EDUCAUSE on "Openness" as a Value

The Jan/Feb 2009 issue of EDUCAUSE Review Magazine (Vol. 44, No. 1) has an article entitled “EDUCAUSE Values: Openness”. EDUCAUSE is preparing a series of value statements. Each statement contains a brief overview of what the value means, why the EDUCAUSE community considers it to be important, and how the value guides EDUCAUSE in its service to association members and to higher education. The first statement focuses on “openness”. Extract:

“EDUCAUSE values sharing, collaboration, and open access to knowledge and resources, and thus supports the development and adoption of technologies, applications, and approaches that foster openness.”

A central pillar of the academic community is its commitment to the free flow of information and ideas. This commitment to sharing is essential to scholarly discovery and innovation. It is also central to helping learners engage, absorb, and apply knowledge in order to advance personally and academically. Finally, this commitment to openness provides the foundation for leveraging resources, both within and among institutions, to strengthen the creation, transmission, and preservation of knowledge.

The academic—and, by extension, social—value of unfettered intellectual exchange finds expression in technologies, applications, and approaches that foster sharing, collaboration, and open access to knowledge and resources. By actively encouraging collaboration, customization, and experimentation, open environments—whether social, cultural, or technological—best facilitate the free flow of information and ideas on which discovery, innovation, and high-quality higher education depend. In an IT context, examples include:

--Open standards and interoperability
--Open and community source software development
--Open access to research data
--Open scholarly communications
--Open access to, and open derivative use of, content

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