Openness Main
Security of Open Source Software : A Survey of Technical Stakeholders’ Perceptions and Actions
— by Divyansha Sehgal — last modified Apr 13, 2023 06:01 AM
Securing Our Dependence on Code Reuse in Software
— by Divyank Katira — last modified Apr 13, 2023 05:47 AMDividing and breaking up a software project into smaller modules with functionality that can be reused to build other software is an increasingly common practice in software development today. We examine our infrastructural dependence on reuse of open-source software (OSS) components, examine the unique security risks posed by the widespread reuse of code, and survey systemic solutions to securing code reuse.
Open Data and Land Ownership
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified May 22, 2019 11:32 AMIn this chapter of the recently published volume on State of Open Data, Tim Davies and Sumandro Chattapadhyay discuss how the lessons from the land ownership field highlight the political nature of data, and illustrate the importance of politically aware interventions when creating open data standards, infrastructure, and ecosystems. State of Open Data, edited by Tim Davies, Stephen B. Walker, Mor Rubinstein, and Fernando Perini, is published by African Minds and International Development Research Centre, Canada.
Sunil Abraham - Key Listener Speech at Wikimedia Summit 2019
— by Sunil Abraham — last modified May 04, 2019 03:34 AMThe Wikimedia Summit 2019 – formerly known as "Wikimedia Conference" or "Chapters Meeting" – took place on 29–31 March 2019 in Berlin. Sunil Abraham made a speech at the summit organized in Berlin.
On World Water Day - Open Data for Water Resources
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jan 28, 2019 02:41 PMLack of open data for researchers and activists is a key barrier against ensuring access to water and planning for sustainable management of water resources. In a collaboration between DataMeet and CIS, supported by Arghyam, we are exploring the early steps for making open data and tools to plan for water resources accessible to all. To celebrate the World Water Day 2018, we are sharing what we have been working on in the past few months - a paper on open data for water studies in India, and a web app to make open water data easily explorable and usable. Craig Dsouza led this collaboration, and authored this post.
Open Data and Land Ownership - Environment Scan
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Feb 12, 2018 10:37 AMThe State of Open Data is an ambitious research project reflecting on 10 years of action on open data and providing a critical review of the current state of the open data movement across a range of issues and thematic areas. This environment scan represents the first step in gathering information to support a review of the state of open data with regard to land ownership, and in refining the focus of a chapter. The lead author for this chapter is Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
Steps towards Integrated Open Water Data
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Nov 02, 2017 09:58 AMMultiplicity of data collection agencies, formats, and disclosure practices and conditionalities make it very difficult to access interoperable and open data about water resources and systems in India. Barriers to accessing water data impede not only academic and applied research on related topics but also public consumption of information and critical decision making. DataMeet and CIS are proud to collaborate on identifying and addressing the challenges to open up and integrate data and information in the water sector. Supported by a generous grant from Arghyam, we are undertaking an initial study of open water data resources in India and taking first steps towards developing a Free and Open Source data portal for water resources information in India. Here is an initial note about the project. The key leaders and contributors of this project are Craig Dsouza, Namita Bhatawdekar, Riddhi Munde, and Jinda Sandbhor, all of whom are members of the Pune Chapter of DataMeet.
Praja - Enhancing Democracy Through Access to Open Data: What Are the Roles of Government and Civil Society? (Delhi, Sep 08)
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Sep 05, 2017 10:57 AMOpen Government Data (OGD) is widely seen to be a key hallmark of contemporary democratic practice and is often linked to the passing of freedom of information legislation. OGD is a philosophy—and increasingly a set of policies—that promotes transparency, accountability and value creation by making government data available to all. Public bodies produce and commission huge quantities of data and information. By making their datasets available, public institutions become more transparent and accountable to citizens. By encouraging the use, reuse and free distribution of datasets, governments promote business creation and innovative, citizen-centric services. Praja is organising a symposium on "open data and civil society" on Friday, Sep 8, which is supported by European Union and Friedrich Naumann Stiftung fur die Freiheit. Sumandro Chattapadhyay (Research Director) will take part in this event as a speaker in the session on "data centric approach and role of stakeholders in the urban governance ecosystem."
SoI’s Open Series Maps Fails to Implement Public Sharing of Govt Data
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified May 04, 2017 12:19 PMAlthough it has made the topographic maps or the Open Series Maps available to general public, Survey of India’s (SoI) Nakshe portal will have to go through a variety of litmus test, as the initiative fails to implement the mandates of public sharing of government data using open standards and open license as put forward by the NMP 2005 and NDSAP 2012, says Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, The Centre for Internet and Society. This interview was published by Geospatial World on May 02, 2017.
Comments on the Right to Information Rules, 2017
— by Amber Sinha — last modified Apr 27, 2017 09:25 AMOn March 31st, 2017, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Personnel and Training released a Circular framing rules under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (“RTI Rules”). The Ministry invited comments on on the RTI Rules. CIS submitted its comments on April 25, 2017.
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in India: Opportunities for Advocacy in Intellectual Property
— by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda — last modified Apr 23, 2017 05:22 AMCentre for Internet & Society worked on a three part case study. The first case study on digital protection of traditional knowledge was published by GIS Watch in December 2016. The other two case studies along with the synthesis overview has also been published.
CBGA - Consultation on Opening Up Access to Budget Data in India (Delhi, January 27)
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jan 27, 2017 05:45 AMOpen Budgets India, a comprehensive and user-friendly open data portal to provide free, easy, and timely access to relevant data on budgets, has been developed by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) in collaboration with a number of other organisations. CBGA is organising a Consultation on “Opening Up the Access to Budget Data in India” on Friday, January 27, 2017, to launch the beta version of the portal. Sumandro Chattapadhyay will be a speaker in the panel discussion that will follow the launch.
4 tips for DIY makers
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 22, 2016 02:36 AMI started learning stencil printing and hand lettering this year, and became quite enthralled with it. These age old techniques really add something special to postcards, which I usually send to myself, my wife, and my friends while traveling.
Kannada Wikipedia Education Program at Christ university: Work so far
— by Ananth Subray — last modified Nov 18, 2016 02:45 AMAs you know we are working closely with Christ university in Bengaluru for the Education Programs in Kannada Wikipedia and Kannada Wikisource, we worked on redesigning the programme for this academic year 2016-17 based on the lessons learned from the earlier intervention.
Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get their Work Published
— by Muthu Madhan, Siva Shankar Kimidi, Subbiah Gunasekaran and Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Oct 29, 2016 02:47 PMWe raise the financial and ethical issue of paying for getting papers published in professional journals. Indian researchers have published more than 37,000 papers in over 880 open access journals from 61 countries in the five years 2010-14 as seen from Science Citation Index Expanded. This accounts for about 14.4% of India’s overall publication output, considerably higher than the 11.6% from the world. Indian authors have used 488 OA journals levying article processing charge (APC), ranging from INR 500 to US$5,000, in the five years to publish about 15,400 papers.
Adopting ORCID as a Unique Identifier will Benefit all Involved in Scholarly Communication
— by Subbiah Arunachalam and Muthu Madhan — last modified Oct 28, 2016 04:28 PMORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a nonprofit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. Together with other persistent identifiers for scholarly works such as digital object identifiers (DOIs) and identifiers for organizations, ORCID makes research more discoverable.
Open source in everyday life: How we celebrated the Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 27, 2016 01:07 AMThe free and open source software (FOSS) enthusiasts just celebrated the Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 all across the world. This year, a small group of six of us gathered to celebrate SFD in the Indian city of Bengaluru. The group consisted of open source contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, Open Street Map, and users of FOSS solutions.
Why Open Access Has To Look Up For Academic Publishing To Look Up
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Oct 12, 2016 04:22 PMIn an important development, the US Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against the India-based OMICS group for harassing authors to publish in its journals.
How we celebrated Software Freedom Day
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 07, 2016 02:02 AMA small group of 6 FOSS contributors from communities such as Mozilla, Wikimedia, Mediawiki, Open Street Map and users of FOSS solutions gathered in Bengaluru to celebrate Software Freedom Day. Subhashish Panigrahi who was a part of the event, reports the developments.
Software Freedom Day: The Importance of Free and Open Source Software
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 18, 2016 03:46 AMSoftware Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 celebrates the liberty that free and open software and the philosophy of freedom brings into people’s lives. When SFD was started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined. It grew to a whooping 1000 by 2010 across the world. Explaining the aim of the celebration, SFD’s official website says,
ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର ସ୍ୱାଧୀନତା ଦିବସ: ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ଼ ଲେଖିବା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 18, 2016 03:33 AMSoftware Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open software, was celebrated in many cities today. The piece sheds light on the philosophy of software freedom, and how free and open source software is making a significant social change. I have also shared how anyone can contribute to the FOSS movement in different ways and celebrate SFD.
It's September, and That Means It's Time for Software Freedom Day
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 17, 2016 03:42 PMSoftware Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open software, is just around the corner on September 17. When the day first started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined, but it has since grown to include hundreds registered events around the world, depending on the year.
Submitted Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Sep 01, 2016 05:49 AMLast month, the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. The draft policy not only aims to facilitate and provide a framework for proactive disclosure of data created by the state government agencies, but also identify the need for integrating such a mandate within the information systems operated by these agencies as well. CIS is grateful to be invited to submit its detailed comments on the same. The submission was drafted by Anubha Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
A workshop to improve Telugu Wikipedia articles on Nobel laureates
— by Pavan Santhosh — last modified Sep 12, 2016 03:01 PMMany articles about Nobel laureates are missing in the Telugu Wikipedia. Recently undergraduate students from four different disciplines of the Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada gathered to create and improve articles related to Nobel laureates.
Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses
— by Pavan Santhosh S. & Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 20, 2016 12:43 PMA campaign has been started to relicense Telugu-language books of several noted authors from "all rights reserved" to Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) license.
Training-the-trainer programme and Mediawiki training at Pune
— by Abhinav Garule — last modified Aug 18, 2016 11:14 AMA two-day long train-the-trainer and Mediawiki training programme was organised during May 28-29 in Pune to better capacity of Wikimedians both technically, and outreach and community building.
Tools orientation for Telugu Wikimedians of Hyderabad
— by Pavan Santhosh S — last modified Aug 17, 2016 02:58 PMTo help Wikimedians learn about essential tools that are used across Wikimedia projects, a tools orientation session was organised during the monthly meetup on July 10 at Hyderabad.
Submitted Comments on the 'Government Open Data Use License - India'
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Jul 26, 2016 09:23 AMThe public consultation process of the draft open data license to be used by Government of India has ended yesterday. Here we share the text of the submission by CIS. It was drafted by Anubha Sinha, Pranesh Prakash, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
Edit-a-thon at DSERT Bengaluru to improve Science-related articles in Kannada Wikipedia
— by Ananth Subray — last modified Aug 16, 2016 08:31 AMWe have been working with the Department of State Educational Research and Training of Karnataka (DSERT), a Government of Karnataka-run research and training institution headquartered in Bengaluru. With the hope of expanding the reach of Science-related content in Kannada Wikipedia, we organised an edit-a-thon spanning over three days from the 11th January through the 13th.
Online edit-a-thon on incidents in Telugu
— by Subhashish Panigrahi and Pavan Santhosh — last modified Jul 11, 2016 04:23 PMA week-long online edit-a-thon was organised by the Telugu Wikipedia community to cover popular social, political and other events on the Telugu Wikipedia.
Public Consultation for the First Draft of 'Government Open Data Use License - India' Announced
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Jun 30, 2016 09:41 AMThe first public draft of the open data license to be used by Government of India was released by the Department of Legal Affairs earlier this week. Comments are invited from general public and stakeholders. These are to be submitted via the MyGov portal by July 25, 2016. CIS was a member of the committee constituted to develop the license concerned, and we contributed substantially to the drafting process.
Developing Open Educational Resources in Indian Languages
— by Sohnee Harshey* — last modified Jun 10, 2016 01:50 AMThe Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), in collaboration with the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), has been involved in organising workshops on developing open educational resources (OER) in Indian languages with undergraduate and postgraduate students across various partner institutions. The objective of these workshops is to introduce students to: a) tools of collaborative knowledge production on the Internet, and b) methods for generating new online content in Indian languages.
Comments on the National Geospatial Policy (Draft, V.1.0), 2016
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jun 30, 2016 09:40 AMThe Department of Science and Technology published the first public draft of the National Geospatial Policy (v.1.0) on May 05, 2016, and invited comments from the public. CIS submitted the following comments in response. The comments were authored by Adya Garg, Anubha Sinha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.
Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified May 17, 2016 10:37 AMThe politics of making and using maps in India has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps. This article by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg was published by The Wire on May 16, 2016.
Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon organised at Sagara, Karnataka
— by Ananth Subray — last modified Aug 22, 2016 10:58 AMA two-day-long Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised at Sagara, Karnataka during January 26-27. A photowalk was also organised on the 25th to cover places of encyclopedic importance.
