The Centre for Internet and Society
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Goa University students update ‘Goa’ Marathi articles on Wikipedia
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-february-20-2019-goa-university-students-update-goa-marathi-articles-on-wikipedia
<b>Faculty and students of Goa University’s Marathi department have updated 164 Marathi articles on Wikipedia related to Goa recently.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in the <a class="external-link" href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/gu-students-update-goa-marathi-articles-on-wiki/articleshowprint/68071126.cms">Times of India</a> on February 20, 2019.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">They have also added information related to the state focused on freedom fighters, Marathi literature and cultural heritage, tourism, biodiversity and the environment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The two-day effort was carried out under the supervision of Subodh Kulkarni from the Centre for Internet and Society, the Indian partner of the Wikimedia Foundation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The history of Goan villages collected by students was uploaded on Wikipedia in Marathi Devanagari Unicode. They also participated in #1Lib1Ref campaign supported by Wikipedia Library and uploaded new articles and 25 photos.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Other than editing the 164 Marathi articles, the faculty and students also edited reference for articles on Wikipedia and contributed to important facts about Goa.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kulkarni served as the resource person for the session, while director of digital learning and initiative at Goa University Prof Ramrao Wagh, head of department of Hindi Vrushali Mandrekar; librarian at GU library Gopakumar, head of department of Marathi Sunita Umraskar, and coordinator of the workshop Vinay Madgaonkar, oversaw the effort.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-february-20-2019-goa-university-students-update-goa-marathi-articles-on-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/times-of-india-february-20-2019-goa-university-students-update-goa-marathi-articles-on-wikipedia</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpenness2019-02-22T02:27:14ZNews ItemLecture on Open Access and Open Content Licensing at ICAR (short course)
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course
<b>The ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) a constituent establishment of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) organised a short course on 'ICTs for Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in Agricultural Research, Education and Extension of NARES' during November 13-22, 2018 in Bangalore. Anubha Sinha delivered a lecture to the participants.</b>
<p>Read for <a class="external-link" href="http://cis-india.org/openness/files/invitation-for-delivering-lecture-in-icar/view">more information about the programme</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2018-12-05T16:19:56ZNews ItemDigital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-technology-engaging-pedagogy-through-hindi-wikipedia-a-case-study
<b>We have published an article in International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities. The article is titled "Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study". The authors of the article are Hindi faculty members of Christ University and Ananth Subray from the Centre for Internet & Society provided research assistance.</b>
<h3>Abstract</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hindi Wikipedia (Hindi Edition of Wikipedia) in the undergraduate language classroom. Wikipedia or Open Source Learning is a powerful tool in the acquisition of knowledge especiallyin today’s digital context.While many of the European languages have already established afoothold in the digital space, the Indian languages are yet to create a niche for themselves. Even after a decade of its launch,the Hindi Wikipediacould not attire the enabled richness of the English Wikipedia.While there are about fifty lakh articles in English, Hindi Wikipedia has only about a lakh.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This paper is an attempt to show how a whole new concept of productive activity for faculty andstudents can be opened through a study of basics in Indian language computing typing and editing Wikipedia articles.It explains the value of Wikis for teaching and learning as compared to traditional teaching and physical paper assignment model, showing the power of Open Source Learning and Wikipedia.Most importantly, it shows how Wikipedia and Global Peer Review can directly and immediately influence the quality and relevance of Teaching and Learning in classrooms and learning spaces today.This pilot study ofstudents’ use of sources in authoring Wikipedia articles shows, how students processed texts from sources to compose their own texts transforming classrooms from a place of knowledge deliveryto a place of creativity and research.Through Wikipedia, students are being empowered tobecome creative writers, efficient editors and successful researchers. Article creation and editingof articles in Hindi for Wikipedia is bound to transform the students’ ability to interpret, analyze,create new knowledge and develop their Research Aptitude. This article addresses the importance of Digital Learning through Wikipedia as Pedagogy in Christ University’s UG language classrooms and discusses the prospects and possibilities of using Wikipedia as a learning tool through a case study.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="external-link" href="http://ijellh.com/OJS/index.php/OJS/article/view/4594/4026">Read the peer reviewed article published by the International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, Volume 6, Issue 8, August 2018</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-technology-engaging-pedagogy-through-hindi-wikipedia-a-case-study'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-technology-engaging-pedagogy-through-hindi-wikipedia-a-case-study</a>
</p>
No publisherDr. George Joseph,Dr. Sebastian K.A, and Kavitha AAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessHindi Wikipedia2018-10-28T05:56:25ZBlog EntryPanel Discussion on Equitable Access to Knowledge
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/panel-discussion-on-equitable-access-to-knowledge
<b>Pranesh Prakash was a panelist and moderator in a panel discussion on Equitable Access to Knowledge on October 23, 2018 at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. The event was hosted by DST Centre for Policy Research (IISc), Bangalore.</b>
<p><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy3_of_FB.png/@@images/7840cc15-fc34-412c-8b60-196d35cb4009.png" alt="FB" class="image-inline" title="FB" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span>Open Access seeks to return scholarly publishing to its original purpose: to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Price barriers should not prevent students, researchers (or anyone) from getting access to research they need. Open Access, and the open availability and searchability of scholarly research that it entails, will have a significant positive impact on everything from education to the practice of medicine to the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate.</span></p>
<h3><span>Panelists</span></h3>
<ul>
<li><span><span>Arul George Scaria - National Law University, Delhi</span></span></li>
<li><span><span>Carl Malamud - <a href="http://Public.Resource.Org/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Public.Resource.Org</a> <br /></span></span></li>
<li><span><span>Pranesh Prakash (Moderator) - Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore <br /></span></span></li>
<li><span><span>Richard Poynder - Journalist (covering OA movement around the world) <br /></span></span></li>
<li><span><span>S Nayana Tara - Indian Institute of Management Bangalore</span></span></li>
<li><span><span>Shahid Jameel - Welcome Trust DBT India Alliance </span></span></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span>This event was a part of International Open Access week activities planned at IISc Bangalore, organized by DST-Centre for Policy Research at IISc in association with National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Karnataka State Library Association (KALA), JRD Tata Memorial Library, Science Policy Group (SPG) and International Scientific and Technological Education Program (i-STEP).</span></span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span><span><span>Read more about the event on <a class="external-link" href="https://www.facebook.com/events/174784246787715/">Facebook page</a><br /></span></span></span></p>
<hr />
<p> </p>
<p><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iH_kjoFRjAQ" width="500"></iframe></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/panel-discussion-on-equitable-access-to-knowledge'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/panel-discussion-on-equitable-access-to-knowledge</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen Access2019-02-22T15:32:46ZNews ItemSting job by Hyderabad scientist exposes fake journals
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/business-standard-ians-october-11-2018-sting-job-by-hyderabad-scientist-exposes-fake-journals
<b>Scientists have at last found a cure for Schlodomoniasis -- a deadly brain infection caused by the "inter-galactic parasite Klaousmodium cruzi" -- they claim to have identified for the first time.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/sting-job-by-hyderabad-scientist-exposes-fake-journals-118101100439_1.html">Business Standard</a> on October 11, 2018. Subbiah Arunachalam was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=beth+smith" target="_blank">Beth Smith </a>and co-workers at "<a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=sanchez+institute" target="_blank">Sanchez Institute </a>for Biomedical Sciences for Doopidoo Research" in <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=morocco" target="_blank">Morocco </a>have published their discovery in three science journals and also reported a novel method called "Magnetic Oddities <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=radiation" target="_blank">Radiation </a>Therapy (MORTY)" to treat the <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=infection" target="_blank">infection.</a> The study was carried out in "Wakandan population".</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">If readers are breaking their heads to understand the startling findings and decipher the strange words like "Wakandan" and "Doopidoo", Farooq Ali Khan, a <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=college+professor" target="_blank">college professor </a>and PhD student in <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=hyderabad" target="_blank">Hyderabad </a>and a co-<a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=author" target="_blank">author </a>of the paper, had the last laugh.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"It was not intended to be a scientific paper," he told this <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=correspondent" target="_blank">correspondent </a>in an email. "It was my sting operation to expose publishers of predatory journals who are churning out fake science for profit."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open access journals are supposed to provide an <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=online+platform" target="_blank">online platform </a>for rapid dissemination of latest updates in science and technology. Their publishers don't charge the readers as access to these journals is free, but they charge the authors wanting to have their research papers published in these journals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Inspired by previous publishing "stings", Khan wanted to test whether open access journals would publish an obviously absurd paper liberally salted with nonsense for the sake of money from gullible authors anxious to publish.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He created a spoof manuscript titled "Newer Tools to Fight Inter-Galactic Parasites and their Transmissibility in Zygirion Simulation", and submitted it to several suspect journals from the list kept online by <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=jeffrey+beall" target="_blank">Jeffrey Beall </a>-- an <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=associate+professor+and+librarian" target="_blank">associate professor and librarian </a>at the <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=university+of+colorado" target="_blank">University of </a><a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=colorado" target="_blank">Colorado </a>who coined the term "predatory journal" -- as a public service to his colleagues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">All the hilarious fake names like "schleem", "dinglebop" and "schwitinization", that do not make any sense, as well as images and graphs published in the paper, were fabricated.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The "Zyrgion simulation", and "intergalactic parasites" are all references to "Rick and Morty" -- a US Cartoon Network's animated science <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=fiction" target="_blank">fiction </a>programme about the misadventures of mad <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=scientist" target="_blank">scientist </a><a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=rick+sanchez" target="_blank">Rick Sanchez </a>and his grandson <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=morty+smith" target="_blank">Morty Smith.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Khan, a great fan of "Rick and Morty", submitted the paper with <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=beth+smith" target="_blank">Beth Smith </a>(Rick's granddaughter in the cartoon show) as the corresponding <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=author" target="_blank">author </a>and himself as co-<a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=author" target="_blank">author.