Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access

For national advisory services in the UK (UKOLN, CETIS, and OSS Watch), varieties of openness (open source software, open standards, and open access to research publications and data) present an interesting challenge. Higher education is often keen to embrace openness, including new tools such as blogs and wikis for students and staff. For advisory services, the goal is to achieve the best solution for any individual institution's needs, balancing its enthusiasm with its own internal constraints and long term commitments. For example, open standards are a genuine good, but they may fail to gain market acceptance. Rushing headlong to standardize on open standards may not be the best approach. Instead a healthy dose of pragmatism is required. Similarly, open source software is an excellent choice when it best meets the needs of an institution, but not perhaps without reference to those needs. Providing open access to data owned by museums sounds like the right thing to do, but prog...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ELPUB
• Authors: Brian Kelly, Scott Wilson, Randy Metcalfe
• Keywords: ELPUB 2007, Information Management, Open Access, Open Source Software, Open Standards