The Centre for Internet and Society
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More Debate on UID Project Needed
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/debate-on-uid
<b>A press conference on UID was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur spoke about the UID. Proceedings from the conference was covered in the Hindu on 27 July, 2010.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/publications/uid-coverage-hindu" class="internal-link" title="More Debate on UID">More Debate on UID</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/debate-on-uid'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/debate-on-uid</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2011-04-02T11:13:43ZNews ItemMore Debate on UID
http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/uid-coverage-hindu
<b>UID coverage in the Hindu on 27 July, 2010</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/uid-coverage-hindu'>http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/uid-coverage-hindu</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishna2010-07-28T05:18:22ZFileUID coverage in Udayavani
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/uid-udayavani-news
<b>A press conference was held at the Press Club in Bangalore on 26 July, 2010. It was co-organised by Citizen's Action Forum, Alternate Law Forum and the Centre for Internet and Society. Mathew Thomas and Vinay Baindur were the speakers. Leading Kannada newspaper Udayavani covered this event.</b>
<p><strong><br /></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/publications/cis/uid-udayavani" class="internal-link" title="UID coverage in Udayavani">UID coverage in Udayavani</a></p>
<p>For reading the original <a class="external-link" href="http://207.218.202.244/epaper/PDFList.aspx?Pg=H&Edn=BN&DispDate=7/27/2010">click here</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/uid-udayavani-news'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/uid-udayavani-news</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2011-04-02T11:13:24ZNews ItemUID coverage in Udayavani
http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/uid-udayavani
<b>Coverage about the UID event in leading Kannada newspaper Udayavani</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/uid-udayavani'>http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/uid-udayavani</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishna2010-07-28T04:52:10ZFileOpen is the Future
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-future
<b>The third Open World Forum will gather together decision-makers from the open digital world, in Paris. 1,500 participants from 40 countries will come together to analyze the technological, economic and social impact of Open Source, the invisible engine behind the digital revolution. The aim: to interpret future trends and cross-fertilize initiatives.</b>
<p>Paris, 22 July 2010. Technologies – Economic Models – Governance... Year after year the Free/Open Source movement is establishing itself as the invisible engine driving the digital revolution, and the hidden backbone of key digital players like Google, Amazon and Wikipedia, as well as the catalyst for numerous emerging trends including Cloud computing, the Internet of Things, green technologies, new organizational models, new-generation NGOs, open democracy… Following the success of the first two events, the Open World Forum will once again be staged in Paris this year, on 30 September and 1 October, bringing together 1,500 experts and decision-makers from 40 countries. The aim of this ‘Davos’ of open technologies is to debate and cross-fertilize initiatives, to shape the open digital landscape of the future.</p>
<h3>Two Days of High-Level Sessions</h3>
<p>With 15 keynote addresses, 20 workshops and 8 think-tanks, featuring 140 presenters from 40 countries, the Open World Forum will include eight flagship sessions:<br /><br />30 September</p>
<ul><li>Opening keynote addresses: The state of the open world: what impact will it have on the digital future? With Walter Bender (MIT Media Labs/OPLC/Sugarlabs), James Governor (RedMonk), Jeffrey Hammond (Forrester), Simon Phipps (ForgeRock), Dirk Riehle…</li><li> The revolution in open innovation: collective intelligence actively supporting growth. With Stefan Lindegaard (15Inno), Steve Shapiro (Innocentive), Roberto Di Cosmo (INRIA), Patrick Chanezon (Google), Michel Guillemet (Bull)…</li><li> Open Cloud: Open Source at the heart of tomorrow’s ‘computing power plants’? With Matt Asay (Canonical), Larry Augustin (SurgarCRM), Kyle Mac Donald (Cloud.com), Matt Wood (Amazon)... <br /></li><li>Open communities: the emblematic organizations of the 21st century? With Eben Moglen (Software Freedom Law Center), Bertrand Delacretaz (Apache), Mike Milinkovich (Eclipse), Cedric Thomas (OW2)...<br /></li></ul>
<p>1 October</p>
