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OSOD 2013: International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/international-workshop-open-science-and-open-data
<b>Nehaa Chaudhari was a panelist at the International Workshop on Open Science and Open Data, 2013, held on October 07, 2013 at the Indian Statistical Institute. She gave a presentation on "Government Copyright and the Open Access Conundrum" </b>
<p>Parts of this presentation draw from <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blog/yojana-august-2013-pranesh-prakash-copyrights-and-copywrongs-why-the-govt-should-embrace-the-public-domain" class="external-link">Pranesh Prakash's views on Government Copyright</a>. Special thanks to Bhairav Acharya for his valuable inputs and feedback.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute along with Creative Commons USA held this workshop. The main objective of this workshop was to bring together international experts, practitioners and advocates of Open Access to information to discuss and contemplate on key issues contributing to Open Science. The workshop also aimed to serve as a platform for institutions, academicians, scientists and researchers interested in Open Science to exchange thoughts and processes 'How To' create Open content within legal framework.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Key Speakers</h3>
<ol>
<li><span><b>Puneet Kishor</b> (Policy Coordinator for Science and Data, Creative Commons)</span></li>
<li><span> <b>ARD Prasad</b> (DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, India)<br /></span></li>
<li><span><b>Devika P. Madalli</b> (DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, India)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><b>Giridhar Manepalli</b> (CNRI, USA)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><b>Usha Munshi</b> (Indian Institute of Public Administartion, India)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><b>Subbiah Arunachalam </b>(Information Scientist, India)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><b>Sridhar Parishetty</b> (</span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span>Centre for Inclusive Governance, Bangalore)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>Nehaa Chaudhari</b> (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore)</span><span><span><b> </b></span><span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>R. Prabhakar</b> (India Biodiversity Portal, Bangalore)<span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>Nisha Thompson</b> (Arghyam)<span><b> </b></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
<li> <span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span><b>Yashas Shetty</b> (Srishti, Centre For Experimental Media Arts, Bangalore) </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></li>
</ol> <ol> </ol>
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<ul>
<li> <a class="external-link" href="http://drtc.isibang.ac.in/osod/programme">Read the agenda here</a></li>
<li>Download Nehaa's presentation titled <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog/osod-2013.ppt" class="internal-link">Government Accessibility and Copyright Conundrum here</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/international-workshop-open-science-and-open-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/international-workshop-open-science-and-open-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen ContentOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2013-10-22T11:02:49ZNews ItemMy First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop
<b>On 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.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b><a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">CIS-A2K</a></b> had planned a day long <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a> training workshop in collaboration with Telugu Wikipedians at the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.efluniversity.ac.in/">English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU)</a>, Hyderabad on March 8, 2013. The intention was to target research students at EFLU who are using Telugu material or working on topics related to Telugu and Andhra Pradesh. This event was also to be part of the Wiki Women’s month events across India. However, this event had to be cancelled in the last minute as a Research Student of EFLU committed suicide on the campus and there was major unrest. The faculty from EFLU though had informed of the possible cancellation of the event earlier, had only confirmed it on March 7, 2013. <b><a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%B9%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%AE%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A6%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D">Rahmanuddin Shaik</a></b> (Telugu SIG, <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India_chapter">Wikimedia India Chapter</a>) and <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%B5%E0%B0%BE%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%81%E0%B0%95%E0%B0%B0%E0%B0%BF:Rajasekhar1961"><b>Dr. Rajasekhar</b> </a>(Telugu Wikipedia Administrator) had already blocked an entire day for this training workshop. In fact a lot of background work was already done for the EFLU event.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When I got the news of cancellation of the workshop, initially I was very dejected at the thought of informing the two active Telugu Wikipedians about it, which I had to do. As my tickets were anyhow booked to Hyderabad and there was no point cancelling them, as I was already on my way to catch the flight, I decided to go ahead with my journey. I made some couple of quick calls and with some effort managed to organize a Wikipedia Training Workshop in collaboration with the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%A5%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%87%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%94%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%80%E0%B0%9A%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%82%E0%B0%A8%E0%B0%BF%E0%B0%9F%E0%B1%8D_%28%E0%B0%9F%E0%B0%BF.%E0%B0%93.%E0%B0%AF%E0%B1%81%29">Theatre Outreach Unit (TOU)</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.uohyd.ac.in/">University of Hyderabad (UoH)</a>. I was anyhow planning on visiting them to explore an institutional collaboration. The Project Director of TOU Dr. Peddi Ramarao, though agreed to spread the word about the workshop, yet was not sure how many would turn up at such a short notice of one night.</p>
<table class="invisible">
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto2forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 2" height="364" width="486" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th> <th>
<p>Rahmanuddin and Dr. Rajasekhar giving hands-on training to edit Telugu Wikipedia at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad</p>
</th>
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</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So on March 8, 2013 Rahmanuddin, Dr. Rajasekhar and I landed at the <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%B0%97%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%A8%E0%B1%8D_%E0%B0%A4%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%B0%E0%B1%86%E0%B0%B7%E0%B1%8B%E0%B0%B2%E0%B1%8D%E0%B0%A1%E0%B1%8D">Golden Threshold</a> hoping against hope to see at least 3 or 4 participants. But alas there were only 2 people when we reached the venue by 10 a.m.. By 10.25 a.m. we had 9 participants, which excited us all. The training workshop began with an introduction of all the participants. Following this a presentation was made on the significance of Wikipedia in the digital era and how Indian language-Wikipedias are pivotal in preserving the vernacular language and culture. This session was interactive with participants asking many questions. Dr. Peddi Ramarao, later, spoke about his experience of using Wikipedia as a reference tool and how he got introduced to contributing Wikipedia. Further, the discussion went on to the poor quality of articles on Telugu Wikipedia and how the participants can take part in improving the existing articles and contribute new articles. Rahmanuddin and Rajasekhar practically demonstrated the process of editing on <a class="external-link" href="http://te.wikipedia.org">Telugu Wikipedia</a>. This was followed by a hands-on session where the participants actively participated in creating their Wikipedia User name on Telugu Wikipedia and did editing of few articles. The training programme was to officially end at Lunch time but even post lunch some of the participants were enthusiastic about learning more nuances of contributing on Telugu Wikipedia. The hands-on session thus continued until 4 p.m.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Post the Wikipedia training programme, I have had interactions with the Project Director of TOU to explore possible future collaborations. TOU, UoH agreed to offer space to host all Telugu Wikipedia meet-ups. As the Golden Threshold space was in the central part of the city, having this infrastructure accessible was a major boost for the Telugu Wikipedia community in Hyderabad. Further, in the discussions we have agreed to collaborate with TOU, UoH in hosting the first mega Telugu Wikipedia community event <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</p>
<table class="invisible">
<tbody>
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<th><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TOUphoto3forCIS.png" title="TOU Training photo 3" height="261" width="348" alt="null" class="image-inline" /></th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Telugu Wikipedia Orientation in progress</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3><b>Outcomes and Impact:</b></h3>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the 9 new Users, who were trained during this workshop, 5 people have done more than 5 edits.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">One person has become a very active editor on Telugu Wikipedia with more than 1000 edits in 3 months. A detailed account of this event was put up by this user on Telugu Wikipedia here <a href="#fn*" name="fr*">[*]</a></li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Because of CIS-A2K’s efforts, Telugu Wikipedians in Hyderabad now have a good meeting space.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">The availability of this space has also encouraged the Telugu Wikipedians to meet more often than before. Since March 8, 2013 Telugu Wikipedians had a total of 6 meet-ups, and all these were held at Golden Threshold.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Golden Threshold also became a venue for hosting <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013</i>.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">This visit to Hyderabad triggered a discussion about organizing <i>Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam</i>, which was successfully organized in a month’s time.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Looking back, though this event was done as a last minute measure without many expectations, yet it turned out to be a lucky break! Especially, because this was my first ever event as the CIS-A2K Programme Director. It will remain a very memorable one. More so because it was done in collaboration with two of the active Telugu Wikipedians. Even more so because it has created some positive energy for the Telugu Wikipedia community, which has since then become a home turf.</p>
<hr />
<p>[<a href="#fr*" name="fn*">*</a>]. <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/17WYq7X">http://bit.ly/17WYq7X</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop</a>
</p>
No publishervishnuDigital ActivismArtAccess to KnowledgeDigital AccessWikimediaWikipediaCyberculturesTelugu WikipediaOpen ContentCommunitiesOpennessMeetingEvent2013-08-19T06:51:16ZBlog EntryWikipedia Introductory Session organized for Data and India portal consultants
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session
<b>On 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.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Recently <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/" class="external-link">Centre for Internet and Society</a>'s <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">Access To Knowledge</a> team was invited to demonstrate the usefulness of Wikipedia for the consultants of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nic.in/">National Informatics Centre</a> (NIC) working for the <a class="external-link" href="http://data.gov.in/">Data.gov.in</a> and the <a class="external-link" href="http://india.gov.in/">National Portal of India</a> at NIC's New Delhi office. Data portal being one of the very important open data portal of the Government of India has worked immensely to populate over 2400 datasets from 32 departments participating in it.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many of the data need to be transcribed in popular medias especially on web. Wikipedia being world's largest online encyclopedia could be one such primary platform to use these useful data. <a class="external-link" href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Psubhashish">Subhashish</a> from A2K team explained the usefulness of Wikipedia for the people associated with this project. The session went with discussing about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_policies">policies</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style">Manual of style</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars">Five pillars of Wikipedia</a> followed by a demonstration of editing articles on English Wikipedia. Post editing session there was a discussion session about the notability and how to check accuracy of articles by using valid references.</p>
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<div id="sdfootnote1">
<p class="sdfootnote"><a class="sdfootnotesym" href="#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym">1</a> <a class="external-link" href="http://bit.ly/11DMH5w">http://bit.ly/11DMH5w</a></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wikipedia-introductory-session</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsDigital GovernanceDigital AccessOpen DataOpen ContentOpen AccessOpennessOpen Innovation2013-07-17T06:33:20ZBlog EntryUse made of Open Access Journals by Indian Researchers to Publish their Findings
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings
<b>Most 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.</b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong><span class="person_name">Muthu, Madhan</span> and <span class="person_name">Subbiah, Arunachalam</span> (2011) <em>Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings.</em> Current Science, 100 (9). pp. 1297-1306.</strong><strong> <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-of-open-access-journals-for-publishing-findings" class="internal-link">Download the full research paper</a></strong></p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">How aware are Indian researchers of open access (OA) and its advantages 10 years after Stevan Harnad<a name="fr1"></a> visited India and spoke about the need for adopting OA archiving? To answer this question, we looked at India’s participation in both OA institutional archiving and Indian researchers using OA journals to publish their findings. In this article, our emphasis is on the use made of selected high impact OA journals, particularly Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central (BMC) journals and Acta Crytallographica Section E, the three leading publishers of open access papers in terms of number of papers published annually.<a name="fr2"></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Registry of Open Access Repository (ROAR)<a name="fr3"></a> lists 2,047 repositories (data gathered on 17 December) of which 59 are from India. Included in the 59 repositories are the National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR) journals repository, the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology Journal repository and repetitive entries of five institutional repositories, viz. EPrints@CMFRI, EPrints@IIMK, EPrints@MKU, repository of INFLIBNET and the repository at the Cochin University of Science and Technology. Many Indian repositories listed in ROAR are inactive. There are at least five other Indian repositories not listed in ROAR, viz. Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, and Vidyanidhi, Mysore, both repositories of theses; International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Ministry of Earth Sciences and SARAI. In all, there are 33 OA repositories in India which include 24 institutional repositories, 4 subject repositories and 5 dedicated theses and dissertation repositories. The quality of tese repositories varies widely as well as their maintenance. Considering that there are more than 450 universities and several hundred research laboratories in the government, corporate and the non-government sectors, one would expect a very large number of institutional repositories in India. Furthermore, many of these repositories are not filling fast enough.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Out of the 5,897 OA journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals or DOAJ (data accessed on 17 December 2010)<a name="fr4"></a> 276 are from India. Another database, Open J-Gate 5 , developed by the Bangalore-based Informatics India, lists 7,967 OA periodicals worldwide which include 4,773 peer-reviewed journals including 339 peer-reviewed Indian journals (Figure 1). There are a few other Indian OA journals which are yet to be listed in DOAJ and indexed in Open J-Gate. For example, two journals published by the Indian National Science Academy (Indian Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics and Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy) and two journals published by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences and Indian Journal of Animal Sciences) are neither indexed in Open J-Gate nor listed in DOAJ. DOAJ does not index Indian Journal of Natural Products and Resources (formerly known as Natural Product Radiance), published by NISCAIR. In all, there are more than 360 Indian OA journals. Needless to say a vast majority of papers, published in the Indian OA journals, are mostly written by Indian researchers. Incidentally, two Indian journal publishers, viz. Indian Academy of Sciences and MedKnow Publications figure in the top 14 OA journal publishers in the Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP) survey. <a name="fr5"></a> Our focus here is papers published by Indian researchers in high-impact OA journals published outside India. We chose all seven journals published by PLoS, 10 BMC journals and Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports. We gathered data from the Science Citation Index – Expanded section of Web of Science between 11 and 29 December 2010. Countries were assigned to papers based on addresses in the by-line. If three authors then the paper was assigned to all three countries. Therefore, the sum of papers from different countries will be far more than the actual number of papers indexed in Web of Science.