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US Doctor Data to be “Open Eventually”
Here’s an interesting project using slightly unorthodox means to get data out into the open: crowdfunding the purchase of US healthcare data for subsequent open release. The company behind the project is NotOnly Dev, a Health IT software incubator who describe themselves as a “not-only-for-profit” company. Earlier this year they released a Doctor Social Graph, […]
Read moreWe are hiring!
We’ve just announced 7 job vacancies at the Foundation. If you’re passionate about open knowledge and want to help us build the tools and communities that will make a difference, then apply! We’re hiring for a number of different roles, some technical and some more community focused. More information on each of them can be […]
Read moreOpen Data Portal for Latin America
Sharing governmental information in open, accessible and structured formats could substantially increase transparency and accountability in public policy design and implementation. Furthermore, it enables broad social engagement in the process. Hence, opening data and acknowledging the demands of the population that arise from this is key to promoting social equality and effective public administration. Based […]
Read moreThe Digital Public Library of America moving forward
A fuller version of this post is available on the Open GLAM blog The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an ambitious project to build a national digital library platform for the United States that will make the cultural and scientific record available, free to all Americans. Hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet […]
Read moreOpen Transport Data Manifesto
Loving this infographic, which explains and launches the Open Transport Data Manifesto: The Manifesto is the product of an ePSI workshop which took place in Helsinki in September in the run-up to OKFest, ‘Transport Data – fueling mobility of the future and smart cities’. 33 participants from 15 countries came together, to discuss the current […]
Read moreData Bootcamps: Hands on data literacy workshops for the world
As governments around the world start implementing open data initiatives, establishing a critical public able to analyse and contextualise the data released is paramount. To facilitate this the African Media Initiative and the World Bank Institute started to collaborate on a program to bring Data Bootcamps to places with Open Government Data initiatives. Data itself […]
Read moreHurricane Sandy and open data
It is not an immediately obvious partnership, and yet open data and crisis response go together incredibly well. As storms have lashed the East coast of the US in recent days, causing tragic loss of life and enormous financial damage, many of the tools which have helped citizens to track its path and stay safe […]
Read moreReputation Factor in Economic Publishing
“The big problem in economics is that it really matters in which journals you publish, so the reputation factor is a big hindrance in getting open access journals up and going”. Can the accepted norms of scholarly publishing be successfully challenged? This quotation is a line from the correspondence about writing this blogpost for the […]
Read moreTowards a public digital infrastructure: why do governments have a responsibility to go open?
The most common argument in favor of open data is that it enhances transparency, and while the link may not always be causal, it is certainly true that both tend to go hand-in-hand. But there is another, more expansive perspective on open government data: that it is part of an effort to build public infrastructure. […]
Read moreReview of Open Access in Economics
This blog is cross-posted from the OKFN’s Open Economics blog Ever since BioMed Central (BMC) published its first free online article on July 19th 2000, the Open Access movement has made significant progress, so much so that many different stakeholders now see 100% Open Access to research as inevitable in the near future. Some are […]
Read moreOKFestival 2012 One Month Later: Successes and Happy Tidings
For the past month since the last OKFestival 2012 pioneers departed from Helsinki’s misty shores, I’ve been wondering how to breach the topic of a “thank you” message to the remarkable community that made this highly experimental event, run on a shoestring budget with a crowdsourced programme, such a spectacular success for Finnish and international […]
Read moreHackathons: the How To Guide
Hackathons are a wonderful way to introduce people of all walks to the amazing possibilities of open data. Here in British Columbia we are fortunate to have a very active open data community which has organized and run 17 open data hackathons in the past two years. This year a few of us decided that […]
Read moreIs 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 […]
Read moreThe Data Bootcamp in Tanzania
This is a post from Michael Bauer a technologist, digital activist, and open data specialist with the Open Knowledge Foundation who is currently travelling around Tanzania and Ghana training people how to find, extract, and analyse public data. You can follow Michael’s travels in more detail on the School of Data Blog. I am on […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreThe Benefits of Open Data (part II) – Impact on Economic Research
This blog is cross-posted from the OKFN’s Open Economics blog A couple of weeks ago, I wrote the first part of the three part series on Open Data in Economics. Drawing upon examples from top research that focused on how providing information and data can help increase the quality of public service provision, the article […]
Read moreThe 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 […]
Read moreHack4Health: London 2-4 November
In the first November weekend – 2-4 November – the UK Open Data Institute in London will host Hack4Health, organised by Coadec, Healthbox Accelerator, the Cabinet Office, NHS Hackday and the Open Knowledge Foundation. The event brings together entrepreneurs, developers and technical startups working on health and fitness data to create innovative solutions and products. […]
Read moreData Party: Tracking Europe’s Failed Banks
This blog is cross-posted from the OKFN’s Open Economics blog. This fall marked the five year anniversary of the collapse of UK-based Northern Rock in 2007. Since then an unknown number of European banks have collapsed under the weight over plummeting housing markets, financial mismanagement and other reasons. But how many European banks did actually […]
Read moreOpen Interests Europe Hackathon in London, 24-25 November
The European Journalism Centre and the Open Knowledge Foundation invite you to the Open Interests Europe Hackathon to track the lobbyists’ interests and money flows which shape European policy. When: 24-25 November Where: Google Campus Cafe, 4-5 Bonhill Street, EC2A 4BX London How EU money is spent is an issue that concerns everyone who pays […]
Read moreOpen Humanities Hack, 21st-22nd November
Where?: Guys Campus, Hodgkin Building, London, SE1 1UL When?: 21st-22md November Sign up: Please fill in the sign-up form Humanities Hack is the first Digital Humanities hack organised jointly by the Kings College London Department of Digital Humanities, DARIAH, the Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E) project and our Open Humanities Working Group. The London event […]
Read moreUS Congress data opened
Exciting news on open legislative data from the US. Eric Mills (from the Sunlight Foundation), Josh Tauberer (of GovTrack.us) and Derek Willis have been beavering away on a public domain scraper and dataset from THOMAS.gov, the official source for legislative information for the US Congress. They’ve just hit a key milestone – the incorporation of […]
Read moreDo bad things happen when works enter the Public Domain?