Legal Challenges to Mapping in India #1 - Laws, Policies, and Cases
— by Adya Garg — last modified May 11, 2016 01:43 PMResponding to the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill and the draft National Geospatial Policy made public recently, this post provides an overview of the present configuration of laws, policies, and guidelines that provides the legal framework in India for governance of creation and sharing of geospatial data in India. The post also studies these policies in action by describing the key legal cases around the creation and use of geospatial data. The next post of this series will document the reflections and opinions of the key geospatial industry actors in India, as well as the free and open source mapping community.
Stats for March 2016
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Jun 07, 2016 04:06 AMCIS-A2K team closely works with 5 Indian languages, we call as focus language areas. Here are the stats for the month of March 2016.
Images and links matter quality
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Jun 08, 2016 09:54 AMWikipedia articles are considered of a higher quality when they have illustrations. An article without images is considered dull. Wikipedia is all about references. Any information on Wikipedia is encouraged to have verifiable citations. Hence images and external links form a criterion for quality of articles on Wikipedias. This blog post tries to analyse the current scenario of CIS-A2K's Focus language areas with respect to images and links.
Edit-a-thon organised to grow content on medicinal plants in Kannada Wikipedia
— by Ananth Subray — last modified May 19, 2016 10:34 AMTwo two-day long edit-a-thons were organised in St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College, both in Mangalore, during March 10-11 and March 12-13 respectively. The edit-a-thons were aimed at creating and enhancing Wikipedia articles related to medicinal plants.
Introducing Odia Wikipedia to students of Utkal University, Bhubaneswar
— by Sailesh Patnaik — last modified May 20, 2016 10:52 AMA four-hour-long workshop was organised at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha on February 25, 2016 for the students of Master of Computer Applications (MCA) and Master in Arts, Department of Odia-language.
Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 23, 2016 09:08 AMThe Kannada-language Wikipedia, arguably the largest online encyclopedia in Kannada language, celebrated its 13th anniversary on February 14, 2016 in Mangalore.
Edit-a-thon organised at Christ University Bangalore to celebrate Women’s Day
— by Ananth Subray — last modified May 20, 2016 01:47 PMA day-long edit-a-thon was organised at Christ University Bangalore on March 12, 2016 to celebrate the Women’s Day and grow the women-related articles on Kannada Wikipedia.
Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II)
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Apr 12, 2016 04:14 AMThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the last 10 Goals. The first 7 has already been discussed in the earlier post.
Consultation on 'National Geospatial Policy' - Notes and Submission
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Mar 29, 2016 05:03 PMThe Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has constituted a National Expert Committee for developing a draft National Geospatial Policy (NGP) to provide appropriate guidelines for collection, analysis, use, and distribution of geospatial information across India, and to assure data availability, accessibility and quality. A pre-drafting consultation meeting for the NGP was organised in Delhi on February 03, 2016. Ms. Anubha Sinha represented CIS at the meeting, and shares her notes.
Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part I)
— by Kiran AB — last modified Jan 02, 2017 02:12 PMThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the first 7 Goals, while the next post will cover the last 10.
Open Data Hackathons are Great, but Address Privacy and License Concerns
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Feb 05, 2016 08:37 PMThis is to cross-publish a blog post from DataMeet website regarding a letter shared with the organisers of Urban Hack 2015, Bangalore, in response to a set of privacy and license concerns identified and voiced during the hackathon by DataMeet members. Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored and co-signed the letter. The blog post is written by Nisha Thompson.
Approaching Open Research via Open Data - Presentation at TERI, December 22, 2015
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jan 12, 2016 02:37 PMThe Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, organised a seminar on 'Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach' on December 22, 2015. We supported the seminar as a knowledge partner. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to deliver a special address. Here are the notes and slides from the presentation.
Pre-Budget Consultation 2016 - Submission to the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jan 12, 2016 01:34 PMThe Ministry of Finance has recently held pre-budget consultations with different stakeholder groups in connection with the Union Budget 2016-17. We were invited to take part in the consultation for the IT (hardware and software) group organised on January 07, 2016, and submit a suggestion note. We are sharing the note below. It was prepared and presented by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with contributions from Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, and other members of CIS.
Odia Wikipedia workshop in Puri, Odisha sparks creation of informal Wikipedia group WikiTungi
— by Sailesh Patnaik — last modified Jan 12, 2016 05:28 AMThe first ever Odia Wikipedia workshop in Odisha's historic town of Puri finally shaped in on this December 20. With 25 participants contributing to Odia Wikipedia this day, more Wikipedia outreach in the city were planned.
Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon in St. Agnes College, Mangaluru to bridge gender gap in Wikipedia
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jan 12, 2016 11:22 AMAs part of a series of workshops to mark the 13th anniversary, Kannada Wikipedia, a Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised during this 10th-12th in St. Agnes College, Mangaluru to address the issue of gender gap in Wikipedia.
Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Edit-a-thon
— by Abhinav Garule — last modified Dec 08, 2015 10:30 AMAs part of the "Sau Dhuni Teen Project" a multilingual Wikipedia Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised at the Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune.
Design Public Conclave, 6th Edition
— by Amber Sinha — last modified Jun 18, 2016 04:45 PMThe 6th edition of the Design Public Conclave was hosted by Civic Labs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Studies, and part of the Vihara Innovation Network, in partnership with Social Innovation Exchange, Okapi, Business World, Business World for Smart Cities, and the Delhi Jal Board.
Konkani-language books from Konkani-language culture center Mannd Sobhaann to enrich Konkani Wikipedia
— by Rahmanuddin Shaik and Tanveer Hasan — last modified Nov 12, 2015 01:08 PMMangalore based cultural centre Maand Sobhaann has recently relicensed 3 of their publications under a free license so that the books could be digitised on Konkani Wikisource and enrich Konkani Wikipedia.
A Kannada Wikipedia brochure for newbies
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Oct 19, 2015 10:46 AMThis brochure has been created keeping readers and new Wikipedia editors in mind. This would come handy to learn editing Kannada Wikipedia and creating/editing articles in Kannada.
Software Freedom Pledge
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Sep 25, 2015 12:26 PMOn September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.
Rethinking of "Empowering Marathi Schools"
— by Abhinav Garule — last modified Jun 18, 2016 05:59 PMLike most other Indian language-medium schools, Marathi schools are experiencing a drastic decline of students. To address these grave problem a day long seminar was organised at S. M. Joshi Sabhagriha, Pune. CIS-A2K member Abhinav Garule attended this event to share how teachers could encourage students to contribute to Marathi Wikipedia.
WikipediansSpeak with Dr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni: Tulu Wikipedia in the making
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:06 PMDr. Kishore Kumar Rai Sheni, Principal, Shri Ramakrishna P.U. College, Mangaluru shares with Dr. U.B. Pavanaja of the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) programme his insights on bringing more contributors of different corners of the society to grow Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu Wikipedia is in Incubator at present and there are a bunch of contributors who are expanding the project to bring it live.
International Open Data Charter: Comments by CIS
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Sep 08, 2015 11:01 AMThe second meeting of Stewards of the International Open Data Charter is in progress in Santiago, Chile, where the revisions made to the Charter based on the comments received during the public consultation period that ended on July 31, 2015, are being re-discussed and finalised by the Stewards. Here we are sharing the comments submitted by us on the first public draft of the Charter published during the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, in May 2015. The comments include those submitted by Sumandro and Sharath Chandra Ram.
"Sau Dhuni Teen" project: Wikipedia workshop in TISS, Mumbai
— by Abhinav Garule — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:08 PMA two-day multilingual Wikipedia workshop was organised at the Women's Studies Department of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai during the 22nd through the 24th August. This was one of the outreach events under the scope of the "Sau Dhuni Teen" project that aims at bringing digital content on 100 notable persons, 100 key books, and 100 key concepts relating to women's studies, gender studies, and more broadly, interdisciplinary social sciences, between January 2015 and March 2016.
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development - Sessions Report
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Aug 28, 2015 08:16 AMCIS facilitated a workshop on open data policy and tools for government officials from Sikkim, Meghalaya, and Tripura, and those from Bhutan and Maldives, in June 2015. The workshop was co-facilitated with Akvo, DataMeet, and Mapbox, and was supported by International Centre for Human Development of UNDP India. Here we share the workshop report and other related documents. The report is written by Sumandro, along with Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo.
Wikipedia workshop in the theme of “Sau Dhuni Teen” in Pune University
— by Abhinav Garule — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:08 PMA two-day Wikipedia workshop was organised in the Srimati Savitribai Phule Pune University on the 20th August 2015. The workshop was focused on enriching Wikipedia with 100 articles related to notable Indian women under the scope of the “Sau Dhuni Teen” project.
Survey of Estimates of Economic Value of Open Government Data
— by Ömer Faruk Sarı — last modified Aug 22, 2015 08:42 AMThis is a survey of estimates of economic value of open government data, and public sector information in general, across regions, countries, and sectors offered by several reports published during the last decade. The survey is undertaken by Ömer Faruk Sarı, a student of Business Administration at Koc University in Istanbul, Turkey, and research intern with CIS.
Edit-a-thon to improve Kannada-language science-related Wikipedia articles
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Sep 04, 2015 08:25 AMA three-day Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon was conducted for science lecturers of institutions who gathered at the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET), Bengaluru this August 18. The idea of this event was to improve science-related articles that are part of the Government of Karnataka's high school syllabus.
Journalism Students of the SDM College Ujire Enrich Karnataka’s Folklore And Folk Art in Kannada Wikipedia
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Sep 15, 2015 09:09 AMAs part of an ongoing partnership with the Shree Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College Ujjire, with active support from a few Kannada Wikipedia editors, CIS-A2K began an outreach programme so that the journalism students could help many Kannada readers about Karnataka’s rich folklore and folk art.
Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore to bring Tulu Wikipedia live
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Sep 15, 2015 09:07 AMA Wikipedia edit-a-thon was organised in Mangalore, Karnataka this 14th to encourage more Tulu-language speakers to contribute to Tulu Wikipedia. Tulu Wikipedia is is currently in the Incubator but the enthusiastic editor community is putting their best effort to bring it live out of Incubator. This edit-a-thon is one of the many activities the Tulu Wikimedia community has organised.
Rare Telugu religious and historical work preserved at Annamacharya library to come on Wikisource!
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Sep 04, 2015 12:53 PMTelugu Wikipedia Community and the Centre for Internet & Society conducted a day long edit-a-thon at Annamaya Library on August 6, 2015 at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada.
Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Aug 21, 2015 05:40 PMPrateek Pattanaik (User:Shrijagannatha on Odia Wikisource) is a young researcher of Odia literature and Odissi music. He has not just digitized as many as 54 Odia-language poetry dating early 18th century but has also annotated, both poetic and prosaic translation in his blogs “Sri Jagannatha” and “Utkal Sangeet”. He has also brought a complete book “Kisora chandranana champu” on Odia Wikisource. A recent entrant into the Odia Wikimedia community, Prateek is also the youngest Odia Wikimedian. He has also digitized 18-19th century 54 poem written by various poets.
Konkani Wikipedia Goes Live After 'Nine Years' of Incubation
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:15 PMKonkani Wikipedia is the second Wikimedia project after Odia Wikisource that has gone live out of incubation. The project stayed in the incubation for nine long years and the community has gone through a long debate to have a Wikipedia of their own. Here is a blog highlighting three Konkani Wikimedians and an advocate of the Wikipedia movement whose efforts finally paid off.
Reading Devanagari script based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada Script
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:14 PMThis is a small hack to read websites with Devanagari script (used for Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Maithili and a few more languages) based sites like Konkani Wikipedia in Kannada script.
Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group
— by Sailesh Patnaik — last modified Jul 16, 2015 01:17 PMThis is a guest post by Wikimedian Sailesh Patnaik who has been a ardent contributor in Odia-language Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and has led outreach and partnership building initiatives to grow the Wikimedia projects in Odia and other Indian languages. In this post Sailesh shares his personal experience from his interaction at the Google Extended I/O organised by Google Developer Group in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. All the views are author’s personal views.
Magic words in Wikipedia
— by Tanveer Hasan — last modified Sep 14, 2015 08:37 AMThe struggle of finding solutions for replacing and retrieving content /words/facts and figures, in this day and age of machines that seem to know everything should ideally be a non-issue. Yet, for many of us who write reports based on the data available at that moment, it is nothing less than a nightmare to come to know that there has been a significant change in the data with which our reports have been written.
Train the Trainer: Running effective outreach activities in India
— by Tanveer Hasan — last modified Jul 30, 2015 03:20 PMIt is heartening to report that many Wikimedia projects in Indian languages have sustained, and even experienced an upward trend in, editor engagement. However, in terms of content creation, the majority of these projects are still facing grave challenges that put their very existence at risk.
Open Data Intermediaries in Developing Countries - A Synthesis Report
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jun 16, 2015 09:40 AMThe roles of intermediaries in open data is insufficiently explored; open data intermediaries are often presented as single and simple linkages between open data supply and use. This synthesis research paper offers a more socially nuanced approach to open data intermediaries using the theoretical framework of Bourdieu’s social model, in particular, his concept of species of capital as informing social interaction... Because no single intermediary necessarily has all the capital available to link effectively to all sources of power in a field, multiple intermediaries with complementary configurations of capital are more likely to connect between power nexuses. This study concludes that consideration needs to be given to the presence of multiple intermediaries in an open data ecosystem, each of whom may possess different forms of capital to enable the use and unlock the potential impact of open data.