<ul><li>Open democracy in 2010: what are the initiatives and prospects? With Philippe Aigrin (Sopinspace), Ellen Miller (Sunlight Foundation), Dominique Piotet (RebellionLab), Francis Pisani (Transnet)...</li><li>Managing ‘the commons’: ‘tragedy’ or opportunity? With David Bollier (Onthecommons.org), Michel Bauwens (P2P Foundation), John Wilbanks (Creative Commons)...</li><li>Open Generation: from ‘Generation Y’ to ‘Generation O’? With Sandrine Murcia (Silicon Sentier/Mindblush), Sunil Abraham (Centre for Internet and Society), Benjamin Bejbaum (founder of DailyMotion)…</li><li> Closing keynote addresses: Open Innovation Awards and FLOSS 2020 RoadMap. With Michael Tiemann (OSI, Red Hat ), Jean-Pierre Laisne (OW2, Bull)...</li></ul>
<p>Numerous workshops and seminars will also enable delegates to evaluate emerging trends in the open world: the development of open media; the advent of new-generation NGOs based on collaborative strategies (Sahana, CrisisCommons…); the revolution in community marketing; new forms of business organization inspired by Open Source; etc. The innovative events being staged this year for the first time include a summit meeting addressing the points of view of leading industry analysts on the Open Source world (Forrester, 451 Group, PAC, RedMonk) and another on diversity and women in the Free/Open Source world. Finally, the Open Source Think-tank, dedicated to analyzing Open Source economic models, will once again be partnering the Open World Forum.</p>
<h3>The Global Meeting Point for Open Innovation</h3>
<p>Above and beyond the forward-looking analysis and networking, the event aims to foster the development of multiple, cross-cutting initiatives, during or following the Forum. Complementing the Open CIO Summit – the leading Open Source summit meeting organized by CIOs, for CIOs – and the FLOSS International Competence Centers Summit, the Open World Forum 2010 will also be hosting several new initiatives:</p>
<ul><li>The first BRIC Think-tank, bringing together decision-makers from the Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese governments to discuss ways of accelerating their digital development using open technologies</li><li>The first Open Cloud Summit, bringing together technical directors from the biggest players in Cloud computing to evaluate ways forward in terms of interoperability. <br /></li><li>The first Open Forges Summit, bringing together decision-makers from the major open digital software forges.</li></ul>
<p>The Forum will also stage the presentation of the 2010 Open Innovation Awards, as part of a Demo Cup event, and will continue forward-thinking initiatives with further input into the 2020 FLOSS RoadMap. Over a number of months, international experts will compare their visions of the future, to generate scenarios and make recommendations that will be published at the Forum. The Open World Forum is an initiative launched and led by a number of major international and European organizations from the Free/Open Source and digital world, with the support of public institutions (the EU, Paris city council, the Ile-de-France region) and the active involvement of a wide ecosystem of businesses, including almost 70% of the world’s largest IT companies. Major sponsors of the 2010 OWF already include Bull (co-founder), Red Hat, HP, AlterWay, QualComm, Smile, HP, INRIA, Nuxeo, Pilot Systems, Canonical, Cap Gemini, Oracle, Jaspersoft, SugarCRM, Ayeba and Accenture. In 2010, the Forum is being organized by the Systematic competitiveness cluster, in partnership with Cap Digital and the European Qualipso consortium. The program committee includes some 50 international experts from six continents.</p>
<h3>About the Open World Forum</h3>
<p>The Open World Forum is the leading global summit meeting bringing together decision-makers and communities to cross-fertilize open digital technological, economic and social initiatives. At the very heart of the Free/Open Source revolution, the event was founded in 2008 and now takes place every year in Paris, with over 140 speakers from 40 countries, an international audience of 1,500 delegates and some forty seminars, workshops and think-tanks. Organized by a vast network of partners, including the leading Free/Open Source communities and main global players from the IT world, the Open World Forum is the definitive event for discovering the latest trends in open computing. As a result, it is a unique opportunity to share ideas and best practice with visionary thinkers, entrepreneurs and leaders of the top international Free/Open Source communities and to network with technology gurus, CxOs, analysts, CIOs, researchers, politicians and investors from six continents. The Open World Forum<br />is being run this year by the Systematic competitiveness cluster, in partnership with Cap Digital and the European QualiPSo consortium. Some 70% of the world’s leading information technology companies are involved in the Forum as partners and participants.</p>
<p>For more information, visit: http://www.openworldforum.org</p>
<ul><li>Click here for the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.openworldforum.org/share/newsdesk/Open%20World%20Forum%202010%20-%20Open%20Is%20The%20Future.pdf">original</a>.</li><li>See the list of speakers <a class="external-link" href="http://2010.openworldforum.org/attend/speakers.html">here</a></li><li>See the video on Youtube <a class="external-link" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-6viPUx8FE">here</a></li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-future'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/open-future</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpenness2011-05-01T02:55:12ZNews ItemThe Attention Economy - A Brief Introduction