</a> Two other authors' names were made-up, and Sukant Khurana -- a <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=scientist" target="_blank">scientist </a>at <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=central+drug+research+institute" target="_blank">Central Drug Research Institute </a>in Lucknow, who offered to help Khan in this sting, was another author -- all affiliated to an institution in <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=morocco" target="_blank">Morocco </a>that does not exist.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The so-called "Magnetic Oddities <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=radiation" target="_blank">Radiation </a>Therapy" developed by the authors to treat the brain <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=infection" target="_blank">infection </a>is again nothing but an expansion of "MORTY", a character in the cartoon show.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Anyone with commonsense would have noticed all the nonsense and consigned the paper to trash, but Khan surprisingly found it was accepted for publication by 10 journals for fees ranging from $75 to $650.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After some bargaining over fees, three scientific journals -- ARC Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, IOSR Journal of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences, and Clinical <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=biotechnology" target="_blank">Biotechnology </a>and <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=microbiology" target="_blank">Microbiology </a>-- published the paper without a second glance.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Khan says his "scientific prank" was intended to expose the seriousness of predatory journal industry and to create awareness among people who are beginning their careers in science. "These predatory journals are polluting the scientific record with junk science and are also resulting in fake news."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"When the Open Access Declaration was drafted in 2002, no one would have imagined that many unscrupulous individuals would pollute the entire system of scholarly communication with predatory journals solely with the idea of making money," Subbiah Arunachalam, <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=renowned+information+scientist" target="_blank">renowned information </a><a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=scientist" target="_blank">scientist </a>and Distinguished Fellow of the <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=centre+for+internet" target="_blank">Centre for Internet </a>and Society in Bengaluru, told this <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=correspondent" target="_blank">correspondent </a>in an email.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"Unfortunately, many Indians -- both individuals and companies -- are in this business," he said. "Predatory journals pose a big threat to the integrity of research."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"These are shameful acts by greedy publishers," Subhash Lakhotia, a <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=professor+of+zoology" target="_blank">professor of zoology </a>at the Benaras Hindu University, told this <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=correspondent" target="_blank">correspondent </a>in an email. "Until we stop payments of all kinds of open access charges and modify the present faulty <a class="storyTags" href="https://www.business-standard.com/search?type=news&q=assessment+system" target="_blank">assessment system </a>that relies on numbers of publications, predation in one or the other form would continue."</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/business-standard-ians-october-11-2018-sting-job-by-hyderabad-scientist-exposes-fake-journals'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/business-standard-ians-october-11-2018-sting-job-by-hyderabad-scientist-exposes-fake-journals</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2018-10-17T02:06:21ZNews ItemAn open data ecosystem can boost India's GDP by $22 B and double farmer income
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/your-story-sohini-mitter-may-22-2-018-open-data-ecosystem-can-boost-indias-gdp-22-b-double-farmer-income
<b>MeiTY says increased data transparency will drive growth and improve governance across key industry sectors in the time to come. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://yourstory.com/2018/05/open-data-ecosystem-can-boost-indias-gdp-22-b-double-farmer-income/">Your Story</a> on May 22, 2018.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">YES Bank in association with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has released a study that says an ‘open data ecosystem’ can grow India’s GDP by $22 billion by 2020. It could impact critical sectors like agriculture and double farmer income by reducing wastage and system inefficiencies.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The report titled <i>Open Government, Open Data – Re-imagining India</i> observes that farmers’ income could be twice of what it is in less than five years from now. Universal Health coverage could be strengthened, and micro-loans could be disbursed to millions of MSMEs more effectively through a well-functioning open data ecosystem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Empirical evidence shows that open data has aided agriculture world over. Combined with agricultural knowledge, remote sensing, and mapping, it helps create early warning systems for farmers. That enables them in “protecting crops from pests and extreme weather, increasing yields, monitoring water supplies, and anticipating changes brought on by climate change,” <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/04/26/open-data-can-transform-farmers-response-to-crisis" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">according</a> to the World Bank.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While India was among the first countries in the world to set up an <a href="https://data.gov.in/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Open Government Data</a> (OGD) platform that offered open and free access to data and information released by over 100 government departments, there have been loopholes in the project that has led to data being restricted in some cases. At present, OGD houses info-sets from 180,543 ministry resources and is presided over by a hundred-plus data officers.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">YES Bank has recommended steps to eliminate the existing gaps and boost usage of OGD to improve governance across sectors. It has also said that emerging technologies like Blockchain, Machine Learning (ML) and the Internet of Things (IoT) would drive further efficiencies in the open data ecosystem, and lead to more tech-focused innovation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One such innovation has been brought about by Silicon Valley agri startup, Harvesting, that recently launched its India operation. <a href="https://yourstory.com/2018/03/silicon-valley-startup-harvesting-plans-bridge-farm-finance-deficit-india">Harvesting uses remote sensing and geo-spatial imagery</a> along with existing farmer data to monitor farmlands, assess them in real-time, and send out reports and analysis to all stakeholders, including farmers, agri lenders, rural banks, and so on.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Harvesting Founder-CEO Ruchit Garg told<i> YourStory</i>,</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>“There are over 500 million small farm-holders in emerging markets that feed 80 percent of the world. But there is a data asymmetry in the agricultural value chain. Most problems arise because of a massive data deficit. We started to look at how this could be solved by leveraging data and technology.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Besides industries, the open data is available for citizen access too, and that is important.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Rana Kapoor, MD and CEO, Yes Bank, said,</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>“Data is collected from citizens for citizen welfare and should therefore be shared with them. Secondly, data like Government budget usage, welfare schemes and subsidies increases transparency, thereby building greater trust.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">YES Bank also recommends more public-private partnerships (PPP) for open data to be fully utilised. It proposes the formation of an Open Data Council comprising representatives from private and public sectors as well as technology service providers. The council would be chaired by MeitY and will work towards the identification of ‘priority sectors’ which require data digitisation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But, merely having large amounts of open data sets is not enough. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) sounds a word of caution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a separate report titled <i>Open Government Data Study: India</i>, the CIS states,</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: justify; ">
<p>“To ensure the relevance of open government data, mechanisms have to be put in place to take its benefits to ordinary people and to marginalised communities. Simply putting up raw data will not suffice.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The report notes that a richer open data ecosystem can be created by harnessing records and information from rural internet kiosks, community e-centres, e-healthcare, geographic information systems (GISs), dairy sector applications, teacher training programmes, online agricultural systems, wireless local loop solutions, databases of rural innovations, land property registrations, women and children’s services, and more.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/your-story-sohini-mitter-may-22-2-018-open-data-ecosystem-can-boost-indias-gdp-22-b-double-farmer-income'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/your-story-sohini-mitter-may-22-2-018-open-data-ecosystem-can-boost-indias-gdp-22-b-double-farmer-income</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpen DataAccess to KnowledgeOpenness2018-05-23T14:37:55ZNews ItemOn World Water Day - Open Data for Water Resources
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/on-world-water-day-open-data-for-water-resources
<b>Lack of open data for researchers and activists is a key barrier against ensuring access to water and planning for sustainable management of water resources. In a collaboration between DataMeet and CIS, supported by Arghyam, we are exploring the early steps for making open data and tools to plan for water resources accessible to all. To celebrate the World Water Day 2018, we are sharing what we have been working on in the past few months - a paper on open data for water studies in India, and a web app to make open water data easily explorable and usable. Craig Dsouza led this collaboration, and authored this post.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Project Blog: <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/" target="_blank">Open Water Data
for Integrated Water Science</a> (External)</h4>
<h4>Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Summary: <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/precipitation/2017/12/31/OWD-Paper/" target="_blank">Read</a> (External)</h4>
<h4>Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Full Paper: <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/docs/open-water-data-paper.pdf" target="_blank">Read</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Open Water Data Web App: <a href="https://water-data-web-app.appspot.com/" target="_blank">View</a> (External)</h4>
<h4>Open Water Data Web App - Tech Stack: <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/tech/2017/12/08/OWD-Web-App-Tech-Stack/" target="_blank">Read</a> (External)</h4>
<h4>Open Water Data Web App - Precipitation Data: <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/precipitation/2018/01/05/OWD-Web-App-Precipitation-Data/" target="_blank">Read</a> (External)</h4>
<hr />
<p>The 22nd of March is celebrated internationally as World Water Day. Water is so tightly intertwined in every aspect of our lives that one can only scratch the surface in understanding this resource. Besides directly giving us life, it is a key non-renewable shared resource that dictates whether and how societies can grow and prosper. It has shaped the way civilization arose - on riverbanks and coastal lands. Adequate water of good quality can make or break a child’s early growth. Water available at the right time in the monsoon could shape a family’s fortunes for an entire year.</p>
<p>Unfortunately given the development trajectory of the last century, we have struggled to strike a balance and use water in a sustainable manner. Far too many face the ill effects of this misuse. The challenge with water lies in its nature as a common pool resource, which means that it belongs to everyone. Water is for everyone to benefit from and conversely it is no individual’s responsibility to manage and to ensure its sustainability. While some laws and policies exist to ensure sustainable use of water its fluid (pun intended) and ephemeral nature make those laws very hard to enforce. No one knows for sure how much water lies under the ground and above the surface, we only have estimates. Moreover even these estimates lie in the hands of a few. The Government of India is by far the largest entity that collects data on water across the country. Management of this resource however requires that these data points and the capacity to monitor should be decentralized. The 73rd amendment recognises this by placing the authority to plan and implement local works such as watershed management and drinking water provision under the purview of Panchayats.</p>
<p>To address this shortcoming Datameet and CIS in collaboration have taken first steps with a project to ensure that data and tools to plan for water resources are accessible to all. The strategy within this project has been to seek alternative data sources for water, other than government data much of which still isn’t open data. Two alternatives that have emerged are remote sensing open data and crowdsourced community data. A <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/precipitation/2017/12/31/OWD-Paper/" target="_blank">paper</a> put together by the team highlights the numerous sources available for datasets such as rainfall, soil moisture, groundwater levels, reservoir storages, river flows, and water demand including domestic and agricultural water. Besides the paper the team has also put together a first iteration of a <a href="https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/precipitation/2018/01/05/OWD-Web-App-Precipitation-Data/" target="_blank">web app</a> which seeks to provide these datasets in an easy to use intuitive and interactive format to users in the area of water planning and management. The first dataset available here is <a href="http://chg.geog.ucsb.edu/data/chirps/" target="_blank">CHIRPS</a>: a high resolution daily rainfall dataset for the whole of India.</p>
