Open Publishing

Open publishing is a process of creating news or other content that is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site.

Internet sites run on open publishing software allow anyone with Internet access to visit the site and upload content directly without having to penetrate the filters of traditional media. Several fundamental principles tend to inform the organizations and sites dedicated to open publishing, though they do so to varying degrees. These principles include non-hierarchy, public participation, minimal editorial control, and transparency.

Open publishing idea embedded the same concept, although didn’t mention Eric S. Raymond's major insight. In Open Publishing problematic content is shallow. Given a large enough audience, peers, readers and commentators, almost all problematic content will be quickly noticed highlighted and fixed. Arnison's Law: "Given enough eyeballs, problematic content is shallow."

It should be distinguished from open access publishing, the publishing of material organized in such a way that there is no financial or other barrier to the user. (All or almost all Open publishing is in fact also open access.)