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Releasing the Automated Game Play Datasets
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 […]
Read moreDonate now to keep The Public Domain Review alive
Our beautiful showcase for public domain works, The Public Domain Review, has just launched its major fundraising drive. It needs your help to stay alive. Here’s a delightful film telling the tale of our cash-strapped editor’s struggle to keep afloat – share it far and wide! With the initial funding for The Public Domain Review […]
Read moreThe Open Data Census Challenge on Open Data Day 2013
On the recent Open Data Day we ran the Open Data Census Challenge. The challenge enlisted the help of participants around the world in digging up information on open data in their city and region and contributing it to the newly launched city section of the Open Data Census. The results have been impressive with […]
Read moreOpen Food Facts
One of the cool projects that OKF France were hacking away on during Open Data Day last weekend was Open Food Facts. It’s a free, open collaborative database of food facts from around the world, which aims to help consumers make better choices about what they put in their body, as well as motivating industry […]
Read moreOpen Humanities Awards: 10 Days Left to Apply!
A couple of weeks ago we announced the Open Humanities Awards a fantastic new initiative to support innovative projects that use open data, open content or open source to further teaching and research in the humanities. There are €15,000 of prizes on offer for 3-5 projects lasting up to 6 months. The winners will be […]
Read moreItalian government ditches transparency and open data
This post is a translation of Il nostro contributo per salvare gli #OpenData originally published by Ernesto Belisario on Agorà Digitale. Most links point to documents and websites in Italian. In the past few weeks I have been very involved with transparency (and therefore, open data) together with the friends of Agorà Digitale. Right when […]
Read moreKeeping track of the European Parliament
The following guest post is by Stef. ###European Union legislation: In whose interest? Brussels is a globally important policy-making center. The European single market is advanced and huge, with industry interests competing with national politics and NGO values. Policy negotiations at this level attract powerful interests. The current Data Protection Regulation, for example, brings in […]
Read moreWrapping up Open Data Day 2013
Open Data Day 2013 took place on the 23rd of February – and it was great! From curious citizens to journalists, tech-geeks to scientists, designers to data wranglers, hundreds of people got together to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments. Some met […]
Read moreContent 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 […]
Read moreAn open goal that can’t be missed: 2015 and open data
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 […]
Read moreOpen Data on the Web Workshop April 2013
The World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C) together with the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Open Data Institute, are pleased to invite you to join a jointly organized workshop to discuss how we can realize the promise of open data on the web. What?: Open Data on the Web Workshop (for more, see topics below) When?: 23-24 […]
Read moreEuropean Union launches CKAN data portal
On Friday, to coincide with Saturday’s International Open Data Day, the European Commission (EC) unveiled a new data portal, which will be used to publish data from the EC and other bodies of the European Union. This major project was announced last year, and it went live in December for testing before today’s announcement. The […]
Read moreExpanded 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 […]
Read moreOpen Data & My Data
The Open Knowledge Foundation believes in open knowledge: not just that some data is open and freely usable, but that it is useful – accessible, understandable, meaningful, and able to help someone solve a real problem. A lot of the data which could help me improve my life is data about me – “MyData” if […]
Read moreHow open data could transform the citizen-government relationship in Uganda
This blog is cross-posted from the AidInfo blog. This Saturday is Open Data Day, a global initiative that encourages citizens around the world to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s governments. It’s an exciting time for Uganda because on Saturday we have jointly organised a hackathon with […]
Read moreEuropean Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes praises work of Open Knowledge Foundation Greece
Great News! Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission, has sent her personal best wishes to the OKF team in Greece who launched their brand new open data portal last week! She said: “Open data is a very powerful lever for both a better economy and society. Open data is fuel for innovation, […]
Read morePreregistration in the Social Sciences: A Controversy and Available Resources
This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. For years now, the practice preregistering clinical trials has worked to reduce publication bias dramatically (Drummond Rennie offers more details). Trying to build on this trend for transparency, the Open Knowledge Foundation, which runs the Open Economics Working Group, has expressed support for All Trials […]
Read moreThe Open Data Census – Tracking the State of Open Data Around the World
Recent years have seen a huge expansion in open data activity around the world. This is very welcome, but at the same time it is now increasingly difficult to assess if, and where, progress is being made. To address this, we started the Open Data Census in order to track the state of open data […]
Read moreFrom Open Data to GovData: why the OGP matters in Germany
The following post is by Maria Schröder and Christian Heise from the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany. It is cross-posted (and slightly shortened) from the Open Government Partnership blog. Germany’s official policy on transparency and accountability is lacking commitment and leadership. Disappointed by the political elites, the community is continuously trying to make the case for […]
Read moreBoundless Learning demands a jury trial
