Openness Blog
Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!
A2K team members Subhashish Panigrahi and Noopur Raval participated in the "WikiWomenDay" organized by Wikipedia Club Pune at PAI International Learning Solutions, Azam Campus on October 28, 2012. Subhashish unfolds the happenings of this full day free fun workshop.
Launch of Assamese Wikipedia Education Program at Guwahati University
The Assamese Wikipedia community has shown a rapid growth in the past six months from 20 active editors in January 2012 to 29 active editors in June 2012. The absolute numbers might seem low but in terms of percentages its an overwhelming increment of 45 per cent.
Wikipedia workshop @ Inmantec College, Ghaziabad
The Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet & Society was approached by Gaurav Prashar, Assistant Dean at Inmantec College, Ghaziabad to organize a Wikipedia workshop. Accordingly, a workshop was organized on October 17, 2012.
Bengaluru: A Hub for Kannada and Sanskrit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects!
Kannada Wikipedia is one of those Indic language wikipedias which has seen many readers coming up every month. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the experiences of some of the very active Kannada wikipedians from the recent Kannada Wikipedia meetup held in Bengaluru on October 7, 2012.
Wikipedia comes to Hyderabad!
This post is a report on the series of Wikipedia meets organized in the city of Hyderabad on September 29-30, 2012. These workshops were a a part of the larger effort to help Wikipedia contributors in the same city to meet each other and strengthen the local community.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar
After Ludhiana and Patiala we came to Amritsar, which we all know is home to the Golden Temple and the spiritual centre of Sikh religion, to introduce Punjabi Wikipedia. The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala
Patiala is the home to the famous Punjabi University. A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012.
2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics
The 2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics convened a panel on Open Access. There was consensus amongst the panelist that the “big question” facing the open access movement no longer remains "if" or "why" open access, but rather "how" open access. The panel proved instructive for shifting the discussion away from ideology towards concrete questions facing the open access agenda and its implementation.
Know your Users, Match their Needs!
As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. The following post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society.
Open Government Data in India (v2)
The first draft of the second version of the Open Government Data Report is now online. Nisha Thompson worked on updating the first version of the report. This updated version of the report on open government data in India includes additional case studies as well as a potential policy (National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy) that would create a central government data portal. The report was distributed for peer review and public feedback.
Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report: Call for Comments
The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes comments on the first draft of "Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report". This report, on open access to scholarly literature, with a special focus on scientific literature, has been written by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu. The report surveys the field of scholarly and scientific publication in India and provides a detailed history of the open access movement in India.
People are Knowledge – Experimenting with Oral Citations on Wikipedia
The Centre for Internet and Society in association with the Wikimedia Foundation has produced a documentary film "People are Knowledge". The film evolved out of a project on Oral Citations in India and South Africa funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, and undertaken by Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board Member Achal Prabhala as a short-term fellowship, to help overcome a lack of published materials in emerging languages on Wikipedia. New Delhi-based filmmaker Priya Sen has directed the film, with additional assistance from Zen Marie who handled the shooting in South Africa. The film explores how alternate methods of citation could be employed on Wikipedia, documenting a series of specific situations with regards to published knowledge, and subsequently, with oral citations.
Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector
The Transparency & Accountability Initiative has published a book called “Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector”. We at the Centre for Internet & Society contributed the section on Open Government Data.
Comments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy
A draft of the 'National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy', which some hope will be the open data policy of India, was made available for public comments in early May. This is what the Centre for Internet and Society submitted.
Open Government Data Study
CIS produced a report on the state of open government data in India, looking at policy, infrastructure, and particular case studies, as well as emerging concerns, future strategies and recommendations. The report is authored by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, and Nishant Shah. We are grateful to the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for providing generous funding for this report.
Q&A on open access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore)
Amrit Dhir, a 1L at Harvard Law School, has been working with the Harvard Law School Library on open access activities. He recently had an opportunity to interview Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The interview was published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on May 5, 2011.
Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education
The Department of School Education & Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resources Development invited comments on its latest draft of the National Policy on ICT in School Education. CIS' comments are listed in this post.
Towards Open and Equitable Access to Research and Knowledge for Development
There is growing recognition that the capacity to conduct research and to share the resulting knowledge is fundamental to all aspects of human development, from improving health care delivery to increasing food security, and from enhancing education to stronger evidence-based policy making. This article by Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam was published in PLoS (Public Library of Science) on March 29, 2011.
Engaging on the Digital Commons
We at the Centre for Internet and Society are very glad to be able to participate in the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Our interest in the conference arises mainly from our work in the areas of intellectual property rights reform and promotion of different forms of ‘opennesses’ that have cropped up as a response to perceived problems with our present-day regime of intellectual property rights, including open content, open standards, free and open source software, open government data, open access to scholarly research and data, open access to law, etc., our emerging work on telecom policy with respect to open/shared spectrum, and the very important questions around Internet governance. The article by Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash was published in the journal Common Voices, Issue 4.
CIS Comments on the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase I)
In November 2010, the Central Government released the Draft 0.6 of the Technical Standards for the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase I), requesting comments by January 27, 2011. Here are the comments that CIS submitted.
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