Rochester Institute of Technology

Rochester Institute of Technology#

  • OSPO: Yes, situated within VP of Research, Rochester Institute of Technology

  • Personnel: Stephen Jacobs, Michael Nolan, and Christopher Baker

  • Link: https://openr.it/

  • Member of: CHAOSS Academic Working Group, CURIOSS, FOSSET, FOSS SIG, International Game Developers Association (IGDA), Linux Foundation TODO Group and Open 3DE Foundation, NASEM HELIOS RIT Representative and co-lead for Best Practices Working Group, OSI Open Policy Alliance, OSPO++, Sustainoss Academic Working Group

General Description#

A Key Research Center serving as the Open Programs Office for RIT, our mission is to support RIT projects, scholarship, and research. Primarily, we work with the RIT community to increase their impact and translation by using Open Work best practices and infrastructure around their dissemination. We also work with faculty to support software and web development around these projects. We provide these services to all members of the RIT community for their new or ongoing scholarly and/or creative work.

Core Objectives#

Open@RIT’s purpose:

  • Introduce the concepts and practices of collaborative ecosystems “Open Across The University” for Faculty, Staff, and Students.

  • Guide the academic community in the implementation of Open tools and launching of open communities.

  • Enhanse the efforts of researchers with Open community plans and various Ooen resources to help them achieve the best result possible.

  • Expand RIT’s impact on all things Open, including, but not limited to, Open Source Software, Open Data, Open Science, Open Hardware, Open Educational Resources, and Creative Commons licensed efforts, what we like to refer to in aggregate as Open Work.

Primary Contacts#

Other Context#

Open@RIT’s origin goes back to 2009 and an honors course for developing educations games for the One Laptop Per Child program. This would evolve into the first of its kind, academic minor as well as a three-course immersion in Free Culture and Free and Open Source Software.

Open@RIT also organized The Summit on Open Work in Academia, bringing together leaders from academia, industry, the U.S. government, and philanthropy to explore collaborative ways to support Open Work.

Additionally, Open@RIT established and maintains the Open Work Definition at https://openworkdefinition.com/, facilitating collaboration and cross-pollination by addressing commonalities in Open Science and nine other open practices.

The Open@RIT Open programs office is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Contents