# Catalogues / lists / repositories of open standards **URL:** \ **Category:** Catalogues\ **Tags:** open-standards\ **Created:** [February 17, 2026, 5:22am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-standards/18 "2026-02-17T05:22:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Moderator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Moderator](https://fairtechforum.com/u/Moderator)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2026, 5:22am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-standards/18/1 "2026-02-17T05:22:35Z")
# Online databases & lists of open standards _This is a curated overview of major directories, catalogues, registries and standards-developing organisations (SDOs) that publish or index **open standards** (specifications, protocols, file formats, ontologies, terminology systems, etc.). This is distinct from open software projects and open datasets — this list focuses on the technical specifications that enable interoperability. This is a wiki post, so you can add to this post; please feel free to enrich/improve where you can!!_ _All links were verified in May 2026._ * * * ## 1. Meta-directories & registries of standards Resources whose primary content is _other_ standards or standards bodies. The right starting point when you don’t yet know which body governs the specification you need. - **[FAIRsharing.org](https://fairsharing.org/)** — ~3,500+ records across **standards, databases, repositories and data policies** (manually curated, interlinked). Covers ontologies, file formats, minimum reporting guidelines, identifier schemes and terminology artifacts, primarily in life sciences but expanding across all disciplines. The closest thing to a “Wikipedia of data standards.” (No single official live count is published on the JavaScript-rendered site; figure derived from FAIRsharing’s curator blog, Feb 2025.) - **[BARTOC](https://bartoc.org/)** — Basel Register of Thesauri, Ontologies & Classifications. The most important cross-domain meta-registry of knowledge organisation systems: ~10,000+ terminologies indexed, plus ~144 terminology registries. Spans classifications, thesauri, ontologies and authority files. - **[Bioregistry](https://bioregistry.io/)** — Open metaregistry of biomedical prefixes, ontologies and databases; integrates ~23 external registries. Successor in spirit to [identifiers.org](http://identifiers.org). - **[RDA Metadata Standards Catalog (MSC)](https://rdamsc.bath.ac.uk/)** — Open catalogue of research-data metadata standards, profiles and tools, hosted at the University of Bath. (Supersedes the older read-only `rd-alliance.github.io/metadata-directory`.) - **[DCC Metadata Standards Catalogue](https://www.dcc.ac.uk/guidance/standards/metadata/list)** — Digital Curation Centre’s curated list of disciplinary metadata standards, focused on research data archiving. Compact but authoritative. - **[OpenStand](https://open-stand.org/)** — Not a catalogue but the canonical statement of the _principles_ of open standards, jointly affirmed by IEEE, IETF, IAB, ISOC and W3C. Useful as a definitional reference. - **[Public.Resource.Org / Law.Resource.Org](https://public.resource.org/)** — Carl Malamud’s nonprofit publishing free, public-domain copies of laws, regulations and standards incorporated by reference (ASTM, NFPA, ASHRAE, etc.). Won a landmark D.C. Circuit fair-use case in 2023. See also [law.resource.org](https://law.resource.org/). - **[Perinorm](https://www.perinorm.com/)** / **[Accuris Standards Store](https://store.accuristech.com/)** — Commercial aggregators. Perinorm is a bibliographic database of ~2.7 million national/international standards records (DIN/BSI/AFNOR partnership). Accuris (formerly IHS Markit + Techstreet) is the principal commercial standards aggregator after the NSSN search engine was retired. - **[ANSI IBR Portal](https://ibr.ansi.org/)** — Free read-only access to standards incorporated by reference in the US Code of Federal Regulations. - **[NYSED Standards & Specifications