Group items tagged

An organization dedicated to visualizing open data around international aid

Interesting examples for those of us who work in those fields. To get people to communicate and start producing material, sharing educational resources and other, it takes those knowledges you present here about open data in the International perspective.

"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. "

from website: "Bioline International is a not-for-profit scholarly publishing cooperative committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries. BI's goal of reducing the South to North knowledge gap is crucial to a global understanding of health (tropical medicine, infectious diseases, epidemiology, emerging new diseases), biodiversity, the environment, conservation and international development. By providing a platform for the distribution of peer-reviewed journals (currently from Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Turkey, Uganda and Venezuela), BI helps to reduce the global knowledge divide by making bioscience information generated in these countries available to the international research community world-wide." The site offers a range of journals, with full text access. Areas include zoology, health, agriculture, and nutrition. There aren't a lot of journals so the site is manageable. Good source if you are a scientist seeking data/information from areas other than the west.

Learning modes and principles of open, commons-based peer-production therefor have the potential to provide the "gold standard" of enhancing future skills, competencies, connections, capacities of people and their organisations on a global scale. In short: peer-to-peer learning around open, commons-based peer-production is a game changer in international development cooperation.

This is a project to make financial information and results on global development open and easy to understand

DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (DJLIT), is an international, peer-reviewed, open access jounal that endeavours to bring recent developments in information technology, as applicable to library and information science. It is meant for librarians, documentation and information professionals, researchers students and others interested in the field. It is published bimonthly. It was formerly known as 'DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology (DBIT)'.

International Development and Research Capacities: Increasing Access to African Scholarly Publishing

"The Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme (SCAP) was a three-year research and implementation initiative that took place between March 2010 and August 2013. Hosted by the University of Cape Town, the programme engaged the Universities of Botswana, Namibia and Mauritius in a process aimed at better understanding the dynamics around scholarly communication in the Southern African higher education environment and advancing the open access agenda for the purpose of increasing the visibility of African research. This work was made possible by a grant from the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC). This report synthesizes research and findings from the four institutional case studies conducted at the Universities of Botswana, Cape Town, Mauritius and Namibia. It provides an overview the scholarly communication activity systems at work in these four Southern African universities."

Thanks for this article. I think it gives a great overview of the current landscape of scholarly publishing in Africa, and concisely states the problems of visibilities (or the lack thereof).

Practical Action is an international development charity. We use sustainable technology to challenge poverty, working with poor women and men around the world. Open Knowledge if it can not be transformed into some development then, we don't need to advocate for it or our advocacy is fruitless

Traditional Healers Organization For Africa: " Biopiracy and Indigenous Traditional Medicine Knowledge The blatant plunder of indigenous knowledge and genetic resources in South Africa continues unhindered and without State monitoring. Since 1997, We have been monitoring private and public enterprises (or their intermediaries) who are actively collecting, sampling and acquiring traditional knowledge for the development of pharmaceutical products. What concerns us is that international organizations are entering South Africa to carry out this research. Not even the World Health Organization are free of scrutiny in this regard. "Biopiracy" refers to the use of intellectual property laws (patents, plant breeders' rights) to gain exclusive monopoly control over genetic resources that are based on the knowledge and innovation of indigenous peoples. Biopiracy and bioprospecting don't just happen in the field ; biopiracy is even more likely to take place in the laboratories of industry and academia, and in patent offices in the cities not even in South Africa."

It's unquestionable that Research4Life has had a significant impact in improving access to research information for communities in developing countries. I do have a number of criticisms about how the program is organized and delivered, however. 1. Publisher participation in the program is 'entirely voluntary', without 'a single contract (being) signed between any of the partners' (Aaronson, 2004), meaning that publishers can opt out at any point. This issue was highlighted in 2011 when Elsevier, Lipincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science Magazine) withdrew access to over 2500 journals through the HINARI system. Following international attention, and widespread condemnation, publishers restored access, with Elsevier announcing that they were in discussions with the government in Bangladesh to transition towards a paid licensing scheme (Wise, 2011). 2. Countries that meet the eligibility criteria of the program (which are based on the World Bank's listing of Lower and Lower Middle Income Countries) are sometimes excluded. Take for example India or Pakistan- although these countries are in the lists of eligible countries, the publishers deliberately exclude participation to protect whatever business they may have in these countries. So although hundreds of institutions could benefit, they exclude access to protect the business they receive from a handful of institutions. 3. Access to content is delivered through a single username and password for each institution. This is problematic for librarians, as they are unable to ensure the security of the password (a well-meaning researcher may share the password with a colleague in another institution, violating the license agreement). Abuse of institutional accounts has severe consequences, and librarians are sent messages from Research4Life threatening to not only cut off the institution, but all institutions in their country if they

Research4life is a great program by committed government and non-government organizations dedicated to produce valuable researches that will improve the life of people. Librarians play an important role in assisting researchers find valid, current, relevant information in order to produce a reliable output or results that will help humankind's betterment of living.

GAPMIL is an international cooperation to ensure that all citizens have access to media and information competencies. This pioneering initiative was launched during the Global Forum for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy (MIL) which took place from 26 to 28 June 2013.The forum was held under the theme "Promoting Media and Information Literacy as a Means to Cultural Diversity".