<p>The plans for this project in the future include making available more datasets (crop maps and Evapotranspiration) and features to access them. In addition to this the goal is also to improve our understanding of the usability of remote sensing water data with efforts to calibrate it with ground observations. A key element of these plans is to develop these resources in collaboration with end users of the data so that the tools are developed with their concerns in mind. <strong>We welcome ideas, queries, feedback, and partnerships - do contact us at <a href="mailto:pune@datameet.org">pune@datameet.org</a></strong>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/on-world-water-day-open-data-for-water-resources'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/on-world-water-day-open-data-for-water-resources</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpen Water DataOpen DataOpen ScienceOpen Government DataEnvironmentFeaturedOpennessHomepage2019-01-28T14:41:51ZBlog EntryDelhi Declaration on Open Access
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/delhi-declaration-on-open-access
<b>Open Access India recently released a statement to promote openness in science and research communities. CIS contributed to the text and introduced it to the participants of OpenCon 2018, Delhi. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Published by Open Access India on February 14, 2018. Read the original <a class="external-link" href="http://openaccessindia.org/delhi-declaration-on-open-access/">post here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This declaration was drafted by a group comprising of researchers and professionals working for opening up access to research outputs for public good in India. The declaration is aimed at scientific communities, scholarly societies, publishers, funders, universities and research institutions to promote openness in science and research communications.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; ">Preamble</h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The South Asian region, home to 24% of the world’s population faces major challenges such as hunger, poverty and inequality. These challenges become the collective responsibility of scholars and experts in research universities across the country. Consequently, it becomes imperative that research institutes share scientific research outputs and accelerate scientific research. The Open Access movement which aims for making all ‘publicly funded research outcomes publicly available for the public good’ is gaining momentum.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>“</i><i>Open</i><i> means </i><i>anyone</i><i> can </i><i>freely access, use, modify, and share</i><i> for </i><i>any purpose</i><i>(subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness)” –</i><a href="http://opendefinition.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Open Definition</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As per the Budapest Open Access Initiative (<a href="http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">BOAI</a>), ‘Open Access’ (to scholarly literature) is “<i>free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself</i>”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since the launch of the BOAI on 14th Feb. 2002, efforts are being made by various scholarly societies, academic communities and governments to make scholarly content Open. However, due to various reasons, the full potential of Open Access is not realised by the producers (scholars), publishers and readers (scholars and society at large) of this knowledge and the world is still disconnected in terms of sharing the scholarly content openly.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As per the Scimago Journal & Country Rank<a href="http://www.scimagojr.com/countrysearch.php?country=in" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> (SJR</a>), India ranks 9th in the year 2016 producing about 13 lakhs articles. However, 82% of them are not Open Access and the Institutional Repositories in India are sparsely populated in spite of having Open Access mandates in place. The Directory of Open Access Journals (<a href="https://doaj.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DOAJ</a>) lists only 200 out of the 20,000+ journals being published from India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The historical BOAI is now 16 years old, but still there is a need for all of us to be educated and empowered to realize the power of Open Access to scholarly content and harness it for public good in India. With burgeoning commercial scholarly publications and increasing diversity in terms of availability of & accessibility to the information, we need to create a necessary framework for making Open Access the default by 2025 in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To ensure the wide availability and encourage the use of of research data and information for the purpose of addressing multifaceted challenges, Open Access to publicly funded research and scholarly outputs are to be made available under Open Licenses (e.g. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Creative Commons</a>) while duly acknowledging the intellectual property (work/rights of the creators/producers/authors).</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://openaccessindia.org/delhi-declaration-on-open-access-brief/">Declaration</a></h2>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>We, the contributors and signatories of this declaration, members of the Open Access India, Open Access communities of practice in India and the attendees of the <a href="http://www.opencon2017.org/opencon_2018_new_delhi" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">OpenCon 2018 New Delhi</a> held on 3rd Feb., 2018 at Acharya Narendra Dev College, Kalkaji, New Delhi (University of Delhi) agree to issue this declaration:</i></p>
<ol style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>We advocate for the practice of Open Science (sharing research methods and results openly which will avoid “reinventing the wheel”) and adoption of open technologies for the development of models for sharing science and scholarship (Open Scholarship) to accelerate the progress of research and to address the real societal challenges</li>
<li>We will strive to publish our interim research outputs as preprints or postprints (e.g. Institutional Repositories) and encourage our peers and supervisors to do the same to make our research open and actionable in a timely manner.</li>
<li>We will practice and encourage researchers and scientists to implement openness in peer-reviewing and other editorial services, influence the scholarly societies to flip their journals into Open Access and will contribute for the development of whitelist of Open Access journals in India adhering to the “<a href="https://publicationethics.org/news/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing-revised-and-updated" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing</a>”.</li>
<li>We will garner support of the relevant stakeholders (scholars, journal editorial teams, university libraries, research funders, authorities’ in-charge of dissemination of scholarship in higher education) for spearheading the Open Access movement.</li>
<li>We will take forward the concept of Open Access to further bring all the publicly funded research outputs (not limited to journal literature alone) to be freely available under open licenses to the public to use, reuse and share in any media in open formats.</li>
<li>We will impress upon policy makers to adopt an open evaluation system for research and an institutional reward system for practicing openness in science ,scientific communications and academic research across disciplines including Humanities and Social Sciences</li>
<li>We will support and work for an alternate reward system in recognition and promotion not in terms of the ‘Impact Factor’ of the journals, but the ‘Impact’ of the articles/scholarship in science and the society and impress upon all the scientists/scholars, research funders, research institutes, universities, academies and scholarly societies to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (<a href="http://www.ascb.org/dora/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DORA</a>).</li>
<li>We strongly agree with the Joint<a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/news-and-in-focus-articles/all-news/news/joint_coar_unesco_statement_on_open_access/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> COAR-UNESCO Statement on Open Access</a> , <a href="http://jussieucall.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Jussieu Call</a> and <a href="http://www.codesria.org/spip.php?article2595&lang=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dakar Declaration</a>. And will also follow the international initiative<a href="https://oa2020.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Open Access 2020</a>, to develop roadmaps to support sustainable Open Access scholarly communication models which are free of charge for the authors and free of charge availability to the readers.</li>
<li>While learning from South South cooperation on Open Access, will work for developing a framework for Open Access in India and South Asia: National Policies for Open Access and country-specific action plans will be formulated aimed at making Open Access as the default in India and South Asia, by 2025.</li>
<li>For creating more awareness on Open Access, infrastructure, capacity building, funding and policy mechanisms, as well as incentivizing for the Open Access, we come forward to share success stories, studies and discussions during the Open Access Week.</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Adopted on 14th February 2018</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Signatories (along with their affiliation):</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Anasua Mukherjee, BRICSLICS</i><br /><i>Anubha Sinha, CIS India</i><br /><i>Anup Kumar Das, Open Access India; CSSP, JNU</i><br /><i>Arul George Scaria, NLU Delhi</i><br /><i>Barnali Roy Choudhury, Open Access India</i><br /><i>Bhakti R Gole, Open Access India</i><br /><i>Girija Goyal, ReFigure.org</i><br /><i>Javed Azmi, Jamia Hamdard</i><br /><i>Kavya Manohar, Open Access India</i><br /><i>Neha Sharma</i><br /><i>Nirmala Menon IIT Indore</i><br /><i>Sailesh Patnaik, Access to Knowledge, CIS</i><br /><i>Savithri Singh, Creative Commons India</i><br /><i>Sridhar Gutam, Open Access India</i><br /><i>Subhashish Panigrahi, Internet Society, O Foundation</i><br /><i>Vijay Bhasker Lode, Open Access India</i><br /><i>Virendra Kamalvanshi, Banaras Hindu University</i><br /><i>Tanveer Hasan A K, Access to Knowledge, Bangalore</i><br /><i>Waseem A Malla</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ahsan Ullah, Bangladesh<br />Anila Sulochana, Central University of Tamil Nadu<br />Anoh Kouao Antoine, Ecole Supérieure Africaine des TIC, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)<br />Antonio Solís Lima,México<br />Atarino Helieisar, FSM Supreme Court Law Library, Federated States of Micronesia<br />Bidyarthi Dutta, Vidyasagar University<br />Binoy Mathew, INELI<br />Boye Komla Dogbe, Ministère De La Communication, De La Culture, Togo<br />Srikanth Reddy, CBIT<br />Cajetan Onyeneke, Imo State University, Nigeria<br />Chantal Moukoko Kamole, Universitty of Douala, Cameroun<br />D Puthira Prathap, Extension Education Society<br />Daniel Bossikponnon, Ministère du plan et du Développement, Bénin<br />Dare Adeleke, the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria<br />Dilip Man Sthapit, TU Central Library/LIMISEC, Nepal<br />Emmy Medard Muhumuza, Busitema University Library, Uganda<br />Fabian Yelsang, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Consultancy Services, Ghana<br />Fayaz Loan, University of Kashmir<br />GJP Dixit, Central Library, Central University of Karnataka<br />Gurpreet Singh Sohal, GGDSD College<br />Harinder Pal Singh Kalra, Punjabi University<br />Hue Bui, Thainguyen University of Sciences, Vietnam<br />Jacinto Dávila, Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela<br />Jaishankar K, International Journal of Cyber Criminology<br />Jancy Gupta, National Dairy Research Institute<br />JK Vijayakumar<br />Jonathan Tennant, Open Science MOOC, Germany<br />Julián Vaquerizo-Madrid, Unidad de Neurología Clínica Evolutiva, Spain<br />Kamal Hossain, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Bangladesh<br />Kasongo Ilunga Felix, Democratic Republic of Congo<br />Kavita Chaddha<br />Kojo Ahiakpa, Research Desk Consulting Ltd., Ghana<br />Krishna Chaitanya, Velaga, the Wikipedia Library<br />Kumaresan Chidambaranathan, New Zealand<br />Kunwar Singh, Banaras Hindu University<br />Luis Saravia, PERU<br />Mahendra Sahu, Gandhi Institution of Engineering & Technology,Gunupur<br />Maidhili S., Meenakshi College for Women<br />Manika Lamba, University of Delhi<br />Md. Nasir Uddin, BRAC University, Bangladesh<br />Md. Nazim Uddin, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh<br />Md. Nurul Islam, International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh<br />Md. Shahajada Masud Anowarul Haque, BRAC University, Bangladesh<br />Mir Sakhawat Hossain, Kabi Nazrul Government College, Bangladesh<br />Munusamy Natarajan, CSIR-NISCAIR<br />Murtoza Kh Ali, Bangladesh<br />Subash Pillai, ICAR-Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research<br />Nasar Ahmed Shah, Aligarh Muslim University<br />Nimesh Oza, Sardar Patel University<br />Niraj Chaudhary, United States<br />Poonam Bharti<br />Prerna Singh, Central University of Jammu<br />Rabia Bashir, Law and Parliamentary Affairs, Pakistan<br />Rajendran Murugan, Department of Education, University of Delhi<br />Rama Kant Shukla, Delhi Technological University<br />Raman Nair R, Centre for Informatics Research and Development<br />Rebat Kumar Dhakal, KUSOED Integrity Alliance, Nepal<br />Revocatus Kuluchumila, AMUCTA, Tanzania<br />M. Humayun Kabir, Tutul, National Health Library & Documentation Centre, Bangladesh<br />Sabuj Kumar, Chaudhuri, University of Calcutta<br />Sandipan Banerjee<br />Satwinder Bangar<br />Shahana Jahan, Bangladesh<br />Shamnad Basheer, SpicyIP<br />Shivendra Singh<br />Shreyashi Ray, NLU, Delhi<br />Sivakrishna Sivakoti<br />Soumen Kayal, Maharaja Manindra chandra College<br />Srinivasarao Muppidi, Sanketika Vidya Parishad Engineering College<br />Stephanie Gross, MSLIS from Pratt Institute, USA<br />Sujata Tetali, MACS-Agharkar Research Institute<br />Surjodeb Lulu Hono Basu<br />Susmita Das, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Bangladesh<br />Susmita Chakraborty, University of Calcutta<br />Thilagavathi, Thillai Natarajan, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women<br />Umesh Kumar<br />Umme Habiba, Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh<br />Vinita, Jain, M D College of Arts, Science and Commerce<br />Virginia Inés Simón, Red Iberoamericana de Expertos sobre la Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, Argentina<br />Vrushali Dandawate, AISSMS College of Engineering/DOAJ<br />Waqar Khan, Dhaka Shishu Hospital, Bangladesh<br />Wilbert Zvakafa, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe<br />Yasser Ahmed, South Valley University, Egypt<br />Yohann Thomas, Wikimedia India<br />Zakir Hossain, International Association of School Librarianship, International Schools Region, Switzerland<br />Dahmane Madjid, CERIST, Algeria<br />Nagarjuna G, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR<br />Sulyman Sodeeq Abdulakeem, Federal Polytechnic Offa, Nigeria<br />Leena Shah, DOAJ<br />Hamady Issaga Sy, Sénégal<br />Sanket Oswal, Wikimedia India<br />Chitralekha, University of Delhi<br />Chris Zielinski, University of Winchester, United Kingdom<br />Mourya Biswas, Prateek Media</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/delhi-declaration-on-open-access'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/delhi-declaration-on-open-access</a>