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Results</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>BioMed Central Journals</strong><br />BioMed Central, established in May 2000, is the world’s leading OA publisher<a name="fr6"></a> in the fields of medical research and biology and publishes 208 OA journals as noted on 28 December 2010. Not all of them commenced publication at the same time, not even the same year. Different journals started publication in different years. So far these journals together have published 99,717 articles, including 83,893 original research papers and 15,824 other types of articles (Table 1). Indian researchers have published 1,872 original research papers and 92 other types of articles (such as review articles) in these 208 journals. To see India’s record in perspective, we have provided data for 11 other countries. These include the other three BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa and China), South Korea and Israel, both of which have scientific enterprises comparable in size to that of India, and six advanced countries. USA stands out with close to 29,300 papers, followed by Great Britain (9,464 papers) and Germany (9,340 papers). China is way ahead of other BASIC countries, and India is ahead of Israel, Korea and South Africa in the number of papers published. Brazil is ahead of India in total number of papers but falls behind in the number of original research papers. It will be interesting to see why researchers from Brazil publish such a large number of review articles.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of these 208 journals, only 77 have been listed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2009 and assigned an impact factor. (For a journal to get indexed in JCR it should have been in existence for longer than two years). We list in Table 2 those journals with impact factor greater than 4.000. Among BMC journals, Genome Biology has the highest impact factor (6.626). Other high impact factor journals are Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (5.825), BMC Biology (5.636) and Breast Cancer Research (5.326). The following nine journals have published more than 2,000 papers so far (since they became OA journals): BMC Bioinformatics (4,078), BMC Genomics (3,204), Critical Care (2,787), BMC Public Health (2,580), Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica (2,575), BMC Cancer (2,344), Arthritis Research and Therapy (2,286), Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research (2,255) and Genome Biology (2,069). Ten journals have published more than 1000 papers but less than 2000. Four journals have published less than 100 papers. Five journals have citations per paper (CPP) higher than 10. These are Genome Biology (18.35), Veterinary Research (12.27), Genetics Selection Evolution (11.71), Respiratory Research (11.03) and Breast Cancer Research (10.33).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The number of papers published by authors in India in 10 BMC journals during 2003–2010 (data gathered on 13December 2010), the number of citations to these papers and cites/papers are provided in Table 3. To see the Indian papers in perspective, we have also given the total number of papers published in these 10 journals during the same period, number of citations received by them and the average number of citations per paper (CPP) as well as similar data for 11 other selected countries including five scientifically middle-level countries and six advanced countries. A quick look at the table reveals that there is a perceptible difference between the middle-level countries and the advanced countries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian researchers have published 4.53% of the papers that have appeared in Malaria Journal, 2.49% of papers appearing in BMC Genomics, 1.77% of papers appearing BMC Public Health, 1.7% of papers appearing in BMC Bioinformatics, and 1.61% of papers appearing in BMC Evolutionary Biology. India’s participation in the other five journals is rather meagre. Looking at CPP, Indian contributions in nine of the ten journals have a lower CPP than the world papers. Year after year, Thomson Reuters’s ScienceWatch has shown that Indian research papers on an average have been cited less often than world papers in every field<a name="fr7"></a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But Indian papers in BMC Public Health have been cited on average 7.45 times compared to the world average of 5.59 CPP. This is rare and the researchers responsible for this deserve to be congratulated. It will be worth examining if India’s performance in public health research is of a higher class overall than research in other areas of medicine. The number of papers from China in BMC journals accounts for a much larger per cent than papers from India. For example, papers from China account for 10.0% in BMC Cancer, 7.75% in BMC Genomics, 5.74% in BMC Bioinformatics and 5.41% in BMC Evolutionary Biology. This is to be expected, as China is second only to USA in the number of papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and publishes more than three times the number of papers as India. Except in Breast Cancer Research, in which journal China publishes about 1% of papers, in all other journals, China’s CPP value is less than the journal average.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Although Brazil publishes fewer papers than India, it has an enviable CPP record in at least five journals considered here: Arthritis Research and Therapy (15.88; journal average 8.64), Genome Biology (23.43; journal average 22.50), Critical Care (11.96; journal average 8.23), Breast Cancer Research (10.71; journal average 8.52) and BMC Public Health (6.54; journal average 5.59). Israel, a small country with only a few research institutions and universities, has published fewer papers, but has a CPP higher than the journal average in seven of the ten journals. South Korea has a higher CPP for its papers in Arthritis Research and Therapy than the journal average.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Except for BMC Public Health, in all the other journals USA accounts for not less than 25% of papers and in some well over 40%. Also, in each of the 10 journals, USA has recorded higher CPP than the journal average. Great Britain is a distant second, but its share of papers in BMC Public Health and Malaria Journal is even higher than that of USA. Britain’s interest in public health and malaria research could be explained by over two centuries of her colonial connections. Also, in both these journals, Britain’s CPP is greater than the journal average. In fact, in both BMC Genomics and Malaria Journal, the CPP is highest for Britain.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Germany has published a larger number of papers in BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Cancer than Britain and France and these have been cited more often as well. Germany has published close to 10% of the papers in Genome Biology and these papers have recorded the highest CPP (33.08 compared to 25.78 for USA).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>Acta Crystallographica<br /></strong>The International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) publishes Acta Crystallographica in six sections. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online is the IUCr’s first electronic-only journal<a name="fr8"></a> It is a rapid communication journal for the publication of concise reports on inorganic, metal-organic and organic structures. Unlike other fee-based OA journals published in the western world, this journal charges a modest USD 150 per article and it also offers a fee waiver for authors from developing countries.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">During the seven years 2003–2009, this journal published 22,887 papers which were cited 35,078 times (Table 4). China accounted for more than 47% of these papers, followed by India (9.1%). However, papers from India averaged a higher CPP (2.13) than Germany, Britain and USA. Crystallography is a known area of strength in India. The earliest Indian paper in this field by Banerjee<a name="fr9"></a> of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science appeared in 1930. Today, chemical crystallography is arguably stronger than all other aspects of crystallography in India, although in the early years physicists dominated the field. Work in biological crystallography started when G. N. Ramachandran, a physicist, started his work at the University of Madras in the 1950s. It will be interesting to look at the historical evolution of crystallography in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><strong>PLoS journals</strong><br />We will now turn our attention to the PLoS journal<a name="fr10"></a> There are seven journals in all. PLoS ONE (eISSN-1932-6203) is somewhat different from the other six PLoS journals. It is an international, peer-reviewed, OA, online publication that accepts reports on primary research from any scientific discipline. In-house PLoS staff and international Advisory and Editorial Boards ensure fast, fair, and professional peer review. In Table 5, we provide data on the number of papers published each year by authors from the 12 countries during 2006–2010. The USA has published the largest number of papers, viz. 6,501, which is more than four times that of Britain, its nearest rival. India has published 262 papers and has the least CPP, viz. 2.34, whereas all the other countries have a CPP of above 3.0. Britain has the highest, viz. 4.76, closely followed by Germany (4.73). The values for other countries are: USA (4.36), France (4.23), Canada (4.29), Israel (3.98), Japan (3.86), South Korea (3.82), South Africa (3.46), China (3.24) and Brazil (3.01). The journal has published during this period 14,071 papers at a CPP of 3.99. The number of papers published by the other six journals, number of times they are cited and impact factors of these journals are given in Table 6. In these journals, India has published 120 papers and these have been cited 1,022 times for an average of 8.52 CPP. The corresponding figures for other middle-level countries are: China (212 papers and 11.39 CPP), South Korea (62 papers and 17.47 CPP), Brazil (131 papers and 10.21 CPP), South Africa (137 papers and 18.42 CPP) and Israel (184 papers and 15.46 CPP).</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Looking at individual journals (Table 7), one sees that in general the middle-level countries have published very few papers compared to the advanced countries. There are exceptions though. Israel has published 73 papers in PLoS Computational Biology, comparable to France’s 92 and higher than Canada’s 55 and Japan’s 46. In this journal Israel’s CPP (8.5) is comparable to the world average (9.1) and the CPP of Britain and higher than the CPP of Japan. In PLoS Medicine, India’s 38 papers have a CPP of 6.92, far below the journal average of 14.12, and less than that of the other 11 countries considered. In PloS Biology, India has a CPP of 15.77, far below the journal average of 31.69, whereas South Korea (54.78) and China (32.12) have a CPP higher than the journal average. In PLoS Genetics, Brazil, South Africa and Israel have a higher CPP than the journal average. Authors from USA publish the largest number of papers in each of the six PLoS speciality journals, followed by Britain. But USA leads in CPP in only two of them, viz. PLoS Pathogens and PLoS Computational Biology. Britain has the highest CPP for PLoS Genetics followed by USA. Japan has the highest CPP for PLoS Medicine followed by France. Canada has the highest CPP for PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases and PLoS Biology, the first of the PLoS journals.</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Discussion</h3>
<p align="JUSTIFY">There has been a perceptible increase in the number of OA papers published in journals. Björk et al. have shown that the number of OA papers has been growing and for articles published in 2008, it stood at 20.4% of all papers published – 8.5% in journals (publisher sites) and 11.9% in searchable repositories.<a name="fr11-12"></a> A recent forecast by Springer based on Web of Science data has shown that at the current rate of growth journal articles which are OA will likely grow from 8.7% in 2010 to 27% by 2020 assuming a constant annual growth rate of 20% as against 3% growth rate of papers indexed in Web of Science.<a name="fr13"></a> It will be interesting to see if the number of papers published by Indian researchers in OA journals also increase year after year. Sathyanarayana of Informatics India tells us that the per cent of OA papers published by Indian researchers as revealed by Open J-Gate is higher than the world average (private communication), but we need a proper scientometric study to confirm this. Evans and Reimar have shown that for authors from developing countries free-access articles are cited much higher when they make them freely accessible over the Internet and that free Internet access widens the circle of those who read and make use of scientists’ investigation.<a name="fr14"></a>An analysis of many MedKnow journals has shown that OA journals do not lose subscribers to print editions; on the contrary, the number of subscribers is increasing in most cases. Again, OA has helped MedKnow journals attract a larger number of paper submissions, hits and downloads, win more citations and improve impact factors.<a name="fr15"></a>The Indian Academy of Sciences has also seen similar trends for their journals (G. Chandramohan, pers.commun). Data in Table 5 show that the number of papers published by each one of the 12 countries in PLoS ONE has increased over the years dramatically. We found similar trends for all PLoS journals (except PLoS Medicine) and several BMC journals including BMC Public Health, BMC Bioinformatics and BMC Genomics <a name="fr16"></a></p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Both BMC and PLoS charge article processing fees as do many other open access journals. BMC journals charge between $ 1450 and $ 1640, PLoS ONE charges $ 1350, and PLoS Medicine and PLoS Biology $ 2900 and other PLoS journals $ 2250. This could be a deterrent to most Indian and other developing country researchers. However, these journals waive the processing fees if authors request before submitting their papers. But not all Indian scientists would like to request such waivers. Here is what Balaram<a name="fr17"></a>a leading Indian molecular biophysicist, says: ‘As an Indian scientist, I do not want my government funds to be subsidising Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals or any other non-Indian open access journal. Some journals waive these charges for authors from developing countries. But I do not think we should go begging for waivers.’</p>
<h3 align="JUSTIFY">Conclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian researchers publish a large number of papers in OA journals, not necessarily because more than 360 Indian journals are OA. Their contribution to high-impact international biomedical OA journals is modest at best. However, India’s contribution to Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports is substantial. There are two reasons for this: India has a strong and vibrant community of inorganic crystallographers and the journal charges only $ 150 for processing a paper. A similar study on India’s participation in international OA journals in other fields, such as physics, chemistry, earth sciences and engineering will be interesting.</p>
<p align="JUSTIFY">Ideally though, Indian researchers and funding agencies should prefer the institutional archiving route recommended by both Harnad <a name="fr18"></a> and Balram One hundred per cent OA through archiving should be the national goal. As pointed out by Joshi<a name="fr19"></a> and as has been demonstrated most recently by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Kochi<a name="fr20"></a> starting and filling an institutional EPrints archive is easy, inexpensive, and immensely beneficial to all. However, six years after the first workshop on setting up OA repositories was held in May 2004, we have not more than 40 active repositories in the country. We believe that such repositories would come up in most, if not all, higher educational and research institutions in the country if the Ministers in charge of both higher education and science and technology send out a note stating that from now on all publicly-funded research should be available through OA channels.</p>
<div></div>
<hr />
