This blog has been rewritten from the original post on our Open Education Working Group blog and is co-authored by Javiera Atenas, Erdinç Saçan & Robert Schuwer. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras once said: “if you want to multiply joy, then you have to share.” This also applies to data. Who shares data, gets a […]
This blog has been reposted from the Open Education Working Group blog and has been written as a joint effort by Javiera Atenas and Paul Bacsich, co-coordinators of the Open Education Working Group. Hot off the press: OpenEdu Policies reports . These reports are the final outcome of one and a half intense years of research […]
This blog has been reposted from the Open Education Working Group page. Today we, the Open Education Working Group, publish a joint letter initiated by Communia Association for the Public Domain that urgently requests to improve the education exception in the proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive). The letter […]
The Open Education Working Group (https://education.okfn.org) is a very active community of educators, researchers, PhD students, policy makers and advocates that promote, support and collaborate with projects related with the advancement of Open Education in different fields at international level. This group aims at supporting the development of Open Educational projects at international level but […]
Getting together at a public event can be a fun way to contribute to the 2015 Global Open Data Index. It can also be a great way to engage and organize people locally around open data. Here are some guidelines and tips for hosting an event in support of the 2015 Index and getting the […]
As part of Open Education Week #openeducationwk activities we are publishing a post on how Open Knowledge Russia have been experimenting with data expeditions. This a follow up post to one that appeared on the Open Education Working Group Website which gave an overview of Open Education projects in Russia. The authors of this post […]
This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. To coincide with Open Access Week, Open Knowledge is launching a new initiative focusing on the future of open access in the humanities and social sciences. The Future of Scholarship project aims to […]
We’re hosting a September Community Call. Join us to discuss a number of community programming ideas and help make a plan. All welcome. (Amazing drawing by Artepilpilean) What: September Community Summit On Air Date: Wednesday, September 10th Your Local time: 8:00 – 9:00 EDT, 13:00 – 14:00 BST, 14:00 – 15:00 CEST (Also see worldtimebuddy.com) […]
Last month flew by! It’s already June and time to turn the spotlight on the Open Knowledge community’s events which rocked the month of May! Bikestorming goes Pecha Kucha in Argentina Bikestorming is a mobile app to grow urban cycling in cities around the world, developed by members of Open Knowledge Argentina’s community. Matías Kalwill […]
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 […]
Happy week! We are hosting two Community Sessions this week. You have expressed an interest in learning more about CKAN. As well, We are continuing our regular Community Feedback sessions. Take a CKAN Tour: This week we will give an overview and tour of CKAN – the leading open source open data platform used by […]
This is a guest post by Anthony Beck, Honorary fellow, and Dave Harrison, Research fellow, at the University of Leeds School of Computing Data repository as research tool In a previous post, we examined why Open Science is necessary to take advantage of the huge corpus of data generated by modern science. In our project […]
Crazy about happy? Call it spring fever, but I am slightly addicted to the beautiful creativity of people around the world and their Happy videos (map). We are just one small corner of the Internet and want to connect you to Open Knowledge. To do this, we, your community managers, need to bring in the […]
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 […]
What does open data / open knowledge have to do with Crisismapping? Everything. In times of crisis, we live in open data / open government ecosystem. We seek, build and make it happen in real time – talk converts to action quickly. On Tuesday, November 19th, the School of Data hosted a full day pre-conference […]
The Open Knowledge Foundation is proud to support over 20 active and incubating working groups, domain specific groups promoting, advocating for and building openness in their respective fields. Here is what some of our working groups have been up to over the past few months! Open Science: The Open Science Working Group has welcomed three […]
The following guest post is by Linda Raftree. Linda works with Plan International USA, serves as a special advisor on ICTs and M&E for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Evaluation Office and is a member of the Open Knowledge Foundation Open Development Working Group. A core theme that the Open Development track covered at September’s Open Knowledge […]
The Open Education Working Group and LinkedUp Project will be hosting the second Open Education Handbook booksprint in collaboration with Wikimedia Deutschland on Friday 22nd November 2013. The booksprint will be held at the at the Wikimedia Deutschland office, Berlin and we’d really like you to participate! During the booksprint participants will be involved in […]
The following guest post is by Duncan Edwards from the Institute of Development Studies. I’ve had a lingering feeling of unease that things were not quite right in the world of open development and ICT4D (Information and communication technology for development), so at September’s Open Knowledge Conference in Geneva I took advantage of the presence […]
Legal questions are at the heart of what openness is about, and there has always been interest at the Open Knowledge Foundation in open legislation – both in theory and in practice. Remarkable projects have been started around the world in open lobbying and open law data. This has proven ample inspiration to put open […]
The biggest open product database in world joins Open Knowledge Foundation and you can get involved! We vote with our wallet everyday, but are rarely aware of everything we endorse through our purchases. Product supply chains are complex, our ethical preferences are diverse and in practice we, as consumers, do not have the time or […]
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 […]
Last week we published updates from the Public Domain, Open Sustainability and Open Education Working Groups. Look out for more stories next month, to keep up-to-date with the buzzing brilliance of the Network. Open Design and Hardware Working Group The Open Design and Hardware working group celebrated its one year anniversary and is busy working […]
