“A piece of data or content is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.” – opendefinition.org In summary, this means the following:
- Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
- Reuse and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit reuse and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
- Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.
Open Data Support is funded by the European Commission under SMART 2012/0107 ‘Lot 2: Provision of services for the Publication, Access and Reuse of Open Public Data across the European Union, through existing open data portals’ (Contract No. 30-CE- 0530965/00-17).
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