<p><i>Muthu Madhan is in the ICRISAT, Patancheru 502 324, India and Subbiah Arunachalam is in the Centre for Internet and Society, No.194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore 560 071, India</i>. <br />*For correspondence. (e-mail: <a class="mail-link" href="mailto:subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com">subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com</a>)</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn1"></a>]. Arunachalam, S., Advances in information access and science communication. Curr. Sci., 2001, 80, 493–494.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn2"></a>]. Dallmeier-Tiessen, S., First results of the SOAP project. Open access publishing in 2010; http://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0506v11</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn3"></a>]. Registry of Open Access Repositories; http://roar.eprints.org</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn4"></a>]. Directory of Open Access Journals; http://www.doaj.org</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn5"></a>]. Open J-Gate; http://www. openj-gate.com</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn6"></a>]. BioMed Central: The Open Access Publisher; http://www.biomedcentral.com/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn7"></a>]. Science in India 2004-2008, Scib ytes 2010, ScienceWatch.com; http://sciencewatch.com/dr/sci/10/jan10-10_2/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn8"></a>]. Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online;http://journals.iucr.org/e/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn9"></a>]. Banerjee, K., Structure of anthracene and naphthalene. Nature, 1930, 125, 456.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn10"></a>]. Public Library of Science Journals; http://www.plos.org/journals/</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn11"></a>]. Björk, B.-C., Roos, A. and Lauri, M., Scientific journal publishing – yearly volume and open access availability.<br />Inform. Res., 2009, 14, Paper 391; http://InformationR.net/ir/14-1/paper391.html</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn12"></a>]. Björk, B.-C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T.and Guðnason, G., Open access to the scientific journal literature: Situation 2009.PLoS One, 2010, 5 (6), e11273; http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn13"></a>]. Hendriks, P., Open Access Publishing at Springer, Presented at Berlin 8 Open Access Conference, Beijing, China, 2010; http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8_OA_Conference_PH_v1.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn14"></a>]. Evans, J. A. and Reimer, J., Open access and global participation in science. Science, 2009, 323, 1025.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn15"></a>]. Sahu, D. K., MEDKNOW: Open Access Publishing for Learned Societies and Associations, Presented at Berlin 8 Open Access Conference, Beijing, China, 2010; http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8.pdf</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn16"></a>]. Comparison of BioMed Central’s article processing charges with those of other publishers; http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apccomparison</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn17"></a>]. Jayaraman, K. S., Open archives – the alternative to open access, interview with Prof. P. Balaram, SciDev.Net, 9 July 2008; http://www.scidev.net/en/features/q-a-open-archives-the-alternative-to-open-access.html</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn18"></a>]. Harnad, S., How India can provide immediate open access now? Curr. Sci., 2008, 94, 1232.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn19"></a>]. Joshi, N. V., Institutional E-print archives: liberalizing access to scientific research. Curr. Sci., 2005, 89, 421–422.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">[<a name="fn20"></a>]. Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute; http://eprints.cmfri.org.in</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/use-made-of-open-access-journals-by-indian-researchers-to-publish-their-findings</a>
</p>
No publisherMadhan Muthu and Subbiah ArunachalamOpennessOpen ContentOpen Access2013-07-04T04:45:39ZBlog EntryOpen Government Platform: An Open Source Solution to Democratizing Access to Information and Energizing Civic Engagement
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/informatics-nic-in-neeta-verma-alka-mishra-d-p-mishra-july-2012-open-government-platform
<b>If 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. </b>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This article by Neeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. Mishra was <a class="external-link" href="http://informatics.nic.in/uploads/pdfs/bf8ad9e4_lead_story.pdf">published as a lead story in the July 2012 edition of Informatics Magazine</a>, printed by the National Informatics Centre.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Online publishing of Government data in open format shall play an important role in enhancing transparency and accountability of the government. It shall enable new forms of citizen engagement & innovation in citizen service delivery. More customized & personalized services could be offered to citizens. When implemented at large scale it shall bring a paradigm shift in development of e-governance applications. At NIC we have recently developed an Open Government Platform (OGPL) to enable government ministries & departments to launch their open data initiative.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Conceptual Overview</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL as a product caters to two sets of users - the government and the citizen/civil societies. It facilitates government departments to contribute their datasets, Apps, tools, documents, services etc., which gets validated and published, after passing through a predefined workflow to the citizen interfacing data portal. The single-point citizen interface is designed in such a way that catalogs can be searched with ease and datasets can be accessed/downloaded in various open formats. It also provides a platform for citizens and civil societies to engage with government on various aspects of socio economic development.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL also facilitates building of subject specific communities through Citizen engagement modules. Communities shall discuss online the kind of datasets, government should release and also what kind of apps should be developed around these datasets. This shall provide first hand information to government as well as developer communities on public demand and prioritize their schedules accordingly.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL Components</h2>
<p>OGPL essentially consists of three major modules:</p>
<ul>
<li>Dataset Management System</li>
<li>Data Portal</li>
<li>Monitoring and Management</li>
<li>Dashboard</li>
</ul>
<h2>Dataset Management System</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dataset Management system or DMS shall be used by all contributing ministries, departments as well as organisations using which, authorized officers of the departments can contribute datasets, documents, services, tools and apps which shall then be processed through a predefined workflow of moderation & approval to ensure that datasets being released in public domain are in compliance with existing acts & policies of the government<br />concerning privacy, security etc.<br /><br />Through DMS each Ministry/Department can contribute their datasets in the form containing a set of Standard Metadata elements. After passing through various stages of moderation and approvals, these datasets gets published on the data portal viz. data.gov.in</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Data Portal</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Data Portal is the citizen facing frontend of the OGPL which shall provide single point access to all the datasets, apps as well as services. Portal has a strong component of search, discovery as well as citizen engagement. The development of the data portal is in compliance with the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This Citizen interfacing Data Portal would also have a Communities component built into the system. This component facilitates Forums/Discussions around various datasets, apps available on the portal as well as platform to express and discuss the kind of datasets & apps they would like to have. This shall give first hand input to development community for building new components, apps. It shall also give input to departments as what kind of datasets are more useful and accordingly can raise the priority of their release.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Monitoring and Management Dashboard</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Monitoring and management dashboard of OGPL helps government monitor & manage its Open Data Programme through three dimensions</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify; "> Metrics, analytics & feedback from citizens: Metrics help understand amount of datasets uploaded, updated by different Departments. Frequency of upload is also available on a single dashboard.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Analytics module gives use perspective in terms of their usage of datasets, Number of downloads, aggregated ratings provided to datasets determine their value and to some extent quality of data released by government.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; ">Feedback from citizens provide government with first hand input from citizens on quality, relevance of datasets, new datasets needed, kind of apps need to be developed, etc. </li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open government platform can be used in multiple ways. One can directly publish their datasets after one time registration & authentication. Departments could build their subject specific catalogues through a cloud based services of OGPL. One can also ask for independent installation of OGPL with customized look & feel. OGPL can be used by any central or state government department, organisations as well as district and panchayat administrations. It can also be used by private organisations as well as non government organization and civil societies to bring in more<br />transparency in their functioning.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL isn't simply about setting up a new web platform, moving to cloud computing or adopting open standards but it's about establishing a platform to enhance transparency, accountability & foster development of Innovative applications to better serve the citizens & other stakeholders. Open government data is gaining a lot of popularity & acceptance with governments across the world. Its led by government themselves, development communities, international organisations. OGPL is a perfect platform for them to launch their open data initiative.</p>
<hr />
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>Note by BK Gairola</h2>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/BKGairola.png" alt=" BK Gairola" class="image-inline" title=" BK Gairola" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India, National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) has been recently notified by the Government. According to this policy, all government departments shall release their datasets in open format for citizens and other stakeholders to freely use & reuse. To make these datasets easily accessible by citizens, policy has also mandated NIC to provide technology solution for establishing an Open Data Portal (http://data.gov.in) for Departments, Subordinate Offices and Organizations. OGPL implementation in India is being executed by NIC, DeitY in close coordination with DST.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL is an open source product with generic architecture, which would easily facilitate other organizations and institutions to adopt for their open data initiatives. Communities could also contribute further by developing innovative apps around datasets and also enhancing the product in terms of features & functionalities.<br /><br />The purpose of the platform is to enhance access and use of government data to foster innovation, promote transparency, accountability and public participation. I am sure it shall go a long way in democratizing the government information.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>Indo-US Collaboration</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open Government Platform (OGPL) was developed jointly by India & US government as a result of announcement made by President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the Indo-US Open Government Dialogue in 2010. OGPL leverages on the best practices & features of the India’s “India.gov.in” and the “Data.gov” of United States.National Informatics Centre (NIC) from Government of India and General Services Administration (GSA) of United States executed the development of OGPL. Open Government Platform, developed to promote access to government data and information and energize citizen engagement was launched by Hon’ble Minister of Communications & IT and HRD, Govt. of India during a press conference held on 30th March 2012 in New Delhi in presence of Dr. Sam Pitroda, Advisor to Prime Minister of India. Secretary(DEITY), DG(NIC) & Joint Secretary, MEA also participated in the press conference, Senior officers from US Government & US Embassy were also present along with GSA team in India. CIO, US Government along with Deputy CTO also addressed the event over video conference.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/KapilSibalPressBriefing1.png" alt="KapilSibal1" class="image-inline" title="KapilSibal1" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/KapilSibalPressBriefing2.png" alt="KapilSibal2" class="image-inline" title="KapilSibal2" /></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>OGPL - An Open Source Solution</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open Government Platform is completely developed using Open Source Stack. In fact complete management of the collaborative development of OGPL by two teams stationed in two continents of the world was also handled using open source tools.It complies with the best practices of open source development, which helps in leveraging the strengths of future versions of the open source base products used in development of OGPL.<br /><br />OGPL being an open source initiative not only facilitates cost saving in terms of software and licenses but also facilitates community participation in terms of further development of product with additional components and<br />innovative apps around the published datasets. This shall define a paradigm shift in the manner electronic government applications shall be developed in future. The entire source code is made available to public for review, feedback and participation for further development and enhancement.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h2>Citizen Engagement</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">OGPL has a strong component of Citizen engagement. Citizens can view, download datasets as well express their opinion on the quality of datasets, they can rate the datasets on a scale of 1 to 5. One can embed a dataset in their blog or web site as well as contact the owner of the datasets for any query or clarification. One can also publish or connect the datasets on their social media pages such as facebook, twitter etc. for wider reach.<br /><br />Ratings given by citizen are transparently shared on the portal in terms of number of views, current star rating which help new visitor understand quality of data sets, its popularity. Portal also enables visitors to submit their ideas, feedbacks and as well suggest datasets they would like government to release in open domain. These ideas are further rated by citizens to help government allocate priority in release of data sets.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/informatics-nic-in-neeta-verma-alka-mishra-d-p-mishra-july-2012-open-government-platform'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/informatics-nic-in-neeta-verma-alka-mishra-d-p-mishra-july-2012-open-government-platform</a>
</p>
No publisherNeeta Verma, Alka Mishra and D.P. MishraOpen DataOpen ContentOpenness2012-11-19T03:15:01ZBlog EntryBangalore Meet-up for the Open Government Partnership Brasilia
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-government-partnership-brasilia-bangalore-meetup
<b>The international Open Government Partnership (OGP) is holding its first annual meeting on April 17 and 18, 2012. Representatives from over 50 member countries will gather in Brasilia to celebrate the progress that has been made to date, to exchange best practices, and to grow and strengthen the global collaborative network of open government leaders. Bangalore meet-up at CIS on April 17, 2012 from 5.30 p.m to 7.30 p.m.</b>
<p>Those who work on open government initiatives but unable to attend in person, can still participate remotely. OGP has tied-up with a number of external partners to make arrangements for people to participate in the event online. There will be live webcasts, interviews and chats. Viewers will be able to pose questions to those being interviewed and will be polled in real-time to see who is watching, where they are, what their interests are and what are their thoughts on the programme.</p>
<p>The two day meeting offers an opportunity for open government advocates throughout the world to connect with local civic activists and public officials as well as those working on similar problems in other countries.</p>
<p>The Centre for Internet & Society is hosting the Bangalore meet-up on April 17 and 18, 2012. Get together to watch the live video stream, engage in conversations via live chat, or on Twitter and Facebook for discussing plans to move open government forward in your region.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.opengovpartnership.org/civil-society-participation-april-2012-ogp-annual-meeting">Click</a> for the full list of countries participating in the event.</p>
<hr />
<p class="p7"><span class="s1"><strong>8:30-9:30 am</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong> </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Registration</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong> & Coffee</strong></span></p>
<p class="p8"><span class="s5"><strong>9:15-9:30 am</strong></span><span class="s2"><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><strong>Official photo </strong>of </span><span class="s1"><strong>OGP Member Government Heads of Delegation </strong></span><span class="s2">and </span><span class="s1"><strong>Steering Committee Members </strong></span></p>