guide](https://nyslibrary.libguides.com/internet-bibliographies/standards-specifications)** — Curated bibliography linking to \>460 organisations worldwide publishing standards and specifications. Library-grade meta-list. - **[NSSN – National Standards System Network](https://www.nssn.org/)** _(legacy — search engine discontinued)_ — Formerly indexed 225,000+ standards across U.S., international and national bodies. [nssn.org](http://nssn.org) now redirects to ANSI’s “StandardsLearn” educational portal; the cross-SDO search functionality has been retired. Use the ANSI Webstore, ANSI IBR Portal, or Accuris instead. * * * ## 2. International / global standards bodies The largest formal SDOs whose catalogues function as primary references. Some standards here are _open_ (free to read/implement); others are RAND/FRAND-licensed; the line is debated. All are publicly searchable catalogues. - **[ISO – International Organization for Standardization](https://www.iso.org/standards.html)** — **25,000+ International Standards and related documents** (ISO’s own current wording). Covers virtually every industry; sold per-document (not free), but ISO also publishes [open machine-readable metadata](https://www.iso.org/open-data.html) on its standards. - **[IEC – International Electrotechnical Commission](https://webstore.iec.ch/)** — ~10,500–11,000 international standards (incl. TS, TR, PAS) for electrical, electronic and related technologies. Often paired with ISO (ISO/IEC joint publications). - **[IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA)](https://standards.ieee.org/)** — Major global SDO: ~1,300 active standards, 500+ in development. The 802 networking family, the P7000 AI-ethics series, power, biometrics. A curated subset is free via the [IEEE GET Program](https://standards.ieee.org/products-programs/ieee-get-program/) (e.g. the 802 family six months after publication; the P7000 AI-ethics series). - **[ITU-T Recommendations](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/publications/Pages/recs.aspx)** — ~3,000+ Recommendations for telecommunications and ICT. **Free to download** since 2007 (except ~30 joint ITU-T | ISO/IEC documents). The “T” series; see also [ITU-R](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-R/) (radiocommunication / spectrum) and [ITU-D](https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/) (development). - **[CEN-CENELEC catalogue](https://standards.cencenelec.eu/)** — European Committees for Standardization. Joint catalogue of European Standards (ENs), Technical Specifications and other deliverables, including those harmonised under EU regulations. * * * ## 3. Internet & Web standards The standards bodies that built and maintain the open Internet and Web stack. Distinguished by genuinely free, open access to specifications. - **[IETF / RFC Editor](https://www.rfc-editor.org/)** — **~10,000 RFCs** (over 9,960 as of May 2026), of which a subset are “Internet Standards” (STDs) and “Best Current Practices” (BCPs). Covers TCP/IP, HTTP, TLS, DNS, SMTP, IMAP, OAuth, etc. Fully free to download; the foundational catalogue of internet protocols. Work-in-progress drafts at the [IETF Datatracker](https://datatracker.ietf.org/). - **[W3C – World Wide Web Consortium](https://www.w3.org/standards/)** — Hundreds of Recommendations (W3C’s term for ratified standards) plus many Working Drafts and Notes; canonical listing at [w3.org/TR/](https://www.w3.org/TR/). Covers HTML, CSS, SVG, WCAG, RDF, DOM, WebRTC, decentralised identifiers, etc. (Reorganised as a US 501(c)(3) non-profit in January 2023.) - **[WHATWG](https://spec.whatwg.org/)** — ~10 Living Standards including the HTML and DOM specifications. Continuously updated (no versioned “snapshots”). - **[Ecma International](https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/)** — **\>420 ECMA Standards + \>110 Technical Reports** , including ECMAScript (JavaScript), JSON, C# and CLI. About two-thirds also published as ISO/IEC. Free to download. - **[Unicode Consortium](https://www.unicode.org/standard/standard.html)** — The Unicode