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Combining Data Skills, Knowledge, and Networks to Save our Planet

Originally published on: https://frictionlessdata.io/blog/2022/03/09/save-our-planet/ During these past tumultuous years, it has been striking to witness the role that information has played in furthering suffering: misinformation, lack of data transparency, and closed technology have worsened the pandemic, increased political strife, and hurt climate policy. Building on these observations, the team at Open Knowledge Foundation are refocusing […]

The Open Human Genome, twenty years on

On 26th June 2000, the “working draft” of the human genome sequence was announced to great fanfare. Its availability has gone on to revolutionise biomedical research. But this iconic event, twenty years ago today, is also a reference point for the value and power of openness and its evolution. Biology’s first mega project Back in […]

Frictionless DarwinCore Tool by André Heughebaert

This blog is part of a series showcasing projects developed during the 2019 Frictionless Data Tool Fund.  The 2019 Frictionless Data Tool Fund provided four mini-grants of $5,000 to support individuals or organisations in developing an open tool for reproducible research built using the Frictionless Data specifications and software. This fund is part of the […]

csv,conf returns for version 5 in May

Save the date for csv,conf,v5! The fifth version of csv,conf will be held at the University of California, Washington Center in Washington DC, USA, on May 13 and 14, 2020.    If you are passionate about data and its application to society, this is the conference for you. Submissions for session proposals for 25-minute talk […]

Introducing our new Product Manager for Frictionless Data

Earlier this year OKI announced new funding from  The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to explore “Frictionless Data for Reproducible Research”. Over the next three years we will be working closely with researchers to support the way they are using data with the Frictionless Data software and tools. The project is delighted to announce that Lilly […]

Evidence Appraisal Data-Thon: A recap of our Open Data Day event

This blog has been reposted from Medium This blog is part of the event report series on International Open Data Day 2018. On Saturday 3 March, groups from around the world organised over 400 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data. 45 events received additional support through the Open Knowledge International […]

Sharing matters to the successful 21st century researcher

Recently, there have been a great deal of debates revolving around research progress and impact across certain areas of science. As a moderate percentage of experimental findings haven’t been successfully replicated, scientists worry that the fruits of their research aren’t valid and reliable enough to change and benefit society at large, beyond academia. This and […]

OpenTrialsFDA presents prototype as finalist for the Open Science Prize

For immediate release Open Knowledge International is thrilled to announce that the OpenTrialsFDA team is presenting its prototype today at the BD2K Open Data Science Symposium in Washington, DC as finalist for the Open Science Prize. The Open Science Prize is a global science competition to make both the outputs from science and the research […]

International Data Week: From Big Data to Open Data

Report from International Data Week: Research needs to be reproducible, data needs to be reusable and Data Packages are here to help. International Data Week has come and gone. The theme this year was ‘From Big Data to Open Data: Mobilising the Data Revolution’. Weeks later, I am still digesting all the conversations and presentations […]

Update on OpenTrialsFDA: finalist for the Open Science Prize

In May, the OpenTrialsFDA team (a collaboration between Erick Turner, Dr. Ben Goldacre and the  OpenTrials team at Open Knowledge) was selected as a finalist for the Open Science Prize. This global science competition is focused on making both the outputs from science and the research process broadly accessible to the public. Six finalists will present their final prototypes at an Open […]

Uncovering the true cost of access

This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. Despite the huge amounts of public money spent on allowing researchers to access the published results of taxpayer funded research [1], there is little fiscal transparency in the scholarly publishing market and frequent […]

Newsflash! OKFestival Programme Launches

At last, it’s here! Check out the details of the OKFestival 2014 programme – including session descriptions, times and facilitator bios here! We’re using a tool called Sched to display the programme this year and it has several great features. Firstly, it gives individual session organisers the ability to update the details on the session […]

Knowledge Creation to Diffusion: The Conflict in India

This is a guest post by Ranjit Goswami, Dean (Academics) and (Officiating) Director of Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Nagpur, India. Ranjit also volunteers as one of the Indian Country Editors for the Open Data Census. Developing nations, more so India, increasingly face a challenge in prioritizing its goals. One thing that increasingly becomes relevant […]

Building an archaeological project repository I: Open Science means Open Data

This is a guest post by Anthony Beck, Honorary fellow, and Dave Harrison, Research fellow, at the University of Leeds School of Computing. In 2010 we authored a series of blog posts for the Open Knowledge Foundation subtitled ‘How open approaches can empower archaeologists’. These discussed the DART project, which is on the cusp of […]

Open Knowledge Foundation at Mozilla Festival – meet us!

