Open science has never been so high on the research agendas, and this is true in all fields, ranging from so-called hard sciences to the humanities. In this respect, those who have been dealing with the TEI guidelines for years, whether as users or designers of the standard, have experienced an environment which has always been open by construction and fostering openness for projects based upon its principles. We outline the main issues related to open science in the current scholarly landscape, whether political or technical, and show the various aspects where the TEI environment has been seminal in setting up an open agenda that may enlightened the humanities at large in terms of good practices, for, e.g., managing, documenting or disseminating scholarly sources and methods.