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attention-economy
<b>This post examines attention economy as a brief prelude to a paper and monograph to be published on it. It examines the current theses on attention economy and a few approaches to reading attention economy in gaming besides foregrounding the attention economy and its functions and influence in MMORPGs.</b>
<h3>What is attention economy?</h3>
<p>Attention economy was made prominent through the writings of Thomas Davenport<strong>1</strong>and Micheal Goldhaber<strong>2</strong>, who examine 'attention' as a scarce commodity in an information rich environment and divulge into examining exchanges and investments of attention and their results. Not particularly a new concept, attention economy focuses on the examination of attention as a scarce commodity in the information-rich societies influenced by the Internet and new digital technologies. The concept was first noted and written about by the political scientist Herbert Simon (1971), who notes “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients… [and thus arises] the need to allocate that attention efficiently among the over-abundance of information sources that might consume it.” In the abundance of information and access to information, the consumption or the ‘prosumption’ of information relies on the investment of attention, which becomes a scarce commodity – expended in the act of consumption. For the expended resource is no longer information or its scarcity in terms of availability – which has been the classical concerns in the industrialized market economy – but the amount of attention that is expended on the consumption of information. Economics is governed by what is scarce and the abundance of information is not a measurable function, rather what is expended in its consumption, namely human attention. From a cognitive science perspective, attention can be read as the investment of focused cognitive faculties in a particular ‘prioritized’ activity. In this way attention becomes an essential factor in capital production activities, in that the investment of attention generates capital through the direction of work (labour) and time in any particular activity. Derek Lomas (2008) and Peter Hughes<strong>3</strong> treat media objects as artificial organisms that need attention for sustenance and energy for reproduction, somewhat in the nature of a Darwinian struggle where the most ‘able’ and ‘fit’ organism survives. All media organisms need one crucial element to survival, sustenance and reproduction – ‘attention’. In viral spreads and reproduction of a media organism the possibility of its procreation and viral distribution is realized through the investment of attention – the amount which enables survival and reproduction. By extension, virtual products are essentially media (artificial) organisms, and by extrapolation virtual goods and (possibly) even identities are organisms that thrive on the attention it receives for survival and reproduction.</p>
<h3>The Economy and the Currency</h3>
<p>Goldhaber (1997) notes that attention economy does not indeed have a market and operates unlike post-industrial markets. Although there is considerable material influence in terms of the investments of labour, time, and real money, often there is no direct means to measure it. Concepts of property, dichotomies of production, work, leisure and play require reformulation in light of this economy thriving on attention and its monetization. Davenport and Beck (2001) reinforces a measure of Goldhaber's arguments by stating that telecommunications bandwidth is not a problem but human bandwidth is. Goldhaber proceeds to say that a transfer of information must always be accompanied by a transfer of attention – measurable by the amount of time that is invested in the process. Even though both Goldhaber and Davenport seem to agree that examining time investment is a poor measure of the attention that is expended.</p>
<p>Attention economics in earlier discourses and theses are connected with examining the failures and shortcomings of ‘the design’ of informational systems that locate, falsely, informational scarcity as the root of the problem leading to a deficit in attention, whereas the problem lies in the flow of attention itself and not information. The theories on ‘attention’ deal with a multitude of perspectives – from examining the psychological aspects, on the one hand, to economics, politics and sociology (including a measure of anthropology) of online networks on the other. A recent research on attention economy has largely been towards attention:</p>
<p>a) as a scarce resource that was incentivized [providing an incentive to invest]<strong>4</strong> in some manner and thus the attention currency – which is one reading of the attention currency; and</p>