There is just one week left to chose a winner in the ‘People’s Choice’ strand of the LinkedUp Veni Competition. The Veni Competition is the first in the LinkedUp Challenge, a series of three consecutive competitions looking for interesting and innovative tools and applications that analyse and/or integrate open web data for educational purposes. Twenty-two […]
Working Groups Stories, a blog series we started back in May, is our way of showcasing the incredible work being done in all different domains across the Open Knowledge Foundation Network. Working groups are domain-specific groups, promoting, defining and producing open knowledge in everything from Archaeology to Shakespeare. Public Domain Working Group The Public Domain […]
Yesterday seventeen open education experts came together to begin writing the Open Education Handbook. The handbook is part of the LinkedUp project, and the project team have chosen to also make it one of the first activities of the soon-to-be-launched Open Education Working Group. The handbook takes the form of an open, living document and […]
Open data can be freely used by anyone – which means that data users can help to fix, enrich or flag problems with the data, leading to improvements in its quality. The Open Knowledge Foundation is currently looking to collect the best examples and stories we can find about how open data can lead to […]
“yes, the government should open other people’s data” Traditionally, the Open Knowledge Foundation has worked to open non-personal data – things like publicly-funded research papers, government spending data, and so on. Where individual data was a part of some shared dataset, such as a census, great amounts of thought and effort had gone in to […]
The Open Economics Working Group would like to introduce the Open Economics Principles, a Statement on Openness of Economic Data and Code. A year and a half ago the Open Economics project began with a mission of becoming central point of reference and support for those interested in open economic data. In the process of […]
This post is by Chris Taggart, the co-founder and CEO of OpenCorporates, the largest open database of companies in the world, and a member of the Open Government working group. [Disclosure: I am on the UK Tax Transparency Board, which has not yet discussed these proposals, but will be doing so at the next meeting […]
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 […]
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 […]
This week eight of the world’s most powerful nations made unprecedented multilateral commitments to open up their data: the Open Data Charter says that that public information should be published in accordance with open data principles by default; the Lough Erne Declaration emphasises the importance of increased transparency in cracking down on tax evasion, corruption […]
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 […]
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 […]
In February, 23 partners kicked off the LAPSI 2.0 thematic network on the legal aspects of public sector information in Leuven, Belgium. The network, consisting of academic institutions and stakeholders from 15 countries, will continue where the previous LAPSI network left off, and look at the remaining legal barriers hindering the full and open availability […]
Next week, on June 11-12, at the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Open Economics Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation will gather about 40 economics professors, social scientists, research data professionals, funders, publishers and journal editors for the second Open Economics International Workshop. The event will follow up on the first workshop held […]
Inspired by the great Global Communities Stories, we want to give you an update about what has happened over the last months in our different Working Groups. Working Groups are a great place for people that are interested in open data related to a specific topic such as science, economics, linguistics or government data. We […]
Last week the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, a level which is said to be unprecedented in human history. Leading scientists and policy makers say that we should be aiming for no more than 350 parts per million to avoid catastrophic runaway climate change. But what’s in […]
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 […]
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 […]
This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. Another economics scandal made the news last week. Harvard Kennedy School professor Carmen Reinhart and Harvard University professor Kenneth Rogoff argued in their 2010 NBER paper that economic growth slows down when the debt/GDP ratio exceeds the threshold of 90 percent of GDP. These […]
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 […]
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 […]
What kinds of energy are we producing, and what kinds are we consuming? How much comes from renewable sources? What is our energy dependency on other countries? Energy policy is today at the heart of every country’s agenda, but can citizen discuss it fairly? Do even policymakers have enough reliable information to implement new energy […]
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, gave a talk earlier this week renewing the EU’s strong, principled support for open science. Speaking at the launch of a new global Research Data Alliance, she said that we are entering a new “era of open science”, which will be “good for […]
Buildings account for more than 30% of final energy use and energy-related carbon emissions in the world today. This sector has the potential to play a crucial role in mitigating the global challenge of climate change. However, the building industry is a local industry and the sector is fragmented at all levels, from planning to […]
We’re really pleased by this week’s announcement from the Society of Cultural Anthropology that their influential journal, Cultural Anthropology will become open access by next year. The plan is that from the first issue of 2014, the journal will be available online globally under an open access license, along with 10 years’ worth of the […]
This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. We are very happy to announce that the Open Economics Working Group is releasing the datasets of the research project “Small Artificial Human Agents for Virtual Economies“, implemented by Professor David Levine and Professor Yixin Chen at the Washington University of St. Louis and […]
STOP PRESS: UN holds consultation. Okay, so this may not be the most groundbreaking of introductions. It’s up there with such bombshells as “man catches bus” and “comedian tells joke” with but stick with me … it’s important. Today marks the first day of the UN’s post-2015 consultation on governance, jointly hosted by South Africa […]
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