<p class="p10"><span class="s5"><strong>9:30-10:15 am</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Opening Remarks and </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Welcome</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1"><strong>The Honorable Dilma Rousseff, </strong></span><span class="s1">President of the Federative Republic of </span><span class="s4">Brazil</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, </strong></span><span class="s1">Secretary of State of the </span><span class="s4">United States of America</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>The Honorable</strong> <strong>Jakaya Kikwete, </strong></span><span class="s1">President of the United Republic of </span><span class="s4">Tanzania</span></li><li><strong>The Honorable</strong> <strong>Nika Gilauri, </strong><span class="s1">Prime Minister of </span><span class="s4">Georgia</span></li></ul>
<p class="p11"><span class="s5"><strong>10:15-10:45 am</strong></span><span class="s4"><strong> </strong></span><span class="s1"><strong>Setting the Stage for the Age of Open:</strong></span><span class="s4"><strong> OGP 2012</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Minister <strong>Jorge Hage</strong>, </span><span class="s4">Brazil</span></li><li><span class="s1">Under Secretary of State <strong>María Otero</strong>, </span><span class="s4">United States</span></li><li><span class="s2"><strong>Warren Krafchik</strong>, </span><span class="s1">International Budget Partnership</span></li></ul>
<p class="p10"><span class="s5"><strong>10:45-11:15 am</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Coffee</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> and Networking </strong></span></p>
<p class="p16"><span class="s5"><strong>11:15-12:30pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Plenary: Using </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Transparency</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> to Transform </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Lives</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> Online and Offline</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><strong>Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar</strong>, United States</li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Gautam John</strong>, Akshara Foundation and TED Fellow,</span><span class="s6"> </span><span class="s1"> </span><span class="s4">India</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Elisabeth Ungar Bleier</strong>, Transparency International, </span>Colombia</li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Juliana Rotich</strong>, Co-Founder of Ushahidi, </span><span class="s4">Kenya</span></li></ul>
<p class="p10"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Samantha Power, The White House, </span><span class="s4">United States</span></em></p>
<p class="p20"><span class="s7"><strong>12:30-1:30 pm</strong></span><span class="s8"><strong> </strong></span><span class="s9"><strong>Innovation</strong></span><span class="s8"><strong> Village </strong></span><span class="s1">of Regional Government, Private Sector, and Civil Society organizations advancing Open Government </span></p>
<p class="p16"><span class="s5"><strong>1:30-2:45 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>Lunch and </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Networking.</strong></span></p>
<p class="p16">Lunch will be provided onsite at the conference center. </p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>2:45-5:30 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Open Government </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>on the Move</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong>: The OGP Country </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Action</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> Plans in Two Parts</strong></span></p>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">In Part I and Part II of regional
breakout sessions, government ministers and leading civil society
activists will discuss country action plans and how to promote a race to
the top on open government in each region. Highlights from each panel
will be transcribed. Moderators will encourage discussion with the
audience following comments from panelists. </span></em><strong><em>Governments
not presenting in Part I will present in Part II of the regional
sessions, from 4:30 to 5:45pm. Participants presenting in Part II are
encouraged to attend the session of their choice during Part I and vice
versa.</em></strong></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>2:45-4:00pm</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></strong></span><span class="s1"><strong>Country Action Plans </strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>PART I </strong></span></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>South America, I</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Chile</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Colombia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Uruguay</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Brazil</strong></span></li><li>Maria Ferrari Fontecilla, Participa, Chile</li><li>Edison Lanza, CAInfo, Uruguay</li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Juan Pardinas, IMCO, Mexico</span></em></p>
<p class="p26">C<strong>entral America and Caribbean</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Honduras</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Guatemala</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>El Salvador</strong></span></li><li><span class="s2">Government of </span><span class="s1"><strong>Dominican Republic</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Jose Ricardo Barrientos Quezada, ICEFI, Guatemala</span></li><li><span class="s1">Carlos Hernandez, Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa, Honduras</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Vonda Brown, Open Society Foundation, United States</span></em></p>
<p class="p22"><strong>Africa, I</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Liberia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Ghana</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>South Africa</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Alison Tilley, Open Democracy Advice Center, South Africa</span></li><li><span class="s1">Vitus Azeem, Ghana Integrity Initiative, Ghana</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1">Moderated by Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza, Tanzania</span></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Asia </strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Mongolia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of the </span><span class="s4"><strong>Republic of Korea</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Indonesia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Philippines</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Dorjdari Namkhaijantsan, Open Society Foundation, Mongolia</span></li><li><span class="s1">Vincent Lazatin, Transparency and Accountability Network, Philippines</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Suneeta Kaimal, Revenue Watch Institute</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Central Europe</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Romania</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Bulgaria</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of the</span><span class="s4"><strong> Slovak Republic</strong></span></li><li>Government of <strong>Czech Republic</strong></li><li><span class="s1">Gergana Jouleva, Access to Information Program Foundation, Bulgaria</span></li><li><span class="s1">Andra Teodora, Fundatia Soros Romania</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1">Moderated by Martin Tisne, Omidyar Network, United Kingdom</span></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Western Europe, I</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Norway</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Sweden</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Denmark</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">CSO Representative TBD</span></li><li><span class="s1">CSO Representative TBD</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Tim Kelsey, Cabinet Office, United Kingdom</span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Southern Europe, I</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Albania</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Montenegro</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Croatia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Macedonia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Katarina Ott, Institute of Public Finance, Croatia</span></li><li><span class="s1">Vuk Maras, MANS, Montenegro</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Baltics</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Latvia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Lithuania</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Estonia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Rura Mrazauskaite, Transparency International, Lithuania</span></li><li><span class="s1">Linda Austere, Center for Public Policy, Latvia</span></li></ul>
<p class="p23"><em>Moderated by Liia Hanni, E-Governance Academy, Estonia</em></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>4:00-4:30 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Coffee </strong>and<strong> </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Networking</strong></span></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>4:30-5:45 pm</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong> </strong></span><span class="s1"><strong>Country action plans </strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>PART II </strong></span></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>South America, II </strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Peru</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Paraguay</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Mexico</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Miguel Pulido, Fundar, Mexico</span></li><li><span class="s1">Samuel Rotta, Proetica, Peru</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderator TBD</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>North America</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Canada</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of the </span><span class="s4"><strong>United States</strong></span><span class="s1"> </span></li><li><span class="s1">Patrice McDermott, Openthegovernment.org Coalition, United States<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></li><li><span class="s1">Toby Mendel, Center on Law and Democracy, Canada</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Tara Hidayat, Government of Indonesia</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Africa, II</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Tanzania</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Kenya</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">John Ulanga, The Foundation for Civil Society, Tanzania<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></li><li><span class="s1">George Kegoro, International Commission of Jurists, Kenya</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Zohra Dawood, Open Society Foundation South Africa</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Middle East</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Israel</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Jordan</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Professor Tamar Hermann, Israeli Democracy Institute, Israel</span></li><li><span class="s1">CSO representative TBD</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Anthony Richter, Transparency and Accountability Initiative</span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Northeastern Europe</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Ukraine</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Moldova</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Serghei Ostaf, National NGO Council, Moldova</span></li><li><span class="s1">Khmara Oleksii, Civic Partnership for Supporting OGP in Ukraine</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Tom Blanton, National Security Archive, United States</span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Western Europe, II</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of the </span><span class="s4"><strong>United Kingdom</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of the </span><span class="s4"><strong>Netherlands</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Spain</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Italy</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation, United Kingdom</span></li><li><span class="s1">Marjan Besuijen, Hivos, Netherlands</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Alan Hudson, ONE Campaign</span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Southern Europe, II </strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of</span><span class="s4"><strong> Greece</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Malta</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Turkey</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">CSO representative TBD</span></li><li><span class="s1">CSO representative TBD</span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Håkon Arald Gulbrandsen, Government of Norway </span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>South Caucasus </strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Armenia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Georgia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of </span><span class="s4"><strong>Azerbaijan</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Eka Gigauri, Transparency International Georgia<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></li><li><span class="s1">Galib Abbaszade, National Budget Group, Azerbaijan<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span></li><li><span class="s1">Liana Doydoyan, FOI Centre, Armenia </span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Jonas Moberg, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Norway</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>5:45-6:30 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>First Day </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Closing</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> Remarks</strong></span></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>7:00-9:30 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> <span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Celebrating</strong> Open Government: A Reception hosted by the </span><span class="s4"><strong>Government of Brazil</strong></span><span class="s1"> and </span><span class="s4"><strong>Omidyar Network.</strong></span></p>
<p class="p5">The reception is onsite at the Convention Center.</p>
<hr /><strong>Wednesday, April 18, 2012</strong>
<p class="p16"><span class="s5"><strong>9:00-10:00 am</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>OPENING Plenary: </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Responsibility</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> and </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Challenges</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> that Come with </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Openness</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1"><strong>Walid al-Saqaf</strong>, YemenPortal.net & Alkasir, </span><span class="s4">Yemen</span></li><li><span class="s1">Minister <strong>Francis Maude</strong>, </span><span class="s4">United Kingdom</span></li><li><span class="s1">Secretary of State <strong>Ben Abbes</strong>, </span><span class="s4">Tunisia</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Fernando Rodrigues</strong>, Folha de São Paulo, </span><span class="s4">Brazil</span></li></ul>
<p class="p11"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Alex Howard, O’Reilly Media, </span><span class="s4">United States</span></em></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s1"><strong>10:00-10:30 am</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Coffee and </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Networking</strong></span></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s5"><strong>10:30-12:30 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Thematic Breakout Sessions: </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Paths to Openness</strong></span></p>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Participants choose one of five breakout sessions to attend in the morning block of thematic discussions. </span>Follow
Sessions 1 or 2 in the morning and afternoon blocks for in-depth
discussions on one topic, explored from three perspectives: government,
civil society, and the private sector.</em></p>
<p class="p22"><strong>Access to Information: Government Perspectives</strong></p>
<ul><li>Vania Vieira, CGU, Government of <strong>Brazil</strong></li><li>Dr. Ali M. Abbasov, Minister of Communications and Information Technologies, Government of <strong>Azerbaijan</strong></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Government of Liberia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Pierre Boucher, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Government of <strong>Canada</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Laura Neuman, The Carter Center, <strong>United States</strong></span></em></p>
<p class="p22"><strong>Lessons Learned in Service Delivery: Government Perspectives</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Minister Mathias Chikawe, Government of <strong>Tanzania</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Ms. Marie Munk, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Economy and the Interior, Government of <strong>Denmark</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Government of <strong>Estonia</strong> (invited)</span></li><li><span class="s1">Permanent Secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Government of <strong>Kenya</strong> </span></li></ul>
<p class="p23"><em>Moderated by Mark Robinson, DFID/Transparency and Accountability Initiative, UK</em></p>
