  The CMS Open Data project offers new opportunities to measure cross sections
of standard model (SM) processes which have not been probed so far. In this
work, we evaluate the challenges and the opportunities of the CMS Open Data
project in the view of cross-section measurements. In particular, we reevaluate
SM cross sections of the production of W bosons, Z bosons, top-quark pairs and
WZ dibosons in several decay channels at a center of mass energy of 8 TeV with
a corresponding integrated luminosity of 1.8 fb-1. Those cross sections have
been previously measured by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations and hence can be
used to validate our analysis and calibration strategy. This gives an
indication to which precision also new, so far unmeasured cross sections can be
determined using CMS Open Data by scientists, who are not a member of the LHC
collaborations and hence lack detailed knowledge on experimental and detector
related effects and their handling.