<p>b) as non-material capital, termed most appropriately as attentional capital and as measurable as wealth is to income, assuming that income can be measured and wealth and holdings are diverse and often immeasurable. Other studies focus on incorporating attention into design such that it captures user’s attention and rewards the time spent on the consumption of that information – so that the prioritization is the gambit of the providers of information and the subsequent hierarchies (such as Google and Yahoo) rather than the users. Prioritization of avatar information is also prominent in the representations in the achievement hierarchy – a system common to how search engines prioritize information – only in gaming this system systematically categorizes information pertaining to the avatar and its achievements and growth. This is both internal to the game world in question as well as external in that external tools outside of the game gather and prioritize avatar information. Such practices have been termed as metagaming.<strong>5</strong></p>
<p>Defining metagaming becomes problematic in that it is not a concept peripheral to the absent centre of gaming rather – metagaming or activities and processes associated with metagaming become multiple centres by itself. Applying this to the secondary/goldfarming market may lead to interesting readings but here I digress. Attention and the flows of attention are connected to the ways in which information is structured into hierarchies and channelled, such that ranking systems and the achievement hierarchy moderates attention flows and shifts – players and gamers who grow in short spans of time through strategic and organizational excellence get more visibility in these hierarchies.</p>
<p>Attention economies are largely read and identified in online economies and ecosystems. Davenport and Beck (2001) switch this dichotomy around and attempt a reading of organizational systems and how the offline attention economy affects organization and concepts of productivity and production. However, for the purposes of this study – online gaming economies take a central focus and a generic reading of multiple MMORPG economies is attempted.</p>
<p>Before Castronova (2003), Castronova et al (2007), and much later Consalvo (2009) engaged with questions on Virtual Economies and Gaming Worlds (for the sake of argument – Castronova’s term, Synthetic Worlds is used interchangeably with Virtual Worlds), Goldhaber and his contemporaries engaged with questions of production of informational goods – those that would in a primitive fashion address virtual production, consumption and exchange of digital informational goods and the relevance of attention expended within these economies. A colloquial reading of attention is that it is always translated as the investment of labour and time in different measures. Furthermore, the investment of time and labour on the consumption of any particular information<strong>6</strong> is is incentivized and thus prioritized based on its position in the hierarchy. The higher its visibility, lower its incentives and vice versa. The writers on gaming cultures and economies do not directly engage with questions of attention flows and shifts but by using their concepts on the investment of time, activities of production, cultural, avatarial, and gaming capital, as well as virtual currencies – I engage with the concept of attention as a currency necessary to survival in virtual worlds particularly in MMORPGs, where there are elements of progress, exploration, conquest, warfare and constant struggle.</p>
<h3>Reciprocal Attention and Survival</h3>
<p>An investment in attention always ‘seeks’ a reciprocity in attention, such that an investment ensures a positive net gain either directly or indirectly owing to a growth in the attention repositories or collection of attention capital. This need not be manifest in the service–provider–user relationship but the user–user relationship. This enables reading the production of attention and the systematic means by which attention is channelled through a complex system of hierarchies in society as well as in the Virtual Gaming Worlds<strong>7</strong> more accessible.</p>
<p>Attention can also be approached as the necessity for survival in human society in much the same manner as human society is dependent on the flows of attention for the development of the individual or group in a society or community. It can be argued that attention inevitably forms a basic necessity that indirectly influences survival, sustenance, and reproduction. Production of attention, production of virtual goods, and the production of attentional capital<strong>8</strong> are dependent on the minimal and pre-requisite investment in attention. The focus of this paper is to pitch attention as a currency, a currency that can be examined as one only when certain thresholds of attention have been achieved and relevant to the survival in MMORPG gaming worlds— worlds that are capable of viable social and economic interaction.</p>
<p>Questions on the attention economy is inevitably connected to questions of production and consumption and more recently prod-usage and pro-sumption (hyphenated for emphasis) in digital technology mediated environments, whether graphically represented complex virtual worlds or text based MUDs.</p>
<p>Although irrelevant to this trajectory, attention economy has also been approached from a systems and organizational perspective, which is what Davenport and Beck (2001) focus on. Similar studies revolve around examining attention flows in Social Network Systems (SNS) – Lomas (2008) and maximizing user value – Huberman and Wu (2008).</p>
