What is "digital commons"

n. 1 digital property, often but not necessarily in the public domain, especially intellectual property, when expressed and reproduced using digital formats. 2 a repository of digital materials and other intellectual property.

Digital Commons is a hosted institutional repository platform. This hosted service, licensed by bepress, is used by over 300 colleges, universities, law schools, public libraries, and research centers to preserve and showcase their scholarly output and special collections.

The digital commons are a form of commons involving the distribution and communal ownership of informational resources and technology. Resources are typically designed to be used by the community by which they are created. Examples of the digital commons include wikis, open-source software, and open-source licensing. The distinction between digital commons and other digital resources is that the community of people building them can intervene in the governing of their interaction processes and of their shared resources.

The digital commons provides the community with free and easy access to information. Typically, information created in the digital commons is designed to stay in the digital commons by using various forms of licensing, including the GNU General Public License and various Creative Commons licenses.