How the Odia Wikimedia community is enriching Wikipedia with character encoding technology
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 14, 2015 11:51 AMLast year, I wrote about the development of Odia language character encoding converters that the Wikipedia community was working on. These converted text into Unicode, a universal encoding standard. These converters have now been made available for use, just in time for today’s thirteenth anniversary of the Odia Wikipedia.
The Newly Updated Indic Keyboard App Now Supports 22 Asian Languages
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:21 PMThis blog post was written in my personal capacity.
Indian government includes open source in RFPs
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:18 PMThe Government of India has implemented a remarkable new policy-level change for open source software (OSS) deployment.
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jun 02, 2015 03:34 PMSumandro Chattapadhyay and Sunil Abraham will take part in the workshop being organised for government officials from Bhutan, Maldives, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Tripura, by the International Centre for Human Development (IC4HD) of UNDP India, during June 3-6, 2015. The workshop will be held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies Campus in Bengaluru. Sunil will be one of the panelists in the opening discussion on 'data and transparency in governance,' and Sumandro will provide input for and lead the sessions on developing the draft implementation plan for the Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy. Sumandro worked with the IC4HD team to design the objectives and the agenda of the workshop.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡିଆ: ନୂତନ ଯୁଗର ଆରମ୍ଭ
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:19 PMMy op-ed on Odia Wikipedia and its journey of 13 years was published in Odia daily "The Samaja".
Odia Language Wikipedia Page Grows to 800K Page Views A Month
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:20 PMOdia Wikipedia is one of the first few Indian language Wikipedia projects celebrating such an old age. The Wikimedia community will gather in Odisha's capital of Bhubaneswar on June 3 to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 13th anniversary.
FOSS for Public Use: Free and Open Source Software for Digital India
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Jun 18, 2016 06:20 PMI attended a round-table meeting on May 29, 2015 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The meeting was organized by SFLC in collaboration with the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software, and the Centre for Internet & Society.
International Open Data Charter: First Public Draft
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jun 02, 2015 03:51 PMThe first public draft of the International Open Data Charter was released at the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, May 28-29, 2015. It is being developed by a range of organisations led by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Open Data Working Group (co-chaired by Government of Canada and the Web Foundation), the Government of Mexico, the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network, and Omidyar Network. CIS has contributed comments to a previous version of the draft, and also took part in the pre-release meeting of potential stewards of the Charter on May 26 in Ottawa. Here is the text of the draft Charter. Please visit opendatacharter.net/charter/ to submit your comments.
How to do GuerillaGLAM
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 28, 2015 03:30 PMA proposal titled How to do GuerrillaGLAM" that I had submitted for the Wikimania 2015 has been accepted. I will be presenting this on July 18.
Open Street Map "Mapping Workshop"
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jun 17, 2015 04:47 PMI conducted a workshop titled "OpenStreetMap Mapping Workshop" on Wednesday, May 13, 2015 at Phandeeyar. The workshop was attended by 20 enthusiasts. This involved organisations that work on resource issues, mostly on land grabbing, a start-up company that is planning to offer location-based local news feeds, a representative of MIDO, and an organisation that sells children’s books.
Odia Wikipedia Set to Celebrate 13 Years of Volunteer Contributions
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Aug 22, 2015 04:54 PMOdia Wikipedia, one of the first of several Indian language Wikipedia projects, is ready to celebrate 13 glorious years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.
What is the Open Data Movement & Why Does it Matter?
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Jun 18, 2015 01:12 AMI gave a talk at this event organized by Phandeeyar on May 13, 2015 in Yangon. About 25 delegates attended the event.
Wikipedia Campus at Oxford College
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 27, 2015 02:22 PMCIS-A2K collaborated with the Oxford College of Engineering, Bommanahalli, Bangalore on April 24, 2015 for introducing Wikimedia projects at their institution. Radhakrishna, a senior Wikimedian from Bangalore provided the crucial introduction and worked closely with the A2K team in conducting all the activities.
Humanitarian OSM: Mapping Nepal
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Apr 27, 2015 07:46 AMTo support the disaster relief work in progress in Nepal, the Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) is busy mapping roads, settlements, and buildings in Nepal. Creating a detailed map of the area in OpenStreetMap will give the relief workers much valuable open data that can be used for planning their efforts. Contribute to the efforts of the Humanitarian OSM to map features in Nepal to support relief work.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଡିଜିଟାଲ ଅସୁବିଧା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 27, 2015 03:22 PMThis paper was presented at the 2nd National Language Seminar by CIS-A2K Pogramme Officer Subhashish Panigrahi. In the paper, Panigrahi discusses about the hindrances of mass use of Odia language on the internet and how that is impacting in overall contribution of people in the language.
Patterns of Gender Aggression and Harassment in Open Tech and Open Culture Communities Online
— by Rohini Lakshané — last modified Jun 01, 2015 02:13 AMReport on the talk delivered by me at Adacamp held in Montreal, Canada on April 13-14, 2015.
2nd National Language Conference, Bhubaneswar
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 10, 2015 03:23 PMInstitute of Odia Studies and Research organised 2nd National Language Conference beginning on Monday, March 30, 2015 and ending on April 2, 2015 at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar. This conference was organised in collaboration with the Department of Tourism and Culture. I presented a paper in Odia language in this conference as part of a panel discussion related to Odia language computing.
Hindustani Language: We Are Wikipedia
— by Syed Muzammiluddin — last modified Apr 10, 2015 04:20 PMIn 2014, the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) embarked on a new social media-based initiative - WeAreWikipedia. The aim of the project was "One Wikimedian every week to tell untold community stories on Twitter".
Hindi Wiki Community Baithak in Delhi
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 27, 2015 01:34 AMHindi Wikimedians met in New Delhi during February 14 and 15. This was the first meeting of the Hindi community. Subhashish Panigrahi attended the meetup.
Telugu Wikipedia Winter Camp at Andhra Loyola College
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Feb 26, 2015 02:27 AMStudents of physics, statistics and Telugu departments of Andhra Loyola College spent 5 days of their Christmas vacation of 2014 to edit and enrich Telugu Wikipedia and Wikisource. They worked on their respective subject areas and came up with more than 100 new articles on Telugu Wikipedia and about 300 pages of Veeresalingam's works were typed on Telugu Wikisource.
Our Endangered Languages
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Mar 10, 2015 01:41 AMMy op-ed (in Odia) about the endangered languages was published in the Samaja this 21st on the International Mother Language Day.
Developing Open Knowledge Digital Resources in Indian Languages
— by Tejaswini Niranjana — last modified Apr 22, 2015 06:09 PMThe Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K), in collaboration with the Centre for Indian Languages (CILHE) at TISS Mumbai, conducted a two-day workshop at English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) at Hyderabad on January 28-29, 2015. Titled ‘Developing Open Knowledge Digital Resources in Indian Languages’, the workshop was the third in this series during 2014-15.
A Wikipedia Presentation at BITS, Goa
— by Radhakrishna Arvapally — last modified Mar 09, 2015 01:21 AMQuark is one of India's largest science, technology and management festivals, held every February at BITS Pilani - K.K. Birla Goa Campus. This year in 2015, the event was held from February 6 to 8, 2015. This blog post captures the key moments. About 12 delegates attended the event.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଅନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jan 31, 2015 04:51 AMThis is an op-ed I authored for Odia newspaper the "Samaja" that got published on January 30, 2015. Through this post I intend to highlight the needs for taking the Odia language to international fora instead of keeping it confined within the books. I have covered the focus area of 3 free and open source projects: Odia Wikipedia, Odia Wikisource and Global Voices Odia in the column highlighting the need for more people to contribute.
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The Intransigenc of STM Publishers
— by Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Feb 12, 2015 12:28 AMA few commercial publishers dominate provision of access to scientific and technical information sought after by researchers around the world. Increasing subscription prices of journals at rates higher than general inflation caused librarians to think of forming consortia, but publishers started selling online journals as bundles, and libraries ended up with many journals their researchers have very little use for. Scientists and librarians adopted open access, but publishers came up with hybrid journals and article processing charges to beat any adverse effect on their profits caused by the fast-spreading open access movement. We compare the steps taken by scientists and librarians in the West to reclaim ease of access to research findings with what is happening in India. We end with a few suggestions.
Indians Plead for #NetNeutrality as Airtel Raises Data Charges
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 11, 2015 03:10 PM
Odia Wikisource workshop at New Delhi
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 30, 2014 01:08 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team in collaboration with "The Intellects" organized a seminar in New Delhi on December 14, 2014. Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk.
Department of Science and Technology & Department of Biotechnology adopt Open Access Policy
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Dec 29, 2014 10:17 AMThis post discusses the newly adopted Open Access Policy of the Department of Science and Technology & the Department of Biotechnology.
Several Publications Now Available under Creative Commons License
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 28, 2014 03:05 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society has got the following publications under Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0) license. These are from multiple authors.
Creating Free Software Environment at Andhra Loyola College
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified May 27, 2015 12:54 AMAndhra Loyola college has signed an MoU with CIS-A2K and as part of it CIS-A2K team has provided a free and open software environment at Andhra Lyola College's Computer Center. Thirty machines have been installed with free software Operating system and some useful applications such as GIMP, Inkscape, firefox, libreoffice, etc.
Beyond the Language Tussle
— by Tejaswini Niranjana — last modified Dec 10, 2014 02:08 PMIt might be more productive to see the ongoing Sanskrit versus German controversy as a welcome opportunity to discuss the real and persistent problems of our education system, not all of which have to do with which languages children get to learn.
Odia Wikisource campus project at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Aug 16, 2015 03:42 PMThe Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a closing ceremony, on December 3, to conclude the three months campus project for Odia Wikisource at Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar.
Nineteen Books Published by Ama Odisha Relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 07, 2014 03:35 AMOdisha's most circulated newspaper Sambad has collaborated with CIS-A2K to relicense 19 books published by its sister concern "Ama Odisha".
Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Dec 28, 2014 04:04 AMThis course is conceived by CIS-A2K. It is currently envisaged as an add-on Certificate Course jointly offered by CIS-A2K and the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE)-a premier teacher training establishment in Goa, India.
Odia Wikisource, its Potential
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 05, 2014 01:47 AMI wrote an editorial in Odia newspaper the "Samaja" on November 17, 2014. I have written about Odia Wikisource, its potential and how people can get involved in it with a short note about the digitization done already. I have also highlighted the authors and copyright holders who kindly have donated their work under CC-by-SA license.
Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra's 21 books relicensed under CC-by-SA 4.0
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 06, 2014 02:49 AMTwenty one books of renowned Odia author Nirmala Kumari Mohapatra will now be available under the Creative Commons License.
Privacy vs. Transparency: An Attempt at Resolving the Dichotomy
— by Sunil Abraham — last modified Mar 08, 2015 06:26 AMThe right to privacy has been articulated in international law and in some national laws. In a few countries where the constitution does not explicitly guarantee such a right, courts have read the right to privacy into other rights (e.g., the right to life, the right to equal treatment under law and also the right to freedom of speech and expression).
55 Works of Iconic Indian writer released under Free Licence to benefit Wikisource
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Nov 14, 2014 01:29 PMKannada is a language spoken by 40 million people in Karnataka – one of the four southern states of India.The Kannada Wikimedia community, in collaboration with CIS-A2K, are enthusiastic about having almost all of the works of Niranjana re-licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 on the occasion of Kannada Rajyotsava.
ನಿರಂಜನರ ಕೃತಿಗಳು CC-BY-SA 4.0 ಪರವಾನಗಿಯೊಂದಿಗೆ ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳಲಿವೆ
— by Omshivaprakash and Tejas Jain — last modified Nov 03, 2014 03:04 PMಕನ್ನಡ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವದ ಸಂದರ್ಭದಲ್ಲಿ ನಿರಂಜನರ ಬಹುಪಾಲು ಕೃತಿಗಳು CC-BY-SA 4.0 ಪರವಾನಗಿಯೊಂದಿಗೆ ಮರುಪ್ರಕಟಗೊಳ್ಳಲಿವೆಯೆಂದು ಸಿಐಎಸ್-ಎ೨ಕೆಯ ಸಹಯೋಗದೊಂದಿಗೆ ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಳಗವು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಹರ್ಷಿಸುತ್ತದೆ.
Converting from nonUnicode (Nudi, Baraha, ...) font encoding to Unicode Kannada
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Oct 23, 2016 03:36 PMPeople have been using computers for typing and printing Kannada text for more than 25 years. Most of the usage of Kannada on computers was limited to the DTP arena.
Tulu Wikipedia Workshop cum Editathon at Udupi
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Oct 31, 2014 02:54 PMA three-day programme was held at Udupi from October 15 to 17, 2014 with an aim to increase the presence of Tulu in the online world. The first day comprised the inauguration programme and a workshop to understand the Wiki markup. The next two days were devoted to the edit-a-thon where participants added articles to Tulu Wikipedia.
