The practice of making research data freely available for any user to access, use, modify, and share, subject only to attribution requirements, typically through deposit in a public repository under an open licence.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A genomics dataset deposited in ENA under public access.
Is an instance
A social-science survey deposited in UKDS Open access under CC-BY-4.0.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A 'restricted access' repository deposit.
Not an instance
Aggregate tables in a paper appendix without the row-level data.

Editorial commentary

Open data in research is bounded by ethical, legal, and consent constraints. Where fully open release is impossible, alternatives include controlled-access deposits, synthetic data, and aggregate releases. The Open Definition (Open Knowledge Foundation) is the canonical definition of 'open'; alignment with FAIR is complementary rather than equivalent.

References

Open Knowledge Foundation, The Open Definition v2.1; G7 Open Data Charter (2013).

Also known as

open research data

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Open data"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data",
  "name": "Open data",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data",
  "description": "The practice of making research data freely available for any user to access, use, modify, and share, subject only to attribution requirements, typically through deposit in a public repository under an open licence.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/reproducibility#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-data",
  "sameAs": [
    "open research data"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:49",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

View CASRAI adoption →