Group items tagged

This blog about Open Data Developments in Asia analyses the recent state of Open Data adopted in Asia and highlights some of the 11 Asian countries participants that attended the Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva in 2012. Of the 11 countries that attended the conference, the author of the post focuses on the East Asian and Pacific countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar and discusses their state and role in Openness. The author does a good job at providing statistics of the different countries in terms of the Worldbank Knowledge Economy Index (KEI), which analyzes the economic rankings of countries. The author then compares economic rank to that of openness, stating that countries low on the economic rank contribute little to no open data within their own countries or externally to other countries. Next, the author talks about the overall internet penetration in Asia as being only 27.5 percent and in that statistic, there is still a wide gap between North and South East Asia in terms of internet use and information distribution and acquisition from citizens and others. Moreover, the author continues to compare how many social, economical, political and cultural influence information distribution, contribution and acquisition in Asia countries. Openness is growing in the more developed Asian countries, but openness is limited, or even nonexistent, in developing (authoritative) countries. After reading this article, I've had a greater understanding of the current state of Open Data in Asia an the influences that contribute to enabling Openness. What I expected from the blog post or something that would've made the post even better could be some examples or projects of Openness or Open Data in Asia.

I presented this paper to a conference in South Africa in 2005, and it was described as "too radical" by the top leaders in libraries in South Africa who attended. :) So am rather happy that my vague perceptions and musings about the emerging trends have been vindicated today. "This paper will focus on another aspect that is integrally linked to the ability to access literature and information - that of cost and economics. Both the broader macroeconomic context and the more focused microeconomic (South African) environment will be referred to. We will examine the assumption that the economic development of a nation is linked to the ability to access information and test whether this is a valid assumption. From there, we will take a brief look at the issue of the cost of books, specifically in South Africa. The advent of the electronic revolution and the many paradigm shifts that the Internet and electronic media have initiated and the effects on the publishing industry, will be outlined. We will explore the "information as commodity" paradigm and briefly look at the related Copyright and Intellectual Property developments before weaving these seemingly disparate threads together to form a picture of innovative solutions that have arisen in response to the information access crisis in South Africa. These solutions have arisen from the popular notion that information should be freely available for societal good, rather than commodified. Finally, we will ponder the effect that these solutions may have on the traditional book publishing industry in South Africa."

Thank you all, very much, it is quite a new experience for me to have the paper well received. :)

Thank you for sharing this. I really appreciated the non-North American context. I grew up in the States, and am working on my Master's degree in Canada, so it's really easy to get caught up in always looking at these issues from the North American point of view. Seeing papers like this really help to confirm how global these issues are, and cement their importance in my mind.

Today, on the one hand we have the Internet that allows access to information worldwide and at any time on the other hand librarians are facing tremendous pressure with the exorbitant price rise of the subscriptions to academic journals and unable to meet their responsibility of providing information. Simultaneously. This has called for the development of new models of information provision to meet user demands. Open Access is one of the models under discussion that has implications for educational, research, legal and economic policy. This handbook is designed to contribute to this debate and provides an interested public with information on Open Access, a subject which, despite its great social importance, has hitherto been mainly discussed by experts. The handbook is the outcome of a workshop that brought together 25 experts coming from German Federal Ministries, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Commission, the academic community,major academic organisations, the publishing sector, and the Open Access community This handbook presents the various views of major stakeholders and covers a wide range of issues relevant to open access.

I found this is quite useful for open access! It kinda of introducing open access in depth. Thanks for sharing!

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

Open Access Publishing is the free distribution of research, whether it is as a pre-print (working paper) or a peer-reviewed article. Since the creation of the web, more and more journal are choosing open access as their business model. One of them was recently Economic Analysis and Policy, published by the Economic Society of Australia...

ZBW Website German National Library of Economics - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ZBW is the largest library for literature in economics world-wide. This is one great example of "open access" whereby access for data is openly made available to users nationally and internationally. ZBW was is recently honoured by the German Library Association as the 2014 Library of the Year for its "a radically modern library whose customer- and innovation-oriented approach is exemplary for other libraries". Through its Econbiz Open project, ZBW was able to partner and create participatory culture among its partner countries.

I believe that one of the best ways to look for truthful information happens through the specialized free access library Julia.

"Increased access to information and knowledge, underpinned by universal literacy, is an essential pillar of sustainable development. Greater availability of quality information and data and the involvement of communities in its creation will provide a fuller, more transparent allocation of resources."