Samskrita Vaibhavam (Sanskrit Wiki Outreach Program)
— by Shubha and Sayant Mahato — last modified Oct 31, 2014 02:02 PMTo celebrate the revival of Sanskrit language, the Bangalore chapter of Samskrita Bharati organised a two-day mega event "Samskrita Vaibhavam" at VSR Kalyan Mantapa in Bangalore on August 9 and 10, 2014.
Odia Wikisource Goes Live!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 07, 2014 01:30 PMOdia netizens have more than one reason to celebrate this festive season.
Open access platform to save the Odia Indian language
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 24, 2014 03:32 PMIn February 2014, the Government of India declared the South Asian language Odia as the 6th classical language of India which is one among 22 scheduled languages of India and has a literary heritage of more than 5,000 years. There are documents for more than 3,500 years, and the rest are undocumented oral histories.
Odia Littérateur Ramakrushna Nanda's 4 Books Now Available Under a Creative Commons License
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 06, 2014 01:41 PMChildren literature in Odia language went through an ennoblement after the intervention of Ramakrushna Nanda's writings.
Second Draft of Open Access Policy of the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science released
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Oct 30, 2014 12:33 AMThe Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India drafted an Open Access Policy (“Policy”) in consultation with several open access experts, government officials and CIS. The second draft of the Policy released last week and is open for comments till 17th November, 2014.
More Than 40 Million People Await the Launch of Odia Wikisource
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 04, 2014 01:58 PMSpeakers of Odia will soon have mountains of books to read online in their mother tongue, following the launch of the Odia Wikisource, which will make accessible many rare books that have entered the public domain.
Bharat Majhi Writings Now Available Under a Creative Commons License
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 07, 2014 03:34 PMBefore the advent of Odia Wikisource becoming live, Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) got in touch with notable Odia author Bharat Majhi for bringing his writings on the Internet.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶରେ ପ୍ରତିବନ୍ଧକ ଓ ସମ୍ଭାବନା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 13, 2014 05:19 AMI authored an editorial in today's Samaja (Odia daily). It talks about the hurdles Odia language has been facing and potential aspects of the language including it being used massively on the Internet in Wikipedia and other platforms.
Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages
— by Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan — last modified Oct 12, 2014 03:52 AMA two-day workshop for students was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Access to Knowledge Programme, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (CIS-A2K) on September 11 and 12, 2014 in Pune. Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan summarize the developments from the workshop in this report.
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia – CIS-A2K and ALC join hands
— by T Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik — last modified Sep 30, 2014 05:11 AMStudents and faculty of Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada aim to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Oct 10, 2014 11:26 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoU) with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 06, 2014 05:09 AMGLAM activities in the last two months have been quite happening!
We are Wikipedia
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 06, 2014 03:19 AMWikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.
CIS' Comments on the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science Open Access Policy
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Aug 22, 2014 03:46 PMIn July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India released a draft Open Access Policy. CIS participated in discussions along with experts brought on board by the Drafting Committee to develop and review the open access policy. As a follow-up, CIS prepared comments to the draft Policy. This post makes available CIS' comments to the draft Policy.
Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Jan 20, 2015 06:47 PMAndhra Loyola College (ALC) and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.
Doctors and Translators Are Working Together to Bridge Wikipedia's Medical Language Gap
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Aug 04, 2014 03:29 AMI interviewed Wikimedian User:CFCF who is managing the entire project to understand how it is going to work and wrote on Global Voices' Rising Voices about it.
Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 28, 2014 07:41 AMThe essay was published in the June edition of Odisha Review, a magazine published by Government of Odisha's Department of Information and Public Relations.
Wiki Loves Pride 2014 and Adding Diversity to Wikipedia
— by Dorothy Howard — last modified Jul 25, 2014 10:56 AMSince Wikipedia’s gender gap first came to light in late 2010, Wikipedians have taken the issue to heart, developing projects with a focus on inclusivity in content, editorship and the learning environments relevant to new editors.
University of Mysore Re-releases Kannada Vishwakosha (Encyclopaedia) under Creative Commons Free License
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jul 24, 2014 07:03 AMThe University of Mysore and the Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the Open Knowledge Day in Mysore on July 15, 2014. On this occasion Mysore University released six volumes of Kannada Vishwakosha under the Creative Commons (CC) license.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ବିକାଶର ରାସ୍ତା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 23, 2014 02:46 PMThe column was published in Odia newspaper The Sambad's editorial. It shows a comparative analysis of Odia language with other languages — both linguistic and usability in digital platforms. The article also emphasizes on various aspects that need advancements.
Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 23, 2014 07:30 AMI took part in two major events, Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 and MozCamp Beta – India organized by Mozilla in India as a voluntary contributor. In this blog post I am sharing with you my experience of the events.
Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 23, 2014 07:06 AMI took part in two major events, Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 and MozCamp Beta – India organized by Mozilla in India as a voluntary contributor. In this blog post I am sharing with you my experience of the events.
Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release first draft of Open Access Policy
— by Anubha Sinha — last modified Dec 26, 2014 11:20 AMThe Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, recently published a draft Open Access Policy in consultation with several open access experts, government officials and CIS. This post discusses open access and the exercise undertaken to draft this policy.
State of Odia Language in Computing and Future Steps
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 28, 2014 07:03 AMI participated in a "National Level Seminar on, Computer Application and Odia Language" organized by the Institute of Odia Studies and Research in Bhubaneswar on July 6, 2014 as a panelist to discuss about the state of Odia language in computing, work in progress highlighting CIS-A2K's work in the knowledge and education sector and further steps.
Aircel & Wikimedia Foundation announce Wikipedia Zero
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jul 07, 2014 05:58 AMAircel and Wikimedia Foundation came together to announce Wikipedia Zero. As per this, users of Aircel need not pay for data for accessing Wikipedia. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja wrote a report on this in Prajavani.
ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷରସଜ୍ଜା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 28, 2014 06:02 AMThis article was published in the Samaja (Odia newspaper) on July 4, 2014.
Ten Telugu Books Re-released Under CC-BY-SA 3.0 License
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Jul 08, 2014 05:29 AMFor the first time in the history of Indian books, 10 Telugu books by a single author were released under Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA 3.0) on June 22, 2014 at 10 a.m. at Golden Threshold, Abids, Hyderabad.
Odia Language gets a new Unicode Font Converter
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 02, 2014 09:59 AMRecently, I worked on designing a font encoding converter with a fellow Wikimedian Manoj Sahukar. We worked by taking the code of a converter that was made three years back and made it work for two fonts AkrutiOriSarala99 and AkrutiOriSarala that are used by the media industry for printing and publishing.
This Twitter Account Puts a Face to the Unsung Volunteer Editors Behind Wikipedia
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 03, 2014 06:17 AMThe life of a Wikipedia editor is an interesting one. Globally, about 100,000 editors edit the collaborative online encyclopedia's 30 million articles in 287 languages, including over 4.5 million in the English Wikipedia.
Twitter weekly Curation WeAreWikipedia brings one Wikipedian Every Week
— by Diptiman Panigrahi — last modified Jun 16, 2014 06:16 AMWeAreWikipedia is an initiative to bring in voices of Wikipedia contributors (known as Wikipedians). One Wikipedian curates the Twitter based handle for a week and tells interesting stories from his/her communities that are unheard to the rest of the globe. Started as a personal project by our program officer Subhashish Panigrahi it has brought 18 Wikipedians across the globe including 6 Indic language communities.
Comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology
— by Nehaa Chaudhari — last modified Jun 30, 2014 11:26 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society submitted its comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines to the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, on May 28, 2014. The comments were prepared by Sunil Abraham and Nehaa Chaudhari.
Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 04, 2014 03:32 AMThe Open Education Working Group sees supporting multilingual activities such as translation to and from languages which are not often used as one of its key future roles. Subhashish Panigrahi’s post while dwelling upon the growth of Indic Wikimedia communities critically examines Wikipedia as an educational resource.
CIS Signs MoU with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified May 27, 2014 10:56 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College on April 21, 2014. On behalf of CIS, Dr. U.B.Pavanaja signed the MoU.
GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 27, 2014 09:13 AMGLAM initiatives work as a gateway to unleash knowledge, decode archived documentation to build modern wonders and also educate people about their past cultural and scientific journey.
Community led Konkani Wikipedia Outreach
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jun 10, 2014 08:44 AMGoa University students organised the first ever community led Konkani Wikipedia outreach on May 14, 2014. Fifteen first year M.A. students from Konkani Department participated in the six hour long workshop.
Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 28, 2014 06:29 AMThis blog post is cross-posted from Opensource.com. It was published on May 2, 2014.
14 Odia books re-released under Creative Commons license
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 06, 2014 06:26 AMThis blog entry by Subhashish Panigrahi (originally published in Wikimedia Foundation's Blog) was edited and re-published by Rohini Lakshane in DNA on April 26, 2014.
Report from India: Relicensing books under CC
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 05, 2014 09:13 AMMy name is Subhashish Panigrahi. I am an educator currently working in the community and communication front at The Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge program (CIS-A2K), an India-based catalyst program to grow Indic language communities for Wikipedia and its sister projects. Prior to my work at CIS, I worked for the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program, a predecessor to the current CIS-A2K project.
CIS Signs MoU with Mysore University
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified May 05, 2014 06:29 AMCIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the University of Mysore for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU.
Odisha Dibasa 2014: 14 Books Re-released under CC License
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 14, 2014 10:57 AMOdisha became a separate state in British India on April 1, 1936. Odia, a 2,500 year old language recently gained the status of an Indian classical language. The Odia Wikimedia community celebrated these two occasions on March 29 in Bhubaneswar with a gathering of 70 people.
ଓଡ଼ିଅା ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 06, 2014 06:50 AMThis article was published in Odia magazine "The Kadambini". It covers a brief history of the book digitization initiatives in Odia language, problems with access available content in ISCII standard, scope of Unicode content and Open Access, Odia Wikipedia's further use for public and contribution.
Vachana Sanchaya: Bringing Access to 11th century Kannada Literature
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 08, 2014 01:48 AMThe blog post throws light on providing access to Vachana Sanchaya, a eleventh century Kannada literature.
୭୯ ବର୍ଷରେ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଶା: ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବହାର
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 06, 2014 05:18 AMThis article was published in online Odia magazine "The Amalekha". It covers a brief history of the book digitization initiates in Odia language, problems with access available content in ISCII standard, scope of Unicode content and Open Access, Odia Wikipedia's further use for public and contribution.
India Access To Knowledge/Draft Work plan July 2014 - June 2015
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Apr 08, 2014 09:51 AMOne of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in South-Asia and in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008 when Jimmy Wales visited Bangalore. From September 2012 it has been actively involved in growing the movement in India through a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Based on the 18-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed its Work Plan for July 2014 to June 2015.
11th Century Kannada Literature Now on Wikisource
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 06, 2014 05:01 AMThis blog post by Pavithra Hanchagaiah and Omshivaprakash HI was edited by Rohini Lakshane for DNA. It was first edited by Subhashish Panigrahi, CIS-A2K on the Wikimedia Foundation blog where it was first published.
Digitize any Book in the Public Domain
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 03, 2014 08:41 AMThe article is about a mass scale digitization project for Kannada WikiSource by two Wikipedians.
ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ: ତିନି ବର୍ଷର ସକ୍ରିୟ ଅବଦାନ ୧୦ ବର୍ଷର ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପକୁ ପୁନର୍ଜୀବନ ଦେଲା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Mar 20, 2014 11:20 AMThe post is about the journey of Odia Wikipedia and the last three years of active contribution
Vachana Sanchaya: 11th century Kannada literature to enrich Wikisource
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Mar 20, 2014 11:13 AMKannada Wikipedian Omshivaprakash, Pavithra and I co-authored this article on digitizing Vachana Sahitya, a 11th century Kannada literature on WikiSource.
Open Source Project Brings 11th Century Kannada Verses Online
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 06, 2014 06:00 AMThe post was co-authored by Pavithra Hanchagaiah, Omshivaprakash H L and Subhashish Panigrahi and published in the March issue of Foss Force.
Open Education Week: Interview with Subhashish Panigrahi
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Apr 04, 2014 09:20 AMNoopur Raval interviewed Subhashish Panigrahi from the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team about sharing information resources and attribution in academia.
Wikipedia Editathon on India Women's History at CBIT, Hyderabad
— by Syed Muzammiluddin — last modified Apr 07, 2014 01:32 AM“Wikipedia Editathon on India Women's History” and “Work-Life Balance: Women in Engineering” were organized parallelly at Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology (CBIT), Hyderabad on March 8, 2014. These events had a common session during the morning and a separate sessions in the afternoon.
Indian Wikimedia community coordinates Women’s History Month
— by Jeph Paul and Netha Hussain — last modified Mar 06, 2014 11:49 AMThe Indian Wikimedia community is pleased to invite you to participate in Women’s History Month events, 2014. We started off with a pre-event Wikipedia workshop at Roshni Nilaya School of Social Work, in Mangalore on the 26th of February.
