definition is relatively new. Open data as a phenomenon denotes that governmental data should be available to anyone with a possibility of redistribution in any form without any copyright restriction. One more definition is the Open Definition which can be summarized as "a piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it—subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike." Other definitions, including the Open Data Institute's "open data is data that anyone can access, use or share," have an accessible short version of the definition but refer to the formal definition. Open data may include non-textual material such as maps,
genome A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...
s, connectomes,
chemical compound A chemical compound is a chemical substance composed of many identical molecules (or molecular entities) containing atoms from more than one chemical element held together by chemical bonds. A molecule consisting of atoms of only one element ...
s, mathematical and scientific formulae, medical data, and practice, bioscience and biodiversity data. A major barrier to the open data movement is the commercial value of data. Access to, or re-use of, data is often controlled by public or private organizations. Control may be through access restrictions, licenses,
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
,
patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
and charges for access or re-use. Advocates of open data argue that these restrictions detract from the common good and that data should be available without restrictions or fees. There are many other, smaller barriers as well. Creators of data do not consider the need to state the conditions of ownership, licensing and re-use; instead presuming that not asserting copyright enters the data into the
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...
. For example, many scientists do not consider the data published with their work to be theirs to control and consider the act of publication in a journal to be an implicit release of data into the
commons The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons ...
. The lack of a license makes it difficult to determine the status of a
data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more table (database), database tables, where every column (database), column of a table represents a particular Variable (computer sci ...
and may restrict the use of data offered in an "Open" spirit. Because of this uncertainty it is possible for public or private organizations to aggregate said data, claim that it is protected by copyright, and then resell it.


Major sources

Open data can come from any source. This section lists some of the fields that publish (or at least discuss publishing) a large amount of open data.


In science

The concept of open access to scientific data was established with the formation of the
World Data Center The World Data Centre (WDC) system was created to archive and distribute data collected from the observational programmes of the 1957–1958 International Geophysical Year by the International Council of Scientific Unions ( ICSU). The WDCs were f ...
system, in preparation for the
International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year (IGY; ), also referred to as the third International Polar Year, was an international scientific project that lasted from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958. It marked the end of a long period during the Cold War w ...
of 1957–1958. The International Council of Scientific Unions (now the International Council for Science) oversees several World Data Centres with the mission to minimize the risk of data loss and to maximize data accessibility. While the open-science-data movement long predates the Internet, the availability of fast, readily available networking has significantly changed the context of open science data, as publishing or obtaining data has become much less expensive and time-consuming. The Human Genome Project was a major initiative that exemplified the power of open data. It was built upon the so-called Bermuda Principles, stipulating that: "All human genomic sequence information … should be freely available and in the public domain in order to encourage research and development and to maximize its benefit to society". More recent initiatives such as the Structural Genomics Consortium have illustrated that the open data approach can be used productively within the context of industrial R&D. In 2004, the Science Ministers of all nations of the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...
(OECD), which includes most developed countries of the world, signed a declaration which states that all publicly funded archive data should be made publicly available. Following a request and an intense discussion with data-producing institutions in member states, the OECD published in 2007 the ''OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding'' as a ''soft-law'' recommendation. Examples of open data in science: * data.uni-muenster.de – Open data about scientific artifacts from the University of Muenster, Germany. Launched in 2011. * Dataverse Network Project – archival repository software promoting data sharing, persistent data citation, and reproducible research. * linkedscience.org/data – Open scientific datasets encoded as Linked Data. Launched in 2011, ended 2018. * systemanaturae.org – Open scientific datasets related to wildlife classified by animal species. Launched in 2015.