At the Open Knowledge Foundation we love festivals – and attending is just half of the fun, we really like making things happen. So as soon as our friends over at Mozilla started building up their fabulous Mozilla Festival we decided to roll up our sleeves and join the party! Mozilla Festival will take place […]

Crowdcrafting: Putting Citizens in Control of Citizen Science

Press Release: Geneva, 17 September 2013 Speaking at the Open Knowledge Conference, the world’s leading event on open data, Co-director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, Rufus Pollock, announced today that the open-source platform Crowdcrafting has grown to accommodate over 120 projects, making it the world’s most diverse open-source platform for online citizen science and crowdsourced […]

New Panton Fellows Announced!

We’ve just finished the second round of appointments for the Panton Fellowships, and this year we have three Fellows joining us: Rosie Graves (UK), Peter Kraker (Austria), and Sam Moore (UK). Peter will be joining us at OKCon this year, so please come and find him and introduce yourself! Left to right: Sam Moore, Peter […]

Publishing research without data is simply advertising, not science

The following post is by Graham Steel. It is an adaptation of a five minute lightning talk given at Glasgow’s 1st Open Knowledge Foundation meet-up. Commencing in 2001, I became involved in the Charitable Sector as Vice-Chair of a support group for families affected by a rare and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease. This led to […]

OKCon 2013 Guest Post: Is Open Source Drug Discovery Practical?

The following guest post is by Matthew Todd, Senior Lecturer at the School of Chemistry, The University of Sydney and Sydney Ambassador of the Open Knowledge Foundation. As part of OKCon 2013 Matthew will host a satellite event entitled ‘Is Open Source Drug Discovery Practical?’, taking place on on Thursday 19 September from 09:00 – 12:00 […]

Network Summit

Twice-yearly the whole community of the Open Knowledge Foundation gathers together to share with, learn from and support one another. The Summer Summit 2013 took place in Cambridge (UK) last week (10th-14th July), with staff updates on the Thursday and network representatives joining on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It was so inspiring to hear […]

Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science

Here’s a few great videos from a recent conference attended by members of our Open Science Working Group, about Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science. A team of researchers at the University of Oxford and University of Koblenz recently joined forces to organise an event on ‘Rigour and Openness in 21st Century Science‘ examining […]

G8 Science Ministers Support Open Data in Science

As you may have seen, open data and transparency is set to be a major topic of discussion at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland next week. We were pleased to see a joint statement from the G8 science ministers released yesterday – expressing a strong commitment to open data in science. The third section […]

Panton Fellowships: Apply Now!

The Open Knowledge Foundation is delighted to announce the launch of the new Panton Fellowships! Funded this year by The Computer & Communications Industry Association, Panton Fellowships will be awarded to scientists who actively promote open data in science, as per the Panton Principles for Open Data in Science. Visit the Panton Fellowships home page […]

Open Knowledge may yet come to medicine – let’s help make it happen

Today is International Clinical Trials Day. To mark the event, here’s a post from Iain Hrynaszkiewicz reviewing the current state of open knowledge in medicine. You can see an earlier version on F1000’s blog. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the organisation which approves drug license applications from the pharmaceutical industry in Europe, has made important […]

The White House Seeks Champions of Open Science

Here at the Open Knowledge Foundation, we know Open Science is tough, but ultimately rewarding. It requires courage & leadership to take the open path in science. Nearly a week ago on the open-science mailing list we started putting together a list of established scientists who have in some way or another made significant contributions […]

Science Europe denounces ‘hybrid’ Open Access

Recently Science Europe published a clear and concise position statement titled: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications This is an extremely timely & important document that clarifies what governments and research funders should expect during the transition to open access. Unlike the recent US OSTP public access policy which allows publishers […]

Opening up the wisdom of crowds for science

We are excited to announce the official launch of Crowdcrafting.org, an open source software platform – powered by our Pybossa technology – for developing and sharing projects that rely on the help of thousands of online volunteers. At a workshop on Citizen Cyberscience held this week at University of Geneva, a novel open source software […]

Panton Fellowship wrap up: Ross Mounce

  The Panton Fellowships have come to an end. The work that our two Panton Fellows, Ross Mounce and Sophie Kershaw have done over the past year to promote openness in the sciences has far surpassed what any of us expected. Here Ross details his wide-ranging experiences and achievements over the past year, and you […]