Standard plus ~20 Unicode Technical Standards (UTS) and Reports (UTR). The base of text encoding worldwide. - **[IANA Protocol Registries](https://www.iana.org/protocols)** — Master registry of IETF protocol parameters: port numbers, URI schemes, MIME media types, HTTP fields, BCP/STD numbers, MIB OIDs, etc.; ~3,000+ individual registries. - **[ICANN](https://www.icann.org/)** — Coordinates the DNS root, IP allocation and gTLD policy. A governance body that delegates to IETF/IANA rather than a strict SDO, but indispensable to the open Internet. - **[schema.org](https://schema.org/)** — Cross-search-engine vocabulary (Microdata / RDFa / JSON-LD); v30.0 (stable) published 19 March 2026. ~800+ types and ~1,500+ properties. - **[JSON Schema](https://json-schema.org/)** — De facto standard for JSON validation; currently being progressed through the IETF; latest draft 2020-12. - **[GraphQL](https://graphql.org/)** — Query language and runtime ([spec](https://spec.graphql.org/)); governed by the GraphQL Foundation under the Linux Foundation. - **[AsyncAPI](https://www.asyncapi.com/)** — Open spec for event-driven / asynchronous APIs (Linux Foundation); v3.0 (December 2023). - **[OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/)** and **[CloudEvents](https://cloudevents.io/)** — CNCF-graduated observability and event-description specs (OTLP, Semantic Conventions; CloudEvents v1.0.2). - **[JSON-LD](https://json-ld.org/)** — W3C Recommendation for JSON-based Linked Data; current 1.1. ### 3a. Decentralised / identity / trust protocols The building blocks of a privacy-first, federated, European-sovereignty stack — currently the most fast-moving open-standards layer. - **[ActivityPub (W3C)](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/)** — Decentralised social-networking protocol (W3C Recommendation, 2018); the foundation of the Fediverse (Mastodon, PeerTube, Lemmy, Pixelfed, and Threads federation). - **[Matrix](https://spec.matrix.org/)** — Open standard for secure, decentralised real-time communication ([Matrix.org](http://Matrix.org) Foundation). Deployed by the French state (Tchap), the German Bundeswehr (BwMessenger), German healthcare (TI-Messenger) and many EU public-sector users. - **[XMPP Standards Foundation](https://xmpp.org/)** — Federated messaging via XEPs; still relevant for IoT and federated chat. - **[OpenID Foundation](https://openid.net/)** — Identity standards: OpenID Connect (OIDC), FAPI, Verifiable Credentials, eKYC/IDA; 30+ active specifications. - **[FIDO Alliance](https://fidoalliance.org/)** — Passwordless / phishing-resistant authentication: FIDO2 (= WebAuthn + CTAP), passkeys, UAF, U2F. WebAuthn is the W3C side; CTAP the FIDO side. - **[IETF OAuth Working Group](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/oauth/)** — OAuth 2.0 (RFC 6749), OAuth 2.1 in progress, DPoP, PAR, RAR. - **[IndieWeb](https://indieweb.org/)** — Community of personal-website / federated standards: Microformats, Webmention, IndieAuth, Micropub (all W3C Recommendations). * * * ## 4. Industry consortium standards (open specifications) Membership-driven consortia that publish royalty-free or RAND-licensed open specifications, often filling gaps left by formal SDOs. - **[OASIS Open](https://www.oasis-open.org/standards/)** — ~80+ OASIS Standards and many more Committee Specifications. Covers OpenDocument (ODF), SAML, OData, MQTT, AMQP, STIX/TAXII, DocBook, CAP/EDXL emergency standards. Several OASIS standards (e.g. ODF, MQTT, AMQP) also become ISO standards. - **[OMG – Object Management Group](https://www.omg.org/spec/)** — ~200+ specifications across Business Modeling, Healthcare, Finance, Government, Lifesciences, etc. Home of UML, BPMN, DDS, CORBA. - **[OGC – Open Geospatial Consortium](https://www.ogc.org/standards/)** — 80+ adopted standards (150+ including profiles and encodings) for geospatial information: WMS, WFS, GeoPackage, CityGML, SensorThings, openEO. - **[OpenAPI Initiative](https://www.openapis.org/)** — The OpenAPI Specification (formerly Swagger). Hosted under the