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Open data initiatives may hold much promise and value, but more attention is needed on how these projects are developing as complex socio-technical systems. Rob Kitchin elaborates on four specific areas that have yet to be fully interrogated.

Of the 255 papers that underwent the entire editing process to acceptance or rejection, about 60% of the final decisions occurred with no sign of peer review. For rejections, that's good news: It means that the journal's quality control was high enough that the editor examined the paper and declined it rather than send it out for review.

This article is certainly controversial, and I believe in some way did a service to the Open Access community by highlighting the practice of predatory journals. However, the irony of Bohannon's article, being an example of the kind of "bad science" he describes in his own article is inescapable. First, there is no randomization of his "experimental group", and there is no control group; second, there was elimination of non-responders; third, there was no application of the intention to treat principle in the analysis; and finally there were no inferential statistics and no references! Using his own standard, there is nothing that can be concluded from his study. For the criticism regarding Bohannon's targeting of OA journals exclusively, it is important to note that this experiment has been done before with 'traditional' journals as well- and many of them failed the test of peer review. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/27/how_nonsense_papers_ended_up_in_respected_scientific_journals.html

I think Bohannens "study" should be considered more "investigative journalism" than scientific study. While it may have some flaws if held against the standards of a scientific study, as a journalistic piece it goes a long way to justify its central accusation that there are predatory open access journals. He does not claim that there are no or evwen less predatory journals in the tradional sector (although it seems reasonable to believe that it might seem easier to predatory publishers to dupe unsuspecting scientists rather than subscription paying librarians). It demonstrates that open access is not a cure for all the problems besetting acacemic publishing. I think more deeply about it, it shows that author fees for publication may create a buisiness model just as open to abouse as the traditional subscription system. One answer might be to make the peer-review process more transparent, i.e. name the reviewers But that of course has other drawbacks.

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.

How the internet change the way we research and the way we live. Is it making us smarter or dumber?

Very interesting topic as we are moving deeper and deeper into the internet of things. May answer to that question is its depend how you use it and how you balance it with real life like nature, human relations etc.

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 official home of the Python Programming Language

Open source is the future. Obvs, Microsoft et.al. paved the way, but moving forward, the route to privacy and access is via free software that can be adapted on the fly.

Microsoft también tiene un sitio sobre "open source" llamado Codeplex (https://www.codeplex.com/), aunque no siempre se debe fiar (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/lest-codeplex-perplex.es.html), hablan de open source, pero no de software libre.

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/).

Artículo escrito por Benjamí Villoslada en la que hace una crítica sobre la filosofía del Software Libre. Muchas veces nos confundimos y creemos que el Open Source y el Software Libre son lo mismo, aunque a primera vista no exista gran diferencia. Ambos buscan que el usuario/desarrollador salga beneficiado.

En este post se trata sobre las críticas que existen sobre el software libre.

Se trata de un Manual en el que se presentan los aspectos que hay que tener en cuenta para escribir y publicar artículos científicos con calidad suficiente para que sean aceptados en revistas de impacto elevado. Puede resultar de gran interés para jóvenes investigadores y para todos aquellos que deseen conocer más a fondo el mundo de la publicación científica Entre otros, se tratan los siguientes temas: - Tipos de publicaciones: ponencias, posters, informes y patentes. - Publicación en revistas científicas: identificación de las revistas, criterios de calidad de las revistas tanto internacionales (factor de impacto JCR, SJR, etc.) como nacionales (INREC's, DICE, CIRC…) - Preparación del manuscrito. Recomendaciones sobre la redacción del título, la forma del nombre del autor, la elaboración del resumen, palabras clave, referencias bibliográficas, partes del artículo, redacción del texto, uso de ilustraciones, tablas, gráficos, etc. - Ética de la publicación científica para autores, editores y evaluadores. Conflictos de intereses, detección de plagio. Organismos que velan por la ética en las publicaciones. - Como seleccionar la revista a la que enviar el artículo - Publicar en acceso abierto: El open access y la calidad, editoriales OA, repositorios temáticos e institucionales - Promoción del artículo y marketing profesional. Seguimiento del impacto.

Información del artículo El Portal de datos abiertos de la Unión Europea: análisis y evaluación

Christopher Kelty has written a book on the cultural importance of open source software and made it freely available under a CC license. It looks at free software from both a technical and social perspective, allowing for greater insights into its significance for today and for tomorrow.

This is a very interesting and thought provoking ebook. Not only does it provide a helpful historical view of how free software came to be, but it posits the impact of such a phenomenon on industry and culture. I particularity liked the view that the pervasiveness of free software - thanks to the Internet - is such that free software itself is instigating much change beyond its original perceived sphere of influence, being software applications. A good read if open source software, free software and impacts on culture interests you.

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.

While not exactly on topic, and newspapers are not generally considered Scholarly publishers, they do engage with the public, and frequently act as a liaison between journals/researchers and the public. In the past ten years or so, people have gotten used to accessing, for free, newspapers and television reports as a way to inform themselves. While this is good for the individual, it is not so good for the publisher. Many traditional news outlets have been struggling to find a way to generate revenue in a way that neither smacks of consumerism, nor excludes the average citizen from participating. IN the UK, the liberal-leaning newspaper The Guardian has begun selling 'memberships', and hosting events ranging from lectures to classes on things as diverse as photography and creative writing.

Eliza Laur CORAS and Adrian Tumitru TANTAU elaborate on the principles of open innovation. Students experienced in open learning might be better suited in a business world, where innovation has changed from being done in a closed shop, to being fostered by a free - albeit carefully managed - in- and outflow of information

"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

En datos.gob.mx puedes descargar y utilizar libremente datos abiertos que el Gobierno de la República genera y recolecta.