</p>
No publisherAdminOpennessOpen Access2018-02-26T14:53:07ZNews ItemOpen Data and Land Ownership - Environment Scan
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-data-and-land-ownership-environment-scan
<b>The State of Open Data is an ambitious research project reflecting on 10 years of action on open data and providing a critical review of the current state of the open data movement across a range of issues and thematic areas. This environment scan represents the first step in gathering information to support a review of the state of open data with regard to land ownership, and in refining the focus of a chapter. The lead author for this chapter is Sumandro Chattapadhyay.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Comments and suggestions: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1teylHd_r-Kan9erpiCb9sHTNKpRv5QwXFE4INjcBDqU/edit#" target="_blank">Environment Scan</a> (Google Drive)</h4>
<h4>State of Open Data: <a href="https://medium.com/@stateofopendata/the-state-of-open-data-join-the-investigation-b223edef2a8a"> Join the Investigation!</a></h4>
<h4>State of Open Data on Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/stateofopendata">@stateofopendata</a></h4>
<hr />
<h2>Issues</h2>
<h3><strong>[Gap] Land Ownership data is mostly closed</strong></h3>
<p>Land Ownership data ranks as the least likely data to be available in an open format and under open license (across the world) among the fifteen types of data tracked by <a href="https://index.okfn.org/dataset/">Global Open Data Index</a> developed by Open Knowledge International. Similarly, the latest Global Report of the Open Data Barometer initiative of World Wide Web Foundation finds Land Ownership to be the least open of different categories of data that are essential for ensuring government accountability – only 1% of countries surveyed were found to open up Land Ownership data as opposed to 10% of countries opening up Budget data, and 11% of countries opening up Election Results data (http://opendatabarometer.org/4thedition/report/#table7). Both these findings indicate that Land Ownership data is among the most closed categories of data that are needed globally for ensuring accountability and transparency, as well as for tracking shifts in the distribution of national wealth.</p>
<h3><strong>[Gap] Global paucity of reliable information about cross-border investments in and shifts in ownership of land</strong></h3>
<p>While initiatives like Land Matrix have spearheaded greater availability of open data about global cross-border investments in land and resulting shifts in ownership patterns, researchers have pointed out the limited accuracy and methodological reflexivity in the production of such data sets, and highlighted the possibility of them representing "an instance of '<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03066150.2013.799465">false precision</a>'". A recent article in <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/df31f666-0a43-3a0e-a747-ec72f2efb40c">Financial Times</a> notes that “[t]here is plenty of debate over the accuracy of this [open-source data of agricultural land sales]. Official data sources vary widely from country to country, while land deals themselves are notoriously opaque and fluid. Media reports about the leasing or buying of land often lack clairity."</p>
<h3><strong>[Progress] Collaborative and incremental development of extensive and intensive monitoring of openness of land ownership data across countries</strong></h3>
<p>There are several recent examples of collaborative efforts to better collect, organise, and recognise open land ownership data, which indicate at a growing momentum to address this critical weak link in the global open data agenda. Key initiatives include the <a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2017/06/09/what-data-do-we-need-the-story-of-the-cadasta-godi-fellowship/">GODI Fellowship</a> established by Cadasta Foundation and Open Knowledge International, a focus on <a href="https://opendatacharter.net/agriculture-open-data-package/section-2-towards-open-data-infrastructure-agriculture/socio-economic-data/land-use-productivity-data/">Land Use and Productivity Data</a> as part of the Agricultural Open Data Package of the International Open Data Charter, and the work of Land Portal in the Mekong region to develop a <a href="http://www.godan.info/sites/default/files/documents/Godan_Success_Stories_1_Land%20portal%20offers%20innovation%20in%20land%20governance%20through%20open%20data.pdf">common land information vocabulary</a>, especially in a region marked by "its disparate languages and range of national priorities [and] the need to communicate effectively about complex land issues across borders and between individuals with different skill sets".</p>
<h3><strong>[Progress] Success of the Access Land campaign in California, USA:</strong></h3>
<p>"<a href="http://accessland.org/">Access Land</a> is a coalition of 50+ organizations committed to increasing access to our public land through open data. This summer, both the Federal Government and California State Parks released reservation contracts that require open data and plans to engage third party partners – redefining how the public accesses their land forever. Unlocking park data empowers entrepreneurs of all backgrounds to build unique applications that better connect the public to their land. By reaching a wider and more diverse demographic, visitation to our parks will rise, boosting revenue and ensuring the future relevance and sustainability of our public land. <a href="https://medium.com/@alyraz/open-data-for-93af9d3d30aa">Open data is the key</a> to inspiring the next generation of park supporters."</p>
<h3><strong>[Progress] HM Land Registry, Government of UK, publishing Commercial and Corporate Ownership Data and Overseas Companies Ownership Data for free</strong></h3>
<p>On November 7, 2017, the land records authority of UK (<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hm-land-registry-makes-commercial-ownership-data-free">HM Land Registry</a>) started free sharing of two of its land ownership data sets: the Commercial and Corporate Ownership Data and Overseas Companies Ownership Data, which "contain more than 3 million rows of data and include the address, company’s name, price paid and country of incorporation along with other useful information." The decision is expected to "support growth in the property technology (PropTech) sector and among small and medium-sized enterprises."</p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Who?: Stakeholders, networks, community</h2>
<h3><strong>Cadasta Foundation</strong></h3>
<p>"Develops and promotes the use of simple digital tools and technology to help partners efficiently document, analyze, store, and share critical land and resource rights information. By creating an accessible digital record of land, housing and resource rights, we help empower individuals, organizations, communities, and governments with the information they need to make data-driven decisions and put vulnerable communities and their needs on the map… Cadasta is dedicated to working in such settings to help partners use simple, low-cost, high-tech tools to efficiently and effectively document their land and resource rights — incrementally strengthening their rights to land. This documentation creates an evidence base and advocacy case for vulnerable communities’ claims to the land. Such documentation can make it less likely that communities will be displaced and can serve to support demands for compensation should communities be displaced. We use and create versatile digital tools for a myriad of purposes from certifying sustainable agricultural production to creating a digital land registry that secures land rights for millions of people."</p>
<blockquote>"Cadasta Foundation is developing an <strong>open platform, informed by the Social Tenure Domain Model</strong>, for documenting land and resource rights. Through the development of an ecosystem of partners, technology and data, the platform is designed to allow the direct capture and documenting of land rights through a global open platform that is secure, cost effective and transparent. The foundation’s perspective is informed by years of experience working with formal land administration processes and national-level land information systems, as well as working with volunteered geographic information to develop robust and upto-date datasets. At Cadasta, the focus is twofold – providing the repository and tools necessary to document the rights of those left out of the formal system, while also serving as a portal for open datasets in land and other resources, such as extractives, forestry and agricultural investment concessions, where they exist."</blockquote>
<p>Supported by the Department for International Development of Government of UK and the Omidyar Network</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://cadasta.org/">http://cadasta.org/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Global Land Alliance</strong></h3>
<p>"The mission of Global Land Alliance is to enable the prosperity of people and places by advancing learning and practice to achieve land tenure security and the efficient, inclusive and sustainable use of land and natural resources. We aim to accelerate quality development by resolving land issues with new paradigms of participation and accountability… Global Land Alliance takes the traditional think tank model a step forward, not only producing new understanding and recommendations based on on-the-ground perspectives of citizens, community leaders and businesses, but also channeling those learnings toward practical implementation at scale. By scaling and speeding up resolution of land issues, we can scale up and speed up improved results in the big issues of our time: urbanization, food security, environmental sustainability and peace."</p>
<blockquote>"<a href="http://www.prindex.net/">PRIndex, the Global Property Rights Index</a>, is a collaborative initiative between Global Land Alliance and the Overseas Development Institute to develop and roll out the first global measurement of peoples’ perceptions of their property rights. PRIndex is establishing a global and national-level baseline of perceptions of land tenure security. This baseline will provide the grounding for a global conversation and movement around securing the property rights of billions who currently lack them."</blockquote>
<p>Supported by Inter-American Development Bank, Omidyar Network, Department for International Development of Government of UK, the World Bank, Overseas Development Initiative, and others</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://www.globallandalliance.org/">http://www.globallandalliance.org/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Global Land Tool Network</strong></h3>
<p>"The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) is an alliance of international partners committed to increasing access to land and tenure security for all, with a particular focus on the poor and women. The Network’s partners include international civil society organizations, research and training institutions, bilateral and multilateral organizations, and international professional bodies… GLTN develops, disseminates and implements pro-poor and gender-responsive land tools. These tools and approaches contribute to land reform, good land governance, inclusive land administration, sustainable land management, and functional land sector coordination."</p>
<blockquote>"Throughout the world, land provides a primary source of income, food security, cultural identity and shelter. It also serves as a fundamental asset for the economic empowerment of the poor and provides a safety net in times of hardship. To enhance access to information and awareness by land and data community and the wider stakeholders around land indicators in the SDGs and related processes for their monitoring, GLTN in collaboration with Land Portal Foundation produced the <a href="https://landportal.org/book/sdgs">Land and SDGs dashboard</a>."</blockquote>
<p>Facilitated by UN-Habitat; currently implementing programmes supported by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Government of Norway, SIDA, Government of the Netherlands, and UN-Habitat</p>
<p>Website: <a href="https://gltn.net/home/">https://gltn.net/home/</a></p>
<h3><strong>International Land Coalition</strong></h3>
<p>"A global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organisations working together to put people at the centre of land governance. The shared goal of ILC's over 200 members is to realise land governance for and with people at the country level, responding to the needs and protecting the rights of women, men and communities who live on and from the land."</p>
