Openness is an overarching concept or philosophy 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 organisational structures; and the inclusiveness of participation". Openness can be said to be the opposite of closedness, central authority and secrecy.
Openness has been attributed to a wide array of approaches in very different contexts as outlined below. While there is no universally accepted definition of the overarching concept of openness, a 2017 comprehensive review concludes that:
Open terminology can refer to a higher-order concept (e.g. the ‘‘philosophy of openness’’); the nature of resources (e.g. ‘‘open data’’); the nature of processes (e.g. ‘‘open innovation’’); or the effects on specific domains (e.g. ‘‘open education’’) [...] The principles typically used to characterize this higher-order concept are: access to information and other resources; participation in an inclusive and often collaborative manner; transparency of resources and actions; and democracy or ‘‘democratization’’ such as the breaking up of exclusionary structures.
Open government
Open government is the governing doctrine which holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight.
Openness in government applies the idea of freedom of information to information held by authorities and holds that citizens should have the right to see the operations and activities of government at work. Since reliable information is requisite for accountability, freedom of access to information about the government supports government accountability and helps protect other necessary rights.
Open content
Open content and free content both refer to creative works that lack restrictions on how people can use, modify, and distribute them. The terms derive from open source software and free software, similar concepts that refer specifically to software.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.
Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information, is any kind of functional work, work of art, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work, meaning "works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose." A free cultural work is, according to the definition of Free Cultural Works, one that has no significant legal restriction on people's freedom to: use the content and benefit from using it, study the content and apply what is learned, make and distribute copies of the content, change and improve the content and distribute these derivative works.
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public.
Delves into the artistic creation process, emphasizing collaboration, experimentation, and the power of improvisation in generating unique ideas.
Explores the significance of anonymity in avoiding judgment based on personal characteristics and the need to balance it with accountability.
Discusses open subsets, compact sets, and methods for demonstrating openness in a space.
Examining the electrocatalytic performance of naturally-occurring metallic minerals is of interest for energy conversion applications given their unique atomic composition and formation history. Herein, we report the electrocatalytic function of an iron-ba ...
The fabrication of highly active and robust hexagonal ruthenium oxide nanosheets for the electrocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in an acidic environment is reported. The ruthenate nanosheets exhibit the best OER activity of all solution-processed ...
The dissertation investigates the phenomenon of firms that make voluntary contributions to the stock of scientific knowledge. Such a firm behaviour appears counterintuitive from a traditional viewpoint, since no direct financial returns can be expected whi ...