Linux Foundation. - **[The Open Group Library](https://publications.opengroup.org/)** — Standards including TOGAF, ArchiMate, O-PAS, Open FAIR. Strong in enterprise architecture. (Publications library; standards landing page at [opengroup.org/standards](https://www.opengroup.org/standards).) - **[Khronos Group Registry](https://registry.khronos.org/)** — Open standards for graphics, AR/VR, parallel computing: OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenCL, glTF, OpenXR, WebGL. (The registry is the actual spec repository; the [main site](https://www.khronos.org/) covers governance.) - **[Open Container Initiative (OCI)](https://github.com/opencontainers)** — Open specifications behind container images: the Image, Runtime and Distribution specs underpinning Docker, Podman and Kubernetes. Linux Foundation project; specs at [opencontainers.org](https://opencontainers.org/). - **[3GPP](https://www.3gpp.org/)** — Mobile telecom (2G–6G); organised by quarterly Releases (Rel-18/19 ongoing, Rel-20 “5G-Advanced” in 2026). Thousands of TS/TR documents; the standards behind GSM, LTE and 5G NR. - **[GSMA](https://www.gsma.com/)** — Mobile-operator industry body: RCS Universal Profile, eSIM (SGP.21/.22/.32), Open Gateway / CAMARA APIs. - **[IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee](https://www.ieee802.org/)** — 802.3 Ethernet, 802.11 Wi-Fi, 802.1 bridging, 802.15 (Bluetooth/Thread/Zigbee PHY). Free via the IEEE GET Program six months after publication. - **[OPC Foundation (OPC UA)](https://opcfoundation.org/)** — Industrial automation interoperability; OPC UA standardised as IEC 62541; 30+ companion specs. Central to European industrial sovereignty (RAMI 4.0, Plattform Industrie 4.0). - **[Connectivity Standards Alliance (Matter / Zigbee)](https://csa-iot.org/)** — Matter 1.5.x smart-home spec; Zigbee PRO; Aliro access control. 550+ member companies. - **[Thread Group](https://www.threadgroup.org/)**, **[LoRa Alliance](https://lora-alliance.org/)**, **[Bluetooth SIG](https://www.bluetooth.com/)**, **[Modbus Organization](https://modbus.org/)** — IoT / networking / industrial protocols (Thread mesh over 802.15.4; LoRaWAN LPWAN; Bluetooth Core / LE Audio / Mesh; Modbus RTU/TCP). - **[Broadband Forum](https://www.broadband-forum.org/)** — Broadband network specs: TR-069 / TR-369 USP, TR-181 data model. ~400+ Technical Reports. - **[FIX Trading Community](https://www.fixtrading.org/)** and **[ACORD](https://www.acord.org/)** — FIX Protocol for electronic trading; ACORD insurance data standards. * * * ## 5. European / regional standards bodies Bodies producing standards scoped to a region, often with strong relevance to interoperability obligations under EU law. Especially relevant to digital-sovereignty and public-procurement work. - **[ETSI – European Telecommunications Standards Institute](https://www.etsi.org/standards/)** — Publishes **~2,500+ standards per year** (56,000+ total catalogue) across ICT (GSM, 3G/4G/5G, DECT, NFV, eIDAS-related signature standards). **PDFs free to download** (Word version restricted). Host of the 3GPP series. - **[CEN](https://standards.cencenelec.eu/) and [CENELEC](https://www.cencenelec.eu/)** — European Standards (ENs) developed under Regulation 1025/2012, often harmonised under EU directives (CE marking). - **[Interoperable Europe Portal](https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/)** _(renamed from Joinup, November 2024)_ — European Commission portal cataloguing interoperability solutions, semantic assets and references to open standards/specifications used by EU public administrations. Mandatory reference point under the Interoperable Europe Act (Reg. EU 2024/903). - **[NIFO – National Interoperability Framework Observatory / EIF](https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/nifo-national-interoperability-framework-observatory)** — The European Interoperability Framework and its observatory; recommended standards and specifications for cross-border e-government services. (The “CEF Digital” brand has been retired.) - **[EUDI