Open Data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data are freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. It has a similar ethos to a number of other “Open” movements and communities such as Open Source and Open Access. However these are not logically linked and many combinations of practice are found. The practice and ideology itself is well established (for example in the Mertonian tradition of science) but the term “Open Data” itself is recent. Much of the emphasis in this entry is on data from scientific research. There is not yet a consistent formalisation of Open Data and this article uses recent publications and activities to define it.
To read the Wikipedia entry in it’s entirety:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Data
written by:
Peter Murray-Rust
Unilever Centre for Molecular Sciences Informatics University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
