Describing Open | Katina Magazine

"And so it is with open: I know that we all must have a sense of what open is, because so many of us are working toward it in our various ways. Organizations and advocates have created various spectra of openness that illustrate the sense and reference. These spectra are used as tools to describe characteristics that make something more or less open (see, e.g., SPARC’s “How Open Is It?” evaluator, the Directory of Open Access Journals’ inclusion criteria, Collister & Villarreal’s Spectrum of Open Methods), and these spectra can be used both to describe core qualities and to encourage improvement and advancement.

When I asked our editorial team to describe some of the core concepts of open, they came back with some similar ideas that have been expressed in the spectra mentioned above.

Readable without payment.

Reusable for any purpose.

Unbound by strict licensing terms and usage rights.

Portable to other contexts and formats.

Inclusive of authors without restrictions based on demographics or ability to pay.

Accessible—everyone can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact.

Discoverable.

This list can go on and on. We can all add our own descriptions to this list, and that is part of the joy and utility of the exercise. With this approach, we might ask the question: “When it comes to research and scholarship, what can open look like?”..."