Wallet Architecture Reference Framework (ARF)](https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-architecture-and-reference-framework)** — Open GitHub repository for the EU Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0; **ARF v2.0 (May 2025)**. Reference implementations (iOS, Android, web verifier) under the [eu-digital-identity-wallet](https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet) org. High-priority for privacy-first mobile-OS work. - **[ENISA standards work](https://www.enisa.europa.eu/topics/standards)** — EU Agency for Cybersecurity; coordinates the EUCC, EUCS and EU5G certification schemes under the EU Cybersecurity Act. - **[EN 301 549](https://www.etsi.org/standards)** _(search “EN 301 549”)_ — Harmonised European Standard for ICT accessibility; mandatory under the EU Web Accessibility Directive and the European Accessibility Act; references WCAG 2.1 AA (v4.x planned to align with WCAG 2.2). Jointly produced by CEN / CENELEC / ETSI. - **[INSPIRE Knowledge Base](https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/)** — EU Directive 2007/2/EC spatial-data infrastructure; 34 spatial-data themes (Annexes I–III); binding for EU public-sector geodata. - **[CAMSS](https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/common-assessment-method-standards-and-specifications-camss)** — Common Assessment Method for Standards and Specifications; the EU method for assessing whether a standard meets openness/interoperability criteria, used in procurement. - **[SEMIC](https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/semic)** and **[DCAT-AP](https://semiceu.github.io/DCAT-AP/)** — Semantic Interoperability Community; maintains the Core Vocabularies (Core Person, Business, Location, Public Service) and the Data Catalogue Vocabulary Application Profile for European data portals. - **[DIN](https://www.din.de/) (DE), [AFNOR](https://www.afnor.org/) (FR), [BSI](https://www.bsigroup.com/) (UK), [NEN](https://www.nen.nl/) (NL)** — National standards bodies, each publishing thousands of national standards and acting as the national entry point to ISO/CEN. * * * ## 6. National & government standards portals Government-published catalogues of standards mandated, recommended or adopted for public procurement — including “comply-or-explain” frameworks. - **[Forum Standaardisatie / pas-toe-of-leg-uit lijst](https://forumstandaardisatie.nl/open-standaarden)** _(Netherlands)_ — Dutch government’s official **“comply-or-explain” list of ~50 mandatory open standards** (binding for public IT procurement above €50,000) plus a recommended list. The most mature such framework in Europe; strong reference for digital-sovereignty work. - **[XÖV / KoSIT](https://www.xoev.de/)** and **[IT-Planungsrat](https://www.it-planungsrat.de/)** _(Germany)_ — XML data-exchange framework for German public administration (XMeld, XRechnung, XBau, XZuFi, XDatenfelder…); 30+ XÖV standards, published via the [XRepository](https://www.xrepository.de/). The key German government open-standards body. - **[ZenDiS / openDesk / openCode](https://www.zendis.de/)** _(Germany)_ — German Centre for Digital Sovereignty. Develops [openDesk](https://www.opendesk.eu/) (open-source M365 alternative bundling Nextcloud, Open-Xchange, Element/Matrix, Collabora, etc.) and [openCode](https://opencode.de/) (GitLab-based public-sector OSS forge). Critical sovereignty reference. - **[Sovereign Tech Agency](https://www.sovereign.tech/)** _(Germany)_ — Government-funded body (SPRIND subsidiary) investing in open-source critical infrastructure; runs the Sovereign Tech Fund, Resilience, Fellowship and (2025–) Sovereign Tech Standards programmes. ~€23.5 M invested across 60 critical technologies (Log4j, Samba, GNOME, etc.) as of November 2024. - **[Référentiel Général d’Interopérabilité (RGI)](https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/publications/interoperabilite/)** _(France)_ — Mandatory French government interoperability reference (V2.0, 2016). Companion: [RGAA](https://accessibilite.numerique.gouv.fr/) (accessibility). - **[X-Road / X-tee](https://www.x-road.global/)** _(Estonia / NIIS)_ — Open-source secure data-exchange layer (MIT licence), developed by the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (Estonia + Finland + Iceland); used by 20+ countries. Estonian deployment: [RIA X-tee](https://www.ria.ee/en/state-information-system/data-exchange-platforms/data-exchange-layer-x-tee). - **[NIST CSRC](https://csrc.nist.gov/)** _(USA)_ — Computer Security Resource Center; FIPS standards, the SP 800 series (~200+ publications), the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 (2024). - **[NIST standards.gov hub](https://www.nist.gov/standardsgov)** _(USA)_ — U.S. government’s hub for federal, industry and international standards engagement. - **[NISO – National Information Standards Organization](https://www.niso.org/)** _(USA)_ — ANSI-accredited SDO for library / publishing / information services (Z39 series, JATS, KBART, OpenURL); 70+ active standards and recommended practices. - **[ANSI Webstore](https://webstore.ansi.org/)** _(USA)_ — American National Standards Institute. Index to U.S. national standards (~10,000+ ANS designations) plus distribution of ISO/IEC. - **[NASA Technical Standards System](https://standards.nasa.gov/)** _(USA)_ — Thousands of standards accessible (NASA-authored plus subscribed SDB content); free read access for NASA-preferred standards. - **[GOV.UK Open Standards](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-standards-for-government)** _(UK)_ — UK government’s adopted open standards for software interoperability, data and document formats. - **Other national comply-or-explain frameworks** — Denmark ([digst.dk](https://digst.dk/)), Italy (AgID Linee Guida), Spain (Esquema Nacional de Interoperabilidad). Less centrally maintained than the Dutch list, but analogous instruments. * * * ## 7. Domain-specific standards registries Catalogues focused on a single domain — useful when you know the field. (Note: BioPortal, OBO Foundry, OLS4 and Ontobee index largely the same biomedical ontologies through different lenses; don’t count ontologies across them independently.) **Semantic web / ontology registries** - **[BioPortal](https://bioportal.bioontology.org/)** — **1,549 ontologies (1,182 public), 15.3 million terms, 100 million+ cross-ontology mappings** (NCBO, 2025). The reference registry for biomedical semantic standards. - **[EBI Ontology Lookup Service (OLS4)](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/)** — ~278 ontologies, ~10.2 million classes, ~50,000 properties (EMBL-EBI). OLS4 replaced OLS3 in production in 2024. - **[Ontobee](https://www.ontobee.org/)** — Linked-data server for ontologies; the default Linked-Data browser used by OBO Foundry; ~180+ ontologies. - **[OBO Foundry](https://obofoundry.org/)** — ~175 active, orthogonally-designed biomedical ontologies sharing common principles (Gene Ontology, Disease Ontology, ChEBI, etc.), plus candidates and obsolete entries. - **[AgroPortal](https://agroportal.lirmm.fr/)** — Agronomy-focused ontology repository (~150+ ontologies). Part of the OntoPortal family (alongside EcoPortal, IndustryPortal, MedPortal). - **[Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV)](https://lov.linkeddata.es/)** — ~900 RDF vocabularies for the linked-data web, with quality metadata and cross-references. - **[Research Vocabularies Australia](https://vocabs.ardc.edu.au/)** — Hundreds of vocabularies, hosted by the Australian Research Data Commons. - **[Dublin Core Metadata Initiative](https://www.dublincore.org/)** — DCMI Metadata Terms and related specifications, foundational for library, archive and digital-object metadata. **Healthcare / life science** - **[HL7](https://www.hl7.org/implement/standards/)** — Healthcare interoperability standards: HL7 v2, v3, CDA, and FHIR (the current dominant standard for health data exchange). Community FHIR implementation guides and packages at **[Simplifier.net](https://simplifier.net/)** (~5,000+ projects). - **[SNOMED International](https://www.snomed.org/)** — SNOMED