Open Data Repositories in Knowledge Society

Abstract

Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used, and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike. Open data is an important resource in present knowledge-based society used for supporting decision-making activities in government agencies, research Institutions, higher educational institutions, etc. The research activities as well as policy-making decisions are highly benefited by the availability of open data. There should be no restrictions to its reuse like legal, financial, or technological. The chapter discusses the concept of open data and its importance in present times for supporting advanced research activities in different domains of human knowledge. It also provides a glimpse of open data repositories at global level and attempts to showcase select open data repositories set by different organizations and institutions for making different datasets available in varied areas for facilitating specialized research and development activities.