Open Risk Manual:About
Contents
The Motivation
Risk Management is a vast and ever expanding domain of knowledge. The required skills are applied, occasionally very technical and ever changing. This specialized nature of the knowledge base is not served fully by either the traditional academic literature or classic publications in printed book form.
Wikipedia comes frequently to the rescue of risk managers (and will likely continue to do so!), but there is a clear need for a more specialized, open, and collaborative wiki that focuses on risk management. With this motivation, Open Risk developed and supports the Open Risk Manual, an open and public wiki dedicated to risk management.
The Manual is primarily a technical resource, constructed by and for professional risk managers. Yet the Manual is open to anybody interested in understanding this important knowledge domain. The scope of the knowledge base is not fixed precisely. It spans the range of risk management practice, including financial risk management and more specialized quantitative approaches. You can read more about the types of resources included in the Manual here.
The Principle
The development of the Open Risk Manual follows roughly the same principles as Wikipedia. Namely it is:
- based on voluntary contributions by individuals willing to spend their own time to provide a quality entry that will be of use to every risk manager, anywhere, anytime
- released under a Creative Commons license
Some key differences with how Wikipedia works
- the Open Risk Manual requires approved Author registration before one can add-to or edit the Manual. This restriction serves multiple purposes, ranging from website security to enabling a more consistent outcome
- The objective and style of the Manual is that of a 'Technical 'Manual, not an Encyclopedia or a Textbook. This choice is reflected in
- Articles are structured for easy problem solving, not academic learning
- The focus on tools, not theory
- There is no particular effort for bibliographic completeness - the Risk Manual is not the place to establish academic precedence!
Is the Risk Manual Free to Use?
The Risk Manual is and will always be free to use. All content of the Open Risk Manual is available under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License.
Alas there is no free lunch! Open Risk supports the development of the Manual with infrastructure and content. The quality and quantity of the available articles will depend on the contributions of a large number of users.
The Development Plan
The Risk Manual is still in the build-out phase. This means:
- We at Open Risk have kick-started the development with a set of initial articles and place-holders
- Contributors may join and adopt areas for development / improvement
- Users respond with requests and feedback
- The process is iterated ad-infinitum
Roles and Responsibilities
For Open Risk
Besides providing and maintaining the server and the wiki software, we at Open Risk:
- Organize article themes and categories and providing seed articles
- Provide templates and tools assisting with article authoring
- Moderate contributions to ensure a level of consistency and minimum common standards
- Ensure Authors get fair recognition for their contributions
For Authors
- Adding new articles or augmenting / improving existing articles
- Proposing new categories / areas
- Peer reviewing articles of other Contributors (optional)
- Updating their profile pages
For End Users
- Make the most of the Risk Manual!
- Report any identified issues with the wiki or specific articles (optional)
- Provide suggestions for further developments
Further Tools
- Editing instructions are provided in a dedicated page
- A standard template for Articles is also provided
The Risk Manual focuses on articles covering e.g., definitions or risk terms, risk management methodologies and risk management best practice. If you are interested to contribute to the sibling effort of developing an open source risk platform please take a look here. We aim to use the Risk Manual also as repository of model documentation.
What Kind of Technology Powers the Risk Manual?
The Risk Manual is using Mediawiki, the same technology as Wikipedia. We have also enabled semantic annotations as provided by the Semantic Mediawiki extension
Some important disclaimers:
The Risk Manual comes with hefty disclaimers which you should read carefully if you plan to contribute or use it. Some highlights:
- Neither Open Risk nor Contributing Authors are assuring any fitness for purpose of the Risk Manual articles
- All the content in the Risk Manual is released under a Creative Commons License
- The privacy policy of Open Risk is applicable