<p class="p23"><strong>Networking Mechanism Affinity Group: Open Data Portals</strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Steve Davenport, AidDATA, <strong>United States</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Tim Kelsey, Director of Transparency & Open Data, Cabinet Office, <strong>United Kingdom</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Marko Rakar, Windmill, <strong>Croatia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Eric Gunderson, Development Seed, <strong>United States</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Abhinav Bahl, Global Integrity/OGP Networking Mechanism</span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Networking Mechanism Affinity Group: Public Finance Management and Fiscal Transparency </strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Iara Pietricovsky, INESC, <strong>Brazil</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Secretary Butch Abad, Government of <strong>Philippines</strong> </span></li><li><span class="s1">Dr. Brian Wrampler, Boise State University, <strong>United States</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Nicole Anand, Global Integrity/OGPNetworking Mechanism</span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Advancing Open Government through Knowledge Exchange</strong></p>
<ul><li>Roberto Perez, IACC, <strong>Latin America</strong>, invited</li><li><span class="s1">Ms. Stela Mocan, Director e- Government Center, Government of <strong>Moldova</strong> </span></li><li><span class="s1">Miguel Pulido, Fundar, <strong>Mexico</strong></span></li><li>Prayoga Wiradisuria, President's Delivery Unit, <strong>Government of Indonesia</strong></li><li>Eric Braverman, McKinsey, <strong>United States</strong></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Han Fraeters, World Bank Institute</span></em></p>
<p class="p33"><span class="s1"><strong>12:30-2:00 pm</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Lunch and </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Networking.</strong></span></p>
<p class="p33">Lunch will be provided onsite at the conference center. </p>
<p class="p10"><span class="s5"><strong>2:00-4:00 pm</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong><span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Thematic Breakout Sessions: </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>More</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Paths to Openness</strong></span></p>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1">Participants choose one of five breakout sessions to attend in the afternoon block of thematic discussions. </span></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Access to Information: Civil Society and Private Sector Perspectives </strong></span></p>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1"><strong>Panel I: Civil Society Perspectives</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Karin Lissakers, Revenue Watch Institute</span></li><li><span class="s1">Alison Tilley, Open Democracy Advice Center, <strong>South Africa</strong> </span></li><li><span class="s1">Ivan Pavlov, Freedom of Information Foundation, <strong>Russia</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Karina Banfi, Alianza Regional Por La Libre Expresion e Informacion, <strong>Latin America</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Helen Darbishire, AccessInfo Europe, <strong>Spain</strong></span></em></p>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1"><strong>Panel II: Private Sector Perspectives</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Alexandre Gomes, SEA Technologia, <strong>Brazil</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Chris Taggart, Open Corporates, <strong>United Kingdom</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Jose Francisco Compagno, Ernst and Young </span></li><li><span class="s1">Ginny Hunt, Google, <strong>United States</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation, United Kingdom </span></em></p>
<p class="p5"><strong>Lessons Learned in Service Delivery: Civil Society and Private Sector Perspectives</strong></p>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1"><strong>Part I: Civil Society Perspectives</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Jose Ricardo Barrientos Quezada, ICEFI, <strong>Guatemala</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Felipe Heusser, Ciudadano Inteligente, <strong>Chile</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Nikhil Dey, MKSS, <strong>India</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Harvey Lowe, Canadian Council on Social Development, <strong>Canada</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza, <strong>Tanzania</strong></span></em></p>
<p class="p22"><span class="s1"><strong>Part II: Private Sector Perspectives</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Philip Ashlock, OpenPlans/Open311, <strong>United States</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Jorge Soto, Citivox, <strong>Mexico</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Tom Steinberg, MySociety, <strong>United Kingdom, </strong>invited</span></li><li><span class="s1">Michael Gurstein, Center for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training, <strong>Canada</strong></span></li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza, <strong>Tanzania</strong></span></em></p>
<p class="p26"><strong>Open Government and Legislatures</strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Part I: Legislative Perspectives</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>Representative Paulo Pimenta, <strong>Brazil</strong></li><li>Denis Russo,Votenaweb, <strong>Brazil</strong></li><li>Laura Alonso, Legislature of City of Buenos Aires, <strong>Argentina</strong></li><li>Cristiano Ferri Soares de Faria, e-Democracy Program Director, Brazilian House of Representatives, <strong>Brazil</strong></li></ul>
<p><em>Moderated by Gherardo Casini, Head of Global Center for ICT in Parliaments, <strong>United Nations</strong></em></p>
<p><strong><em>Part II: Civil Society Perspectives</em></strong></p>
<ul><li>Andrew Mandelbaum, National Democratic Institute, <strong>United States</strong></li><li>John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation, <strong>United States</strong></li><li>Danardono Siradjudin, Indonesian Parliamentary Center, <strong>Indonesia</strong></li><li>Melissa Ortiz Masso, Latin American Network on Legislative Transparency, <strong>Latin America</strong></li></ul>
<p><em>Moderated by Tiago Peixoto, World Bank Open Government Specialist</em></p>
<p class="p22"><strong>Measuring for Impact: How to build the case for Open Government </strong></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Rolf Alter, OECD, <strong>France</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Nikos Passas, Northeastern University, <strong>United States/Greece</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Jorge Garcia-Gonzalez, Director of Technical Secretariat of MESICIC, Organization of American States, <strong>Latin America</strong> </span></li><li>Harlan Yu, Princeton University, <strong>United States</strong></li></ul>
<p class="p23"><em>Moderated by Martin Tisne, Omidyar Network, <strong>United Kingdom</strong></em></p>
<p class="p26"><span class="s1"><strong>Learning from Country Consultations to Date: New Strategies for Public Engagement</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Samuel Rotta, Proetica, <strong>Peru</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Chris Vein, The White House, <strong>United States</strong></span></li><li><span class="s1">Khmara Oleksii, Civic Partnership for Supporting OGP in <strong>Ukraine</strong> </span></li><li>Government of <strong>Philippines</strong>, invited</li></ul>
<p class="p22"><em><span class="s1">Moderated by Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership, <strong>United States</strong></span></em></p>
<p class="p10"><span class="s1"><strong>4:00-4:30 pm<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Coffee</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> and Networking </strong></span></p>
<p class="p10"><span class="s1"><strong>4:30-5:00 pm<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span>Report from Working Group on </strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>Meeting Outcomes</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong> </strong></span></p>
<p class="p10"><span class="s1"><strong>5:00-6:00 pm<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></strong></span><span class="s4"><strong>OGP at Home</strong></span><span class="s1"><strong>: Closing Remarks with OGP Leadership</strong></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="s1">Vice-Minister <strong>Luiz Navarro</strong>, </span><span class="s4">Brazil</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Samantha Power</strong>, White House, United States</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Warren Krafchik</strong>, International Budget Partnership</span></li><li><span class="s1"><strong>Tim Kelsey</strong>, Director of Transparency and Open Data, Cabinet Office </span><span class="s4">United Kingdom</span></li></ul>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><strong>Note: Brazil's local time is approximately eight and half hours behind us. The welcome address on April 17th starts at 9:30 A.M (B.R.T) which is approximately 5:00 P.M (I.S.T).</strong></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-government-partnership-brasilia-bangalore-meetup'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-government-partnership-brasilia-bangalore-meetup</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessEvent TypeOpen Content2012-04-12T13:18:28ZEventOpen access to government data on the cards
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data
<b>The way has been cleared for public access to the data collected by Union government ministries and departments, with official approval being accorded to the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP). T Ramachandran's article was published in the Hindu on March 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in it.</b>
<p>Following its recent approval by the Union Cabinet, the policy has been notified and is in the process of being gazetted, said R. Siva Kumar, CEO of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, and head of the Natural Resources Data Management System, Department of Science and Technology.<br /><br />The use of open data as a tool for promoting governmental transparency and efficiency has been gaining ground in some parts of the world. An Open Government Partnership was launched last year by the United States and seven other governments. Forty-three other governments have joined the partnership, which has endorsed an Open Government Declaration, expressing a commitment to better “efforts to systematically collect and publish data on government spending and performance for essential public services and activities.” It acknowledges the ‘right' of citizens to seek information on governmental activities.</p>
<p>India has not joined the partnership, but is collaborating with the U.S. in developing an open source version of software for a data portal.<br /><br />The NDSAP states that at least five ‘high value' data sets should be uploaded to a newly created portal, data.gov.in, in three months of the notification of the policy. Uploading of the remaining data sets should be completed within a year.<br /><br />The Department of Science and Technology will co-ordinate the effort and create the portal through the National Informatics Centre. The Department of Information Technology will work out the implementation guidelines, including those related to technology and data standards.<br /><br />Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based NGO, said the removal of “a few good aspects” in an earlier draft of the policy — such as linkage with Sections 8 and 9 of the Right to Information Act that specify the kinds of information exempt from disclosure by the authorities — had weakened it “even further.” “None of the criticisms the CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed,” he said.<br /><br />The NDSAP seeks “to provide an enabling provision and platform for providing proactive and open access to the data generated through public funds available with various departments/organisations of the government of India.”<br /><br />However, the Ministries and Departments can draw up, within six months of the notification of the policy, a negative list of data-sets that will not be shared, subject to periodic review by an ‘oversight committee.'<br /><br />The policy envisages three types of access to data: open, registered and restricted. Access to data in the open category will be “easy, timely, user-friendly and web-based without any process of registration/authorisation.” But data in the registered access category will be accessible “only through a prescribed process of registration/authorisation by respective departments/organisations” and available to “recognised institutions/organisations/public users, through defined procedures.” Data categorised as restricted will be made available only “through and under authorisation.”<br /><br />The policy also provides for pricing, with the Ministries and Departments being asked to formulate their norms for data in the registered and restricted access categories within three months of the notification of the policy.</p>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article3223645.ece">Read the original published in the Hindu </a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-access-to-govt-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen DataOpen ContentOpen AccessOpenness2012-03-26T07:31:48ZNews ItemFrancis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award
<b>The 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. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The award function organised by the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore was held at the Sambasivan Auditorium, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai on 14 February 2012. Leading luminaries such as Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Prof. G Baskaran and Prof. K Mangala Sunder participated in the award felicitation ceremony.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Giving the welcome speech, Prof. Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at CIS said that Dr. Jayakanth works for the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has trained many students and helped a number of institutes to set up open access repositories. Prof. Arunachalam added that the event is being celebrated in India as the winner is from India and specified that it is being held at the MS Swaminathan Foundation as this was the institution that hosted the first workshop to promote open access. Prof. Swaminathan had a vital role in arranging funds for the workshop. About 50 people had learnt what open access was, how to set up open access repositories, how to use the EPrints software, etc. For this very reason it was decided to hold the event in Chennai and not Bangalore where Dr. Jayakanth is based.</p>
<p align="center"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis7.jpg/image_preview" alt="Participants in the Award Function" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Participants in the Award Function" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Felicitating Dr. Jayakanth, Prof. Swaminathan who presented the award added that it is important to highlight the contributions of those who really convert the concept of social inclusion to reality. He said that today every politician talks about inclusive growth. What is this inclusive growth, how do you convert exclusion to inclusion? Exclusion creates large problems, social problems, economic problems, etc. On a concluding note, Prof. Swaminathan said that the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh has declared 2012-13 as the year of science and he hopes that there will be a new science policy and technology policy and that he hopes that a very important component of that should be methods of ensuring open access including open access to knowledge and open access to literature.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis3.jpg/image_preview" title="Francis Jayakanth" height="166" width="174" alt="Francis Jayakanth" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">In his award acceptance speech, Dr. Jayakanth said that the atmosphere was very overwhelming and never in his two-and-a-half decade old career he had the opportunity to speak amidst such luminaries and added that it was a privilege and prestige to have received the award from Prof. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India. He also added that no event in India or elsewhere is complete without the active participation and mentioning of the name of Prof. Arunachalam, the greatest advocate of open access that India has seen so far, and that he wouldn’t have been here at the award ceremony but for the timely intervention of Prof. Arunachalam. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Jayakanth concluded by saying that he would like to thank Prof. NV Joshi, Prof. Derek Law, Prof. Alma Swan, Prof. Balaram, Prof. N Balakrishnan, Prof. Giridhar, and Prof. TB Rajashekar, and particularly the students of the information and knowledge management programme at the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, who were responsible for the growth of a repository granting more visibility to the 32,000 publications that are part of the repository.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Mangala.jpg/image_preview" title="Mangala Sunder" height="130" width="177" alt="Mangala Sunder" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Mangala Sunder of IIT Madras and Prof. G Baskaran of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, also participated in the event. Prof. Sunder said that it is for the kind of information that we talk about, which we want to make public for which champions like Dr. Jayakanth have been working on the sidelines but working so efficiently to get institution after institution to convert what is known as a rigid framework into a flexible more open policy of bringing their scientific content to their intellectual information content. He said that he works in the area of content development from the point of view of education and he understands the difficulty of bringing material to the public. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are many issues, such as issues about copyright, issues about people owning the information, issues about people feeling very rigid on what they want to say in the public, etc. Dr. Jayakanth has gone through all these exercises for the last 30 years in slowly creating the “little after little” what are called the waterways to finally see that everyone benefits. The linking of science, knowledge and sustainable development to open access to information, open access to research and open access to content completes the whole cycle of knowledge.</p>