New research shows that the traditional arguments for copyright extension are as flawed as we always suspected. Copyright is generally defended in terms of the stimulus it gives to creative production: what motivation would anyone have to do anything ever if they don’t get decades of ownership afterwards? But then how do you justify the […]
Read moreThe Benefits of Open Data – Evidence from Economic Research
This blog is cross-posted from the OKFN’s Open Economics blog Looking back on the Open Knowledge Festival 2012 in September, there’s an impression that openness is everywhere: There are working groups on Open Science and Open Linguistics, topic streams on Gender and Diversity in Openness, and events like Open Prom and Open Sauna. Open Knowledge […]
Read moreMaking a Real Commons: Creative Commons should Drop the Non-Commercial and No-Derivatives Licenses
Students for Free Culture recently published two excellent pieces about why Creative Commons should drop their Non-Commercial and No-Derivatives license variants: Stop the inclusion of proprietary licenses in Creative Commons 4.0 The Future of Creative Commons: Examining defenses of the NC and ND clauses As the first post says: Over the past several years, Creative […]
Read moreCode4Europe fellowships launched
Code for Europe is a new organization looking to enliven a culture of innovation in city government. This week they have launched a hunt for talented developers and app makers, “to help make a breakthrough in how government services its citizens.” The projects will take place in six European cities: Helsinki, Amsterdam, Rome, Berlin, Manchester […]
Read moreWorld’s first REAL commercial open data curation project!
The following post is by Francis Irving, CEO of ScraperWiki. Can you think of an open data curation project where the people who work on it come from multiple commercial companies? In the mid 1990s, as open source code began to boom, the equivalent was commonplace. Geeks working at ISPs would together patch the Apache webserver into shape. Startups like […]
Read moreSir 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 […]
Read moreVideo: Julia Kloiber on Open Data
Here’s Julia Kloiber from OKFN-DE’s Stadt-Land-Code project, talking at the OKFest about the need for more citizen apps in Germany, the need for greater openness, and how to persuade companies to open up.
Read moreAmendments Liberated: new features for Parltrack
The following guest post is by Stef. The European Parliament is one of the most notoriously impenetrable institutions that governs our lives. Shining a light into the murky corridors of Brussels and Strasbourg becomes increasingly vital as the reach of the Parliament grows. Opening up the EU to greater citizen scrutiny will help to improve […]
Read moreForestWatchers.net A citizen project for forest monitoring
Tropical forests provide habitat for most of the world’s known terrestrial plant and animal species. These ecosystems are under increasing threat worldwide. During the last few decades, several million hectares of humid tropical forest were lost each year. Despite the proliferation of new remote sensing technologies, information about the status of world’s forest is limited […]
Read moreOKFN meetups in Boston and San Francisco, 3rd October 2012
The Open Knowledge Foundation will be hosting some of its first meetups in the US next week. On Wednesday 3rd October you can join others interested in open data, open content and the public domain in Boston and San Francisco. The Boston meetup is focusing on “global annotation, web caching, and shared data initiatives” and […]
Read moreOpen 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 […]
Read moreStadt Land Code : An incubator for civic tools in Germany
Today is the launch of OKFN-De’s new project ‘Stadt Land <Code>’ (‘City State <Code>’), an incubator to create digital tools for Citizens. This project is aimed at getting developers to create and implement applications to make the life of citizens in Germany easier and better. Together, the plan is to create useful applications for civic […]
Read moreVisualising Europe’s Languages
Jonathan Van Parys of Where’s My Villo? fame got in touch to tell us about a nice little mini-project he’s just launched to coincide with the European Day of Languages, which is today: Launching on the 2012 European Day of Languages, languageknowledge.eu is a new website that visualizes language knowledge in Europe based on the […]
Read more“Demand carbon dioxide data” says Hans Rosling to open data advocates at OKFestival
Gapminder is one of the best known examples of a project which uses open data to improve public understanding of big global issues and trends. Yesterday Gapminder Founder Hans Rosling, who is also on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Advisory Board, gave a spectacular keynote talk at OKFestival, for which he received a standing ovation. In […]
Read moreNew open source “publishing-house-in-a-box” makes it easier for scholars to publish open access monographs
Today the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) released a new piece of software called the Open Monograph Press. As it says in their press release: OMP is an open source software platform for managing the editorial workflow required to see monographs, edited volumes, and scholarly editions through internal and external review, editing, cataloguing, production, and publication. […]
