OA and Open Standards - Berlin 6

Moderated by Christoph Bruch, one of our fellow OA contacts from the Max Planck Digital Library, Day 2 of Berlin 6 was kicked off with a dialogue on open standards.

Now, I find standards, norms and what not fascination (don't judge :) ) but chose to focus a bit more on the standarization theory detailed by Dr. Stefan Weisgerber in this conversation. I would have loved to have heard more about the standarization of metadata, standard forms of describing information in the digital space (RDF, ontologies, standardized languages) -- largely since I view describing the info on the Web in a machine readable way as the base on which all of this in built, but so it goes.

So with that, here are some notes on Weisgerber's presentation about standardization theory. I need to do some additional reading to really grok this and be able to build upon it, but here goes ... My apologies for this being so informal.

- intern'l standards are for the global market
- provide reference framework and universal language for suppliers and customers, facilitate trade and tech transfer, ensure tech compat, provide scientific basis for legislation, ensure that trade agreements can be successfully implemeneted - technical know how

World Trade Organization - standards codex
- no preferential status for domestic products
- no trade barriers as a result of national standards
- Adooption of relevant international standards
- participation of nat'l delegations
- DUplicate work should be avoided
- National consensus-building followed by voting
- Consistency in standards
- Publication of work programmes - should be easy to see what's ongoing in standard work
(www.iso.org)
- Public review of procedures published (at least 2 months)
- Appropriate consideration of comments submitted, to the extent possible