Open Data¶
What is Open Data¶
Open Data is as defined by the Open Definition:
Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.
Common benefits of open data include:
- Transparency
- Releasing social and commercial value
- Participation and engagement
How to get involved¶
Using Open Data
Using Open Data has many economic benefits, studies have found that the economic value of Open Data is tens of billions of dollars (USD). Companies and organizations have used this data to create new products that harness the Open Data that others have released.
Open Data can be incorporated into your organization or company to reduce the cost of research and development, and helpful in many other ways.
Publishing Open Data
Another way that you can get involved in Open Data is by releasing your own data to the public. If your data is geographically specific, e.g. concerning a specific country or providence you should contact the owner of the particular data set to request access to upload your data to their database. To find the appropriate data portal for the country or providence your data would match with this organization created a list of data portals per country
If your data is not central to a particular country or providence there are other data portals that are not geocentric. One of the largest of these being wikidata.org which has a guide to publishing data set here.