In government

There are a range of different arguments for government open data. Some advocates say that making government information available to the public as machine readable open data can facilitate government transparency, accountability and public participation. "Open data can be a powerful force for public accountability—it can make existing information easier to analyze, process, and combine than ever before, allowing a new level of public scrutiny." Governments that enable public viewing of data can help citizens engage within the governmental sectors and "add value to that data." Open data experts have nuanced the impact that opening government data may have on government transparency and accountability. In a widely cited paper, scholars David Robinson and Harlan Yu contend that governments may project a veneer of transparency by publishing machine-readable data that does not actually make government more transparent or accountable. Drawing from earlier studies on transparency and anticorruption, World Bank political scientist Tiago C. Peixoto extended Yu and Robinson's argument by highlighting a minimal chain of events necessary for open data to lead to accountability: # relevant data is disclosed; # the data is widely disseminated and understood by the public; # the public reacts to the content of the data; and # public officials either respond to the public's reaction or are sanctioned by the public through institutional means. Some make the case that opening up official information can support technological innovation and economic growth by enabling third parties to develop new kinds of digital applications and services. Several national governments have created websites to distribute a portion of the data they collect. It is a concept for a collaborative project in the municipal Government to create and organize culture for Open Data or Open government data. Additionally, other levels of government have established open data websites. There are many government entities pursuing Open Data in Canada. Data.gov lists the sites of a total of 40 US states and 46 US cities and counties with websites to provide open data, e.g., the state of
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...
, the state of California, US and
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
. At the international level, the United Nations has an open data website that publishes statistical data from member states and UN agencies, and the
World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...
published a range of statistical data relating to developing countries. The
European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...
has created two portals for the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
: the EU Open Data Portal which gives access to open data from the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies and the European Data Portal that provides datasets from local, regional and national public bodies across Europe. The two portals were consolidated to data.europa.eu on April 21, 2021.
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
is the first country to release standard processes and guidelines under a
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license for spread usage in the Public Administration. The open model is called the Open Data Management Cycle and was adopted in several regions such as
Veneto Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northeast Italy, north-east of the country. It is the fourth most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is t ...
and
Umbria Umbria ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region of central Italy. It includes Lake Trasimeno and Cascata delle Marmore, Marmore Falls, and is crossed by the Tiber. It is the only landlocked region on the Italian Peninsula, Apennine Peninsula. The re ...
. Main cities like
Reggio Calabria Reggio di Calabria (; ), commonly and officially referred to as Reggio Calabria, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, is the List of cities in Italy, largest city in Calabria as well as the seat of the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria. As ...
and Genova have also adopted this model. In October 2015, the Open Government Partnership launched the International Open Data Charter, a set of principles and best practices for the release of governmental open data formally adopted by seventeen governments of countries, states and cities during the OGP Global Summit in
Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. In July 2024, the
OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...
adopted Creative Commons CC-BY-4.0 licensing for its published data and reports.


In non-profit organizations

Many
non-profit organizations A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
offer open access to their data, as long it does not undermine their users', members' or third party's privacy rights. In comparison to
for-profit corporation A for-profit corporation is an organization which aims to earn profit through its operations and is concerned with its own interests, rather than the interests of the public (nonprofit corporation). Structure A for-profit corporation is usually an ...
s, they do not seek to monetize their data. OpenNWT launched a website offering open data of elections. CIAT offers open data to anybody who is willing to conduct big data analytics in order to enhance the benefit of international agricultural research.
DBLP DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Novem ...
, which is owned by a non-profit organization Dagstuhl, offers its database of scientific publications from computer science as open data. Hospitality exchange services, including Bewelcome, Warm Showers, and CouchSurfing (before it became for-profit) have offered scientists access to their anonymized data for analysis, public research, and publication.


Policies and strategies

At a small level, a business or research organization's policies and strategies towards open data will vary, sometimes greatly. One common strategy employed is the use of a data commons. A data commons is an interoperable software and hardware platform that aggregates (or collocates) data, data infrastructure, and data-producing and data-managing applications in order to better allow a community of users to manage, analyze, and share their data with others over both short- and long-term timelines. Ideally, this interoperable cyberinfrastructure should be robust enough "to facilitate transitions between stages in the life cycle of a collection" of data and information resources while still being driven by common data models and workspace tools enabling and supporting robust data analysis. The policies and strategies underlying a data commons will ideally involve numerous stakeholders, including the data commons service provider, data contributors, and data users. Grossman ''et al'' suggests six major considerations for a data commons strategy that better enables open data in businesses and research organizations. Such a strategy should address the need for: * permanent, persistent digital IDs, which enable access controls for datasets; * permanent, discoverable metadata associated with each digital ID; *
application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...
(API)-based access, tied to an authentication and authorization service; * data portability; * data "peering," without access, egress, and ingress charges; and * a rationed approach to users computing data over the data commons. Beyond individual businesses and research centers, and at a more macro level, countries like Germany have launched their own official nationwide open data strategies, detailing how data management systems and data commons should be developed, used, and maintained for the greater public good.