CT clinical terminology ( **~370,000+ active concepts** ). Open within member countries. - **[LOINC](https://loinc.org/)** — Universal terminology for lab tests, clinical observations and document types; ~100,000+ active terms (Regenstrief Institute). - **[DICOM](https://www.dicomstandard.org/)** — Medical imaging standard (PS3, multi-part), maintained by NEMA/MITA. - **[openEHR International](https://www.openehr.org/)** — Open clinical EHR architecture (Reference Model + Archetypes + Templates); [Clinical Knowledge Manager](https://ckm.openehr.org/) hosts 700+ published archetypes. Relevant for European e-health sovereignty. - **[IHE – Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise](https://www.ihe.net/)** — Profiles combining HL7/DICOM/etc. to solve interoperability use cases; ~150+ profiles across ~14 clinical domains. - **[WHO ICD-11](https://icd.who.int/)** — International Classification of Diseases, 11th revision (effective 2022); ~17,000 diagnostic categories, ~120,000 codable terms. **Geospatial** - **[ISO/TC 211](https://committee.iso.org/tc211)** — Geographic Information / Geomatics; the ISO 19100 series (~80+ standards). Works closely with OGC. (See also INSPIRE in the European section.) **Financial / business** - **[ISO 20022](https://www.iso20022.org/)** — Financial messaging standard; ~284 message sets and 750+ individual message definitions. - **[GLEIF / LEI (ISO 17442)](https://www.gleif.org/)** — Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation; **3.02 million active LEIs as of end-Q1 2026** (+13.5% in 2025). - **[GS1 Standards](https://www.gs1.org/standards)** — Global standards for product identification, barcodes, EPCIS supply-chain events. - **[IFRS / IFRS Sustainability Standards](https://www.ifrs.org/)** — Accounting and sustainability reporting standards. Some content open; full standards via subscription. - **[XBRL International](https://www.xbrl.org/the-standard/)** — XBRL specifications for business and financial reporting in machine-readable form. **Identifiers / persistent IDs** - **[DOI Foundation (ISO 26324)](https://www.doi.org/)** — International DOI System; ~391 million DOIs assigned by 2025 (per IDF data; [doi.org](http://doi.org)’s FAQ still cites a static ~300 million). - **[ORCID](https://orcid.org/)** — Open researcher identifiers; ~16 million records, ~10.5 million active users (end-2025). - **[ROR – Research Organization Registry](https://ror.org/)** — Open persistent IDs for research organisations; ~115,000+ orgs. - **[Crossref schemas](https://www.crossref.org/schemas/)** and **[DataCite Metadata Schema](https://schema.datacite.org/)** — XML schemas for scholarly metadata deposit (DataCite v4.6, 2024). **Library / archives** - **[Library of Congress standards hub](https://www.loc.gov/standards/)** — Central hub for METS, MODS, PREMIS, MARC, MARCXML, EAD, BIBFRAME, MIX and MADS. The single most important resource for the library/archives community. * * * ## 8. Open document & file format standards A useful slice given how often “open standard” debates centre on document formats and codecs. - **[OpenDocument Format (ODF) at OASIS](https://www.oasis-open.org/standard/odf/)** and **[ISO/IEC 26300](https://www.iso.org/standard/66363.html)** — The vendor-neutral office document standard underpinning LibreOffice, Collabora Online, OnlyOffice (partial) and Murena Workspace’s office stack. - **[Office Open XML (ISO/IEC 29500)](https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html)** — Listed for completeness alongside ODF; note the contested openness debate over the “Strict” vs “Transitional” variants. - **[PDF / ISO 32000](https://www.iso.org/standard/75839.html)** — Now an open ISO standard. Subsets: **[PDF/A (ISO 19005)](https://www.iso.org/standard/79381.html)** (archival) and **[PDF/UA (ISO 14289)](https://www.iso.org/standard/82278.html)** (universal accessibility). Coordinator: the [PDF Association](https://www.pdfa.org/). - **[EPUB 3 (ISO/IEC 23736; W3C maintained)](https://www.w3.org/TR/epub-33/)** — Maintained