Data may be thought of as unprocessed atomic statements of fact. It very often refers to systematic collections of numerical information in tables of numbers such as spreadsheets or databases. When data is structured and presented so as to be useful and relevant for a particular purpose, it becomes information available for human apprehension.

Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) is an API used by geospatial systems to provide metadata in open standards, including in the FGDC-endorsed ISO 19115 schema. The CSW-provided metadata can be mapped into the Project Open Data metadata schema.

Source: US OD

 ‘Comma-separated values’ is a standard format for spreadsheet data. Data is represented in a plain text file, with each data row on a new line and commas separating the values on each row. As a very simple open format it is easy to consume and is widely used for publishing open data. Source: ODH

A model in which individuals and organisations obtain goods and services (ideas, money) from a large relatively open and often rapidly evolving group of internet users. It divides work between participants to achieve cumulative result. The term was coined 2006 (crowd plus sourcing), although it existed as a model before digital age.

A set of open standard licences determined by the Creative Commons organisation. See → https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

A non-profit organisation founded in 2001 that promotes re-usable content by publishing a number of standard licences, some of them open (though others include a non-commercial clause), that can be used to release content for re-use, together with clear explanations of their meaning.

The principle of setting a price for a resource, e.g. data, aiming to recover the cost of collecting the data, as distinct from marginal cost. In the EU it is for public sector information allowed only exceptionally, as determined by the PSI/OD Directive.

The European Commission’s primary public repository and portal to disseminate information on all EU-funded research projects and their results.

Source: http://cordis.europa.eu/home_en.html

A legal right over intellectual property (e.g. a book) belonging to the creator of the work. While individual data (facts) cannot be copyright, a database will in general be covered by copyright protecting the selection and arrangement of data within it. Within the European Union separate ‘database rights’ protect a database where there was a substantial effort in ‘obtaining’ the data.

The process of automatically reading data in one file format and emitting the same data in a different format, thus making the data accessible to a wider range of applications.

Source: ODH