Odia Language's Presence in Digital Media and Wikipedia's Role
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Mar 05, 2014 11:36 AMକମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା (Odia language in computer) is an essay published in Odia newspaper "The Samaja's Sunday supplement" on March 2. It is about the journey of Odia language in the digital era and the challenges faced during digitization of books and manuscripts.
First Urdu Wikipedia Workshop at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad
— by Syed Muzammiluddin — last modified Apr 07, 2014 01:06 AMDuring the second week of February, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore received a call from Dr Faheemuddin, Assistant Professor, Department of Translation Studies, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad requesting an Urdu Wikipedia Workshop in University. We were informed of special interest of Dr Zafaruddin , Head, Department of Translation studies in holding the event as any effort aimed at expanding the Urdu Wikipedia will benefit the Urdu language community across the world.
Tewiki 10th Anniversary
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Mar 19, 2014 11:01 AMTewiki 10th anniversary celebration 2014, started on February 15 in Vijayawada at Kakaraparti Bhavanarayana College. It was co-organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team and the Telugu Wikipedia community. Ch.Arjuna Rao expressed his happiness on Telugu Wikipedias completion of 10 years and 55000 articles in Telugu on the inauguration of decade celebrations.
Odia Wikipedia: Three Years of Active Contributions Gives Life to a Ten Year Old Project
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 04, 2014 08:56 AMOdia Wikipedia has carved its mark as the largest online encyclopedia in Odia language that is edited by a volunteer editor community.
Wikipedia Editing as Assessment Tool in the Indian Higher Education Classroom
— by Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana, Ashwin Kumar A.P. and T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Jan 30, 2014 10:06 AMGetting students to create and edit Wikipedia entries in English and Indian languages can be a comprehensive assessment tool at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. Both levels of higher education require the demonstration of the ability to present knowledge in encyclopaedic form, which can be done by a good review of relevant literature and the showcasing of key arguments in the field.
Wikipedia at Forefront in Christ University
— by Syed Muzammiluddin — last modified Feb 04, 2014 05:08 AMWikipedia has entered Indian undergraduate language classroom in Christ University, Bangalore. Recently the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) organized a series of events in Christ University. This blog post provides a brief analysis of the outcome.
WikiSangamotsavam 2013 brings Indian Wikimedians together
— by Netha Hussain and Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 03, 2014 06:57 AMWikiSangamotsavam, the annual conference of Malayalam Wikimedians, took place in Alappuzha, Kerala from December 21 to 23, 2013. The conference brought together around 200 Wikimedians and well-wishers from all over India.
CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 03, 2014 06:24 AMKIIT University, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) for furthering Odia Wikipedia.
CIS-A2K: Work Accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 11:48 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K team) is pleased to share with you the key accomplishments about the work it accomplished on Konkani Wikipedia from September to December 2013 in this report. In accordance with the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access to Knowledge Program’s (CIS-A2K) Konkani Work Plan 2013-14 the program has invested time and effort to build Konkani Wikimedia community and projects.
Telugu Wikipedia completes 10 years
— by Rahmanuddin Shaikh — last modified Dec 31, 2013 04:40 AMTelugu Wikipedia completed 10 years on December 10, 2013. Several training sessions, aka Wiki Academies, were planned by the Telugu Wikipedia community to mark the occasion.
Pooja Tople on Wikimedia Projects
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 11:04 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.
Darshana Mandrekar speaks on Konkani Wikipedia
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 10:38 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.
Darshan Kandolkar on Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Process
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 10:47 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.
Varsha Kavlekar on Konkani Wikipedia Incubator
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 10:56 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Goa University is working to build Konkani Wikipedia. As part of this program it organised the Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Program recently.
Konkani Vishwakosh Encyclopedia released under Free License
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 12:42 PMUpon Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K)‘s explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in the digital era.
First ever Train-the-Trainer Program in India
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Dec 31, 2013 12:18 PMAccess to Knowledge Programme at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS-A2K) organized the first ever Train the Trainer Program in India. 20 Wikimedians from 8 different language communities and 10 different cities across India attended CIS-A2K’s Train the Trainer (TTT).
How Can We Make Open Education Truly Open?
— by Nishant Shah — last modified Nov 30, 2013 08:45 AMI have spent the last month being unpopular. I have been in conversation with many ‘Open Everything’ activists and practitioners. At each instance, we got stuck because I insisted that we begin by defining what ‘Open’ means in the easy abuse that it is subject to.
CIS-A2K Narrative Report (September 2012 – June 2013)
— by Vishnu Vardhan, Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 30, 2013 11:18 AMThis narrative report captures the work done by the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in the first ten months of the grant. The report also throws some light on the CIS-A2K program strategy in the next one year.
ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಟ್ಟ ಸಸಿಗೆ ಈಗ ಹತ್ತು ವರ್ಷ
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Nov 20, 2013 09:55 AMDr. U.B. Pavanaja wrote an article highlighting 10 years of Kannada Wikipedia. Kannada Wikipedia started in the year 2003 and now it has completed 10 years. The article highlights the current status of the Kannada Wikipedia vis-a-vis number of articles, number of editors, active editors, and page views per month.
CIS Signs MoU with Christ University, Bangalore
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Nov 20, 2013 06:46 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Christ University in Bangalore. As part of this MoU Christ University and CIS-A2K will work together to introduce "Wikipedia in the Indian Undergraduate Language Classroom" at Christ University.
Train The Trainer Programme for Wikipedians
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 18, 2013 08:24 AMTwenty Wikimedians from 10 cities speaking 8 languages attended the 4-day Train-The-Trainer (TTT) programme conducted last month by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge programme (CIS-A2K) at Bangalore. The programme aimed to improve and enhance Wikipedians' skills for outreach and community-building activities.
Train the Trainer Program
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 18, 2013 07:52 AMWikipedians, about 20 of them, from 10 different cities, speaking 8 different languages, joined together for the first ever four days "Train the Trainer Program" organised by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team in Bangalore from October 3 to 6, 2013.
Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jan 31, 2014 06:20 AMCIS-A2K team interviewed Priyadarshini Tadkodkar about Konkani language. She speaks how editing/contributing to Konkani Wikipedia would help students.
Konkani Vishwakosh Under CC-BY-SA
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Nov 30, 2013 10:47 AMUpon CIS-A2K's explicit request, Goa University has approved the re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to make it freely available to public and giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done. This is a huge step to help preserve Konkani language and culture in digital era and will also feed into building of Konkani Wikipedia.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Nov 30, 2013 10:49 AMGoa University in collaboration with the Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) is digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh. In this project CIS-A2K will work with group of individuals who will help digitize the encyclopedia in a time bound manner. All 3632 pages of Konkani Vishwakosh will be digitized.
Feedback on the Framework on OSS Adoption in E-Governance Systems
— by Nehaa Chaudhari — last modified Oct 28, 2013 10:35 AMCIS gave its feedback to the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) on the Framework on Open Source Software Adoption in E-Governance Systems on October 26, 2013.
Making Wikipedia Better
— by Pooja Saxena and Nirbheek Chauhan — last modified Oct 25, 2013 07:30 AMIt wasn’t something that we set out to do when we started working on The Ballot, but one of the most satisfying unintentional side-effects of the project has been the chance to correct facts and figures, and remove inappropriate content from entries related to India and its politics on Wikipedia.
Re-release of Konkani Vishwakosh under CC-BY-SA 3.0
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Nov 04, 2013 12:14 PMGoa University re-released Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons License CC-BY-SA 3.0. To celebrate and further the movement of open knowledge and open access Goa University in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) organised an event on September 26, 2013 at 10 a.m., at the Goa University Conference Hall.
The Indian Council of Agricultural Research Adopts an Open Access Policy
— by Nehaa Chaudhari — last modified Sep 30, 2013 03:03 PMIn this blogpost, Nehaa Chaudhari discusses the newly adopted Open Access Policy of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
Open Access: An Opportunity for Scientists around the Globe
— by Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Sep 26, 2013 06:00 AMResearchers face two problems related to information access: making their own research more visible to researchers elsewhere and making worldwide research readily available to them. Open access (OA) can solve both of them.
CIS Signs MoU with Goa University
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Sep 25, 2013 10:57 AMThe Access to Knowledge (A2K) team from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has signed a MOU with the Goa University.
Konkani Vishwakosh Digitization Project
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Oct 01, 2013 12:23 PMThe Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the University of Goa invite you to a two-month project on digitization of Konkani Vishwakosh. Please send in your applications by October 5, 2013.
Wikipedia reaches Classrooms in Hyderabad
— by Syed Muzammiluddin — last modified Sep 20, 2013 07:20 AMThe Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad organised a one-day workshop on editing Wikipedia in Indian languages. It was attended by participants who formed a small but proactive group of students who eagerly tried to register the first edits on four different Indian language wikipedias.
e - DIRAP Google+ Hangout: Open Government
— by Christine Apikul — last modified Sep 18, 2013 10:43 AMThe e-DIRAP Hangout on Open Government was held on Thursday, 25 July 2013. It brought together nine professionals from Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines to discuss the wide spectrum of issues surrounding open government.
WikipediansSpeak: Piotr Konieczny
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 18, 2013 12:22 PMWikipediansSpeak is a video interview show hosted by Subhashish Panigrahi at the Centre of Internet and Society. It brings you series of posts about Wikipedians across the globe. Wikipedians are those voluntary contributors who write Wikipedia articles, correct mistakes made by other wikipedians and share knowledge for free to the world.
Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 12, 2013 10:22 AMKonkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students.
ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 13, 2013 08:38 AMThis is a column about Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, a noteworthy wikipedian who started contributing to Wikipedia articles on Odia Wikipedia related to medical science after retiring as an Orthopedic Specialist-Assistant Professor of a Medical college.
Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Oct 30, 2013 06:07 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) opened applications for the post of Programme Officer, Pilot Projects for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme on 17th April 2013. The vacancy and call for applications was shared on all Indian language mailing lists, city mailing lists as well as Village Pumps.
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Sep 03, 2013 10:37 AMThere has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur
— by Gorvachove Pothal — last modified Aug 27, 2013 12:09 PMA training workshop for Odia Wikipedians was held in Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. The workshop was organized by Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal, with financial support from CIS-A2K programme. It was a part of the Access To Knowledge - Outreach Programs.
Voices from Goa: Rusita Paryekar, a MA student writes articles on Konkani Wikipedia
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 06, 2013 12:30 PMRusita Paryekar is one of the 38 students from the MA Konkani department of Goa University gathered at the State Central Library to learn writing and editing articles on Konkani Wikipedia. Currently Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation and needs more voluntary participation from enthusiasts who want their language, Konkani to strengthen its base in the digital knowledge domain.
Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 05, 2013 09:24 AMKonkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge Programme (CIS-A2K) in collaboration with the Konkani department of Goa University organized a four-day Wikipedia workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.
Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Sep 13, 2013 06:03 AMThe 7th, 8th and 9th of August 2013 saw over 600 Wikipedians across the world participating Wikimania at Hong Kong. The three day annual international conference for users and contributors of Wikipedia brought many debates about open educational research, open source technologies, gender gap, documenting the history of mankind in a free and open platform like Wikipedia and its sister sites in collaboration with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums and all of these in 286 world languages. More and more volunteers are joining this movement and it is expanding the media of accessing and disseminating knowledge.
A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Sep 05, 2013 06:46 AMOn Sunday, August 11, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Shyam Computers, Krishnarajapet, Karnataka. The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet. This report summarizes the proceedings of that workshop and subsequent research into relevant questions flowing from the discussions.
A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop in Mysore
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Oct 04, 2013 04:40 AMOn Tuesday, August 6, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at the Centre for Proficiency Development and Placement Services (CPDPS), Manasa Gangotri campus, University of Mysore, Karnataka by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
A Telegu Wiki Meetup @ CIS
— by SJ Veera (Telugu Wikipedian) — last modified Sep 01, 2013 11:30 AMTelugu Wikipedians had their monthly meetup at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore on Saturday, July 13, 2013, 2.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.
Open Access Dialogues - Report and Policy Recommendations
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Dec 22, 2015 06:52 AMThe Open Access Dialogues were a series of global electronic debates facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), during November 2012 to March 2013. It was supported by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and was hosted at WSIS Knowledge Communities Discussion Forum.
A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Sagara
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Mar 25, 2014 08:51 AMOn Sunday, July 28, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Sagara, Shimoga Dist, Karnataka by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. In this post, I share with you the happenings from the workshop.
A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Hubli
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jul 31, 2013 09:28 AMOn Sunday, July 21, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Hubli by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. This blog post throws more light on the workshop.
Telugu Wiki Academy at Centre for Good Governance
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Aug 19, 2013 06:49 AMAn account of the Telugu Wiki Academy organized for the staff of Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad on April 9, 2013 at their Jubilee Hills premises.
Bangalore RHoKed to Create 8 Apps for a Better World!
— by Yogesh Londhe — last modified Jul 03, 2013 07:48 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) on June 1 and 2, 2013 hosted a Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) event at its office. Yogesh Londhe shares with you a post-event report.
