Open Scholarship / Open Science

Open scholarship is implemented through a number of independent but related initiatives, each developed to meet a particular need. Open publishing or open resource sharing initiatives include open educational resources (OERs), open access (OA), open data, and open-source software (OSS). These initiatives are all supported by several open licensing systems.

Open access (OA) is an ideal in which peer reviewed scholarly work is freely accessible, shareable, and available for machine analysis or text mining. In practice, OA consists of different standards and practices that allow scholarly work to be freely distributed and shared. As with all forms of open scholarship, the belief is that the rapid, seamless, and widespread sharing of scholarly output will foster greater creativity while providing more transparency and instilling more trust in research.

For more information, see the library's OA guide:

Additional resources about OA:

Open educational resources (OERs) are teaching, learning, and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be textbooks, full courses, lesson plans, videos, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge.

For more information, see the library's OER guide:

Open data, sometimes referred to as data sharing or data collaboration, is a philosophy that data produced as part of your research ought to be freely shared within certain limitations, such as privacy.

For more information, see the library's Data Management & Sharing guide:

Additional resources about open data:

Open source is a concept that applies to computer software. It refers to any computer code for which the underlying human-readable source code is made available. Access to the original source code allows others to improve, alter, or repurpose the code and re-compile it for their own use. It should be noted here that open source software is NOT equivalent to free software. Proprietary closed source software can be, and often is, distributed free of charge, often as a limited trial version. On the other hand, open source software is often sold, frequently as a paid support or "profession" version of software that is also available in a free or "community" version, offered without support.