Is Open Access Open?

This post is cross-posted from Peter’s blog I’m going to ask questions. They are questions I don’t know the answers to – maybe I am ignorant in which case please comment with information, or maybe the “Open Access Community” doesn’t know the answers. Warning: I shall probably be criticized by some of the mainstream “OA […]

The future of Open Access

At the start of this week, which is Open Access week, we heard from Martin Weller about some of his fears for the future of Open Access. We’ve been collecting a few opinions from around the OKFN on the future of OA. Here’s a selection. What do you think? ###Ross Mounce: The future of publicly-funded […]

The great Open Access swindle

This week is Open Access week, and we’ll be running a few pieces mulling over where Open Access has got to, and where it’s going. Here Martin Weller discusses some reservations… The Cunning Thief, by Chocarne-Moreau. PD Just to be clear from the outset, I am an advocate for open access, and long ago took […]

Sir Mark Walport on Open Access

Sir Mark Walport, the new chief scientific advisor to the UK government, spoke on Radio 4 last night on his passion for Open Access. Walport has come from being Director of the Wellcome Trust, the UK’s largest provider of non-governmental funding for scientific research. “The bottom line is very simple: we want the science we […]

Open data and access to information advocates unite!

Today is the tenth International Right to Know Day. Freedom of Information organisations and advocates around the world are marking the day with activities to celebrate and raise awareness of the right to information. FOIAnet has a good overview of things that are happening around the world. What does access to information have to do […]

OpenDataMx: Opening Up the Government, one Bit at a Time

On August 24-25, another edition of OpenDataMx took place: a 36-hour public data hackathon for the development of creative technological solutions to questions raised by the civil society. This time the event was hosted by the University of Communication in Mexico City. The popularity of the event has grown: a total of 63 participants including […]

The Right to Read Is the Right to Mine

The following is a draft content mining declaration developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Working Group on Open Access In brief: The Right to Read Is the Right to Mine ##Introduction Researchers can find and read papers online, rather than having to manually track down print copies.  Machines  (computers) can index the papers and extract […]

Petition the White House to Open Up Publicly Funded Research

John Wilbanks, co-author of the Panton Principles and past OKFN Advisory Board Member, just launched a petition to ask the White House to mandate free access to publicly funded research in the US. Here’s what it says: We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results […]

Open Book Publishers releases “The Digital Public Domain”

Open Book Publishers is the first UK academic publisher to have made all its books freely available online, publishing peer-reviewed research in subjects across the Humanities and Social Sciences. They are “committed to the idea that high quality scholarship should be available to readers everywhere regardless of their income or access to university libraries”. This […]

New EU consultation on open access to scientific information

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The European Commission has recently announced a consultation on access to scientific information. If you’re interested in open data in science (e.g. as per the Panton Principles for open data in science), then we’re sure the EC would love to hear […]

Guardian piece on open data in science

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The Guardian recently published an interesting article on open data in science, including interviews with OKF Co-Founder Rufus Pollock and other leading voices from the world of open science. Here’s Rufus: “The litmus test of openness is whether you can have […]

Sustaining open data business

Jo Walsh, who works as a project manager at EDINA and sits on the Open Knowledge Foundation board, writes: These thoughts on sustaining open data business were provoked by ORCID, a not-for-profit business set up by a group of large academic publishers and a few leading universities. Its aim is to provide a central directory […]

The Power of Open Data

The following guest post is from David Bollier, independent policy strategist, journalist, and author of Viral Spiral. It was originally posted at the On the Commons blog. Science has always recognized the power of sharing in developing new knowledge. But in the search for treatments and cures for diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, the sprawling […]

Open Context

The following guest blog is from Open Context’s Project Lead Eric Kansa and Editor Sarah Whitcher Kansa, who are both members of the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Working Group on Open Data in Archaeology. About Open Context Open Context is a free, open access resource for the electronic publication of primary field research from archaeology and […]

Climate Change, Climate Sceptics and Open Data

With the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen starting on Monday, it is of vital important that there is consensus on the scientific evidence about climate change, in order to inform debates about the best course of action for the international community. Sharing the same basic picture about the climate, global warming and the […]

Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: Call for Proposals

The Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010 Call for Proposals is now open! We would be grateful for help in circulating the call to relevant lists and communities! You can reuse or point to: This blog post Main CFP page Plain text announce (wrapped at 72 characters) Identi.ca post Twitter post Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010: […]

New mailing list for open knowledge in development

We’ve just launched a new mailing list for those interested in open knowledge in development: http://lists.okfn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/open-development As you may have seen we had a session on Open Knowledge for Development at OKCon 2009. There was also discussion of the value of sharing knowledge for development at the 5th Communia Workshop – particularly from Pierre Guillaume […]

Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009: Saturday 28th March

Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2009 will take place next Saturday 28th March – less than a week away! where: Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL, London when: 28th March 2009, 1030-1830 home: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/ register: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/ If you plan to attend, and haven’t registered yet – we encourage you to book your ticket now as space […]

Working Group on Open Data in Science

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new Working Group on Open Data in Science. In the first instance, the group will aim to: Act as a central point of reference and support for people who think they are interested in open data in science. Identify practices of early adopters, collecting data and […]

Open Everything Berlin + CC Salon Berlin

After the success of open everything Berlin last December (see documentation), the newthinking network and CC Salon Berlin teamed up to put on another event in Berlin last night: CC Salon Berlin and openeverything focus – Feb. 26 (CC Blog) openeverything focus + CC Salon (Michelle Thorne’s blogpost) I was invited to speak – and […]

Public Interest Information Policy in Germany

I was recently asked to write a piece for Berlin-based think tank Das Progressive Zentrum on public interest information policy in Germany: Wem gehört das Wissen? Informationspolitik in Deutschland (Shorter German version) Public Interest Information Policy in Germany (Longer English version) The piece finishes with three policy suggestions: Support legislation as well as licensing and […]

What Obama can do to promote openness

With the inauguration of US President-Elect Barack Obama later today – we thought we’d prepare a brief list of things he can do to promote openness in his new role. Open government data. Make core government data open (as in opendefinition.org) – so that it can be re-used in mashups, visually represented, used in semantic […]

After the Workshop on Open Scientific Resources

The Workshop on Finding and Re-using Open Scientific Resources (cf. last week’s announce) took place on Saturday at the London Knowledge Lab. The day started with a discussion of various aspects of openness in educational and research materials – alluding to open access, open data and the Open Knowledge Definition. This was followed by brainstorming […]

Workshop on Finding and Re-using Open Scientific Resources, Saturday 8th November

As we announced earlier this month, tomorrow is our Workshop on Finding and Re-using Open Scientific Resources. As a concrete outcome of the workshop, we hope to add more open scientific resources to CKAN, as we did last Saturday in the Workshop on Public Information and which we’ve blogged about in the past. So far, […]

Open Access Day 2008

As many of you will have gathered, 14th October 2008 was Open Access Day. Peter Suber (of Open Access News and on the OKF’s Advisory Board) and Gavin Baker have provided an 8 page roundup of some of the comments on OA from around the world (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8). You […]

Open Data in Iceland

Hjalmar Gislason recently wrote to us to tell us about an initiative to open up material from the Icelandic government and other public institutions. In The Case for Open Access to Public Sector Data he writes: In these public data collections lies tremendous value. The data that has been collected for taxpayers’ money for decades […]

Beyond Strong and Weak: Towards a Typology of Open Access

Over the past week or so there has been a flurry of posts about ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ open access, including the following: Strong and weak OA, Peter Suber What’s in a Name? Strong and Weak Open Access, Glyn Moody The Two Forms of OA Have Been Defined: They Now Need Value-Neutral Names, Stevan Harnad Lower […]

“Open-Access” Quantitative mRNA/Protein Dataset

The RIKEN Research Center for Allergy and Immunology in Japan have just released RefDic, “an open-access database of quantitative mRNA/Protein profiles specifically for immune cells”: http://refdic.rcai.riken.jp/ A prepublication epub has been posted on pubmeb giving more information entitled Construction of an open-access database that integrates cross-reference information from the transcriptome and proteome of immune cells […]

Discussion forum for PSI re-use request service

Nick Holmes of Binary Law wrote to tell us about the Office of Public Sector Information’s forum for a new PSI re-use request service. His blog post about the forum is here. As noted in the forum description, the service is being built in response to recommendation 8 in the Power of Information Review by […]

Articles in CTWatch Quarterly

As some of you many have seen, Open Knowledge Foundation advisory board members Peter Suber and John Wilbanks recently wrote two interesting articles in CTWatch Quarterly. Peter Suber’s Trends Favoring Open Access is a broad-ranging overview of developments in publishing, research, and technology that look to support Open Access. As well as looking at how […]

‘Voyages into publisher copyright’

Peter Murray-Rust of the Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge, has recently been looking into the licensing practices and access policies of publishers of science journals. He has particularly focused on the publishers of chemistry journals who say they endorse Open Access publishing, or what has come to be known as ‘Open Choice’ publishing, whereby […]

Open Knowledge 1.0 Nearly Here

Open Knowledge 1.0, which takes place on Saturday March the 17th at Limehouse Town Hall in London, is now just over a week away. While there are still some places left we are nearing capacity so, if you would like to come, we advise you to register as soon as possible via: http://www.okfn.org/okcon/register/ Open Knowledge […]