A 'Kannada' Wikipedia Workshop for Bloggers
— by U.B.Pavanaja — last modified Jul 03, 2013 10:19 AMOn Sunday, June 23, 2013, a day-long Kannada Wikipedia workshop was conducted at Suchitra, Bengaluru for Kannada bloggers by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team. This blog post gives a report on the workshop.
Big Data, People's Lives, and the Importance of Openness
— by Nishant Shah — last modified Jul 03, 2013 04:23 AMOpenness has become the buzzword for everything in India right now. From the new kids on the block riding the wave of Digital Humanities investing in infrastructure of open knowledge initiatives to the rhetoric of people-centered open government data projects that are architected to create 'empowered citizens', there is an inherent belief that Opening up things will make everything good.
My First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad
— by T. Vishnu Vardhan — last modified Aug 19, 2013 06:51 AMOn March 8, 2013, a day-long Telugu Wikipedia training workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Golden Threshold, Nampally, Hyderabad in collaboration with Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad. This blog post gives a concise account of the event.
A Telugu Wiki Meetup @ CIS, Bangalore
— by SJ Veera — last modified Aug 19, 2013 06:53 AMOn June 2, 2013, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) hosted a Telugu wiki meetup in its Bangalore office. Updates from the meetup is shared in this blog post.
Wikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 06:33 AMOn May 13, 2013, the Access to Knowledge team led by Subhashish Panigrahi conducted a Wikipedia Introductory Session at the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi for the consultants working for Data and India portal. This session was aimed to emphasize how these portals and their useful data could be used on Wikipedia to create good quality articles.
Use made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings
— by Madhan Muthu and Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Jul 04, 2013 04:45 AMMost of the papers published in the more than 360 Indian open access journals are by Indian researchers. But how many papers do they publish in high impact international open access journals? We have looked at India’s contribution to all seven Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals, 10 BioMed Central (BMC) ournals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. Indian crystallographers have published more than 2,000 structure reports in Acta Crystallographica, second only to China in number of papers, but have a much better citations per paper average than USA, Britain, Germany and France, China and South Korea. India’s contribution to BMC and PLoS journals, on the other hand, is modest at best. We suggest that the better option for India is institutional self-archiving.
Comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy
— by Nehaa Chaudhari — last modified May 28, 2013 06:44 AMThe following comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research on May 23, 2013.
Use of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers
— by Subbiah Gunasekaran and Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Jul 04, 2013 04:50 AMIndian researchers have published more than 43,400 papers in over 4,600 journals in 2009 as seen from Science Citation Index (SCI) – Expanded. Of these, over 6,900 (or one in six) papers are published in 445 open access (OA) journals. The proportion of papers published by Indian researchers in OA journals is considerably higher than the world average, which is estimated to be 8.5–10.0%. Although India publishes well over a thousand journals, including about 360 OA journals, SCI Expanded indexed in 2009 only 101 Indian S&T journals including 46 OA journals. It is likely that the percentage of Indian papers in OA journals as seen from SCI will be higher if more Indian journals are indexed in SCI Expanded.
Access to Knowledge Work Plan: Synopsis of Feedback by Wikipedians
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jun 05, 2013 05:39 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team shared its annual work plan with the larger Wikipedia community. Over the last one month, Access to Knowledge team members were involved in receiving feedback from community members over mailing lists, private emails, Wikimedia Meta, IRC, and one-on-one conversations. In this post, we are sharing a brief summary of the feedback received.
Odia Wikipedia: Needs Assessment
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 06:35 AMThis blog encompasses the status of Odia Wikipedia and assessment of the needs for growth of the community.
Analysis of Konkani Wikipedia: Facts & Challenges
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified May 08, 2013 02:26 AMNitika Tandon, in this blog post, provides an analysis of the Konkani Wikipedia. She reflects on the challenges faced by Konkani Wikipedia and identifies four possible solutions.
Indian WikiWomen celebrate Women’s History Month
— by Netha Hussain — last modified Apr 29, 2013 09:21 AMMarch 2013 was a busy month for women Wikimedians in India, as we conducted various events, such as edit-a-thons and workshops to celebrate the presence of women in Wikimedia projects. The women Wikimedians, members of the Wikimedia India Chapter and the Access to Knowledge Team, brainstormed about the possible events, which we wanted to conduct to encourage women to participate and to increase the quality of articles related to Indian women in Wikipedias in English and the Indian languages.
Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #2: Visualising Page Views and Project Pages
— by Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Apr 22, 2013 01:37 PMIn this blog post, we bring you a visualisation of the page views statistics and the project specific pages that we created last month. The page views indicate the number of unique visits the Wikipedia project concerned has received in one month.
Odia Wikipedia - Bhubaneswar Community Meetup (March 17, 2013)
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 30, 2013 03:52 AMThe Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet and Society and the Odia Wikipedia community held a meetup in Bhubaneswar on March 17, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this meet-up.
Odia Wikipedia - Cuttack Community Meetup (March 16, 2013)
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 06:40 AMA meetup of Odia wikipedians was organised by the Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet and Society and the Odia wikipedia community on March 16, 2013. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meetup.
Wikipedia Indian Languages Workshop at IIT, Bombay
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Mar 28, 2013 11:44 AMThis is a brief report on the Wikipedia Indian languages workshop held on March 9, 2013 at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in partnership with Vaani, the Hindi bloggers' club at IIT, Bombay.
Iraqi Public Data Scenario Workshop: A Summary
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Apr 02, 2013 04:55 AMA workshop on public data was conducted by Sunil Abraham and Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the officials of the Government of Iraq. It was organized by UNDP Iraq in Amman, Jordan from October 18 to 23, 2012. Sumandro Chattapadhyay shares with us the developments from the workshop held over five days.
Indic Wikipedia Visualisation Project #1: Visualising Basic Parameters
— by Sajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Mar 26, 2013 10:04 AMSajjad Anwar and Sumandro Chattapadhyay bring you a visualisation of the growth of Indic Wikipedia in this first post on Indic Wikipedia Visualisation project. In doing so, the authors look into the different aspects of the past and present activities of Indic Wikipedias, and divide the visualisation into three different focus areas.
Strategic Issues Emerging from Open Access Dialogues - Final Report
— by Sumandro Chattapadhyay — last modified Oct 11, 2015 04:39 AMA series of discussions - on the Chat Literacy forum of ELDIS and on Twitter - was organised during November 2012 to March 2013 to identify the global challenges in 'Navigating the Complexities of Open Access'. The discussions were facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), through support from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. On behalf of CIS, Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-coordinated and contributed to these discussions.
Wiki Women's Day in Goa
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Mar 19, 2013 06:32 AMInternational Women's Day (IWD), also called International Working Women's Day, is celebrated on March 8, every year. There were a series of Wikipedia events organised this year with the aim of increasing participation of women contributing to Wikipedia. One such event was organised by the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society and the Wikimedia India Chapter at the Nirmala Institute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College in Panaji, Goa on March 8, 2013.
Introductory Wikipedia session at BITS Goa
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jul 26, 2013 11:40 AMThe Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society was invited by Nikhil Dixit, Public Relations Officer at the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani – Goa (BITS Goa) to organise Wikipedia session on March 7, 2013. Nitika Tandon participated in this workshop and shares with us the developments.
Ahmednagar — Marathi Wikipedia Workshop
— by Tanveer Hasan — last modified Jul 26, 2013 09:34 AMWikipedia Community members helped the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications Programme (HEIRA), CSCS Bangalore organize a day-long workshop on ‘Digital Literacy’ at Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, Maharasthra on January 17, 2013. Tanveer Hasan of HEIRA shares with us the developments in this report.
Creative Commons comes to India
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 06:49 AMCreative Commons team visited four Indian cities to spread the word about CC free licenses and CC affiliate program. Wikimedia India chapter was approached to join hands with Creative Commons for research and community building.
Fifty-fourth Bangalore Wikimedia Meet-up at IIM, Bangalore
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Mar 06, 2013 09:09 AMThe 54th Wikimedia meet-up in Bangalore was held at the Indian Institute of Management on February 25, 2013. The event was planned and organized by Radhakrishna Arvapally, SIG (Special Interest Group) Chair, Bangalore (a part of the Wikimedia India Chapter) with support from Solutions IQ, Wikimedia India Chapter and CIS.
FOSS, Wikimedia and Mozilla Under One Roof at GNUnify 2013, Pune
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 06:55 AMGNUnify 2013 organized in the campus in Pune from February 15 to 17, 2013. The event was organized by Pune Linux/Unix User Group (PLUG) and Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research (SICSR). Subhashish Panigrahi reports the outcomes in this blog post.
Odia Wikipedia Community Brings Wikipedia Education Program to IIMC, Dhenkanal
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Aug 23, 2013 02:01 PMThe Odia Wikipedia community collaborated with the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Dhenkanal and hosted a pilot Odia Wikipedia Education Program. The program began in November 2012 and got over by January 2013. Sixteen student wikipedians signed up and took part in editing more than a dozen articles on Odia Wikipedia.
Celebrating Odia Wikipedia's Ninth Anniversary
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Feb 28, 2013 04:32 AMOdia Wikipedia saw its first edit on January 29, 2004. After a dormancy of many years it got revived in 2011. To commemorate the effort of many volunteer wikipedians, a celebratory event was organized on January 29, 2013 in Bhubaneswar. Subhashish Panigrahi participated in this event.
Report of Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight
— by Zainab Bawa — last modified Mar 02, 2013 01:32 PMOn 19th and 20th January, HasGeek organized a hacknight to commemorate the life and works of Aaron Swartz. Zainab Bawa from HasGeek shares with us the developments.
Digital Literacy Workshop at Department of Arts, Delhi University
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Mar 05, 2013 01:03 AMA digital literacy workshop was organised at the Department of Arts, Delhi University for students pursuing their masters in Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies on February 5, 2013. Nitika Tandon shares the developments.
Access to Knowledge Report — September to December 2012
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Jan 31, 2013 10:14 AMThis post provides an overview of the activities done by the Access to Knowledge team under the grant provided by the Wikimedia Foundation from September 2012 to December 2012.
Remembering Aaron Swartz, Taking Up the Fight
— by Nishant Shah — last modified Jan 28, 2013 04:51 AMI encountered the Aaron Swartz memorial the other day that helps ‘liberate’ a randomly selected article from JSTOR, as an act of civil disobedience, to commemorate both the legacy that Swartz leaves behind, but also the high-profile witch-hunt case which was a crucial factor in him taking his own life.
Konkani in Wikipedia Incubator — Taking it to the Next Level
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jan 25, 2013 07:34 AMAn introductory session on Konkani in Wikipedia was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, Delhi in the Konkani Department at Goa University on December 12, 2012. About 30 participants took part in the event.
Aaron Swartz: The First Martyr of the Free Information Movement
— by Lawrence Liang — last modified Jan 24, 2013 12:26 PMWell known American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist died on January 11, 2013. Lawrence Liang from the Alternative Law Forum discusses with Newsclick the tragic loss. The interview was conducted by Prabir Purkayastha.
Promoting GLAM in Goa
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jul 26, 2013 11:27 AMWe organised an introductory Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) session at Goa State Central Library on December 13, 2012. It was well attended by about 45 interested people coming from over 10 different GLAM institutes in Goa.
Bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in Public Domain
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jul 26, 2013 11:35 AMOn December 14, 2012, a meeting was scheduled with the Vice Chancellor Dr. Satish R Shetye to discuss the possibility of bringing Konkani Encyclopedia in public domain. Nitika Tandon shares the development in this blog post.
A Wiki Workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology, Ghaziabad
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jan 22, 2013 03:09 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team organized a Wikipedia workshop at Raj Kumar Goel Institute of Technology (RKGIT), Ghaziabad in collaboration with Metawings on January 17, 2013. Subhashish Panigrahi summarizes the happenings from the one-day workshop in this blog post.
Celebrating the success of Wikipedia in Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Apr 16, 2013 12:48 PMWikipedia Club Pune, a local community based outreach user group in Pune has recently organized Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013 to spread words about “Spoken Wikipedia”, a project to add recorded audio for Indic language Wikipedia articles which will help the disabled to access Wikipedia and “Bridging Editor Gender Gap.”
Indic Language Wikipedias — Statistical Report — 2012
— by Shiju Alex — last modified Feb 03, 2013 02:40 AMI have compiled the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias for the year 2012. As usual, in this report, my aim is to provide my perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language wikipedias.
Wikipedia in St. Xavier's College, Mapusa, Goa
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jul 26, 2013 11:33 AMA three hour Wikipedia workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi, in the morning of December 14, 2012 at St. Xavier's College in Mapusa, Goa. Over 30 participants attended the session.
The Violence of Knowledge Cartels
— by Nishant Shah — last modified Jan 18, 2013 07:33 AMWe are all struck with a sense of loss, grief and shock since we heard of the death of Aaron Swartz, by suicide. People who have been his friends have written heart-felt obituaries, saluting his dreams and visions and unwavering commitment to a larger social good.