<ol><li>
<p class="discreet">Davenport has explored the implication so of the attention economy from an organizational perspective and the impact on human life – so to speak – particularly in Davenport and Beck 2001 – 'The Attention Economy', the primitive precursor of which was Davenport 1997 – 'Information Ecology'.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Micheal Goldhaber has written and spoken in considerable detail on The Attention Economy – most prominent and seminal of which is 'The Attention Economy – The Natural Economy of the Net' 1997 in the Journal First Monday.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I quote directly from Peter Hughes who posits: “Artificial organisms might live on attention--they 'sleep' when no one is looking at them and gain energy (cycles) when someone is. Since energy could be used to reproduce, the most attention-grabbing forms would be selected.” - Italics imposed for Emphasis.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Some discourses focus on the means by which attention can be converted into currency – one of those means would be to provide incentives to invest attention in a particular action, this incentive then moves its priority higher in the informational hierarchy and in a limited focus, reading the achievement hierarchy.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I believe the term to be conceptually unanchored and nearly meaningless in its vast array of usages and applications – but to locate some of these practices using metagaming might provide an interesting insight into the very nature of these practices and the way in which they are encapsulated and epitomized in other terms.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Informational goods and virtual goods are read side by side and are not differentiated in this article, for the purposes of this argument – 'informational goods' as a term is a larger concept of which virtual goods may form a subset.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">Termed the Achievement Hierarchy – The Achievement Hierarchy represents the complex internal and metaverse rankings in an online game. This includes the game’s internal achievement ranking system that categorises players’ and gamers on different growth patterns and achievements as well as external tools not part of the game which assists in a detailed ranking system. Often players themselves subscribe to external ranking mechanisms, to keep track of others and their own progress. Wowprogress is one such external achievement hierarchy that ranks players in multiple realms. Travian World Analyzer, Traviandope and many other external resources support gameplay but are not in essence a part of intended gameplay. Metagaming can prove to be a usable and relevant term to define these practices. I have intentionally avoided linking them as some of these sites employ hostile scripts.</p>
</li><li>
<p class="discreet">I consistently use attentional capital as an extended concept which includes avatarial capital – avatar capital is a term proposed by Castronova (2005) and cited by Consalvo (2007).</p>
</li></ol>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attention-economy'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/gaming-and-gold/attention-economy</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaGamingGaming EconomyInternet HistoriesHistories of InternetResearchers at Work2015-04-03T10:48:21ZBlog EntryNMEICT Funds Book Conversion Project for the Print Disabled
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nmeict-funding
<b>IIT, Kharagpur, Daisy Forum of India, Inclusive Planet and the Centre for Internet and Society have joined hands to undertake a project for the print disabled. The National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) is funding this project.</b>
<p><a class="external-link" href="http://www.ignouonline.ac.in/sakshat/">NMEICT</a> has funded a project for converting college level text books into daisy format for the print disabled students. This project is being jointly undertaken by IIT, Kharagpur, the Daisy Forum of India, CIS and Inclusive Planet. The vision of the Mission is to fund education projects using ICT to ensure that knowledge resources are made available to learners in a manner and speed which is attuned to their needs. It seeks to increase enrolment in education at various levels by providing an alternate route to conventional educational practices and bridging the gap with the objective of fully utilizing India's human resource potential.</p>
<p>The present project involves organizations around the country to identify 200 college level text books in Hindi, English and five regional languages for conversion into Daisy over the next year. The converted books will be distributed through CDs and a website to 500 universities and colleges around the country. The details of the stage wise progress of the project, including the methodology, partners, technologies and finances will be updated periodically on the dedicated <a class="external-link" href="http://www.cel.iitkgp.ernet.in/asm/">website</a>.</p>