<table class="plain">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Baskaran.jpg/image_preview" title="Prof. Basakaran" height="177" width="117" alt="Prof. Basakaran" class="image-inline image-inline" /></td>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">Prof. Baskaran said that it is a very well deserved award and Dr. Jayakanth has definitely raised the bar for future awardees. Prof. Baskaran stressed upon the aspects of open access. He said that as a theoretical physicist he understands the need for open access very well. Physicists, when they have new research results place them in arXiv, the open access repository for preprints in physics. Some people wonder what if some physicists deposit all kinds of articles in the arXiv. Experience has shown that 99 per cent of the articles appear in good journals later. He added that once it is put in the arXiv, the whole world gets access and a bad paper will be noticed and commented upon by many. No one likes to be the author of such a paper! He urged that other sciences, especially the life sciences should have a repository similar to arXiv and requested Prof. Swaminathan to take the intiative at MSSRF. <br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr />
<h2>Dr. Francis Jayakanth</h2>
<p align="left"><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Francis1.jpg/image_preview" alt="Francis with the Award" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Francis with the Award" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dr. Francis Jayakanth is a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. He has played a significant role in the establishment of India’s first institutional repository (IR) (<a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in">http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in</a>). He now manages the IR and has provided technical support for establishing IRs in many other universities and institutes in India. He has been the key resource person at many events to train people in setting up IRs and open access journals. He has delivered presentations on IRs, open access journals, the OAI protocol, OAI compliance, and the benefits of open access to authors and institutions and the role of libraries. He has developed a free and open source software tool (CDSOAI), which is widely used. Dr. Jayakanth can indeed be considered an open access ‘renaissance man’, an advocate and technical expert in all aspect of open access development and an inspiration to all, both at the research and policy level.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-jayakanth-presentation" class="internal-link" title="Francis Jayakanth's Presentation">See Francis's presentation on Who Benefits from Open Access to Scholarly Literature?</a> [Powerpoint, 1523 KB]</p>
<p><b>See the video of the award function below:</b><b> </b></p>
<hr />
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" src="http://blip.tv/play/AYLtr00A.html?p=1" width="250"></iframe>
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</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAwardOpen ContentVideoOpen AccessOpenness2013-08-03T05:36:54ZBlog EntryThe Online Video Environment in India - A Survey Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india
<b>iCOMMONS, 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.</b>
<p>The basic assumption of this paper is that the online video medium should support creative and technical innovation, competition, and public participation, and that open source technology can help develop these traits. These assumptions are not elaborated upon here. Instead, this report looks at questions of “openness” that are not strictly technological; that are specific to video in India; and that provide points of entry to a simple policy framework.</p>
<p>The paper is organized in the following parts:</p>
<ul><li>The first chapter, <strong>THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF INDIAN VIDEO</strong>, provides a brief historical timeline of events from the first screening of the Lumiere Brothers films in India in 1896, through the beginning of the twenty-first century. This chapter traces the traditional channels of dissemination of video content in India, and establishes the close and unique bond that the visual medium has formed with Indian society.</li><li>The second chapter, <strong>DIGITAL MEDIA AND NETWORK TRANSFORMATIONS</strong>, looks at recent media transformations like the rise of the Internet and peer-to-peer networking, the proliferation of telecommunications, and other developments which form the backbone of the emerging online video medium. Peer-to-peer and associative networking provides a new means of content circulation throughout the country.</li><li>The third chapter, <strong>MAPPING CONTENT ON THE INTERNET</strong>, traces the various types of visual content visible over these new networks, exploring case studies of videos circulating on the Internet which have raised new questions of censorship, freedom of speech, and the openness of the medium.</li><li>The fourth chapter, <strong>THE ‘OPEN VIDEO’ QUESTION</strong>, creates a judgment-based framework to assess the openness of the medium. This chapter lays out a series of questions around the broad spectrum of openness, viewed from various perspectives of access, participation, open source technology, and availability, with the intent of mapping the circumstances under which online video operates in India. Moreover, the chapter focuses on the structural limitations to video which can be addressed by policy, or even an absence of policy.</li></ul>
<p><em>Whereas the report consciously makes an effort to explore not only transitory web videos but also films, the terms ‘video’ and ‘film’, in many parts are treated interchangeably. Although films and videos represent different traditional mediums of recording, the interest of this report in examining the ‘online video’ content in India, consists of both types of material—accessed perhaps with little distinction</em>.</p>
<p>The scope of this paper is extremely broad and touches upon a wide variety of issues in India, where each area has a peculiar specificity of its situation—urban or rural, geographic, and so on. Links and references have been provided in the footnotes for background readings of these issues.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/content-access/online-video-india-survey-v1" class="internal-link" title="The Online Video Environment in India: A Survey Report">Click here</a> to download the report. [PDF, 1.22 MB]</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpennessOpen ContentPublicationsOpen Video2011-10-03T09:31:30ZBlog EntryResearch Project on Open Video in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-research
<b>Open 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.</b>
<p> </p>
<h3>Project Timeline</h3>
<p>From mid-April to mid-July.<br /><br /></p>
<h3>Summary of Outputs</h3>
<ol><li>A 15-20 page paper surveying the online video environment in India and the opportunities it presents for creative expression, political participation, social justice, and other such concerns. The paper should deal with the structural limitations of the medium (e.g.: limited bandwidth, IP lobbies discourage re-appropriation of cultural materials, online video is inaccessible to the deaf, and so on) and how they can be addressed. Recommendations should be bold but in touch with the real policy and business frameworks of present-day India.</li><li>Several 1-2 page briefs on specific policy matters like: where is jurisdiction being exercised? what are the policy inflections? and, what interventions are needed to solve the structural limitations of the medium?</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<h3>Survey Paper</h3>
<p>The survey paper should describe the online video scenario in India, and three or more policy tensions. The paper should focus on areas of intellectual property rights, network issues, standards, device freedom and interoperability, accessibility, etc. The Open Video Alliance website[ova] for a complete list of relevant issues.</p>
<p>Overall, it should paint both a qualitative as well as a quantitative picture of online video in India, and in which structural improvements are needed (if any) to empower individuals.This paper should not be viewed as a recommendation to policymakers but instead as a general interest document which will inform and appeal to many audiences. While we expect the paper to span several distinct issues, there should be a prevailing narrative to weave them together.<br /><br /></p>
<h3>Basic Assumptions</h3>
<p>We want online video to be a participatory and collaborative social medium powered by open source. We also value the ability of individuals to express themselves using these tools, and the ability of new entrants to challenge incumbents and innovate on top of existing technologies. No time is needed to be spent establishing these values—instead, through this paper we try to identify structural improvements to the online video medium. How do we get from the status quo to the ideal open video environment? What investments must be made? What protections must be put into place for users, producers, etc.? Further, we should be able to make some broad recommendations to governments, foundations, and big institutions.<br /><br />Because the network and IP enforcement environment in India are still malleable, we want to stress that there are many possible shapes that the online video medium could take. Our goal is to shine some light on how a medium that privileges the values outlined above could take shape.<br /><br /></p>
<h3>Suggested Methodology</h3>
<p>First, you would need to carry out a basic survey of the literature. Second, you should talk to various organizations using video, discover what they consider the structural limitations of online video, and what might be considered open video practices: some are legal, some are technical. You would use this data to direct original research and weave your findings into an engaging narrative.<br /><br /></p>
<h3>Next Steps</h3>
<ul><li>You send 2 writing samples, a CV, and letter of recommendation;</li><li>We'll discuss the unifying themes and identify a more detailed timeline;</li><li>We produce a contract;</li><li>We Pick a regular time to meet every other week, to track progress.<br /></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-research'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-research</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshIntellectual Property RightsOpen ContentProjectsSoftware Patents2011-08-23T02:51:36ZBlog EntryOpenness, Videos, Impressions
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport
<b>The 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.</b>
<p></p>
<p>The notion of free and open is under great debate even under
that, and I think even when you side with a camp, there are going to be further
splinters. There are many ways of defining the free and open, and I think that the
tension, rather than being resolved, needs to be sustained and creatively
perpetrated to keep an internal checks and balances on not getting carried away
with it. All the groups did indeed circle around this in different,
often tangential ways – that there is need to define, variously and almost
endlessly, in defining the context of the free that we are dealing with.</p>
<p>Open video, in that matter, has gone through different
iterations, and I think it is nice that different stakeholders have defined it
variously, and also looked at the problems that it might lead to. However, for
the sake of synthesis, I am going to let you have your own idea of free and
open but instead look at five key words which have emerged, in my selective
hearing, through the day: <strong>Access, Archive,
Share, Remix, Repurpose</strong>. And it is these five that we need to now
imbricate these concepts across different thematic that emerged in the groups
today.</p>
<p><strong>Access</strong> has been one primary question that almost everybody
dealt with; Access has its legacies in the Open and Free culture movements,
where technological access, dealing with questions of open standards and
content, of bandwidth and infrastructure. More interestingly, in an emerging
information society like India, there are other concerns of language, access,
privilege, bandwidth, education etc. To
contextualise access and to put it into different perspectives is something
that different participants have voiced the need for.</p>
<p><strong>Archive</strong> is a preoccupation with most people because
archiving has close relationships with knowledge and subsequently retrieval and
usage. If knowledge is being digitised so that it is made accessible to
different people, there are older questions of representation, voice,
empowerment, participation, ethics, privacy, ownership etc. Crop up. In
education archiving has to do with the curricula building and knowledge
production. In networking, collaboration and film making, it is the kind of
issues that pad.ma is trying to tackle with. It also leads to notions of
access, distribution etc.</p>
<p><strong>Sharing </strong>is what is almost defining the spirit of the Open
and Free culture movements. There is a need to understand and explore what
sharing means. When does it infringe laws and what kind of regulation needs to
be advocated so that sharing becomes possible. How does one overcome questions
of piracy, stealing, IPR etc? More interestingly, what do we share and who do
we share it with? Tools by which sharing
leads to innovation? How does it lead to new participation and learning
practices and pedagogies? What kind of open distribution models and networks
can be built up?</p>
<p><strong>Remix</strong> has been of great value because it means that you are
being converted into some sort of a stakeholder or a contributor to the
process. Networking and nodes, network-actor, collaborator , peer 2 peer – the
possibility of looking at questions of internet and digital traces is
interesting. Or imagine that the act of sharing is also a remix. Sometimes just
putting it into new contexts, making it available to newer constituencies, etc.
can also be looked upon as remixing. Remix as a knowledge production aesthetic
and mechanics seems to have emerged.</p>
<p><strong>Repurpose </strong>is my additional reading of something that perhaps
needs no mention to this group, but nonetheless needs flagging. The fact
remains, that the technology is not a solution in itself. It is a tool that
enables the solutions which one is seeking for. The processes, paradigms,
protocols and practices are indeed shaped and mediated by technologies and
there are new solution possibilities which are produced. However, there still
seem to be anxieties, concerns, questions and problems which are cropping up
and need to be addressed outside of technology but within technology ecologies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsArtWorkshopDigital AccessFLOSSOpen ContentArchivesOpennessOpen InnovationMeetingOpen Access2011-09-22T12:23:13ZBlog EntryOpen Video Summit
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-summit
<b>The 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.</b>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), iCommons, Open Video
Alliance and Magic Lantern are organizing a workshop on December 15,
2009.</p>
<p>This workshop in Bangalore—modelled after a similar <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_Video_Meeting_at_Yale_Law_School_%2810/31/08%29">meeting</a>
in October 2008 at Yale University—draws together experts from tech,
art, film, NGOs and business to explore the future of online video.</p>
<p><strong>When</strong>: December 15th, 2009</p>
<p><strong>Where</strong>: The Energy and Resources Institute- Southern Regional Centre</p>
<p>(TERI-SRC)<br />4th Main, 2nd Cross, Domlur II Stage<br />Bangalore- 560071</p>
<p><strong>What</strong>: The Open Video Summit is a one-day workshop
to explore issues of intellectual property and telecom policy for
video. By inviting experts from different fields to participate in the
workshop, we aim to create a <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/issues">framework</a> for
open video in India and to better understand how the online video
medium is developing. We also hope to expand the network of researchers
who have open video on the radar and to foster international
collaborations. We expect between 30-40 participants to attend.</p>
<p>Participants should bring some specialized knowledge or insight
about the state of online video to the event. The workshop is highly
interactive and its success will depend on the quality and dynamism of
our discussions. This workshop will in turn direct iCommons research
efforts in the area of online video policy.</p>
<p><strong>Why</strong>: We’re now surrounded by cameras in cellphones,
laptops, and everywhere else. Software and storage advances have made
video remix an emergent art form. For the first time, huge numbers of
people are communicating through video. Video is almost like a new
language, a new toolkit for self-expression. This has some pretty
profound implications.</p>
<p>But while sites like YouTube have enabled millions of people to
broadcast themselves, it offers just a glimpse into the future of the
online video medium. Heading into this future, the tools for creating,
manipulating, and sharing video must be available to everyone. And
while having community-developed, open source versions of these tools
is a critical charge, it’s only one part of a larger puzzle. Open video
requires that networks and technical, legal and business structures
support the ability of huge numbers of individuals to use video in ways
that go beyond just watching.</p>
<p>The Open Video Alliance was created to support industry coordination toward an <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/wiki/index.php?title=Some_principles_for_open_video">open video ecosystem</a>.
