Open Data

The sharing of open data can be incredibly beneficial to society: facilitating enhanced scientific collaboration and reproducibility, increasing government and corporate transparency, and speeding the discovery and understanding of solutions to planetary and societal needs.

The Open Data Charter is a collaboration between governments and organisations working to open up data based on a shared set of Principles. With 69 governments adopters and 49 organizations endorsers, our goal is to embed open data as a central ingredient to achieving better solutions to the most pressing policy challenges of our time.

Open Data for Development (OD4D) is a global partnership that supports southern leadership and locally-led data ecosystems around the world as a way to spur positive social change and sustainable development.

The Open Data Impact Map, a project of the Open Data for Development Network (OD4D), is a public database of organizations that use open government data from around the world. Open Data is publicly available data that can be accessed and reused by anyone free of charge.

This book is intended to give the non-expert an overview of standards and best practises related to publishing metadata about works. Its primary focus is metadata from cultural heritage institutions - i.e. GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives and museums).

In the digital age, data is the raw material on which discoveries are built, and unfettered access to research data, whether in the Life Sciences or the Social Sciences, is crucial to accelerating progress in research. Data plays a central role in our ability to predict and counter natural disasters, understand human biology, and develop advances in computing technology.

You can’t go 10 minutes without hearing about data these days. “Data blogs.” “Big data.” “Data protection.” “Data.” “Daahta.”

And let’s face it – whether it’s about ‘men in black’ reading our emails or some MP claiming expenses for his dog-sitter, a lot of news is shaped by how information is stored, secured or shared.

But what is ‘open data’, and how does it fit in? Here are 10 things you need to know.