"In this context, a right to information would be transformational. Access to information supports development by empowering people, especially marginalised people and those living in poverty, to: - Exercise their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. - Be economically active, productive and innovative. - Learn and apply new skills. - Enrich cultural identity and expression. - Take part in decision-making and participate in an active and engaged civil society. - Create community-based solutions to development challenges. - Ensure accountability, transparency, good governance, participation and empowerment. - Measure progress on public and private commitments on sustainable development. "

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

Good article to start studying and understanding the economic behind open education. This article started by focusing at things like open source software economic models, the business share, and how high technology society and the Internet access affect supply and demand of open education.

This is an interesting article about the cost of formal publishing verses open access publishing. Although there seems to be a lot of secrecy around the issue, the research shows that the total cost for open access publishing is a lot less than formal publishing. That appears to bring the perception that the open access works are not as good as those published in formal journals. Despite this factor there is growing encouragement to authors to publish their work in open access sources, but traditional models remain very popular. A large percentage of these journals actually allow people to publish online, although some do ask for a time delay. Despite that, many authors do not proceed to publish online after they have gone through the formal process although some authors are obliged to do so by their institution. It could be a good test to see why these authors do not take the step to publish online. Reasons could range from apathy, to not enough knowledge of the process, to a need not to share the information with everyone. Economically, there is also a concern that open access sources will become more expensive as more authors begin publishing in this way.

Open Access Resources aims to remove constraints in access to articles and knowledge for academic-intellectual world community, particularly in the developing countries. Scientists from these countries still have trouble posting their works due to limitations of network access, institutional economic difficulties and lack of information about solutions available Open Access. It is expected that the Open Access increase understanding of educational and research opportunities to unite the world.

You could be interested in this too: http://sdu.ictp.it/index.html SDu is developing also a videocapture integrated system so that for a small investment lessons can be recorded and shared online http://www.openeya.org/ ...even infrastructures must be open....

"Open data could add up to $3 trillion worth of economic activity per year worldwide, according to a study by McKinsey Consultants. But in the race to liberate thousands of data-sets from the government and business sectors, the African continent is seen as lagging behind. "

If there is any continent that needs Open Data most, it is Africa. African needs transparency and accountability, which are the core foundation of Open Data, to create meaningful change on the continent. But making data available and Open is just the initial stage of accomplishing something. The challenge here is how to ensure that the people of Africa have knowledge of the information and are ABLE to ACCESS the information. What use is information when still limited Internet access, scarce electricity, and other ICT infrastructure, including language barriers continue to act as roadblocks to accessing Open data? Wow!! Just when I finished this short posting, the light went off. Couldn't access the Internet. Everything is dead. I have being waiting 30mins, 1hr, 2hrs, 2hrs 45mins … and now its 4hrs and my laptop battery power is running down. ALAS!! Finally power is restored after 4hrs 49mins for me to make my post. You feel me? This is not the exception, and this is not a coincidence but the norm

"Although the official press release highlights that "Open Access publishing has no negative effect on book sales, and increases online usage and discovery considerably" (which is, in my opinion, only a snapshot which will sooner or later lose validity in the course of the ongoing digitalization of the academic book market), the most interesting and valuable outcomes of the pilot arise from the attempt to quantify and itemize the costs of an OA monograph."

"The current crisis, the deepest and longest in the history of capitalism, has opened a debate around the world about what appears, more clearly with each passing day, to be the simultaneous destruction of the two principal institutions of social and economic life: the State and the market. Never in living memory has the economic system been so universally questioned. On the other hand, never before have technical capacities been so powerful, and, more importantly, so accessible to people and small organizations. In fact, never before have so many small businesses taken part in the world market. Nearly free [gratis] P2P communication technologies let them create the largest commercial networks in history. The emergence of free software (which, by itself, represents the largest-ever transfer of value to the economic periphery) empowered them with unexpected independence. Millions of small businesses around the world, especially in Asia, were able to coordinate among themselves this way and hone their products just as new markets were opening up to them. It's "globalization of the small." It's not a marginal phenomenon: never before have so many people around the world gotten out of poverty."

Paper Conclusions: While sources differ in their precise estimates of the economic potential of Open Data, all are agreed that it is potentially very large. In countries which were early movers in Open Data there is already evidence of significant businesses having developed to exploit that potential. Leading governments have recognised that their role is not simply to publish data - they are supporting the whole value chain of the use of data through four distinct though interlinked roles. Other governments should consider how to use their Open Data to enhance economic growth, and should put in place strategies to promote and support the use of data in this way.

"Although the Directory of Open Access Journals reports that nearly two-thirds of OA journals listed there do not charge authors, a recent study indicates that 50% of OA articles have been published after the author paid a fee." That still leaves at least 50% of OA journals that DO NOT charge author fees. This is often forgotten.

"Funded by tertiary institutions rather than individual researchers, this new model seeks to provide open access not just to traditional academic publications but to all forms of scholarly output."