What are open standards?
Open Standards are internationally accepted protocols (technical specifications) that guarantee that data can be exchanged between ICT systems. An open standard must comply with the following requirements: • the standards are defined using an open decision-making process; • the standards are published; • the costs of using the standard are low and do not form a barrier preventing access to the standard; • the intellectual property rights to the standard belong to a non-profit organization that has a policy that does not restrict membership in any way; • there are no conditions restricting re-use of the standard. In the absence of such a protocol, nobody knows how others supply information or what the information supplied or requested actually involves. The result would be a motley collection of programs that are unable to process each other’s data. Open standards are therefore crucial for good information management and proper usage of information.
Open Standards are required for several reasons: • Application Independence: To ensure that access to resources is not dependent on a single application. • Platform Independence: To ensure that access to resources is not restricted to particular hardware platforms. • Long-term Access: To ensure that quality scholarly resources can be preserved and accessed over a long time frame. • Accessibility: To ensure that resources can be accessed by people regardless of disabilities. • Architectural Integrity: To ensure that the architectural framework for the Information Environment is robust and can be developed in the future.
The idea of openness within standards creation has several elements: the process and speed by which the standard is created; the cost of accessing and using the standard; any copyright or intellectual property impediments to implementing the standard. For example, proprietary standards can be open, in the sense that the pertinent information and detailed specification is public and open to all, but this is not often the case since such open proprietary standards offer less of a market advantage. Those overseen by national and international standards bodies, which are supposed to be imbued with inherent ‘public good’ motivations, are far more likely to meet the criteria of openness. A further categorisation takes note of the speed with which specifications are developed and ratified as standards. This is closely related to the concept of democracy i.e. how varied the membership and open the decision-making procedures within a standards body are and whether any one interest can exert con