We’ve been following the case of Boundless Learning on the OKF blg (see here and here), in which the world’s most prominent producer of Open Access textbooks online is being sued by the world’s biggest producers of physical, copyrighted textbooks. In the latest twist to the tale, Boundless have filed their answer, requesting a trial […]
Read moreOpen 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. […]
Read moreNew Open data hub from OKFN Greece
Opening up public sector data is becoming a top priority for governments throughout Europe and North America. We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Greek open data hub, developed and hosted by OKFN Greece. The data hub integrates the Open Knowledge Foundation’s open source data cataloging software CKAN, which is also the […]
Read moreProtecting the foundations of Open Knowledge
###The foundations of the Foundation The Open Knowledge Definition (OKD) was one of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s very first projects: drafted in 2005, 1.0 in 2006. By stipulating what Open means, the OKD has been foundational to the OKF’s work, as illustrated by this several-years-old diagram of the Open Knowledge “stack”. Knowing your foundations seems […]
Read more€15,000 of Prizes on Offer for Open Humanities Projects
We are excited to announce the first ever Open Humanities Awards. There are €15,000 worth of prizes on offer for 3-5 projects that use open content, open data or open source tools to further humanities teaching and research. Whether you’re interested in patterns of allusion in Aristotle, networks of correspondence in the Jewish Enlightenment or digitising […]
Read moreOpen Government Datavis Competition
The Guardian Data Blog and Google are teaming up to find the best open government datavis out there. There is a top prize of $2,000 on offer for the best visualisation of open government data. The Open Knowledge Foundation will be helping to judge the competition and we want to see imaginative, clear and beautiful […]
Read moreVersion Variation Visualisation
In 2010, I had a long paper about the history of German translations of Othello rejected by a prestigious journal. The reviewer wrote: “The Shakespeare Industry doesn’t need more information about world Shakespeare. We need navigational aids.” About the same time, David Berry turned me on to Digital Humanities. I got a team together (credits) […]
Read moreWe 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 […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, February 2013
Sign up here to receive the Open Knowledge Foundation newsletter into your inbox every couple of months. We’re fresh back from our biannual summit, which brought together members from Open Knowledge Foundation Local Groups and Working Groups around the world. It was truly inspiring to hear about the vision and dedication of people in so […]
Read moreYet 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 […]
Read moreUS government to release open data using OKF’s CKAN platform
You may have seen hints of it before, but the US government data portal, data.gov, has just announced officially that its next iteration – “data.gov 2.0” – will incorporate CKAN, the open-source data management system whose development is led and co-ordinated by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The OKF itself is one of the organisations helping […]
Read moreDutch PhD-workshop on research design, open access and open data
This blog post is written by Esther Hoorn, Copyright Librarian, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. It is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. If Roald Dahl were still alive, he would certainly be tempted to write a book about the Dutch social psychologist Diederik Stapel. For not only did he make up the research data […]
Read moreSovereign Credit Risk: An Open Database
This blog post is cross-posted from the Open Economics Blog. Sign up to the Open Economics mailing list for regular updates. Throughout the Eurozone, credit rating agencies have been under attack for their lack of transparency and for their pro-cyclical sovereign rating actions. In the humble belief that the crowd can outperform the credit rating […]
Read moreWinter Updates from Belgium
Belgium has been quiet for a while, but that doesn’t mean less busy. In fact, we’ve been so busy that from time to time we forgot to communicate! We hope to solve this with this winter update. ##Open Transport We love transport data. Our Open Transport Working Group, iRail, has just netted a front-end engineering […]
Read moreFirst #OpenDataEDB of 2013
The Edinburgh Open Data community started the year in fine style with a meet-up hosted by the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge. The turn-out was excellent, with a wide range of participants. As usual, we had a number of lightening talks. The meet-up started with a welcome from Darryl Mead, Deputy National […]
Read moreCitizen 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 […]
Read moreBioMed 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 […]
Read moreVice Italy interview with the editor of the Public Domain Review
The editor of The Public Domain Review, Adam Green, recently gave a feature-length interview to Vice magazine Italy. You can find the original in Italian here, and an English version below! While there is a wealth of copyright-free material available online, The Public Domain Review is carving out a niche as strongly curated website with […]
Read moreFirst Open Economics International Workshop Recap
The first Open Economics International Workshop gathered 40 academic economists, data publishers and funders of economics research, researchers and practitioners to a two-day event at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, UK. The aim of the workshop was to build an understanding around the value of open data and open tools for the Economics profession and the […]
Read moreOne Graduate Student’s Commitment to Open Knowledge
The following post was originally published on Alex Leavitt’s website. Fed Up I have been a PhD student for less than two years. On the other hand, for six years, I have been a member of the free culture movement, which emphasizes the importance of access to and openness of technology and information. Recently, […]
Read moreHelp Us to Cultivate the Digital Commons!