Arguments for and against

Opening government data is only a waypoint on the road to improving education, improving government, and building tools to solve other real-world problems. While many arguments have been made categorically, the following discussion of arguments for and against open data highlights that these arguments often depend highly on the type of data and its potential uses. Arguments made on behalf of open data include the following: * "Data belongs to the human race". Typical examples are
genome A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...
s, data on organisms, medical science, environmental data following the Aarhus Convention. * Public money was used to fund the work, and so it should be universally available. * It was created by or at a government institution (this is common in US National Laboratories and government agencies). *
Fact A fact is a truth, true data, datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to Fact-checking, check facts. Science, Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by ...
s cannot legally be copyrighted. * Sponsors of research do not get full value unless the resulting data are freely available. * Restrictions on data re-use create an anticommons. * Data are required for the smooth process of running communal human activities and are an important enabler of socio-economic development (health care, education, economic productivity, etc.)."Big Data for Development: From Information- to Knowledge Societies"
Martin Hilbert (2013), SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 2205145. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network; https://ssrn.com/abstract=2205145
* In scientific research, the rate of discovery is accelerated by better access to data.Gomes Dylan G. E. 2025 How will we prepare for an uncertain future? The value of open data and code for unborn generations facing climate change Proc. R. Soc. B.29220241515
/ref> * Making data open helps combat "data rot" and ensure that scientific research data are preserved over time. * Statistical literacy benefits from open data. Instructors can use locally relevant data sets to teach statistical concepts to their students. * Allowing open data in the scientific community is essential for increasing the rate of discoveries and recognizing significant patterns. It is generally held that factual data cannot be copyrighted. Publishers frequently add copyright statements (often forbidding re-use) to scientific data accompanying publications. It may be unclear whether the factual data embedded in full text are part of the copyright. While the human abstraction of facts from paper publications is normally accepted as legal there is often an implied restriction on the machine extraction by robots. Unlike
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
, where groups of publishers have stated their concerns, open data is normally challenged by individual institutions. Their arguments have been discussed less in public discourse and there are fewer quotes to rely on at this time. Arguments against making all data available as open data include the following: * Government funding may not be used to duplicate or challenge the activities of the private sector (e.g.
PubChem PubChem is a database of Chemistry, chemical molecules and their activities against biological assays. The system is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a component of the National Library of Medicine, which ...
). * Governments have to be accountable for the efficient use of taxpayer's money: If public funds are used to aggregate the data and if the data will bring commercial (private) benefits to only a small number of users, the users should reimburse governments for the cost of providing the data. * Open data may lead to exploitation of, and rapid publication of results based on, data pertaining to developing countries by rich and well-equipped research institutes, without any further involvement and/or benefit to local communities ( helicopter research); similarly, to the historical open access to tropical forests that has led to the misappropriation ("Global Pillage") of plant
genetic resources Genetic resources are genetic material of actual or potential value, where genetic material means any material of plant, animal, microbial genetics, microbial or other origin containing functional units of heredity. Genetic resources is one of the ...
from developing countries. * The revenue earned by publishing data can be used to cover the costs of generating and/or disseminating the data, so that the dissemination can continue indefinitely. * The revenue earned by publishing data permits non-profit organizations to fund other activities (e.g. learned society publishing supports the society). * The government gives specific legitimacy for certain organizations to recover costs (
NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...
in US,
Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...
in UK). * Privacy concerns may require that access to data is limited to specific users or to sub-sets of the data. * Collecting, 'cleaning', managing and disseminating data are typically labour- and/or cost-intensive processes – whoever provides these services should receive fair remuneration for providing those services. * Sponsors do not get full value unless their data is used appropriately – sometimes this requires quality management, dissemination and branding efforts that can best be achieved by charging fees to users. * Often, targeted end-users cannot use the data without additional processing (analysis, apps etc.) – if anyone has access to the data, none may have an incentive to invest in the processing required to make data useful (typical examples include biological, medical, and environmental data). * There is no control to the secondary use (aggregation) of open data. The paper entitled "Optimization of Soft Mobility Localization with Sustainable Policies and Open Data" argues that open data is a valuable tool for improving the sustainability and equity of soft mobility in cities. The author argues that open data can be used to identify the needs of different areas of a city, develop algorithms that are fair and equitable, and justify the installation of soft mobility resources.