<p>Supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Government of Germany, EU, IFAD, Irish Aid, American Jewish World Service, Belgian Fund for Food Security, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SIDA, and others.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://www.landcoalition.org/">http://www.landcoalition.org/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Land Matrix</strong></h3>
<p>"A global and independent land monitoring initiative. Our goal is to facilitate an open development community of citizens, researchers, policy-makers and technology specialists to promote transparency and accountability in decisions over land and investment... [The website functions as a] Global Observatory - an open tool for collecting and visualising information about large-scale land acquisitions."</p>
<p>Supported partly by the internal resources of the partner organisations, and partly by Oxfam, SDC, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BMZ and European Commission; designed and developed by Sinnwerkstatt in partnership with Tactical Studios at Tactical Technology Collective.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://landmatrix.org/en/">http://landmatrix.org/en/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Land Portal Foundation</strong></h3>
<p>"Works to create a better information ecosystem for land governance through a platform based on cutting-edge linked and open data technologies. We help partners to create, curate and disseminate land governance data and information to become part of a more inclusive information landscape. Current information sources are often fragmented, represent a restricted set of perspectives, and are not structured, curated and licensed in ways that support maximum discovery, engagement and reuse."</p>
<p>The Foundation is hosted by University of Groningen, The Netherland; supported by the Department for International Development of Government of UK, International Land Coalition, and the Global Land Tool Network.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="https://landportal.org/">https://landportal.org/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Open Land Contracts</strong></h3>
<p>"An online repository of publicly available contracts for large-scale land, agriculture, and forestry projects. The repository includes the full text of contracts; plain language summaries (also referred to as "annotations") of each contract’s key social, environmental, human rights, fiscal, and operational terms; and tools for searching and comparing contracts. Launched in October 2015, OpenLandContracts.org promotes greater transparency of land-based investments, facilitates a better understanding of the contracts that govern them, and provides useful tools for governments, communities, companies, and other stakeholders."</p>
<p>An initiative of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, USA; supported by UKaid from the Department for International Development, Government of UK.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://www.openlandcontracts.org/">http://www.openlandcontracts.org/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Radiant</strong></h3>
<p>"Radiant launched operations in August 2016 to answer the call for open access to geospatial data, with analytical tools for global development practitioners designed to improve decision-making, and to foster entrepreneurship worldwide. Radiant’s geospatial technology platform will permit users to illuminate earth, literally, to allow everywhere to be "seen"; to turn the telescopes back on human activity as we enter the Anthropocene period; and to give decision-makers a scientific window into understanding global activity better. Providing the global community with these tools and data can create powerful insights and accelerate greater catalytic, evidence-based support for change."</p>
<p>Supported by Omidyar Network and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="https://radiant.earth/">https://radiant.earth/</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Research and evidence</h2>
<p><strong>Cotula, Lorenzo, and Thierry Berger. 2017. Trends in global land use investment: Implications for legal empowerment. London, UK: IIED. Accessed from <a href="http://www.landcoalition.org/sites/default/files/documents/resources/12606iied.pdf">http://www.landcoalition.org/sites/default/files/documents/resources/12606iied.pdf</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>This report takes stock of trends in land use investments and legal empowerment responses, with a view to informing next steps for legal empowerment agendas. Drawing on a review of the available literature and global datasets, it discusses evolving patterns in land use investments, developments in investment frameworks, and implications for legal empowerment initiatives.</blockquote>
<p><strong>Ferris, Lindsay, Frank Pichel, and Neil Sorensen. 2016. Land Debate on Open Data and Land Governance. Cadasta Foundation and Land Portal. December. Accessed from <a href="https://landportal.org/pt/library/resources/report-debate-open-data-and-land-governance">https://landportal.org/pt/library/resources/report-debate-open-data-and-land-governance</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>Across most contexts, government data sources on land are largely inaccessible, from land administration data, such as parcel data and ownership information to land investments, contract data and even policy information. In considering data on property ownership specifically, the latest version of the Open Data Barometer shows only two countries, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, obtained a full 100% score on the topic of Land Ownership. When this land administration data is made available, it is commonly made public via a web portal rather than as open data. However, governments are not the sole sources of land data. For example, international organizations such as World Bank, the United Nations and numerous bi-lateral donor organizations publish land related data, while countless NGOs may participate in community mapping and policy analysis. Beyond EU Directives for geospatial datasets, common principles and processes are lacking for determining what data should be open, with often differing interpretations among EU Directives. Finally, questions of how to tackle privacy and security risks to vulnerable populations remain disputed, leading NGOs, governments and international institutions to dismiss open data entirely. However, with an ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is an increasing need to pool data resources toward solving global challenges -- while protecting the rights of vulnerable populations. In September 2016, Cadasta Foundation and the Land Portal Foundation teamed up to facilitate a conversation on these issues. Our aims were to better understand the current landscape, potential impacts as well as illustrate the unique challenges in opening land data in order to begin figuring out the solutions. Within the Land Portal platform, we heard the points of view of 26 participants from government land agencies, international institutions and NGOs. Throughout this report, we’ve summarized the main themes that surfaced throughout the three-week Land Debate.</blockquote>
<p><strong>Ferris, Lindsay. 2017. Outputs for the Cadasta GODI Fellowship. Links to four outputs accessed from <a href="https://blog.okfn.org/2017/06/09/what-data-do-we-need-the-story-of-the-cadasta-godi-fellowship/">https://blog.okfn.org/2017/06/09/what-data-do-we-need-the-story-of-the-cadasta-godi-fellowship/</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>Throughout the fellowship, Lindsay conducted interviews with land experts, NGOs and government officials as well as on-going desk research on the land data publication practices across different contexts. She established 4 key outputs: 1. Outlining the challenges of opening land ownership data… 2. Mapping the different types of land data and their availability… 3. Assessing the privacy and security risks of opening certain types of land data… 4. Identifying user needs and creating user personas for open land data… Throughout the GODI process, our aim is to advocate for datasets that different stakeholders actually need and that make sense within the context in which they are published. For example, one of the main challenges in land ownership is that data is not always recorded or gathered by the federal level, and is collect in cities and regions. One of the primary users of land ownership data are other government agencies. Having a grasp of this type of knowledge helped us better define the land ownership dataset for the GODI. Ultimately, we developed a thoughtful definition based on these reflections and recommendations.</blockquote>
<p><strong>Hogge, Becky. 2015. “HM Land Registry: The UK’s trading funds, and two futures for open data”. In Open Data: Six Stories About Impact in the UK. November. Omidyar Network. Pp. 17-24. Accessed from <a href="https://www.omidyar.com/sites/default/files/file_archive/insights/Open%20Data_Six%20Stories%20About%20Impact%20in%20the%20UK/OpenData_CaseStudies_Report_complete_DIGITAL_102715.pdf">https://www.omidyar.com/sites/default/files/file_archive/insights/Open%20Data_Six%20Stories%20About%20Impact%20in%20the%20UK/OpenData_CaseStudies_Report_complete_DIGITAL_102715.pdf</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>HM Land Registry began a phased release of its data on property transactions – the Price Paid Dataset – in March 2012, and by November 2013 the entire historic record dating back to 1995 was released. The data provides much-needed transparency in a historically “murky” business, and is already being used extensively by some traditional players in the property market. Additionally, new players are consolidating around the field of proptech, developing digital tools to bring buying and selling property “out of the Stone Age”. Proptech startups attracted an estimated $1.4 billion in investment globally in 2014. PI Labs, an incubator for proptech startups, opened in London in late 2014.</blockquote>
<p><strong>Raman, Bhuvaneswari, and Zainab Bawa. 2011. Citizens Participation and Technology Interventions in Government Programmes: The Case of Nemmadi Kendras in Bangalore. SIRCA Report. Janastu. Accessed from <a href="http://tgc.janastu.org/2011/06/raman-bawa/">http://tgc.janastu.org/2011/06/raman-bawa/</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>Our findings on Nemmadi corroborates Benjamin et al (2005) suggestion that transparency of land information in contexts such as Bangalore can accentuate existing social and economic inequalities and can weaken the claims on land of relatively weaker groups in society. The reflection of the activist from Dalit Sangarsh Samithi quoted above draw attention to the fact that despite the apparent myth of uniform access to information, there are differences in terms of their ability to capture this information. Specifically, when it comes to land, it is not only about having information but also the power to displace / disposses current occupiers. Thus, power between different users affect their ability to capture this information to their advantage but more importantly, such visibility can pose new risks to the claims of relatively weaker groups. Proponents of data transparency fail to make the distinction between access to and the capture of information and the risk posed by opening up certain types of data. Based on our preliminary observations we suggest that there is need to differentiate between the types of data that is made public and the political economic context in which such information is made public. Our findings suggest the usefulness of further research on this aspect.</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<h2>Events</h2>
<h4>International workshop on Open Land Data: Mobile Apps and Geo-services for Open Soil Data</h4>
<p>Hosted by Tom Hengl and Rik van den Bosch (ISRIC – World Soil Information), and Jeff Herrick (U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service, New Mexico State University), July 2-4, 2017, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, <a href="http://gsif.isric.org/doku.php/wiki:workshop_2017">http://gsif.isric.org/doku.php/wiki:workshop_2017</a></p>
<h4>Responsible Land Governance: Towards an Evidence Based Approach</h4>
<p>Annual Word Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, Washington DC, USA, March 20-24, 2017, <a href="https://www.conftool.com/landandpoverty2017/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=555&presentations=show">https://www.conftool.com/landandpoverty2017/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=555&presentations=show</a></p>
<h4>Workshop on Open Data and Land Governance: Moving Towards an Information Ecosystem</h4>
<p>Land Portal Foundation and Cadasta Foundation, March 20, 2017, OpenGov Hub, Washington DC, USA, <a href="https://landportal.org/event/2017/03/open-data-and-land-governance-moving-towards-information-ecosystem">https://landportal.org/event/2017/03/open-data-and-land-governance-moving-towards-information-ecosystem</a></p>
<p> </p>
<h2>Resources and funding</h2>
<h3><strong>Department for International Development, Government of UK: Land Governance for Economic Development</strong></h3>
<p>"DFID will pursue actions globally to improve land rights protection to: help ensure women and men enjoy legally recognised, secure property and tenure rights. To Improve information and knowledge to facilitate the provision of clear, transparent land related information and knowledge, enabling rights to be identified, understood and protected. To improve private sector investment through the development and rollout of a standardized investment risk assessment methodology and implementation of best practice in land governance."</p>
<p>Website: <a href="https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-204252/">https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-204252/</a></p>
<h3><strong>Omidyar Network – Property Rights</strong></h3>