OVA members develop free and open source software and conduct policy
research to support a more participatory video medium. The OVA also
coordinates the <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/open-video-conference/">Open Video Conference</a>,
a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and
activism to explore the future of online video. The first OVC was host
to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and
speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live
broadcast.</p>
<p><strong>Meeting Organizers:</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/"><em>Open Video Alliance </em></a>is a coalition of organizations devoted to creating and promoting</p>
<p>free and open technologies, policies, and practices in online video.
OVA founding members include Mozilla, the Participatory Culture
Foundation, Kaltura, iCommons, and the Yale Information Society Project.</p>
<p><a href="http://icommons.org/"><em>iCommons</em> </a>is a project-based incubator organization dedicated to promoting free culture and the global commons.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/../../"><em>The Centre for Internet and Society</em></a>
critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public
accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and
Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.magiclanternfoundation.org/"><em>Magic Lantern Foundation</em> </a>is a non-profit group working with media and human rights.</p>
<p><em>This meeting made possible with the support of the Ford Foundation.</em></p>
<p><strong>Working schedule:</strong></p>
<p>Morning: </p>
<ul><li>Keynote talk and brief discussion<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li>Lightning presentations by selected participants<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Breakout discussion groups</li></ul>
<p>Afternoon: <span class="apple-tab-span"></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Lunch<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Breakout discussion groups<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Plenary discussion to identify focus areas and summarize</li></ul>
<p>Evening: <span class="apple-tab-span"></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Film Screening</li></ul>
<p><strong><em>Space is limited. Please RSVP to <a href="mailto:conference@openvideoalliance.org">conference@openvideoalliance.org</a>, and feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you in Bangalore.</em></strong></p>
<p> <img class="image-inline" src="../../../../home-images/ff..jpg/image_preview" alt="ff" height="150" width="110" /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-summit'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-video-summit</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaOpen ContentWorkshop2011-08-18T05:08:54ZBlog EntryOpen Video Summit
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/open-video-summit-1
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), iCommons, Open Video Alliance and Magic Lantern are organizing a workshop on December 15, 2009 at TERI, Bangalore</b>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Open%20Video%20Summit..jpg/image_preview" title="open video summit" height="176" width="400" alt="open video summit" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), iCommons, Open Video Alliance and Magic Lantern are organizing a workshop on December 15, 2009.</p>
<p>This workshop in Bangalore—modelled after a similar <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/wiki/index.php?title=Open_Video_Meeting_at_Yale_Law_School_%2810/31/08%29">meeting</a> in October 2008 at Yale University—draws together experts from tech, art, film, NGOs and business to explore the future of online video.</p>
<p><strong>When</strong>: December 15th, 2009</p>
<p><strong>Where</strong>: The Energy and Resources Institute- Southern Regional Centre</p>
<p>(TERI-SRC)<br />4th Main, 2nd Cross, Domlur II Stage<br />Bangalore- 560071</p>
<p><strong>What</strong>: The Open Video Summit is a one-day workshop to explore issues of intellectual property and telecom policy for video. By inviting experts from different fields to participate in the workshop, we aim to create a <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/issues">framework</a> for open video in India and to better understand how the online video medium is developing. We also hope to expand the network of researchers who have open video on the radar and to foster international collaborations. We expect between 30-40 participants to attend.</p>
<p>Participants should bring some specialized knowledge or insight about the state of online video to the event. The workshop is highly interactive and its success will depend on the quality and dynamism of our discussions. This workshop will in turn direct iCommons research efforts in the area of online video policy.</p>
<p><strong>Why</strong>: We’re now surrounded by cameras in cellphones, laptops, and everywhere else. Software and storage advances have made video remix an emergent art form. For the first time, huge numbers of people are communicating through video. Video is almost like a new language, a new toolkit for self-expression. This has some pretty profound implications.</p>
<p>But while sites like YouTube have enabled millions of people to broadcast themselves, it offers just a glimpse into the future of the online video medium. Heading into this future, the tools for creating, manipulating, and sharing video must be available to everyone. And while having community-developed, open source versions of these tools is a critical charge, it’s only one part of a larger puzzle. Open video requires that networks and technical, legal and business structures support the ability of huge numbers of individuals to use video in ways that go beyond just watching.</p>
<p>The Open Video Alliance was created to support industry coordination toward an <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/wiki/index.php?title=Some_principles_for_open_video">open video ecosystem</a>. OVA members develop free and open source software and conduct policy research to support a more participatory video medium. The OVA also coordinates the <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/open-video-conference/">Open Video Conference</a>, a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of online video. The first OVC was host to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live broadcast.</p>
<p><strong>Meeting Organizers:</strong></p>
<p>The <a href="http://openvideoalliance.org/"><em>Open Video Alliance </em></a>is a coalition of organizations devoted to creating and promoting</p>
<p>free and open technologies, policies, and practices in online video. OVA founding members include Mozilla, the Participatory Culture Foundation, Kaltura, iCommons, and the Yale Information Society Project.</p>
<p><a href="http://icommons.org/"><em>iCommons</em> </a>is a project-based incubator organization dedicated to promoting free culture and the global commons.</p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/"><em>The Centre for Internet and Society</em></a> critically engages with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.magiclanternfoundation.org/"><em>Magic Lantern Foundation</em> </a>is a non-profit group working with media and human rights.</p>
<p><em>This meeting made possible with the support of the Ford Foundation.</em></p>
<p><strong>Working schedule:</strong></p>
<p>Morning: </p>
<ul><li>Keynote talk and brief discussion<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li>Lightning presentations by selected participants<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Breakout discussion groups</li></ul>
<p>Afternoon: <span class="apple-tab-span"></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Lunch<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Breakout discussion groups<span class="apple-tab-span"></span></li><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Plenary discussion to identify focus areas and summarize</li></ul>
<p>Evening: <span class="apple-tab-span"></span></p>
<ul><li><span class="apple-tab-span"></span>Film Screening</li></ul>
<p><strong><em>Space is limited. Please RSVP to <a href="mailto:conference@openvideoalliance.org">conference@openvideoalliance.org</a>, and feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. We look forward to meeting you in Bangalore.</em></strong></p>
<p> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/ff..jpg/image_preview" title="ff" height="150" width="110" alt="ff" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/open-video-summit-1'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/open-video-summit-1</a>
</p>
No publisherradhaOpen ContentWorkshop2009-12-10T06:21:01ZEventWiki Academy
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-academy
<b>An 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. </b>
<p> <em>Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; </em></p>
<p><em>Where knowledge is free; </em><strong>- Rabindranath Tagore </strong></p>
