Guest Editorial

Open source. Open access. Open data. Open notebooks. Open government. Open educational resources. Open access workflows. To be open is to have a disposition favoring transparent and collaborative efforts.

Open is everywhere. Since the late 90’s when developers in Silicon Valley adopted the term ‘open source’ (suggested by Christine Peterson), the open movement has grown by leaps and bounds. The developers, who met after the web browser company Netscape made its source code open, articulated that ‘open’ “…illustrated a valuable way to engage with potential software users and developers, and convince them to create and improve source code by participating in an engaged community." It also separated ‘open source’ “…from the philosophically- and politically-focused label ‘free software.’”