Relation to other open activities

The goals of the Open Data movement are similar to those of other "Open" movements. *
Open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
is concerned with making scholarly publications freely available on the internet. In some cases, these articles include open datasets as well. * Open specifications are documents describing file types or protocols, where the documents are openly licensed. These specifications are primarily meant to improve different software handling the same file types or protocols, but monopolists forced by law into open specifications might make it more difficult. *
Open content Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software, software program, or any other creative Media (communication), content for which there are very minimal ...
is concerned with making resources aimed at a human audience (such as prose, photos, or videos) freely available. * Open knowledge. Open Knowledge International argues for openness in a range of issues including, but not limited to, those of open data. It covers (a) scientific, historical, geographic or otherwise (b) Content such as music, films, books (c) Government and other administrative information. Open data is included within the scope of the Open Knowledge Definition, which is alluded to in Science Commons' Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data. * Open notebook science refers to the application of the Open Data concept to as much of the scientific process as possible, including failed experiments and raw experimental data. *
Open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...
is concerned with the
open-source license Open-source licenses are software licenses that allow content to be used, modified, and shared. They facilitate free and open-source software (FOSS) development. Intellectual property (IP) laws restrict the modification and sharing of creative ...
s under which computer programs can be distributed and is not normally concerned primarily with data. *
Open educational resources Open educational resources (OER) are Instructional materials, teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and Free license, licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" descr ...
are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. * Open research/
open science Open science is the movement to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) and its dissemination accessible to all levels of society, amateur or professional. Open science is transparent and accessib ...
/ open science data (linked open science) means an approach to open and interconnect scientific assets like data, methods and tools with linked data techniques to enable transparent, reproducible and interdisciplinary research. *Open-GLAM (Galleries, Library, Archives, and Museums) is an initiative and network that supports exchange and collaboration between cultural institutions that support
open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
to their digitalized collections. The GLAM-Wiki Initiative helps cultural institutions share their openly licensed resources with the world through collaborative projects with experienced
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
editors. Open Heritage Data is associated with Open GLAM, as openly licensed data in the heritage sector is now frequently used in research, publishing, and programming, particularly in the
Digital Humanities Digital humanities (DH) is an area of scholarly activity at the intersection of computing or Information technology, digital technologies and the disciplines of the humanities. It includes the systematic use of digital resources in the humanitie ...
.


Open Data as commons


Ideas and definitions

Formally both the definition of Open Data and commons revolve around the concept of shared resources with a low barrier to access. Substantially, digital commons include Open Data in that it includes resources maintained online, such as data. Overall, looking at operational principles of Open Data one could see the overlap between Open Data and (digital) commons in practice. Principles of Open Data are sometimes distinct depending on the type of data under scrutiny. Nonetheless, they are somewhat overlapping and their key rationale is the lack of barriers to the re-use of data(sets). Regardless of their origin, principles across types of Open Data hint at the key elements of the definition of commons. These are, for instance, accessibility, re-use, findability, non-proprietarily. Additionally, although to a lower extent, threats and opportunities associated with both Open Data and commons are similar. Synthesizing, they revolve around (risks and) benefits associated with (uncontrolled) use of common resources by a large variety of actors.


The System

Both commons and Open Data can be defined by the features of the resources that fit under these concepts, but they can be defined by the characteristics of the systems their advocates push for. Governance is a focus for both Open Data and commons scholars. The key elements that outline commons and Open Data peculiarities are the differences (and maybe opposition) to the dominant market logics as shaped by capitalism. Perhaps it is this feature that emerges in the recent surge of the concept of commons as related to a more social look at digital technologies in the specific forms of digital and, especially, data commons.


