Ed @ Ralph the Sacred River asks the thoroughly non-rhetorical question "What is open-source biblical studies?" and as the discussion already, in his comments, shows it is a good question. Personally I'd like to reword it, I've begun to want to avoid (or at least soften) the implied analogy with Open Source Software, and talk about "Open Biblical Studies" and more generally "Open Scholarship".
Here's what I mean:
Open Scholarship would be:
- open to as many readers as possible - by implied contrast to scholarship which is more concerned with communicating only with professionals, based in the Western world, with access to good library resources, Open Biblical Studies would publish in ways that use digital media to make the publications available to anyone who wants to access them (cheaply or ideally freely)
- open to collaboration - traditional Biblical Scholarship has largely been conducted by individuals in their studies, and only communicated to others when (nearly) polished and the ideas (more or less) firmed - Open Biblical Studies would prefer work by teams, communicating and discussing using digital media and together sharpening and polishing, while not losing individual difference
- open in its creation - traditional BS has been the preserve of "professional" scholars (and a few talented, trained and usually relatively wealthy) amateurs - Open Biblical Studies would welcome any and all (who demonstrate the necessary knowledge and skills, or the ability and desire to develop them)
- scholarly, unless Open Biblical Studies submits itself to peer review (or some process that ensures similar rigorous standards) it would not be scholarship!
[to Del.icio.us]
I think the Creative Commons initiative has a lot of relevance here in its application of "open source" concepts to other media. Also see the spin-off "Science Commons" which, is probably even more relevant to Open Biblical Studies.
Science Commons provides an excellent exemplar of the kind of thing I'd like Open Biblical Studies to be.
By 
James Tauber, at
August 29, 2005 6:56 PM
James, both CC and SC provide useful and convenient ways to publish more openly, and that's a significant part of the problem.
I suspect that initially for BS Creative Commons is more relevant than Science Commons. The issues CC addresses especially of how to publish with "some rights reserved" are important to Biblical Scholars, though the other issues that SC addresses e.g. licencing and data may well be really useful as Open Biblical Studies develops, as indeed projects like your MorphGNT show!
By 
Tim, at
August 29, 2005 7:50 PM
I mention CC not only because of the legal framework it provides for open scholarship but for the way it frames things in terms of ability to redistribute, ability to create derived works, etc. I think these notions are key to a definition of what open biblical studies are.
Where SC comes in, and why I see it in analogy to open biblical studies is that it is an example not only of CC licences applied to particular fields but also an attempt to better bring together scholars and enable them to share and collaborate on their work more easily.