At the Open Knowledge Foundation we work to cultivate a global commons of digital material that everyone is free to use and enjoy. This digital commons includes everything from open data about carbon emissions or spending from governments around the world; to open access research in the sciences, the humanities, and many other disciplines; to […]
Read moreAndrew Stott joins OKFN Advisory Board
We’re very pleased to announce that Andrew Stott, the UK’s former Director for Transparency and Digital Engagement who pioneered data.gov.uk, has joined the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Advisory Board. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him already from our events or from our open-government mailing list, here’s a brief bio: Andrew Stott was the […]
Read moreBoundless Releases All Its Textbooks Under Open License
News just in that Boundless, the open source digital textbook provider, is releasing all of its 18 open source textbooks under a Creative Commons Attribution and Share-Alike license. We covered the progress of this brilliant initiative mid-way through last year. Boundless leverages open content on the web, whether that’s information on Wikipedia or digital copies […]
Read moreOpen Data Day 2013
Saturday 23rd February is Open Data Day 2013! Open Data Day is a gathering of citizens in cities around the world to write applications, liberate data, create visualizations and publish analyses using open public data to show support for and encourage the adoption of open data policies by the world’s local, regional and national governments. […]
Read moreCitizen 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 […]
Read moreExploring the 2012 Open Budget Survey
How transparent and accountable are different countries’ national budgets? Every two years, the International Budget Partnership (IBP) runs the Open Budget Survey to try to answer this question, by measuring the budgets of over 100 countries against a wide range of openness standards. The results for 2012 are released today, with an interactive data explorer […]
Read moreNew Open Access Initiative Started by Mathematicians
Last week Tim Gowers, Cambridge University mathematician and open access advocate who led the recent boycott of Elsevier, announced an exciting new open access initiative for mathematicians on his blog. The project, called the Episciences Project, will make it super quick and easy to set up open access journals called “epijournals”. Epijournals are electronic journals […]
Read moreePSI Open Data Days, Warsaw, February 21-23
The ePSI platform team have announced “three days of open data fun” in Warsaw next month. The big day is the 2013 ePSI platform conference on 22nd February, but you’re also all invited to a workshop on the 21st, and a hackday on the 23rd! ###At a glance What?: ePSI conference, workshop and hackday When?: […]
Read moreMy Environment App Competition
Natural England, in partnership with the Environment Agency, is launching a new web-portal service called My Environment. To celebrate its launch, My Environment is running an Apps competition. From the announcement: Could you create an app that will appeal to mobile device users and help them to engage with nature? The app that best helps […]
Read moreDigital Public Library of America recommends CC0
The following post is cross-posted from the OpenGLAM blog. On the OpenGLAM blog we have previously written about the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), an initiative that has the goal to make the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, to all. To achieve this goal the board of directors has […]
Read moreCommunia condemns the privatisation of the Public Domain by the BnF
Last week the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) concluded two new agreements with private companies to digitze over 70.000 old books, 200.000 sound recordings and other documents belonging (either partially or as a whole) to the public domain. While these public private partnerships enable the digitization of these works they also contain 10-year exclusive agreements […]
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.