Real-life case

Application of open data for societal good has been demonstrated in academic research works. The paper "Optimization of Soft Mobility Localization with Sustainable Policies and Open Data" uses open data in two ways. First, it uses open data to identify the needs of different areas of a city. For example, it might use data on population density, traffic congestion, and air quality to determine where soft mobility resources, such as bike racks and charging stations for electric vehicles, are most needed. Second, it uses open data to develop algorithms that are fair and equitable. For example, it might use data on the demographics of a city to ensure that soft mobility resources are distributed in a way that is accessible to everyone, regardless of age, disability, or gender. The paper also discusses the challenges of using open data for soft mobility optimization. One challenge is that open data is often incomplete or inaccurate. Another challenge is that it can be difficult to integrate open data from different sources. Despite these challenges, the paper argues that open data is a valuable tool for improving the sustainability and equity of soft mobility in cities. An exemplification of how the relationship between Open Data and commons and how their governance can potentially disrupt the market logic otherwise dominating big data is a project conducted by Human Ecosystem Relazioni in Bologna (Italy). See: https://www.he-r.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/HUB-report-impaginato_v1_small.pdf. This project aimed at extrapolating and identifying online social relations surrounding “collaboration” in Bologna. Data was collected from social networks and online platforms for citizens collaboration. Eventually data was analyzed for the content, meaning, location, timeframe, and other variables. Overall, online social relations for collaboration were analyzed based on network theory. The resulting dataset have been made available online as Open Data (aggregated and anonymized); nonetheless, individuals can reclaim all their data. This has been done with the idea of making data into a commons. This project exemplifies the relationship between Open Data and commons, and how they can disrupt the market logic driving big data use in two ways. First, it shows how such projects, following the rationale of Open Data somewhat can trigger the creation of effective data commons. The project itself was offering different types of support to social network platform users to have contents removed. Second, opening data regarding online social networks interactions has the potential to significantly reduce the monopolistic power of social network platforms on those data.


Funders' mandates

Several funding bodies that mandate Open Access also mandate Open Data. A good expression of requirements (truncated in places) is given by the
Canadian Institutes of Health Research The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; ; IRSC) is a federal agency responsible for funding health and medical research in Canada. Comprising 13 institutes, it is the successor to the Medical Research Council of Canada. CIHR supports ...
(CIHR): * to deposit bioinformatics, atomic and molecular coordinate data, and experimental data into the appropriate public database immediately upon publication of research results. * to retain original data sets for at least five years after the grant. This applies to all data, whether published or not. Other bodies promoting the deposition of data and full text include the
Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of Burroughs Wellcome, one of the predec ...
. An academic paper published in 2013 advocated that Horizon 2020 (the science funding mechanism of the EU) should mandate that funded projects hand in their databases as "deliverables" at the end of the project so that they can be checked for third-party usability and then shared.


See also

* Open knowledge * Free content *
Openness Openness is an overarching concept that is characterized by an emphasis on transparency and collaboration. That is, openness refers to "accessibility of knowledge, technology and other resources; the transparency of action; the permeability of or ...
* CKAN - Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network *
Creative Commons license A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bu ...
* Data curation * Data governance *
Data management Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource, it is the practice of managing an organization's data so it can be analyzed for decision making. Concept The concept of data management emerged alongsi ...
* Data publishing * Data sharing * Demand-responsive transport *
Digital preservation In library science, library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal process to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable in the long term. It involves planning, resource allocation, and appli ...
* FAIR data principles * International Open Data Day * Linked data and Linked open data * Open energy system databases * Urban informatics * Wikibase * Wikidata * List of datasets for machine-learning research *
Open Standard An open standard is a standard that is openly accessible and usable by anyone. It is also a common prerequisite that open standards use an open license that provides for extensibility. Typically, anybody can participate in their development due to ...
* Digital public goods


References


External links


Open Data – An Introduction
– from the Open Knowledge Foundation
Video
of
Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...
at
TED (conference) TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...
2009 calling for "Raw Data Now"
Six minute Video
of
Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...
at
TED (conference) TED Conferences, LLC (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an American-Canadian non-profit media organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan "Ideas Change Everything" (previously "Ideas Worth Sprea ...
2010 showing examples of open data
G8 Open Data Charter

Towards a Genealogy of Open Data
– research paper tracing different historical threads contributing to current conceptions of open data. {{Authority control Free culture movement