by the W3C EPUB 3 Working Group. - **[Matroska / WebM](https://www.matroska.org/technical/specs/index.html)** and **[Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia)](https://aomedia.org/)** — Open container/codec specifications: AV1 video (2018), AVIF image (2019), IAMF immersive audio (2024); AV2 in development. - **[SPDX (ISO/IEC 5962)](https://spdx.dev/)** and **[CycloneDX (Ecma TC54)](https://cyclonedx.org/)** — Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) standards from the Linux Foundation and Ecma respectively. - **[IANA Media Types Registry](https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml)** — The authoritative registry of MIME types underpinning content negotiation on the web. * * * ## 9. Specialised open-standards advocacy & comparison resources Smaller resources useful for political/strategic context on what counts as “open.” - **[Wikipedia: List of open standards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard#Examples_of_open_standards)** — Decent starting overview with cross-references to definitions. - **[Free Software Foundation Europe – Open Standards work](https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/standards/standards.en.html)** — Advocacy resources and the FSFE definition of open standards (stricter than the EIF definition; royalty-free required). - **[Open Standards NZ](https://openstandards.nz/example-standards)** — New Zealand advocacy campaign (Dave Lane) petitioning for a government open-standards mandate. Its example page is a useful concrete classifier: **open** (JSON, XML, HTML, ODF, PNG, SVG, WebRTC, FLAC, Ogg) vs. **“fauxpen”** (OOXML, MP3) vs. **proprietary/closed** (PSD, DWG, ESRI Shapefile, WMV, etc.). Sharp framing of the open-vs-FRAND-vs-vendor-controlled distinction. - **[OpenForum Europe](https://openforumeurope.org/)** — European think tank publishing research and policy briefs on open standards in EU policy. - **[Document Foundation – Open Standards](https://www.documentfoundation.org/)** — Maintainers of LibreOffice; useful position pieces on ODF vs. OOXML. - **[Open Source Initiative (OSI)](https://opensource.org/)** — Maintains the Open Source Definition and the OSI-approved licence list. - **[OpenChain Project (ISO/IEC 5230)](https://www.openchainproject.org/)** — Open-source licence-compliance management standard. - **[OpenSSF – Open Source Security Foundation](https://openssf.org/)** — Linux Foundation umbrella for OSS security best practices: SLSA, Sigstore, OpenSSF Scorecard. - **[Digital Public Goods Alliance – DPG Standard](https://digitalpublicgoods.net/standard/)** — Defines what counts as a digital public good (relevant to UN SDG digital cooperation). * * * ## 10. Open hardware & silicon standards Open specifications for hardware and chip design — increasingly central to European semiconductor sovereignty under the EU Chips Act. - **[RISC-V International](https://riscv.org/)** — Open ISA stewards (Linux Foundation member); ~55+ ratified specifications, ~75 technical working groups. Ratified-extensions library at [docs.riscv.org](https://docs.riscv.org/). - **[Open Compute Project (OCP)](https://www.opencompute.org/)** — Open hardware designs for data centres (servers, racks, networking, AI accelerators). - **[CHIPS Alliance](https://chipsalliance.org/)** — Linux Foundation project for open hardware IP (RISC-V cores, networking, SSDs). ---
**Author:** ![shenol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@shenol](https://fairtechforum.com/u/shenol)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2026, 10:35am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-standards/18/2 "2026-04-20T10:35:22Z")
Nice catalogue. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![mona](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ee7513/32.png) [@mona](https://fairtechforum.com/u/mona)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2026, 11:19am UTC](https://fairtechforum.com/t/catalogues-lists-repositories-of-open-standards/18/3 "2026-04-29T11:19:04Z")
Thanks for posting! 🤩