Two-day Wiki Workshop in Goa University: An Introduction
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jan 25, 2013 06:30 AMLast month, on December 12 and 13, 2012, the Access to Knowledge team from the Centre for Internet & Society along with Wikipedia community members organized a two-day workshop for M.A. and Ph.D. students at the Goa University. Nitika Tandon participated in the event and shares with us the developments.
Open Access Champion Leslie Chan Delivers Five Talks in India
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Jan 02, 2013 05:35 AMProfessor Leslie Chan, a champion of Open Access (OA) and Associate Director of the Centre for Critical Development Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough visited Tiruvananthapuram and Mysore in December 2012 for a series of lectures. Well known advocate for OA in India and the developing world, Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, accompanied him on these tours.
A Wikipedia Workshop at NMAIT
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jan 04, 2013 04:30 PMThe Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi collaborated with Metawings Institute to spread the words about Wikipedia for Indian languages. A one-day workshop was organized to educated the students on contributing to Wikipedia on December 21, 2012. About 170 engineering students took part in this event.
New Avenues: Media Wiki Groups
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Jan 05, 2013 01:46 AMThis blog post is a brief recap and snippets of my conversation with Harsh Kothari, a volunteer on Gujarati Wikipedia on what we've been doing to help with MediaWiki groups.
A Wikipedia Workshop at SRM University, Chennai
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Dec 27, 2012 05:57 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society, Delhi in association with Metawings Institute organized a one-day workshop on contributing to Wikipedia at SRM University on December 17, 2012. About 40 students from different engineering colleges in Chennai participated in the workshop. Metawings coordinated for the logistics and for spreading the word among the students.
Non Unicode ISCII Text Can be Converted to Unicode Now!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 21, 2012 09:59 AMOdia Wikipedian Manoj Sahukar has designed a new tool which can convert non Unicode ISCII text to Odia Unicode text. A majority of the digitized text and web content of newspapers and books are in non unicode text which now could be used for Wikipedia and other Odia Wiki projects. This opens a new arena for digitized free license books in Odia language.
Random Hacks of Kindness Global December 2012 — A Report
— by Yogesh Londhe — last modified Jan 08, 2013 04:12 PMA Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) hackathon in Bangalore was hosted at office of the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) in Domlur on December 1 and 2, 2012. CIS, Amnesty International India Office, Greenpeace India Office, HasGeek, Yahoo Research & Development and SimpleTechLife sponsored the event.
Marathi Wiki Workshop at Tata Institute of Social Sciences
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Feb 04, 2013 04:55 AMThe Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai is taking up a number of activities and conducting workshops focusing on Indian languages across cities. A series of workshops in Marathi, Kannada and Bangla have been planned with Wikipedia sessions in each of these events.
Kolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 04, 2012 07:19 AMRecently, Access to Knowledge team member Subhashish Panigrahi spent some time with wikipedians in Kolkata. Through this blog post he shares his experience and learning from the interaction. This post explores the journey of three wikipedians — Jayanta Nath, Deepon Saha and Ashwin.
First Odia Wikipedia Education Program to be Rolled Out
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 14, 2012 12:17 PMOdia Wikipedians gathered at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal on November 8, 2012 to start the first Odia Wikipedia Education Program. This program aims to bring students edit articles on Odia Wikipedia through a series of assessments by professors. The local community members from Nalconagar would be supporting the four month program.
Wikipedia Women's Workshop in Mumbai
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Dec 03, 2012 06:01 AMThe Wiki Women Workshop was organized at the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Wadala in Mumbai on November 4, 2012. It was attended by over 60 women participants who were taught how to contribute to Wikipedia articles and briefed about the knowledge gaps in Wikipedia — the free encyclopedia. Noopur Raval has prepared a report of the event.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at KMBB College, Bhubaneswar
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 07, 2012 10:40 PMThe Centre for Internet and Society along with Odia Wikipedians in Bhubaneswar organized an Odia Wikipedia workshop on November 18, 2012. It was held in KMBB College of Engineering. Odia Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia in Odia language which everyone can edit.
Follow up to Wikipedia Introductory Session at Bharati Vidyapeeth — More Interested and More Involved Participants
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Oct 30, 2013 09:17 AMA Wikipedia introductory session was organised at Bharati Vidyapeeth Engineering College in Delhi early this year and a follow up session was organised by CIS on November 19, 2012. About 12 to 15 participants attended the follow up session. Although most of the participants had attended the introductory session there were a few who were coming over for the first time.
Odia Wikipedia Gets a New Typing Solution!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Dec 12, 2012 12:28 PMSubhashish Panigrahi worked with Yuvi Panda to create a new typing scheme for Odia Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. This blog post gives a summary of this development and its outcome.
Open Government Platform: An Open Source Solution to Democratizing Access to Information and Energizing Civic Engagement
— by Neeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. Mishra — last modified Nov 19, 2012 03:15 AMIf government could release these datasets in open format for people to use & reuse, a whole lot of new innovative apps could be built around these datasets to provide better, customized services to citizens.
Typing in Indic Languages from Mobiles made Easy!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 09:02 AMA new app is up for typing in Indic languages from mobile phones. This is is available online at: http://bitly.com/indictyping and supports on iOS. Android version is to be released soon.
Report on Wikipedia Hackathon held in Hyderabad
— by Yuvi Panda — last modified Dec 03, 2012 06:37 AMBITS Hyderabad had a tech fest from October 25 to 27, 2012, and wanted to conduct a technical wiki hackathon. We decided to do it on October 26 — all night.
A Wikipedia Mini-hackathon in Delhi
— by Yuvraj Pandian — last modified Dec 04, 2012 07:31 AMWikipedian Yuvaraj Pandian visited the CIS office in Delhi and helped the Access to Knowledge team conduct a super-ad-hoc mini-hackathon with two other volunteers, Sheel from Delhi and Harsh from Ahmedabad. The aim was to get them a kickstart in developing userscripts/gadgets, and get them to a point where the prior existing documentation makes sense to them.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Academy of Media Learning
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jul 17, 2013 07:06 AMOdia Wikipedians were invited to Academy of Media Learning (AML), Bhubaneswar for a guest lecture and a workshop on contributing to Odia Wikipedia. The event was organised by the Centre for Internet & Society on November 10, 2012. This is a report about the activities in AML.
Gujarati Wikipedia Article Competition – 10 schools, 200 students, 20 articles on Gujarati Wikipedia
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Nov 04, 2012 02:12 AMThis was a competition to raise Wikipedia awareness and help students discover the joy of writing articles in their native language and an attempt to connect producers having knowledge in Gujarati to a wide audience of more than four lakh readers.
Gujarat Wikipedia Education Program: Rajkot
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Oct 31, 2012 08:17 AMThis report analyses a series of meetings and workshops held in Rajkot, a city in Gujarat, India during the month of October 2012.
First Pune Odia Wikipedia Workshop Organized!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 30, 2012 12:44 PMThe first Pune Odia Wikipedia workshop was organized in Pune on October 27, 2012. Subhashish Panigrahi recollects his experience about the events through this report.
Malayalam Wikipedia Education Program: August to October Updates
— by Shiju Alex — last modified Nov 09, 2012 06:18 PMThree months back, I wrote a blog post (http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/07/06/wikipedia-education-a-model-from-malayalam-wikipedia/) about the inauguration of the Wikipedia education program in Malayalam Wikipedia. This program is the first of its kind in an Indic language, and Malayalam community is doing the program in collaboration with the IT@School, a project of the Department of General Education, Government of Kerala, setup in 2001, to foster the IT education in schools.
Bridging Gender Gap in Pune: WikiWomenDay 2012 Celebrated with Success!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 10, 2012 08:30 AMA2K 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
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jul 26, 2013 11:43 AMThe 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
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Jan 07, 2013 04:30 PMThe 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!
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Nov 04, 2012 02:03 PMKannada 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!
— by Noopur Raval — last modified Feb 13, 2013 11:40 AMThis 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
— by Shiju Alex — last modified Oct 04, 2012 04:11 PMAfter 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.
Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telugu Wikipedia
— by Nitika Tandon — last modified Sep 29, 2012 12:13 PMNitika Tandon tells us about the Editor Growth & Contribution Program on Telegu Wikipedia, how it will run, its necessity and the future steps.
Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala
— by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 04, 2012 12:18 PMPatiala is the home to the famous Punjabi University. A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012.
Wikipedia Workshop in British Library, Chandigarh
— by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 04, 2012 12:08 PMA Wikipedia workshop was organized in Chandigarh by the British Library over two days on August 24 and 25, 2012. Bipin Kumar, Head of British Library and Christina, Deputy Manager had pivotal roles in designing this workshop with support from Piyush, a wikipedian.
The First Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop
— by Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Oct 04, 2012 12:16 PMFor those who might not be aware, Punjabi Wikipedia is one of the first Indic Wikipedias where community started editing way back in 2002. However, after the initial few edits all activities got stopped and it was inactive over the last decade. Recently we conducted a few workshops that led to the revival of Punjabi Wikipedia. This post is about the first Punjabi Wikipedia workshop held in Ludhiana, Punjab on July 28, 2012.
Indic Language Wikipedias – Statistical Report: January – June 2012
— by Shiju Alex — last modified Sep 28, 2012 03:41 PMThe following is a compilation of the statistical update of the Indic language Wikipedias from January to June 2012. The author provides perspectives on the health of various Indic language communities as well as the state of various Indic language Wikipedias during the period.
Kannada Wiki Workshop at Tumkur University
— by Shiju Alex — last modified Oct 16, 2012 12:35 PMTumkur University, Karnataka hosted a Kannada Wiki Workshop on September 15, 2012. This was the first Kannada Wikipedia workshop at Tumkur.
Unpacking Openness: From Seemingly Transparent to Definitely Opaque
— by Maarten Zeinstra and Marlieke Kieboom — last modified Aug 01, 2012 09:16 AMNishant Shah was in Netherlands recently and as part of his trip had given a public lecture to an audience at Kennisland. One of the respondents wrote a small write-up of the talk.
2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Jul 18, 2012 10:47 AMThe 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.
Open Government Data
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Jul 16, 2012 12:42 PMThe Transparency & Accountability Initiative published a book titled “Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector”. The Centre for Internet & Society contributed a chapter on Open Government Data.
Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified May 30, 2012 07:03 AMOn the 20th of April 2012, the third Design Public Conclave, organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society, was held at the National Museum, New Delhi. The Conclave brought together thought-leaders and decision makers from the government, the media, multinational organizations and academic institutions for a conversation about transforming India into an Innovation Society.
Cancel the Subscription
— by Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified May 09, 2012 03:44 AMIt has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available, writes Prof. Arunachalam in an article published by the Indian Express on May 8, 2012.
Arduino Introductory Workshop at CIS
— by Priya Kuber — last modified May 01, 2012 07:50 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society organised a hands-on-free Arduino workshop in its office on March 3, 2012. Video is now online!
Hejje — Together with Kannada & Technology
— by Murali & Pavithra — last modified Apr 09, 2012 09:18 AMTo discover the place of Kannada in the field of information technology, Sanchaya.net organized Hejje in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Vishwakannada.com and Chanda Pustaka on January 22, 2012 in Bangalore. The event marked the first step to bring everyone working in Kannada in the IT field to brainstorm the ideas for future steps, and create a space for technological collaboration in Kannada.
Open DataCamp — 2012
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Mar 30, 2012 02:49 PMA one-day unconference for people working with data from various sectors to come together and share their projects and ideas was organised in Bangalore on March 24, 2012. It was organised by the DataMeet group. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.
Francis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Aug 03, 2013 05:36 AMThe Electronic Publishing Trust recently announced a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developed countries who have made significant contribution for the cause of open access and free exchange of research findings. There were 30 nominations from 17 countries around the world and Dr. Francis Jayakanth from the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was selected for the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access in the Developing World by a committee that went through all the nominations.
Comments on Technical Standards for Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (Phase II)
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Feb 29, 2012 09:44 AMThe e-Governance Standards Division has called for public comments on the draft of the Technical Standards IFEG Phase II. We from the Centre for Internet and Society have given our comments.
An Interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Nov 24, 2012 06:09 AMIndia has been losing out its best talents to the West, however, this trend could be reversed if we create adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, and our scientific productivity and quality of research will improve significantly, says Dr. Francis Jayakanth in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.
Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Jan 30, 2012 04:24 PMThe Western Ghats Portal team had organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: technology behind biodiversity informatics, scientific commons and policy and biodiversity portals in India. It hoped to provide an opportunity to interact and learn from similar endeavors in this emerging discipline. The workshop was held at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.
Design!PubliC — Innovation and the Public Interest
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Jan 16, 2012 08:48 AMOn the 14th of October, 2011, the Center for Knowledge Societies organized the second edition of the Design Public Conclave, a conversation on how innovation can serve the Public Interest. The conclave was held at the lovely premises of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore.
Report on the 'Open Access to Academic Knowledge' workshop
— by Tom Dane — last modified Jan 08, 2012 10:57 AMOn Wednesday the 2nd of November, during Open Access Week, the Indian Institute of Science in conjunction with the Centre for Internet and Society held a workshop on Open Access at the National Centre for Science Information, in Bangalore.
Know your Users, Match their Needs!
