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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.

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 love the idea that progress and science being based on communication. Often the idea that I have in my mind is a scientist working alone, and that is never truly how the great break-throughs come, but rather from building on the science that we have learned about previously. I still have a problem with the Author Pay part of Open Access publishing, and it seems like it is not actually "Open" if you have to pay to play. The Utopic Version is really the way that I think of "Open" publishing even with all the pit falls of finding the Utopia. I like the rebirth by giving the onus to the reader to review, and that is a model that works as seen by Wikipedia, because people are willing to aid progress with out conventional compensation. I understand all of the problems with this, but I love the possibility.

Who has heard of this festival about Open Knowledge? Who has been there?

An online course by David Wiley covering a wide range of topics within open education and open knowledge in the wider sense.

Opened in a broader sense knowledge and a broad range of topics is something wonderful for those wanting to learn more and more from anywhere in the world!

Una manera diferente de ver la Educación, muy interesante.

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.

An article published today in PLoS Biology listing recommendations for publishers in making research data more accessible. The recommendations have been assembled with help of the public online and in meetings!

"Data connectivity is intrinsic to most of our daily lives. The place which exists in almost every community large or small, rural or urban, is the public library. Ben Lee argues that not only do libraries provide free access to data, but they do so in an environment which is trustworthy and neutral, geared to learning. Access to digital technology increasingly overlaps with access to opportunity and it is important to recognise the role public libraries already play (and have always played) in keeping the gate to knowledge open. "

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.

"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

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/).

Shule.Info is a project that puts data about Tanzanian schools online, providing information for the overall country, regions, and individual schools. The website is also in both English and Swahili, the language of the majority of Tanzanians. This is a great attempt at making this open data accessible and understandable to the people to who need it. "We all know that education in Tanzania is in a state of crisis. Massive failure rates. Not enough teachers. Not enough books. Poor teaching. And many more problems. So what do you do if you are a parent, brother or sister and want to find a good school? What if you are a council or national government leader and want to track progress? Right now it is very difficult to do so, because data is not easily available. And when you can access data, it is very difficult to understand and use. Open data is in fact relevant to all of us in making beter decisions. It is not just a concept for technical experts. If we knew which medicines were available in our nearest health centres we would save ourselves wasted trips. If we had live traffic updates we could better plan our travel. And if we had data on school performance we would have the chance to make better decisions about our children's education and potentially shape the course of their future differently."

This ground-breaking text offers a fresh perspective on the governance of science from the standpoint of social and political theory. Science has often been seen as the only institution that embodies the elusive democratic ideal of the 'open society'.

This article describes how the Notification Service of SHARE (SHared Access Research Ecosystem) has come about. It clearly specifies the associations and organisations which have collaborated to alert scientists and others to the status of the latest scientific research being conducted to drive their mutual goals of the advancement of science and access to this research for all.

Open data at work! Sanjay Pradhan was thrilled when, at age six, a cart full of sweets was wheeled to his family's doorstep in Bihar, India. The gift, however, was intended as a bribe for his father, who was responsible for building roads in India's poorest state.

Putting different sets of data "on top of each other" to gain insights or knowledge -- this can only happen when more data sets are open for all to use. 2010, "We have only just started!"