Read more“Rest assured, the EU is behind you” says European Commissioner Neelie Kroes to OKFestival participants
If you have more than a passing interest in EU policies related to the internet, digital content and digital technologies then you’ve probably heard of Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. Today Neelie gave a virtual address for participants at OKFestival, one of the largest open knowledge […]
Read moreOKFN India Trip – the Roundup
This is the final post in the Open Data in India series. Our visit to India wasn’t just about meetups… the following post deals with the individuals and organisations that Lucy and Laura met whilst in India, the questions they were asked and the projects they were introduced to. It is cross-posted on the OKFN […]
Read moreThe Revenge of the Yellow Milkmaid: Cultural Heritage Institutions open up dataset of 20m+ items
The following is a guest blog post by Harry Verwayen, Business Development Director at Europeana, Europe’s largest cultural heritage data repository. Last week, on September 12 to be exact, we were proud to announce that Europeana released metadata for more than 20 million cultural heritage objects under a Creative Commons Zero Universal Public Domain […]
Read moreRecycle public sector data with the Big Clean on November 3rd 2012 in Prague
Public sector data lives a short life. Its life spans the life of applications that are hidden deep inside of public bodies. Tied to application-specific data formats, the data dies with the application that hosts it. During its lifetime the data stays within the public sector, serving a few predetermined purposes, while the ability to […]
Read moreCall for Participation: First Open Economics International Workshop
supported by The Open Economics Working Group is inviting PhD students and academics with relevant experience and research focus to participate in the first Open Economics Workshop, which would take place on December 17-18, 2012 in Cambridge, UK. The aim of the workshop is to build an understanding of the value of open data and […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July – August 2012
This newsletter comes to you on the eve of the world’s biggest ever open knowledge event, OKFest 2012. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point, as a movement and as an organisation. We really hope you’ll be making the physical journey with us to Helsinki next week, to create, innovate and celebrate […]
Read more#OpenDataEDB 3
Amidst the kerfuffle and cacophony of the Fringe Festival packing up for another year, the Edinburgh contingent came together again to meet, greet, present and argue all aspects of Open Data and Knowledge. OKFN Meet-ups are friendly and informal evenings for people to get together to share and debate all areas of openness. Depending on […]
Read moreUK Departmental Government Spending – Improving the Quality of Reporting
Continuing in their mission to make spending data more accessible and comprehensible, the Spending Stories team and the team of Data.Gov.Uk are releasing a reporting tool today that will help journalists and analysts to pick the freshest and best departmental spending data to work with when exploring the UK central government expenditure. Spending data is […]
Read moreOpen Data, Technology and Government 2.0 – What Should We, And Should We Not Expect
This is second of two pieces about “managing expectations” (the first is here). Open data has come a long way in the last few years and so have expectations. There’s a growing risk that open data will be seen as a panacea that will magically solve climate change or eliminate corruption or “fix” democracy. This […]
Read moreNew open access recommendations ten years on from Budapest Open Access Initiative
The notion of open access – or making research freely usable by all, without cost or legal barriers – has been in the news quite a bit this year. It received significant media coverage on the back on the so-called Academic Spring, and subsequent high profile activities and announcements in the UK, the US and […]
Read moreOpen Street Map has officially switched to ODbL – and celebrates with a picnic
Open Street Map is probably the best example of a successful, community driven open data project. The project was started by Steve Coast in 2004 in response to his frustration with the Ordnance Survey’s restrictive licensing conditions. Steve presented on some of his early ‘mapping parties’ – where a small handful of friends would walk […]
Read moreThe Open Knowledge Foundation Newsletter, July-August 2012
This newsletter comes to you on the eve of the world’s biggest ever open knowledge event, OKFest 2012. It has been an incredible journey getting to this point, as a movement and as an organisation. We really hope you’ll be making the physical journey with us to Helsinki next week, to create, innovate and […]
Read moreIgnite Cleanweb
Ignite Event in London This Thursday in London, Cleanweb UK invites you to their first Ignite evening, hosted by Forward Technology. Come along and see a great lineup of lightning talks, all about what’s happening with sustainability and the web in the UK. From clean clouds, to home energy, to climate visualisation, there will plenty […]
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