Data Explorer Mission on Carbon Data

Sign up now for next week’s Data Explorer Mission on Carbon Emissions Data, a pilot initiative of our School of Data and P2PU, to help people explore a topic, while at the same time building their data skills through experimentation and doing. Image CC-By-SA J Brew on Flickr At the School of Data, we teach […]

Open Research Data Handbook – Call for case Studies

The OKF Open Research Data Handbook – a collaborative and volunteer-led guide to Open Research Data practices – is beginning to take shape and we need you! We’re looking for case studies showing benefits from open research data: either researchers who have personal stories to share or people with relevant expertise willing to write short […]

Will Obama’s new $100m brain mapping project be open access?

On Tuesday President Obama unveiled a new $100 million research initiative to map the human brain. The BRAIN (Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) initiative will “accelerate the development and application of new technologies that will enable researchers to produce dynamic pictures of the brain that show how individual brain cells and complex neural circuits […]

Landmark ruling will enable more lifesaving generic drugs in developing countries

Earlier this week the Guardian and the BBC reported on a landmark ruling in India which will hopefully pave the way for greater access to lifesaving generic drugs in developing countries. The Indian supreme court has rejected a new patent on a “slightly altered” version of Glivec, a cancer treatment drug developed by the pharmaceutical […]

Content Mining in Europe: Further Licensing is Not The Only Way

A significant number of groups who support knowledge policies for the public good, including ourselves, have signed and published a letter of concern arising from one of the working groups of the Licences for Europe – A Stakeholder Dialogue meetings in Brussels. This particular working group was Working Group 4, which was set to discuss ways […]

Expanded Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research

On Friday 22nd February, 2013 the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a statement to say that the “Obama Administration is committed to the proposition that citizens deserve easy access to the results of scientific research their tax dollars have paid for”.  This was accompanied by a new policy memorandum and a long-awaited response by OSTP […]

Open Research Data Handbook Sprint

On February 15-16 we are updating the Open Research Data Handbook to include more detail on sharing research data from scientific work, and to remix the book for different disciplines and settings. We’re doing this through an open book sprint. The sprint will happen at the Open Data Institute, 65 Clifton Street, London EC2A 4JE. […]

We Need an Open Database of Clinical Trials

The award winning science writer and physician Ben Goldacre recently launched a major campaign to open up the results of clinical trials. The AllTrials initiative calls for all clinical trials to be reported and for the “full methods and the results” of each trial to be published. Currently negative results are poorly recorded and positive […]

Yet Another Open Access Inquiry

Hot on the heels of the recent House of Lords inquiry, there is also a separate Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Committee inquiry into the new Research Councils UK open access mandate focusing on economic aspects. There were only 70 or so written evidence submissions to the House of Lords inquiry and few were from active researchers. Other […]

Citizen Science Open Technical Workshop – tomorrow

It’s our pleasure to invite you to join the Citizen Science Open Technical Workshop to be held Wednesday 30th January 16:00 CET virtually using Google Hangout. You can attend the meeting and send all your comments in this Youtube channel or this twitter account. Over 2 hours, we’ll have expert talks and open discussions about […]

BioMed Central Open Data Awards

The deadline for nominations in the annual BioMed Central Open Data Awards is on January 31st. Get your votes in now! It’s been a big year for open science in general, and for BioMed Central in particular. We’ve been hard at work promoting the value of data-sharing, developing standards to make it more attractive to […]

Citizen Science Can Produce Reliable Data

The following piece is cross-posted from The Conversation. Citizen science occurs when data for scientific research is collected by members of the public in a voluntary capacity. Public participation in environmental projects, in particular, has been described as a global phenomenon. But there is a stigma associated with these types of projects. The data collected […]

Open Research Data Handbook Sprint – 15-16 February

On February 15-16, the Open Research Data Handbook Sprint will happen at the Open Data Institute, 65 Clifton Street, London EC2A 4JE. The Open Research Data Handbook aims to provide an introduction to the processes, tools and other areas that researchers need to consider to make their research data openly available. Join us for a […]

Prescribing Analytics: how drug data can save the NHS millions

Last week saw the launch of prescribinganalytics.com (covered in the Economist and elsewhere). At present it’s “just” a nice data visualisation of some interesting open data that show the NHS could potentially save millions from its drug budget. I say “just” because we’re in discussions with several NHS organizations about providing a richer, tailored, prescribing […]

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