-The notion of opening-up, i.e. creation of conditions for cargo traffic in a mine operation moving the cargo from the face to the place of its reception within the boundaries of the mine or outside, means the same whether it is an open-pit mine, a quarry or an underground mine.However, in open cast mining, the term "opening-up" is often understood as stripping or making an initial cut at the contact with minerals, as there is no clear definition of the concepts of the method of opening, opening schemes, and opening systems.Having studied various options used to classify the methods of opening, we offer to emphasize those methods which show how the opening-up is implemented (by mine workings or without them), and all other descriptions should be attributed to the schemes, since they show the spatial position of the method (external, internal, individual, group workings, etc.) Keywords -open pit mining, initial cut, method of opening, scheme of opening.