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Feb 27, 2012 03:06 PMAs 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.
Professor Balaram talks Open Access
— by Tom Dane — last modified Aug 03, 2012 11:10 PMLast week Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science, about his thoughts on the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is available for download in the audio player within this post.
Open Access Week begins in Bangalore
— by Tom Dane — last modified Aug 03, 2012 11:04 PMOn Monday 24 October, the National Aerospace Laboratories in Bangalore held an event to mark the beginning of Open Access Week 2011
Open Government Data in India (v2)
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Dec 14, 2012 10:25 AMThe 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
— by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Madhan Muthu — last modified Dec 14, 2012 10:26 AMThe 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
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Dec 14, 2012 10:26 AMThe 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
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Dec 14, 2012 10:26 AMThe 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
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 24, 2011 06:32 AMA 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
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Sep 03, 2015 08:08 AMCIS 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)
— by Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Nov 01, 2023 12:41 PMAmrit 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
— by krithika — last modified Aug 30, 2011 02:23 PMThe 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
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:04 AMThere 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
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 20, 2011 12:56 PMWe 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)
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified May 22, 2013 10:48 AMIn 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.
Withdrawal of Journal Access is a Wake-up Call for Researchers in the Developing World
— by Subbiah Arunachalam — last modified Nov 01, 2023 12:39 PMGuest blog by Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop, Subbiah Arunachalam (Trustees for the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development). This article was published in Speaking of Medicine PLoS Medicine community blog on January 17, 2011.
E-Governance Interoperability Framework — Meeting in Iraq
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:04 AMA meeting to create a plan of action for the development of e-Governance Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) in Iraq and include formulation of an e-GIF policy and technical document within the larger framework of public sector modernization, was held from 25 to 27 January 2011. Sunil Abraham was the main resource person for this meeting.
The Online Video Environment in India - A Survey Report
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Oct 03, 2011 09:31 AMiCOMMONS, the OPEN VIDEO ALLIANCE, and the CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY have initiated a research project which seeks to survey the online video environment in India and the opportunities this new medium presents for creative expression and civic engagement. This report seeks to define key issues in the Indian context and begins to develop a short-term policy framework to address them.
Call for Comments for Report on Open Government Data in India
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Mar 01, 2013 05:50 AMThe Centre for Internet & Society is pleased to announce a public call for comments on the Report on Open Government Data in India prepared by Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah.
Wikipedia Meet-up in TERI
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Sep 22, 2011 12:21 PMThe Wikipedia Bangalore meet-up is a monthly get-together of Wikipedians (contributors and users) to meet, discuss, share experiences, reach out and advocate for Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Danese Cooper, Chief Technical Officer, Wikimedia Foundation, Alolita Sharma, Engineering Programs Manager, Wikimedia Foundation, Erik Möller, Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation and Achal Prabhala, Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board Member attended the meeting. The Centre for Internet and Society made arrangements for this event.
Call for Comments for Report on the Online Video Environment in India
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Dec 14, 2012 12:12 PMThe Open Video Alliance, the Centre for Internet and Society and iCommons are pleased to announce a public call for comments on version 1 of "Online Video Environment in India: A Survey Report".
Free Access to Law—Is it here to Stay? An Environmental Scan Report
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Mar 20, 2012 06:36 PMThe following is a preliminary project report collaboratively collated by the researchers of the "Free Access to Law" research study. This report aims to highlight the trends, as well as the risks and opportunities, for the sustainability of Free Access to Law initiatives in each of the country examined.
Open Access to Science and Scholarship - Why and What Should We Do?
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Aug 23, 2011 03:13 AMThe National Institute of Advanced Studies held the eighth NIAS-DST training programme on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Science, Technology and Society” from 26 July to 7 August, 2010. The theme of the project was ‘Knowledge Management’. Dr. MG Narasimhan and Dr. Sharada Srinivasan were the coordinators for the event. Professor Subbiah Arunachalam made a presentation on Open Access to Science and Scholarship.
Civic Hacking Workshop
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 23, 2011 03:14 AMCIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, is organizing a workshop on open data (or the lack thereof) and 'civic hacking'.
Open Access to International Agricultural Research
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Aug 25, 2011 08:13 AMOpen access advocates have urged the top management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to give open access to its research publications. A report by Subbiah Arunachalam on 3 June, 2010 was also circulated to all the signatories of the letter.
Research Project on Open Video in India
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 23, 2011 02:51 AMOpen Video Alliance and the Centre for Internet and Society are calling for researchers for a project on open video in India, its potentials, limitations, and recommendations on policy interventions.
Does the Social Web need a Googopoly?
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:06 AMWhile the utility of the new social tool Buzz is still under question, the bold move into social space taken last week by the Google Buzz team has Gmail users questioning privacy implications of the new feature. In this post, I posit that Buzz highlights two privacy challenges of the social web. First, the application has sidestepped the consensual and contextual qualities desirable of social spaces. Secondly, Google’s move highlights the increasingly competitive and convergent nature of the social media landscape.
The (in)Visible Subject: Power, Privacy and Social Networking
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:06 AMIn this entry, I will argue that the interplay between privacy and power on social network sites works ultimately to subject individuals to the gaze of others, or to alternatively render them invisible. Individual choices concerning privacy preferences must, therefore, be informed by the intrinsic relationship which exists between publicness/privateness and subjectivity/obscurity.
Impaired Social Mobility
— by Prasad Krishna — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:07 AMLeading e-mail providers like Gmail and Yahoo Mail have introduced open protocols for copying e-mails offline through Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird but popular social networking websites like Facebook, Myspace, etc generally do not allow the user to backup their own data. Sunil Abraham through this article points out that if competition and technological development does not rectify the situation then the government needs to intervene for the sake of its citizens.
Openness, Videos, Impressions
— by Nishant Shah — last modified Sep 22, 2011 12:23 PMThe one day Open Video Summit organised by the Centre for Internet & Society, iCommons, Open Video Alliance, and Magic Lantern, to bring together a range of stakeholders to discuss the possibilities, potentials, mechanics and politics of Open Video. Nishant Shah, who participated in the conversations, was invited to summarise the impressions and ideas that ensued in the day.
Open Content and Access in the Knowledge Society
— by Radha Rao — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:08 AMOpen Content and Access: Democratising and Disruptive Impacts on the Knowledge Society - by Madanmohan Rao, Editor, The KM Chronicles - Bangalore; Dec 16, 09
Open Video Summit
— by Radha Rao — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:08 AMThe Open Video Summit: A one-day workshop to explore issues of intellectual property and telecom policy for video is being organized by The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), iCommons, Open Video Alliance and Magic Lantern on December 15, 2009 at TERI, Bangalore, from 9am to 6pm.
Creative Commons Casestudies, Featuring Status.Net
— by Radha Rao — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:08 AMThe Centre For Internet and Society and JAAGA organised a CC Salon on 02nd December, 2009 at 7.30pm.
Open Standards Workshop at IGF '09
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 23, 2011 02:54 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society co-organized a workshop on 'Open Standards: A Rights-Based Framework' at the fourth Internet Governance Forum, at Sharm el-Sheikh. The panel was chaired by Aslam Raffee of Sun Microsystems and the panellists were Sir Tim Berners-Lee of W3C, Renu Budhiraja of India's DIT, Sunil Abraham of CIS, Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft, and Rishab Ghosh of UNU-MERIT.
Is Copyright Law Censoring the Art World?
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:09 AMLast week, ART and the Center for Law and Policy Research held a workshop on “Copyright, Censorship and the Creative Commons” for individuals interested in examining the art/law nexus, and exploring its broader implications for individual artists and the creative commons. While it appears that artists are becoming more rights conscious, the increasing copyrightability of art today is compelling many artists to critically rethink the role of law in the art world.
After 15 Years, Is Free Access to Law Here to Stay?
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:07 AMCIS, in collaboration with partners LexUM and SAFLII, is undertaking a Global Free Access to Law Study. Being the first of its kind within the Free Access to Law Movement, this comparative study will examine what free access to law initiatives do, evaluate their core benefits and identify factors determining of their sustainability. In the end, the free access to law study will provide future initiatives and existing LII networks with proven and adoptable best practices which will support the continued growth of the legal information commons.
Wiki Academy
— by Radha Rao — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:01 AMAn article by Hari Prasad Nadig on Wiki Academy, a workshop based on usage of Indian languages, editing and its applications in academics of Wikipedia - the free online encyclopedia, was held at Eric Mathias hall in St Aloysius College in Mangalore on Saturday, August 22.
Second Response to Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:06 AMThe government is in the process of drafting a national policy on open standards for e-governance. The National Informatics Centre recently released draft version 2 of the policy, and CIS sent in its comments on the draft.
Letter to Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, Advocating Adoption of FOSS in State IT Academies
— by Sanchia de Souza — last modified Aug 23, 2011 02:55 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society is a signatory to a letter being sent to the Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of FOSS at state IT academies.
An Interview With Arjen Kamphuis
— by Sanchia de Souza — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:01 AMIn an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Dutch open source activist Arjen Kamphuis discussed his experience of successfully working with the government for a policy mandating open standards for all government IT in the Netherlands.
International Repository Infrastructure Workshop, Amsterdam, 16-17 March 2009: A Report
— by Sanchia de Souza — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:01 AMOpen Access activist Madhan Muthu recently attended the International Repository Infrastructure Workshop, held in Amsterdam, 16-17 March 2009, in company with CIS Distinguished Fellow Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam. In this entry, as a guest blogger for CIS, he files a report on the proceedings at the workshop.
Journals, Open Access, Copyright, Repositories
— by Sanchia de Souza — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:01 AMProf N. Mukunda, Editor of Publications, The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, discusses open access in his keynote address at the 26 March 2009 one-day conference on 'Scholarly Communications in the Age of the Commons'.
RTI Application to Visvesvaraya Technological University
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:01 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors.
Department of Information Technology Meeting on a National Policy on E-Accessibility
— by Nirmita Narasimhan — last modified Sep 22, 2011 12:32 PMOn 30 January 2009, the Department of Information Technology hosted a meeting in New Delhi bringing together important stakeholders to discuss the issue of electronic accessibility for the disabled and persons with special needs in India.
Updated List of Signatories for Letter Supporting WIPO Treaty for the Reading Disabled
— by Sanchia de Souza — last modified Aug 25, 2011 08:35 AMThe list of signatories to a letter in support of the WIPO Treat for the Reading Disabled has been updated.
Workshop on Reforming the International ICT Standardization System
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 23, 2011 02:56 AMOn Day 4, the last day, of the Internet Governance Forum, a workshop was conducted by the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards on the reforming the international ICT standardisation system. The panellists were Bob Jolliffe of Freedom to Innovate South Africa, Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, Ashish Gautam of IBM India, and Aslam Raffee, Chairperson of the Government IT Officers' Council, OSS Working Group, Republic of South Africa, who moderated the session.
Report on Open Standards for GISW2008
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Jan 05, 2009 06:52 AMIn this report, Sunil Abraham lays out the importance and the policy implications of Open Standards.
DCOS Agreement on Procurement
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 23, 2011 02:58 AMOn December 6, 2008, at the closing of the third Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS), of which the Centre for Internet and Society is a member, released an agreement entitled the "Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards".
Open Access Day celebrated in India
— by Sunil Abraham — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:06 AMThe Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and the Centre for Culture, Media and Governance co-organised joint celebrations of Open Access Day in Jamia Millia Islamia campus on the 14th of October 2008. Around 50 people attended the event from different departments in Jamia there were also some participants from the Indian Linux Users Group. CIS also published an Open Access flyer on this day featuring quotations from Sam Pitroda, MS Swaminathan, Peter Suber, Alma Swan, Frederick Noronha, Barbara Kirsop and Samir Brahmachari.
The National Public Meeting on Software Patents
— by Pranesh Prakash — last modified Aug 23, 2011 03:02 AMOn Saturday, October 4, 2008, the Centre for Internet and Society, with the support of eighteen other organization, held a meeting on the National Public Meeting on Software Patents in the United Theological College campus. The aim of the event was to explore various issues surrounding software patents, especially from the perspective of the draft Patent Manual.
A2K3 Panel XI: Open Access to Science and Research
— by Sunil Abraham — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:07 AMProf. Subbiah Arunachalam participated in the third Access to Knowledge hosted by The Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School between September 8-10, 2008, in Geneva, Switzerland. The conference held at the Geneva International Conference Centre brought together hundreds of decision-makers and experts on global knowledge to discuss the urgent need for policy reforms.
Essay Competition for Software Freedom Day
— by Sunil Abraham — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:02 AMThe Free Software Users Group of Bangalore and the Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration organise an essay competition for schools and colleges in Bangalore on the topic of "Software Freedom"
Reconceptualizing Privacy on Social Network(s) Sites
— by Rebecca Schild — last modified Aug 18, 2011 05:07 AMWhile “privacy” on social network sites remains a highly ambiguous notion, much debate surrounding the issue to date has focused on privacy as the nonpublic-ness of personal information. However, as these social platforms become sites for diverse forms of “networking”, privacy must also be popularly conceptualized as control over personal data flows.
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