Open education does not constitute a discipline, in the manner of a hard science for example, so there is no agreed canon of research that all researchers will be familiar with. It is also an area that practitioners tend to move into from other fields, often because of an interest in applying aspects of openness to their foundational discipline. This can be seen as an advantage, in that different perspectives are brought into the domain, and it evolves rapidly. However, it also results in an absence of shared knowledge, with the consequence that existing knowledge is often ‘rediscovered’ or not built upon.
In order for open education to be more than a movement, it feels like we should be consciously moving in this direction - to define a canonical set of resources that are foundational to the field in order to help orient others and further define ourselves as a field/discipline. Because, as we have seen with MOOC's, if we do not do it, then others will do it for us.