<p>"We know why this matters: Strengthening rights to land, natural resources, and other assets empowers people to decide, based on their tacit and local knowledge, how best to use their assets. Add in increased decision-making authority with legal rights to benefit from valued uses of property, and you get improved incentives to invest in families, children, farms and businesses. It is worth underscoring that the poor – whether informal urban entrepreneurs or smallholder farmers – are by far the largest group of businesspeople in the world. And, as highlighted in the recent report Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa, improving property transfer procedures will strengthen business opportunities..."</p>
<p>Website: <a href="https://www.omidyar.com/investees?initiative=Property+Rights&region=All&search=#filter">https://www.omidyar.com/investees?initiative=Property+Rights®ion=All&search=#filter</a> and <a href="https://www.omidyar.com/blog/why-property-matters">https://www.omidyar.com/blog/why-property-matters</a></p>
<h3><strong>World Bank – Land</strong></h3>
<p>"The World Bank is increasingly working to open land and geospatial datasets for acceleration of growth through businesses, and improving own source local revenue creation, location-based analysis and decision-making, urban management, climate change responses, and resilience… The World Bank recognizes that national land administration systems and spatial data infrastructure are fundamental to disaster risk reduction and response by the provision of historical repository of pre-disaster land use and occupancy, location-based information as well as a unified geospatial platform for planning, monitoring, and implementing responses… The World Bank is working on land tenure as well as land and geospatial infrastructure and systems in 48 countries, with a current investment of approximately $1 billion in commitments, impacting millions of land holders in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa."</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/land#2">http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/land#2</a></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-data-and-land-ownership-environment-scan'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/open-data-and-land-ownership-environment-scan</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroLand RecordsOpen Government DataOpennessOpen Data2018-02-12T10:37:48ZBlog EntryChrist University Wikipedia Education Program Internship
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-university-wikipedia-education-program-internship-1
<b></b>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>
<p dir="ltr">The Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge program, in partnership with Christ University, is announcing its annual internship program for the 1200 students enrolled in the Wikipedia Education Program. The Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University, now in its fourth year, is an effort to bring together educators and students to use Wikipedia as an educational implement. CIS-A2K conducts the internship activity for passionate Christ University students to improve the quality of the articles created or edited by their fellow WEP peers. The internship will largely involve improving upon the articles created by their peers as well as gathering community consensus based on which these articles would be moved to the main namespace.</p>
<p><strong id="docs-internal-guid-f831cc41-4682-753a-ab43-fabdf30eafba"><br /></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">The students will be working on Wikipedia over the course of 21 days in developing upon the content created by Christ University Wikipedia Education Program participants. The fledgling articles currently housed in the individual “sandboxes” of the WEP participants will be improved upon by the interns through addition of detailed content, images and info-boxes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p dir="ltr">The students are selected based on three main criteria: fluency of language(written and spoken), knowledge of Wikipedia and its processes, and their personal interest levels. The applications are open from 13 to 17 December, 2017. Interested students can apply here:</p>
<p dir="ltr">https://goo.gl/forms/Ffxh3T3DRZz8Q25F3</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-university-wikipedia-education-program-internship-1'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/christ-university-wikipedia-education-program-internship-1</a>
</p>
No publishermanasaraoCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikipedia Education ProgramWikimediaWikipediaSanskrit WikipediaUrdu WikipediaOpennessHindi WikipediaTulu WikipediaKannada Wikipedia2017-12-14T08:55:05ZBlog EntryWikipedia Orientation Program at Rotary Club of Salem
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-orientation-program-at-rotary-club-of-salem
<b>CIS-A2K in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Salem, Tamil Nadu conducted a two-day Wikipedia orientation workshop for student members of the club.</b>
<p>Over the December 9- 10 weekend, CIS-A2K, in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Salem, Tamil Nadu conducted a two-day Wikipedia orientation workshop. This workshop focussed on teaching the basics of Wikipedia to all the student members of the club. The overwhelming participation of women volunteers was the highlight of the event. The workshop was organised by the Rotary Club while Salem Tamil Sangam also lent its support to the program. The President of the Rotary Club of Salem implored the students to contribute to the Tamil language by involving themselves more deeply with the Wikimedia projects. </p>
<p>With 13 female participants and 10 male participants, the participants were upbeat throughout both days. Veteran Tamil Wikipedian, Tamil Parithi acted as resource person along with CIS-A2K. Mr. Parithi explained the philosophy and history of the free knowledge movement which he felt was essential to the understanding of the wider Wikimedia movement. Usha Sanghamitra, a participant, reflects, "I previously thought some company was doing this but I am glad to note that it is people like you and me that are editing this information and creating such knowledge resources. I will surely take this up and continue to engage with Wikipedia."</p>
<p>A follow-up workshop is on the cards in December 2017.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-orientation-program-at-rotary-club-of-salem'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikipedia-orientation-program-at-rotary-club-of-salem</a>
</p>
No publishermanasaraoCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpenness2017-12-11T15:52:12ZBlog EntryWikimedia Technical Workshop at Savitribai Phule Pune University
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-technical-workshop-at-savitribai-phule-pune-university
<b></b>
<p>A Wikimedia Technical Workshop was conducted between 27- 28 November, 2017 at the Department of Mathematics, Savitribai Phule Pune University. The objective of the workshops was us to understand how Wikipedia works and what career opportunities there are related to Wikipedia and how one can contribute to and enrich the open source knowledge for the benefit of all.</p>
<p>On the first day, the students were given an introduction to Wikimedia projects as well as Marathi Wikipedia. They were also taught account creation and given a general introduction to Wikipedia , MediaWiki, and wikis in addition to Wikipedia structure, article structure, name spaces, common.css and common.js pages, and gagdets. In the post-lunch session the participants were given an introduction to gadgets, scripts, tool and bots.</p>
<p>On the second day, the participants continued where they left off by learning about advanced tools and bots like Archive Bot, Sign bot, Anti-vandalism bots as well as Phabricator. Finally, the session ended with talks about future projects and activities. </p>
<p>22 participants attended the event.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-technical-workshop-at-savitribai-phule-pune-university'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-technical-workshop-at-savitribai-phule-pune-university</a>
</p>
No publishermanasaraoCIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaMediawiki training (MWT)WikipediaMarathi WikipediaOpenness2017-12-19T16:03:48ZBlog EntryKannada Wikipedia Orientation Workshop at IISc, Bengaluru
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru
<b></b>
<p>A Kannada Wikipedia orientation workshop was held at the Entrepreneurship Centre, SID, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru on 26 November, 2017. The day long event was aimed at adding content to Kannada Wikimedia projects on topics such as ecology, environment, wildlife and sciences of Karnataka. The event was organised by Gubbi Labs in conjunction with CIS-A2K. Gubbi Labs is a research collective and social collective run by environmental scientists. The event was attended was attended by 8 participants of which one member was female.</p>
<p>The participants created six articles and expanded one article. The impact of this workshop was the fact that participants were made aware of the importance of open access data. It helped initiate another similar workshop in Mysuru. Upon sharing the idea for projects like Wiki Loves Butterfly Idea, a participant was interested in starting a project titled 'Wiki Loves Spiders'. We are hoping to take this project forward on Kannada Wikipedia.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/kannada-wikipedia-orientation-workshop-at-iisc-bengaluru</a>
</p>
No publisherGopalakrishna ACIS-A2KAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaOpennessKannada Wikipedia2017-12-19T16:16:29ZBlog EntryAdvocating for Openness: Nine Ways Civil Society Groups Have Mobilized to Defend Internet Freedom
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/cima-sarah-oh-november-15-2017-openness-nine-ways-civil-society-groups-have-mobilized-to-defend-internet-freedom
<b>The debate over whether the Internet is a better tool for democratic empowerment or authoritarian control misconstrues the nature of the democratic challenges of the digital age. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The blog post by Sarah Oh was published by the <a class="external-link" href="https://www.cima.ned.org/publication/advocating-openness-nine-ways-civil-society-groups-mobilized-defend-internet-freedom/">Center for International Media Assistance</a> on November 15, 2017</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Key Findings</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Civil society groups from the Global South are leading the charge to advocate for an Internet that remains open, pluralistic, and democratic. The nine case studies highlighted in this report demonstrate various ways groups in different countries have successfully fought for policies and norms that strengthen Internet freedom and digital rights. These strategies include awareness-raising, nonviolent direct action, regional and international coalition-building, and strategic litigation.</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Media freedom advocates have been at the forefront of many Internet freedom efforts.</li>
<li>Threats to independent media online and freedom of expression continue to mount as authoritarian regimes become more technologically savvy.</li>
<li>Building broad civil society coalitions around Internet rights increases the chances of long-term success.</li>
</ul>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Introduction</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The debate over whether the Internet is a better tool for democratic empowerment or authoritarian control misconstrues the nature of the democratic challenges of the digital age. The Internet is not a tool, but a complex domain of “competing forces and constraints.”1 These forces are comprised of powerful businesses, states, politicians, criminal enterprises, advocacy groups: in short, all of the elements present in any democracy. But in this cyber-democracy, forces compete in part on the shifting ground of the technological and physical infrastructure of the Internet, where some players wield more power than others with an ability to mold the terrain in their favor. Authoritarian states aware of what is at stake in the evolution of the Internet are beginning to engage in long-term and well-resourced efforts to undermine the democratic rights of citizens in this more fundamental way.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a reference to the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that take down a specific website, these broader efforts represent what some have called a <a href="https://www.demworks.org/distributed-denial-democracy">“distributed denial-of-democracy” (DDoD)</a> attack aimed at reducing the utility of the Internet for genuine democratic discourse. These efforts, which are coordinated and well resourced, are often more insidious, harder to detect, and have the overall effect of undermining civic engagement and overall trust in the media ecosystem.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And while the diffuse and fast-changing nature of Internet can at times make it difficult for authoritarian regimes to exert their control, the complex interplay between technology, laws, infrastructure, and socio-political factors shaping the Internet make it equally difficult for democratic actors to counteract these DDoD strategies. As an additional obstacle, the values that underpin Internet freedom can be sidelined in the forums and governing bodies that set Internet standards by the dominance in those spaces of private tech companies concerned primarily with generating profits.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Formidable though they may be, these challenges are not insurmountable. Civil society groups from the Global South are leading the charge to advocate for an Internet that remains open, pluralistic, and democratic. The nine case studies highlighted in this report demonstrate various ways groups in different countries have successfully fought for policies and norms that strengthen Internet freedom and digital rights. These strategies include awareness-raising, nonviolent direct action, regional and international coalition-building, and strategic litigation.</p>
