Group items tagged

"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

"So what did I learn from this novel experience? For me, it was the combined power of social media and open access publishing. Social media acted as a sign post to the research for a wide range of people, largely outside academia. Open access then meant that everyone could read it."

Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.

Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.

I began at Code Academy last year, and completed various courses. The problem I had was knowing about the architecture and systems behind the code, so, now I am learning to use Command Line and working through FLOSS manuals. I like Code academy, and I may go back there, but not before I have understood Command Line and more specifically what works with Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora etc The thing is, free software development, open source and education for all, begins with Linux OS and whatever branches from that is free to share, iterate and scalable. The trademark socialist, philosophically opposed to the capitalist.

A great news, especially for the "immediately" aspect! "A consortium of six leading UK medical research charities will support the costs of making research articles from their funded research immediately and freely openly available to scientists, patients, and donors alike, through the recently announced joint Charity Open Access Fund."

The "manifesto" for the open access movement, written by Aaron Swartz from 2008. Only 6 years old, but already, it carries a historical value. "Will you join us?" Creative Commons license: Attribution 3.0 United States

Great resource and very relevant to this weeks' module! Thank you for sharing. The idea of "Guerilla Open Access" is something I had really hoped to cover more in depth in the lecture materials. Yes, there's a tension -- or a "balance", as many of the lecturers said -- between protecting creators vs. protecting consumers, but there has not been nearly enough discussion on the power dynamics and implicit within our current system. I am taking this class partly in person through UBC, and I will be sharing this resource with my seminar group this week.

An interesting article arguing for the creation of open licenses for data. They make the point that the use of creative commons licenses is mistaken as these are designed for creative work not data or data bases. Unfortunately the argument - which is repeated several times - is not very thoroughly presented. The Talis Community License is mentioned as a possible alternative. The paper dates from 2008 and is thus - apart from the forceful argument for open licenses as the more viable alternative to the public domain - primarily of historical interest. Much progress has been made in the field with Open Data Commons Licenses now being an accepted standard as well as well as country specific licenses such as Open Government License UK, Open Government License Canada or Data License Germany (cf. http://opendefinition.org/licenses/).

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.

The story of Aaron Swartz, incredible programmer and activist for internet rights, open access and open knowledge. Good documentary to learn a little more about the open access movement, see some important figures (Tim Berners-Lee, Lawrence Lessig, etc.) and the fight against the SOPA bill. A big part of the movie is about his personal life and legal battle over copyright infringement. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

This was a great video! I enjoyed it very much and it was very touching. thank you for posting. @smoens - awesome blog too. thank you for the link.

For the Copyright section I recommend to watch this documentary: The Internet's Own Boy depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him.

"Progress has been made toward making academic research, knowledge, and resources accessible to the broader public. This is a great cause. It is certainly a matter of justice and equality. Ironically, a number of scholars - particularly those from marginalized communities themselves (women, people of color, LGBT people) - cannot or are hesitant to participate in the move toward open access. However, many scholars, particularly marginalized scholars, participate in a different form of open scholarship: intellectual activism. "

Open e-learning course about open access, new science comunication models  for everybody

This article discusses the start of open access publications and the arguments against open access journals.

Excellent and concise article, thank you for posting. I think this type of anonymous testing of open journals must continue to be applied to ensure standards are raised, and then consistently maintained. It also serves to call out frequent offending publications that may repeatedly demonstrate a lack of stringent review.

An investigation of the role of libraries in open access funding and support within institutions

"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."

Founding editor and previous co-editor of the open access journal Feminist Media Studies provides an in-depth account into her experiences engaging with feminist, open access processes. Lisa McLuaghlin spends a great deal of time discussing the implications of hierarchies in (academic) publishing and the political implications of editorial boards. Also engaged throughout the article is a conversation about diversity within academic publishing. She emphasizes how Feminist Media Studies does not have a very diverse authorship despite the journal's intention and specific policies and editorial policies that are intended to encourage non-English speakers to publish in the English journal. This reflection on feminism and open access demonstrates what these fields have accomplished, while also indicating how far we still have to go. Overall, the article provided many insights from someone on-the-ground in regards to feminist, open access initiatives.

Open access publishing in Feminist/Gender studies should reflect objectivism and diversity; therefore a diverse editorial board should be elected to recruit and select journal content that suits the target profile. It seems as if the editorial management of this journal is run more along business ethics than the principles of the journal.

I would say that ethics should nearly always come ahead of journal principles.

Lists cover a range of topics related to: institutions that support open access, university actions for open access or against high journal prices, what you can do to help the cause of open access, etc.

Breaking new ground for the open-access movement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health research, plans to require that the researchers it funds publish only in immediate open-access journals. The policy doesn't kick in until January 2017; until then, grantees can publish in subscription-based journals as long as their paper is freely available within 12 months.

This serves as a significant catalyst to change the mentality of both the researcher and the funder. The Gates Foundation is a leading organization in resolving world health issues. This action demonstrates their drive and desire toward their cause; and will hopefully it will start a trend amongst authors and other research funding NGOS.

As mentioned in class discussions, this is the only reasonable response. Bill and Melinda have put their time forth into creating charities, and attempting to control content which was given from charitable grants is lunacy. It is comforting to see the Gates foundation scrapping the 6-12 month window of restriction. WIth this said that said, this draws interesting parallels with journals that receive government grants due to the fact that the privately sold resource is already being funded by the tax payers.

Codecademy is the easiest way to learn how to code. It's interactive, fun, and you can do it with your friends.