Vocabufacts

Welcome to the Vocabufacts page, designed to be a glossary for general users and future contributors to the Open Food Facts project.

This page aims at helping people who have an interest in Open Food Facts and its projects to better understand it, in order to better participate to it.

API: Application Programming interface is the protocol by which an application can talk to another application. Open Food Facts provides a comprehensive API enabling re-users to connect to the data and get services from the application (see API documentation). Most service of Open Food Facts also have an API and communicate between them thanks to it.
Category: The category refers to the category of the food item. That is to say wether it is a drink, canned vegetables or fresh fruits. The category impacts the computation of the scores displayed on Open Food Facts.
CodeOnline Food : It is a PIM developed by GS1, it allows a brand to generate GTINs.
Community: The term community at Open Food Facts refers to the contributors, the volunteers, and all the people who take part in the consolidation of the database.
Contributing: To contribute to the Open Food Facts project doesn't have one given definition. From adding/correcting product sheets to participating in the creation of the website, the ways of contributing have no limits. Any stakeholder who has made a change in the project is considered a contributor.
Creative commons license:
Database: a set of informations structured in a meaningful way. It can be processed to get specific or aggregated informations. Open Food Facts main goal is to have a comprehensive database of food products. This database is freely available and can be used through a lot of applications (the main being the website) but it can also be downloaded for specific uses under the ODbL license.
Data Pool Certified by GS1 : Any company that needs to send or receive product information can benefit from the GDSN by subscribing to a data pool.
EAN: The International Article Number (also known as European Article Number or EAN) is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify a specific retail product type, in a specific packaging configuration, from a specific manufacturer (credit: International Article Number, Wikipedia)
Eco-score: The Eco-Score is an experimental 5 colors and letters score. At the image of the Nutri-Score For more information visit our page dedicated to the Eco-Score
GDSN : The GS1 Global Data Synchronisation Network® (GDSN) is a network of interoperable, GS1-certified data pools (electronic catalogues) that enable companies to securely synchronise data using GS1 standards
GLN (GS1 identifier) of Open Food Facts : 3770026870013
GS1 : GS1 is a neutral, not-for-profit international company created by businesses to facilitate and automate trade between partners using a unique identification system. A national branch exists in each country
GTIN (Global Trade Item Number): It is a new name for EAN.
Nova score: The Nova Score is a score which highlights the levels of processing of food items. For more information, check out our page dedicated to the score.
Nutri-score: The Nutri-Score once called the 5 colors score is a score dedicated to ease the determination of the nutritional quality of the consumed food items. You can find out more on our dedicated website page.
ODbl : The database created by Open Food Facts is available under the ODbL licence. For more information, check this page out and this one too.
OFF: an abbreviation for Open Food Facts,
Open data: a term to design data (mostly under the form of databases) that is freely reusable. It still comes under a license which specifies obligations you have to respect. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data
PIM: Product Information Management. A Product Information Management (PIM) solution is a business application that provides a single place to collect, manage, and enrich your product information, create a product catalog, and distribute it to your sales and eCommerce channels. A PIM solution makes it faster and easier to create and deliver compelling product experiences. A PIM can also be called Data Pool.
Permanent team: The term permanent team refers to the employees of the Open Food Facts NGO.
Pro platform: The pro platform is dedicated to professionals. It is designed to ease the data import process on Open Food Facts by allowing producers to send a large amount of data at once either via Excel or thanks to a connection to their PIM.
Public platform: The public platform is Open Food Facts' core database. It is the website on which all the products sheets are displayed upon import from the pro platform or, after they are added/completed by contributors.
Slack: Slack is the platform on which the permanent team interacts with the Open Food Facts' community. It is composed of various channels from which contributors can choose from depend on their interests. Its reach is international. Join us !
Taxonomy: You can check out the following pages on Open Food Facts' blog and more in detail on Yukti's blog
Teams: The teams system is designed to ease the contribution process to the project. Indeed, contributing to Open Food Facts can include more than adding products or editing products sheets, the various teams have different tasks and purposes and everyone is welcome to participate to the teams' activities depending on their interests.
USDA: USDA stands for United States Department of Agriculture. You can find out more on this page.