<p class="BodyA" style="text-align: justify; ">Each of the following case studies corresponds to one of the nine guiding principles of a <a href="https://openinternet.global/comment-draft-principles">Democratic Framework to Interpret Open Internet Principles</a>. This framework was collaboratively developed by a network of civil society groups worldwide to illuminate the ways that an open Internet is essential for the functioning of democratic societies. It was inspired by the norms and standards developed by the <a href="http://internetrightsandprinciples.org/site/">Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition (IRPC)</a> of the United Nations <a href="https://www.intgovforum.org/">Internet Governance Forum</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The framework is an important starting point for more effective, coordinated effort to ensure that the Internet remains a welcoming place for democratic life. Its aim is to create a consensus around the values that should shape the future development of the Internet. But moreover, it also provides an avenue for understanding and sharing knowledge on the concrete strategies that can be put into practice in different contexts to make sure that the Internet remains a level playing field. The following nine examples demonstrate how citizen groups can mobilize to enshrine such democratic principles in cyberspace.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">“The debate over whether the Internet is a better tool for democratic empowerment or authoritarian control misconstrues the nature of the democratic challenges of the digital age.”</h3>
<div class="tsd-simple_content tsd-cima-module" style="text-align: justify; ">
<h2>1. Freedom of Expression</h2>
<br />
<p>In the <i>Philippines</i>, a cybercrime law introduced in 2012 proposed increasing penalties for libel and giving authorities unchecked power to track information online. Internet freedom activists worried several provisions of the law would infringe on freedom of expression by preventing Filipinos from freely posting content on websites, and participating in online forums and discussions without fear of being blocked or facing serious penalties. In response, pro-democracy organizations from across the political spectrum joined together to challenge the constitutionality of the law. Through protests, roundtables, and capacity building activities, they raised awareness and encouraged advocacy efforts around the dangers the law posted to freedom of expression and privacy. <a href="http://fma.ph/">The </a><a href="http://fma.ph/">Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA</a><a href="http://fma.ph/">)</a>, a digital rights organization founded after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/PIFA.ph/about/?ref=page_internal">Philippine Internet Freedom Alliance (PIFA)</a>, a broad nationwide coalition of pro-democracy and Internet freedom advocates, were among the organizations in the front lines on the struggle. PIFA was even one of the 20 organizations to file 15 petitions to the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the law.</p>
<p>Public efforts in the courts and actions in the streets contributed to the takedown of three contested provisions of the law, including provision that would allow government to block or restrict access to computer data. The Supreme Court declared these provisions unconstitutional and delayed implementation of the law. Despite public concerns about the surviving provisions, the national campaign against the cybercrime law led to a turning point for Filipino activists; it showed the power of people coming together and fighting for the importance of digital rights in the Philippines. Initially fragmented, the campaign led to a larger movement unified under the goal of protecting human rights and freedom of expression online. Thus, it took the introduction of a flawed law and active public campaigns to initiate a broader dialogue about privacy, surveillance, and digital security. Digital rights <a href="http://www.rstreet.org/2015/09/10/the-business-case-for-cambodian-Internet-freedom/">communities across Southeast Asia</a> have been inspired by Filipino advocacy efforts, which they have understood to be an example of how to communicate the balance required between anti-cybercrime measures with fundamental rights to a public audience.</p>
</div>
<div class="tsd-simple_content tsd-cima-module" style="text-align: justify; ">
<h2>2. Freedom of Assembly and Association</h2>
<br />
<p>Social media is an important organizing tool for journalists and advocacy groups in <i>Uganda</i>. Facebook, WhatsApp, and other messaging applications <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=2dmeBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA367&lpg=PA367&dq=using+facebook+for+organizing+uganda+-facebook.com&source=bl&ots=Agd54hNXbj&sig=KRs9Ndl7BJfVfBnW9LXHJgpyEv4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjv6fKsdLWAhUK7mMKHVkmB5kQ6AEISzAI#v=onepage&q=using%2520facebook%2520for%2520organizing%2520uganda%2520-facebook.com&f=false">have been used to share</a> political knowledge, connect leaders with supporters, and organize events — even share information about government abuses. During national ‘<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_to_work_protest">Walk to Work</a>’ protests in 2011, organized to protest living costs after presidential elections, Facebook and Twitter provided a steady stream of updates from protestors, bystanders, and journalists.</p>
<p>Using social media, however, can have dangerous consequences for marginalized groups such as the LGBT community. The government of Uganda has been known to collect user information and prosecute individuals based on information shared on social media. Uganda is one of 76 countries where homosexuality is currently criminalized, and LGBT activists fear that their online conversations will be monitored and used against them. By posting information taken from photos and content posted on Facebook, a local tabloid exposed the identity of numerous members of the LGBT community in 2011 and again in 2014. The tabloid stories in 2011 are believed to have contributed to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/26/uganda-lgbt-groups-david-kato-murder-5-years-on">killing of David Kato</a>, a prominent gay rights activist.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Illustration_p11_Network-graphic.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-8162 size-medium" height="300" src="https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Illustration_p11_Network-graphic-300x300.jpg" width="300" /></a>Furthermore, the government has repeatedly restricted access for advocacy groups to use the Internet to share political information. In 2016, the country’s media regulator <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35601220">restricted the use</a> of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter to prevent the organizing of protests before presidential elections in February as the government had done before in 2011. In both cases, the electoral commission <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/uganda">enforced</a> the social media shut-down.</p>
<p>Civil society groups have responded in two ways. First, they have sought to deepen their digital security capacity. To protect against threats to journalists, LGBT organizations, and other groups have learned how to use Facebook and social media applications more securely and to implement other practices that increase their privacy. In the lead up to the 2016 election this included the use of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network">virtual private networks</a> (VPNs) to share information. Civil society groups spread information about how to use them through radio broadcasts. The fact that the hashtag #UgandaDecides trended on Twitter shows how they were able to spread their knowledge through local networks and connect with international media. Secondly, civil society groups built coalitions with international organizations to draw attention to abuses taking place in Uganda. In 2016, <a href="https://www.accessnow.org/">Access Now</a> supported a coalition of groups to <a href="https://www.accessnow.org/uganda-blocks-social-media-harms-human-rights/">demand</a> that the government stop the Internet shutdown as part of the #KeepitOn campaign.</p>
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<h2>3. Accessibility</h2>
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<p>In <i>Nigeria</i>, national broadband plans have overlooked rural communities, leaving them with low bandwidth and high-cost options for Internet access. This means that broadband and mobile data fees are unaffordable to many in Nigeria, especially the poor. Fixed-line broadband subscriptions cost an average of 39 percent of average income, and mobile broadband packages cost 13 percent. Given that approximately 80 percent of Nigerians earn below the poverty line ($2 a day or less), access to the Internet is out of reach and unaffordable for a majority of citizens in Nigeria.</p>
<p><a href="http://a4ai.org/">The </a><a href="http://a4ai.org/">Alliance for Affordable Internet</a>, a global coalition working on Internet affordability, works with Nigerian civil society leaders to raise awareness around this issue through thematic working groups. The consumer advocacy and pricing transparency working group, for instance, works closely with <a href="http://a4ai.org/a4ai-nigeria-multi-stakeholder-coalition/a4ai-nigeria-coalition-members/">a coalition of Nigerian NGOs</a> that have been leading campaigns to raise awareness about pricing and taxation policies that have been proposed in Nigeria. One proposed policy includes imposing a nine percent tax on voice, data, and SMS services to consumers. This policy would make the Internet dramatically more expensive for Nigerian consumers. Groups say they worry about the consequences of the proposed policy in an environment where farmers are forced to climb trees just to get a stable Internet connection.</p>
<p>Civil society leaders who are part of the coalition have worked to build a healthy dialogue between regulators, civil society, and the government. A key strategy, according to activists, has been encouraging groups to find constructive ways to work with government and leveraging the interests of each of these groups to protect and drive down costs for Nigerian consumers. They seek to build relationships with the regulator and to inform them about ways to better communicate with and engage consumer groups, such as sharing their content through social media rather than press releases. Another important learning has been identifying champions within government to work on these issues.</p>
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<h2>4. Privacy and Data Protection</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Cell_phone_android_transparent.jpg"><img class="alignleft wp-image-8896" height="358" src="https://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Cell_phone_android_transparent-212x300.jpg" width="253" /></a>In <i>Burma,</i> gaps in the law have left citizens vulnerable when it comes to privacy and data protection. Restrictions on privacy have eased since the country’s transition from military rule, but a lack of data protection laws and general lack of awareness around privacy and data protection present significant challenges for protecting an open Internet.</p>
<p>Messaging applications such as Viber and Facebook Messenger, for example, are the de-facto tool for communication for activists and are used to organize political events and activities. Cheaper than voice calls, far more accessible than landlines, and easier to use than email, these tools are the primary way people in Burma communicate. <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40438242/jailed-for-a-facebook-poem-the-fight-against-myanmars-draconian-defamation-laws">Activists have received harsh penalties for sharing content that may be viewed as threatening state security</a>. These applications are often not secure, making it possible for Burma state authorities or agents of the state to intercept their conversations. <a href="https://pen.org/sites/default/files/unfinished_freedom_lowres.pdf">During a crackdown on student protests in March 2015, mobile phones were taken by police</a>. Activists worried at the time that information on these phones would eventually be used against them.</p>
<p>Observing the need to protect activists and educate them about data protection, activists in 2016 formed a coalition, Digital Rights MM. The coalition, led by <a href="http://phandeeyar.org/">Phandeeyar</a>, <a href="http://www.myanmar-responsiblebusiness.org/index.php">Myanmar Center for Responsible Business</a>, <a href="http://www.myanmarido.org/">Myanmar ICT for Development</a>, and Free Expression Myanmar, has led a national conversation on the issue. <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chynes/2016/12/21/digital-rights-must-become-a-top-priority-in-myanmars-connectivity-revolution/#4fde153b2267">Drawing on expertise from the region and international organizations</a>, 22 local Burma-based organizations have been successful in pointing out gaps when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression in the <a href="https://www.article19.org/resources.php/resource/38665/en/myanmar:-telecommunications-law">national telecommunications law</a>, a comprehensive law that oversees the development of the telecommunications sector in Burma. They also participated in meetings with the government and launched a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MMTelecomLaw/photos/a.821155664669495.1073741830.821091201342608/1347827635335626/?type=3&theater">public facing campaign #ourvoiceourhluttaw</a> pushing to amend 23 articles, including one on lawful interception of data.</p>
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<h3>“Messaging applications such as Viber and Facebook Messenger, for example, are the de-facto tool for communication for activists and are used to organize political events and activities.”</h3>
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<h2>5. Personal Safety and Security</h2>
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<p>In <i>Pakistan</i>, women face threats of physical, sexual, and psychological harassment online. Leaking explicit photos and threats of blackmail are growing increasingly more common. <a href="https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/drfpcwstraining/">From 2014 to 2015, more than 3,000 cybercrimes were reported to the Federal Investigation Agency and of those cases, nearly half were targeted to women on social media</a>. Observers estimate far more cases go unreported. In fact, in workshops conducted by the <a href="https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/">The Digital Rights Foundation</a>, many female college students reported that they did not know cyber harassment was a crime.</p>