<p> <em>ಜ್ಞಾನವೆಂಬುದು</em><em> </em><em>ಯಾರೊಬ್ಬರ</em><em> </em><em>ಸೊತ್ತಲ್ಲ</em><em>. </em><em>ಅದು</em><em> </em><em>ಎಲ್ಲರದೂ</em><em> </em><em>ಆಗಬೇಕು</em><em>. </em><em>ಮಾನವಕುಲದ</em><em> </em><em>ಒಟ್ಟು</em><em> </em><em>ಅರಿವು</em><em> </em><em>ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಬ್ಬರಿಗೂ</em><em> </em><em>ಸಿಗಬೇಕು</em><em>, </em><em>ಜ್ಞಾನವನ್ನು</em><em> </em><em>ಮುಚ್ಚಿಟ್ಟು</em><em> </em><em>ಅಥವ</em><em> </em><em>ಹಿಡಿದಿಟ್ಟು</em><em> </em><em>ಪ್ರಯೋಜನವಿಲ್ಲ</em><em>. </em><em>ಹಂಚಿಕೊಂಡ</em><em> </em><em>ಜ್ಞಾನ</em><em> </em><em>ಮತ್ತಷ್ಟು</em><em> </em><em>ಬೆಳೆಯುತ್ತದೆ</em> - ಇದು ಒಂದು ರೀತಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಯೋಜನೆಯ ಹಿಂದಿರುವ ಸಿದ್ಧಾಂತ.</p>
<p>ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಒಂದು ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ. ಎಲ್ಲರೂ ತಮ್ಮ ಅರಿವು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಬಹುದಾದ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ. ಯಾರೊಬ್ಬರೂ ಎಡಿಟ್ ಮಾಡಬಹುದಾದ ಪುಟಗಳ ಗುಚ್ಛ. ಇದನ್ನು ನಡೆಸುವುದು ಜಗತ್ತಿನಾದ್ಯಂತ ತಮಗರಿವಿರುವ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತ ತಾವೂ ಹೊಸ ವಿಷಯಗಳನ್ನು ಅರಿತುಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ಉತ್ಸುಕರಾಗಿರುವ ಆಸಕ್ತರ ಸಮುದಾಯ. ಪ್ರಾರಂಭವಾದ ಕೆಲವೇ ವರ್ಷಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲದ ಅತ್ಯಂತ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ವೆಬ್ಸೈಟುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದಾದ ಯೋಜನೆ ಇದು. ಅಂತರ್ಜಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ಇಂದು ಅತ್ಯಂತ ಬಳಕೆಯಾಗುವ ಮೊದಲ ಐದು ವೆಬ್ಸೈಟುಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಇದೂ ಒಂದು.</p>
<p>ನಾಲ್ಕಾರು ವರ್ಷಗಳೇ ಈ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಕಳೆದವರಿಗೆ ಎಲ್ಲರೊಡನೆ ಕುಳಿತು ಒಂದು ದಿನದಲ್ಲಿ ವಿಕಿ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವುದು ಬಹುದೊಡ್ಡ ಸವಾಲು. ಏಕೆಂದರೆ, ವಿಕಿ(ಪೀಡಿಯ) ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳಲು ನಮಲ್ಲಿರುವ ವಿಷಯಗಳು ನೂರಾರು. ಮಂಗಳೂರಿನಲ್ಲಿ ರಾಜ್ಯಮಟ್ಟದ ಮೊಟ್ಟಮೊದಲ ವಿಕಿ ಅಕಾಡೆಮಿ ಆಯೋಜಿಸಿದಾಗ ನಮಗೆದುರಾದ ಸವಾಲು ಕೂಡ ಇದೇ. ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಅಂದು ನೆರೆದಿದ್ದ ಇನ್ನೂರಕ್ಕೂ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಜನ ಆಸಕ್ತರ ಸಮೂಹ ನಮಗಿದ್ದ ಸವಾಲನ್ನು ಇಮ್ಮಡಿಗೊಳಿಸಿತ್ತು.</p>
<p>"ಮಂಗಳೂರು ಆಸ್ಟ್ರೇಲಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಕೂಡ ಇದೆ. ಅದರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಲೇಖನ ಉಂಟೋ?" ಎಂದು ಸಭಿಕರೊಬ್ಬರು ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆ ಮುಂದಿಟ್ಟಾಗ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ನಡೆಸಿಕೊಟ್ಟ ನಮಗೂ ಕುತೂಹಲ. ಅಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಆಂಗ್ಲ ವಿಕಿಯ 'ಮಂಗಳೂರು' ಪುಟ ತೆರೆದು ನೋಡಿದಾಗ ಆಸ್ಟ್ರೇಲಿಯದಲ್ಲಿರುವ 'ಮಂಗಳೂರು' ಎಂಬ ಊರಿನ ಬಗ್ಗೆಯೂ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಓದಿ ಹೇಳುವಾಗ ಎಲ್ಲಿಲ್ಲದ ಖುಷಿ. ನಮ್ಮೆಲ್ಲರ ನಡುವೆ ಇರುವ ಮಾಹಿತಿಯ ತುಣುಕುಗಳು ಒಟ್ಟಾದಾಗ ಮಾತ್ರ ಹೀಗಾಗಲು ಸಾಧ್ಯ ಅಲ್ವ? ಇಲ್ಲದಿದ್ದರೆ ವಿಕ್ಟೋರಿಯ, ಆಸ್ಟ್ರೇಲಿಯದಲ್ಲಿರುವ ಮಂಗಳೂರಿಗೆ ಒಂದು ರೈಲ್ವೇ ಸ್ಟೇಶನ್ ಕೂಡ ಇದೆ, ಒಂದು ಏರ್ಪೋರ್ಟ್ ಕೂಡ ಇದೆ ಎಂಬುದಿರಲಿ, ಮತ್ತೊಂದು ಮಂಗಳೂರು ಪರದೇಶವೊಂದರಲ್ಲಿದೆ ಎಂಬುದೂ ತಿಳಿದುಬರದು.</p>
<p>ಇದೇ ರೀತಿಯ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳು ಉತ್ಸಾಹದ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮವನ್ನಾಗಿಸಿತು ಆ ದಿನ. ಮಂಗಳೂರಿನಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದ ವಿಕಿ ಅಕಾಡೆಮಿ ನಮ್ಮೆಲ್ಲರ ಮನಸ್ಸಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಅಚ್ಚುಳಿಯುವಷ್ಟು.</p>
<p>ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಎಂದರೇನು, ಅದರ ಸಿದ್ಧಾಂತ ಏನು, ಅದರಲ್ಲಿ ಯಾರು ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು, ಹೇಗೆ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಬಹುದು? ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲು ಬೇಕಾದದ್ದು ಏನು? ಇದೇ ಮೊದಲಾದ ವಿಷಯಗಳೊಂದಿಗೆ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಪ್ರಾರಂಭಿಸಿದೆವು. ಸೇಂಟ್ ಅಲೋಶಿಯಸ್ ನಲ್ಲಿ ನೆರೆದಿದ್ದ ಆಸಕ್ತರು ನೆರೆದ ಸಂಖ್ಯೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಒಡ್ಡಿದ ಸವಾಲು ನಮಗೆ ಅಷ್ಟೇ ಉತ್ಸಾಹ ಮೂಡಿಸಿದ್ದು ಹೌದು. ಬಿಳಿಗಿರಿರಂಗನ ಬೆಟ್ಟವನ್ನು ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ಷೇತ್ರವಾಗಿ ಮಾಡಿಕೊಂಡಿರುವ ಡಾಕ್ಟರರಾದ ಪ್ರಶಾಂತ್ ಎನ್ ಎಸ್ ನನ್ನ ಜೊತೆ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ನಡೆಸಿಕೊಟ್ಟವರು. ಇವರ ನಿತ್ಯದ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಎಡಿಟ್ಸ್ ನೋಡಿದರೆ ಅದಲ್ಲಿರುವ ಅವರಿಗಿರುವ ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ತಿಳಿಸದೇ ಇರದು.</p>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/wiki-academy.png/image_preview" title="Wiki Academy " height="169" width="400" alt="Wiki Academy " class="image-inline" /> <img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/IN22-MANGALORE-WIKIPE_1376f.jpg/image_preview" title="Wiki Academy in Mangalore" height="266" width="400" alt="Wiki Academy in Mangalore" class="image-inline" /></p>
<p>ಈ ಯೋಜನೆಯ ಜನಪ್ರಿಯತೆಗೆ ಕಾರಣವೇನು? ಇದು ಹೇಗೆ ಇಷ್ಟು ದೊಡ್ಡದಾಗಿ ಬೆಳದದ್ದು? ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಎಂಬುದೊಂದು ಇಷ್ಟು ಅದ್ಭುತವಾದ ಯೋಜನೆಯಾದದ್ದು ಹೇಗೆ - ಮುಂತಾದ ವಿಷಯಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ನಾವು ಬೆಳಕು ಚೆಲ್ಲುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ ಮಾಡಿದೆವು. ಸಹಯೋಗದಲ್ಲಿ (Collaboration) ಮಾಡಿದ ಕೆಲಸ ಹೇಗೆ ಜಗತ್ ಸ್ವರೂಪ ಪಡೆದು ಉತ್ತಮವಾಗುತ್ತ ಹೋಗುತ್ತದೆ ಹಾಗು ವಿಶ್ವ ಮಟ್ಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಇದು ಹೇಗೆ ಕಾಣುತ್ತದೆ ಎಂಬುದರ ಕುರಿತು ಮಾತಾನಾಡಲು ಪ್ರಯತ್ನಿಸಿದೆವು. ರಾಜ್ಯಮಟ್ಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಾರಂಭಿಸುವಾಗ ನಮ್ಮ ಭಾಷೆ ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ನಾಲ್ಕು ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಹಿಂದೆಯೇ ಪ್ರಾರಂಭವಾಗಿರುವ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಆವೃತ್ತಿ ಮರೆಯಲಾಗದು, ಅದರ ಕುರಿತು ಕೂಡ ಚರ್ಚೆ ಮಾಡಿದೆವು. ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಹುಭಾಷಾ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ್ವವಾಗಿ ರೂಪುಗೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತಿರುವ ಕುರಿತು, ಅದರ ಪ್ರಾಮುಖ್ಯತೆ ಕುರಿತು ಕೂಡ ಮಾತನಾಡಿದೆವು.</p>
<p>ಮಧ್ಯಾಹ್ನ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಬಳಸುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ, ಈ ಯೋಜನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಪಾಲ್ಗೊಳ್ಳುವುದು ಹೇಗೆ ಎಂಬುದರ ಕುರಿತು ಕಾರ್ಯಾಗಾರವಿತ್ತು. ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಪಾಲ್ಗೊಂಡವರು ಸ್ವತಃ ಮುಂದೆ ಬಂದು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದಲ್ಲಿ ತಾವೂ ಒಂದು ಅಕೌಂಟು ತೆರೆದು ಎಡಿಟ್ ಮಾಡುವಂತೆ ಮಾಡಿದೆವು. ಇದು ಸಭೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ನೆರೆದಿದ್ದ ಹಲವರಿಗೆ ಬಹಳ ಖುಷಿಕೊಟ್ಟ ವಿಷಯವೆಂದು ಈಗ ನಾನು ಹೇಳಬಲ್ಲೆ. ಏಕೆಂದರೆ ಯಾವುದೇ ಯೋಜನೆಯಾಗಲಿ, ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನವಾಗಲಿ - ಅದರ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಕೇಳುವುದು ಸುಲಭ, ಆದರೆ ಬಳಸಿ ನೋಡುವಾಗ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆ ಎದುರಾದಾಗ ಕಷ್ಟ! ನೇರ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮದಲ್ಲಿ ಪಾಲ್ಗೊಂಡವರನ್ನೇ ಭಾಗವಹಿಸಲು ಕೇಳುತ್ತ ಅವರ ಕೈಯಲ್ಲೇ ಅಕೌಂಟು ತೆರೆಯುವಂತೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು, ಪುಟವೊಂದನ್ನು ಎಡಿಟ್ ಮಾಡುವಂತೆ ಮಾಡುವುದು - ಸಭಿಕರಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳ ಸರಮಾಲೆಯನ್ನೇ ಹುಟ್ಟುಹಾಕಿತು! ನಮಗೂ ಅದೇ ಬೇಕಿದ್ದದ್ದು. ಎಲ್ಲರ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗಳಿಗೆ ನಮಗೆ ತಿಳಿದ ಉತ್ತರ ನೀಡುತ್ತ ಅವರಿಗೆ ಎದುರಾದ ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಗಳನ್ನು ಪರಿಹರಿಸುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ ಮಾಡಿದೆವು. ಒಟ್ಟಾರೆ, ನಮಗದು ಬಹಳ ಖುಷಿಕೊಟ್ಟ ಕಾರ್ಯಾಗಾರ!</p>
<p>ದಿನದ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮ ಮುಗಿದ ಮೇಲೆ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳು, ಉಪನ್ಯಾಸಕರು, ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತರು - ಎಲ್ಲ ನಮ್ಮಲ್ಲಿ ಬಂದು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದೊಂದಿಗೆ ಅವರ ಅನುಭವ ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುತ್ತ ಕಳೆದ ಸಮಯವಂತೂ ಮರೆಯಲಾಗದ್ದು. ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞರಾಗಿ ನಾವು ಕಾಣುವ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಎಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ತನ್ನದೇ ಮುಖವನ್ನು ಕಾಣಿಸುತ್ತದೆಂಬ ಅರಿವು ಈ ಯೋಜನೆಯ ಸಮಗ್ರತೆಯ ಪರಿಚಯ ಹೆಚ್ಚಿಸಿತು. ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ನಮ್ಮೆಲ್ಲರಿಗೂ ಮತ್ತಷ್ಟು ಹತ್ತಿರವಾಯಿತು.</p>
<p>[ವಿಕಿ ಅಕಾಡೆಮಿಯನ್ನು ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗಿಸುತ್ತಿರುವ ಸೆಂಟರ್ ಫಾರ್ ಇಂಟರ್ನೆಟ್ ಎಂಡ್ ಸೊಸೈಟಿಯವರಿಗೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ ಸಮುದಾಯದ ಪರವಾಗಿ ಅಭಿನಂದನೆಗಳು. ಹೆಚ್ಚಿನದೇನೂ ಅಪೇಕ್ಷೆಯಿಲ್ಲದೆ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯದ ಸ್ವಯಂಸೇವಕರಿಗೆ ಪ್ರೋತ್ಸಾಹ ನೀಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ವಿಕಿ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವ ನಮ್ಮೆಲ್ಲರ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನದಲ್ಲಿ ಇವರ ಪಾತ್ರ, ಕೊಡುಗೆ ಗಣನೀಯವಾದದ್ದು.</p>
<p>ಮಂಗಳೂರಿನ ಆವೃತ್ತಿಯನ್ನು ಆಯೋಜಿಸುವಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಪಾತ್ರವಹಿಸಿದ ಮಂಗಳೂರು ಆಕಾಶವಾಣಿಯ ಸಾತ್ವಿಕ್, ಸೇಂಟ್ ಅಲೋಶಿಯಸ್ ಕಾಲೇಜಿನ ಉತ್ಸುಕ ಉಪನ್ಯಾಸಕರೂ, ಸರಳ ಜೀವಿಯೂ ಆದ ರೆವರೆಂಡ್ ಫಾದರ್ ರಿಚರ್ಡ್ ರೆಗೋ ಇವರಿಬ್ಬರಿಗೂ ನಮ್ಮೆಲ್ಲರ ಪರವಾಗಿ ಹೃತ್ಪೂರ್ವಕ ಅಭಿನಂದನೆಗಳು.</p>
<p>ಇದೆಲ್ಲದರ ಜೊತೆಗೆ ವಿಕಿ ಅಕಾಡೆಮಿಯನ್ನು ಕುತೂಹಲದಿಂದ, ವಿಶ್ವಾಸದಿಂದ ನೋಡುತ್ತ ವಿಕಿ ಕುರಿತು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವಲ್ಲಿ ತಮ್ಮದೂ ಒಂದು ಪಾತ್ರವಿದೆ ಎಂಬಂತೆ ನಡೆದ ಪತ್ರಕರ್ತ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತರಿಗೆ ನಾವೆಲ್ಲರೂ ಕೃತಜ್ಞರು. ಇವರಿಲ್ಲದೆ ನಾವು ಕೈಗೆತ್ತಿಕೊಂಡಿರುವ ಅರಿವು ಹಂಚಿಕೊಳ್ಳುವ ಅಭಿಯಾನ ಅಪೂರ್ಣ.</p>
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<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/wiki-academy" class="internal-link" title="Wiki Academy">More information available here</a></p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/wa-aug-09-slides.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Wiki Academy">Seminar held at Managlore - slides available here</a></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-academy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/wiki-academy</a>
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No publisherradhaOpen ContentWikipedia2011-08-18T05:01:57ZBlog Entry