Open publishing is a term used by Matthew Arnison in March 2001 to describe the online process of creating text, audio and video news by methods that are fully transparent to the readers. In the early 2000s, the term was widely associated with the online

Indymedia The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seattl ...

network.

History

The aim of open publishing described by Matthew Arnison was that anybody could contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

to change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site. Internet sites run on open publishing software allow anyone with Internet access to visit the site and upload content directly without having to penetrate the filters of traditional media. Several fundamental principles tend to inform the organizations and sites dedicated to open publishing, though they do so to varying degrees. These principles include non-hierarchy, public participation, minimal editorial control, and transparency.

Related ideas

Arnison's idea of open publishing can be compared to

Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar''. He wrote a guidebook for the ...

's point of view in the

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open ...

versus

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

debate. Given a large enough audience of peers, readers and/or commentators, supporters of open publishing hope or expect that almost all problematic content will quickly be noticed, highlighted and fixed.

Linus's law In software development, Linus's law is the assertion that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". The law was formulated by Eric S. Raymond in his essay and book ''The Cathedral and the Bazaar'' (1999), and was named in honor of Linus To ...

could in this be context be described as Arnison's Law, reworded as, "Given enough eyeballs, problematic content is shallow". The term "open publishing" is intended to be much more open than the more restricted idea of open access publishing, in which the publishing of material organized in such a way that there is no financial or other barrier to the reader, but there is no claim for transparency in the methods and procedures of publishing. In other words, open publishing is

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

, but open access publishing is only sometimes "open publishing".

Examples

Online historical and existing networks typically associated with open publishing include the

Independent Media Center The Independent Media Center, better known as Indymedia, is an open publishing network of activist journalist collectives that report on political and social issues. Following beginnings during the 1999 Carnival Against Capital and 1999 Seattl ...

network, Kuro5hin,

Slashdot ''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and eval ...

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

and

Wikinews Wikinews is a free-content news wiki and a project of the Wikimedia Foundation that works through collaborative journalism. Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has distinguished Wikinews from Wikipedia by saying, "On Wikinews, each story is to be ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite web, last1 =Arnison , first1 =Matthew, title =Open publishing is the same as free software, publisher =Purple Bark, date =2003-06-09, url =http://www.purplebark.net/maffew/cat/openpub.html , archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20171225114724/http://purplebark.net/maffew/cat/openpub.html , archivedate=2017-12-25 , url-status=live Publishing Citizen media Collective intelligence New media

History

Related ideas

Examples

See also

References