<p>Online platforms are an important space for political engagement, expression, and mobilization in Pakistan. Thus, online harassment directly impacts the political participation of women, including female journalists and women politicians. In 2016 the <a href="https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/">Digital Rights Foundation</a> established a <a href="https://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/cyber-harassment-helpline-completes-its-four-months-of-operations/">Cyber Harassment Helpline</a> that women can reach out to for help when they are harassed on the Internet. One of the main objective of the helpline is to help bridge the trust deficit between survivors and law enforcement agencies. <a href="http://digitalrightsfoundation.pk/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/4-Month-Report.Final_.pdf">An analysis of more than 400 cases </a>showed that the most common barriers to equal participation are non-consensual use of information, impersonation, account hacking, black mailing, and receiving unsolicited messages; the most targeted groups include women, children, human rights defenders, and minority communities. The Digital Rights Foundation has also been leading efforts to strengthen legal protections for women and responding to survivors by recommendations to law enforcement agencies and the government. Pakistan has a National Response Centre for Cybercrime, but it has faced challenges serving women outside of major cities.</p>
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<h2>6. Inclusion</h2>
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<p>In <i>India</i>, the population of people with disabilities is estimated to be as high as 150 million people, and the recorded rates of those who are vision-impaired are among the highest in the world. Indian digital rights advocacy groups, like the <a href="https://cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet and Society (CIS)</a> have worked to ensure that these individuals are able to participate fully online by promoting policies that prioritize accessibility. These include the National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, and <a href="http://guidelines.gov.in/">Guidelines for Indian Government Web (GIGW)</a>, which all require government information be shared in formats that are accessible. Advocacy groups, however, have successfully shown that policies alone are not enough and have taken action to ensure persons with disabilities have access to critical resources and information online.</p>
<p>Mobile phones in particular are a vital portal to access government services, but mobile applications remain largely inaccessible to many people with disabilities, especially those with vision disabilities. For example, CIS observed in 2015 that the <a href="https://www.mygov.in/">MyGov</a>, the Indian Government’s mobile citizen engagement platform and the Prime Minister’s application was highly inaccessible: screens cannot be navigated by visually impaired users and can also not be read using a screen reader. Based on this, CIS with other advocacy organizations worked on framing accessibility guidelines for mobile applications recommended to the Government of India as a standard. Advocacy groups, such as the <a href="http://www.ncpedp.org/">National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP)</a>, have also been appealing to the private sector to ensure products designed to serve these needs are affordable and readily available to people with disabilities. They appeal to Indian companies and policymakers by advocating for the universal appeal of assistive technology to ensure disabled communities are not left behind.</p>
<p>Sustained advocacy, new legal mandates applied to public and private sectors, and increased research in this domain have helped advance the issue of accessibility of mobile applications. The country’s National Informatics Centre has set up a committee to revise the GIGW to bring them up to speed with international standards.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/cima-sarah-oh-november-15-2017-openness-nine-ways-civil-society-groups-have-mobilized-to-defend-internet-freedom'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/news/cima-sarah-oh-november-15-2017-openness-nine-ways-civil-society-groups-have-mobilized-to-defend-internet-freedom</a>
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No publisherAdminOpennessAccessibility2017-11-26T03:58:47ZNews ItemHelping Institutions Embrace Open Access
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/manupriya-wire-november-17-2017-helping-institutions-embrace-open-access
<b>World over, a large number of universities and institutions are making way for open access repositories. Why have Indian researchers shied away from it?</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Manupriya was <a class="external-link" href="https://thewire.in/197872/helping-institutions-embrace-open-access/">published in the Wire</a> on November 17, 2017</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">On October 28, 2017, a group of panelists in the faculty hall at <a href="https://indiabioscience.org/orgs/iisc" target="_blank" title="Indian Institute of Science (IISc),">Indian Institute of Science (IISc),</a> discussed the framework of policies that can help academic institutions embrace open access in letter, spirit and action. The discussion was a part of week-long activities organised by <span class="caps">DST </span>Centre for Policy Research (<span class="caps">DST</span>–<span class="caps">CPR</span>) at IISc to increase awareness and acceptability for open access publishing in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/OA.png/@@images/3939a474-dc8c-4f7b-b3ee-20b19b8f0e18.png" alt="OA" class="image-inline" title="OA" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The panel included Jayant Modak, deputy director, IISc, Satyajit Mayor, director of <a href="https://indiabioscience.org/orgs/ncbs" target="_blank" title="National Centre for Biological Sciences">National Centre for Biological Sciences</a> and <a href="https://indiabioscience.org/orgs/instem" target="_blank" title="inStem">inStem</a>, Padmini Ray Murray, vice-chair, <a href="http://www.globaloutlookdh.org/" target="_blank" title="Global Outlook: Digital Humanities">Global Outlook: Digital Humanities</a>, <span class="caps">N.V.</span> Sathyanarayana, chairman and managing director, <a href="http://www.informaticsglobal.com/" target="_blank" title="Informatics India Ltd">Informatics India Ltd</a> and Madan Muthu, visiting faculty at <a href="https://iiscdstcpr.wordpress.com/" target="_blank" title="DST-CPR at IISc."><span class="caps">DST</span>–<span class="caps">CPR</span> at IISc.</a> The discussion was anchored and moderated by Sunil Abraham, executive director, <a href="https://cis-india.org/" target="_blank" title="Centre for Internet and Society.">Centre for Internet and Society.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Open access is a form of publishing that makes the fruits of research, such as journal papers and other forms of data accessible to anyone interested in it, without a cost. World over, a large number of universities and institutions are beginning to give up the library subscription model of publishing to make way for open access, owing to the latter’s lower cost and higher visibility.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In India too, funding agencies like <span class="caps">DBT</span> and <span class="caps">DST</span> have laid out guidelines that require researchers to submit their research output in open access repositories. Ironically though, most researchers have shied away from submitting their work in the repositories. Which raises the question, why?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In fact, this was one of the first questions that the panelists debated upon. Abraham initiated the discussion by asking the panelists – What are the weaknesses of <span class="caps">DBT</span>–<span class="caps">DST</span> policy on open access? Why have a large number of scientists not followed the guidelines laid by the policy? Is it because the policy document does not talk about any punitive measures for scientists in the event of not depositing their work in the institutional repositories (IRs)? And, how can the policy be improved?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Modak opened the argument by saying that we as a nation are good at making provisions but bad with implementation. He agreed that scientists are yet to warm up to the idea of open access but was disinclined on using punitive measures to force scientists into submitting their work in IRs. Mayor, in agreement with Modak, said that the policy document is advisory in nature and sort of lacks ‘teeth’. However, he too was against the use of punitive measures.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Murray, the third academician on the panel said that though the policy talks about staying away from publisher-based metrics like impact factor to assess a scientist’s work, it does not provide any information about what alternative metrics can be used to measure it. She suggested that the accessibility of a scientist’s work and how much effort she has put in to make it easily available to non-scientists could be used as a metrics for measurement. She also drew attention to the fact that the policy completely bypasses the requirements of independent scholars and those working in languages other than English. “Which institutional repository should they deposit their work in?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sathyanarayana, the fourth panelist and a strong advocate of open access said, the policy document “lacks an aggressive strategy” to drive a disruptive and “fundamentally voluntary model” of adopting open access. He asked the other panelists and the audience, “why have repositories like ResearchGate become so successful and attractive for researchers? Why can’t open access IRs be modelled along the lines of such repositories? His argument was that the IRs can be fashioned in a way to make them a ‘convenient step in the process of research’”. One suggestion that he offered was that IRs can be structured as a paper submission platform. So that anybody who is interested in publishing their work first puts it up in the <span class="caps">IR</span> and only after that the process of going to a journal begins.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Muthu, the fourth panelist and a long-time crusader for open access in India said that scientists in India have stayed away from the open access publishing because they don’t fully realise that in traditional models of publishing, you surrender all copyrights of your work to the publisher. He added that more scientists can be encouraged to adopt the open access model of publishing by making IRs institute-managed, easier to use and as a mandatory step in the process of publishing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mayor added to this argument by saying that the idea of submitting (unpublished) work in an <span class="caps">IR</span> is quite similar to the concept of pre-print archives which are fast becoming a powerful way of sharing work. Almost all top journals accept work that has been published in a pre-print archive. In fact, in the physical sciences, people have been using pre-print archives for a long time and now slowly, even the biology community is warming up to it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Murray emphasised on the need to talk to students about open access and making them aware of the ways to design their metadata so that it is amenable to open access repositories.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the discussion inched closer to its final moments, it veered off towards the costs of open access publishing. Modak said that in the last year alone, the amount of money IISc has spent for publishing papers has doubled. If all researchers start opting for open access (<span class="caps">OA</span>) journals/hybrid-<span class="caps">OA</span> journals that charge the authors nearly double of what traditional journals do, then publishing papers will become unsustainable.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To this, Sathyanarayana said, it may appear that the cost of publishing in <span class="caps">OA</span> journals is high, but on a macro-level, when you consider the cost of publishing and accessing all the papers published in a year, then the <span class="caps">OA</span> model costs much lesser. He added that scientific publishing is the only business in the world where authors (creators of proprietary material) give away all their rights to publishers.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Backing up the points made by Sathyanarayana, Murray said that in traditional models of publishing the publishers make close to 400% profits. We need to think about, “how much labour we as academics put in for publishers’ profits?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It is authors’ inertia that is stopping open access from becoming the obvious model of publishing, said, Muthu.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In conclusion, Abraham summed up the arguments and acknowledged that there are many dimensions to open access and an institutional policy on <span class="caps">OA</span> cannot be framed in a vacuum. Common people need to participate in the debate to shape the direction the policy takes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>Apart from the panel discussion a poster competition and a quiz competition were organised as part of the <span class="caps">OA</span>-week activities. <span class="caps">DST</span>–<span class="caps">CPR</span> was joined by the student’s council at IISc, Centre for Contemporary Studies, <span class="caps">JRD</span> Tata Library and IndiaBioscience in organising the activities.</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>This article was originally published on </i><a href="https://indiabioscience.org/" target="_blank" title="IndiaBioscience">IndiaBioscience</a><i>. Read the original <a href="https://indiabioscience.org/news/2017/helping-institutions-embrace-open-access" target="_blank" title="here">here</a>. <br /></i></p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/manupriya-wire-november-17-2017-helping-institutions-embrace-open-access'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/manupriya-wire-november-17-2017-helping-institutions-embrace-open-access</a>
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No publisherAdminOpennessOpen AccessAccess to Knowledge2017-11-27T15:11:34ZNews Item