<p>The pilot project commenced on 1st April 2010 and will finish on 31st March, 2011.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nmeict-funding'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/nmeict-funding</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibilityProjects2011-08-23T04:52:37ZBlog EntryLocating Gender Politics in the New Techno-Industrial Complex: A Lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin
http://editors.cis-india.org/events/locating-gender-politics
<b>The Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), IT for Change and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) are hosting a lecture by Dr. Lisa McLaughlin, Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women's Studies, Miami University, Ohio, USA at CIS, Bangalore on 23 July, 2010.</b>
<p><img class="image-inline" src="../research/lisa/image_preview" alt="Lisa McLaughlin" /></p>
<p>Dr. McLaughlin will address the gendered ties that bind the 'new global governance' to the 'new information economy', with a focus on women, work, and information and communication technology.</p>
<p>Dr. McLaughlin is spending two months in India (June and July) to work on a joint research project with IT for Change titled, “Women’s Enterprise and Information Technology”. The study explores ICT policies and practices that seek to integrate women entrepreneurs, especially from the informal and small business sectors, into formal and global markets. She is also part of the Advisory Group of the research program “Gender and Citizenship in the Information Society”, coordinated by IT for Change. This initiative aims to explore the the concept of citizenship, and use citizenship as a framework to understand gender issues implicit in the 'Information Society'.</p>
<h3>About Dr. Lisa McLaughlin</h3>
<p>Dr. McLaughlin is an Associate Professor in Media Studies and Women's Studies at Miami University-Ohio, USA. She teaches undergraduate courses in media and society, global media, and gender and media. She also teaches graduate seminars in feminist media theory, global media, technology and culture, and media governance. Her research has been published in scholarly journals including as Media, Culture and Society, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Critical Studies in Media Communications, and Sociological Review. She is the author of two forthcoming books, one titled Global Communications and the Public Sphere and the other titled Keywords in International Communications. She also has worked as an academic journal editor and is founding editor, and current co-editor, of an international journal titled Feminist Media Studies. Her research interests include feminist studies, critical theory, gender and information work in the knowledge economy, and global communications governance.</p>
<strong>Video</strong>
<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/AYLR5EAA.html" frameborder="0" height="250" width="250"></iframe><embed style="display:none" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYLR5EAA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/events/locating-gender-politics'>http://editors.cis-india.org/events/locating-gender-politics</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaResearch2011-10-21T08:44:37ZEventInternet, Society and Space in Indian City: First Report
http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-space
<b>This is the first report on the progress of the research on Internet, Society and Space in Indian City. The post is a collection of some of the initial focus of these studies. I have started simultaneously exploring and testing various arguments and have listed some key observations from the ones that are nearing completion. </b>
<p><img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-10/image_preview" alt="City Poster 10" /></p>
<p>The idea of the relationship of Internet with space throws interesting challenges from the perspective of both the theoretical premises and actual research methods followed to tease out the issue. I have been exploring the following line of inquiry in the first month and a half of the research:</p>
<ol><li>To understand the broad patterns of representation of cities in Indian from both a historical (classical) traditions and contemporary popular practices</li><li>To derive the key hypothesis for the narrative research of the different persons leading to rendering of characteristics of the target group to be interviewed</li><li>To develop the method for researching issues of spacial transformations as related to mobility and change in land-use patterns<br /></li></ol>
<h3>Notes from Field Studies</h3>
<p>Representation of space in various mediums was of special interest to me, as it reveals a lot about our cities, both in terms of what physically exists and is imagined. The aim was to capture the ideas of such representations both in popular as well as formal/ classical mediums. The search started with the old part of Ahmedabad, which is the centre of trade and commerce for not only the city but also the region at large. A wholesale seller of books on medicine, the Navneet school textbook, the Anchor electrical switches, the Tullu pump motor and the Taparia screwdriver are all here in the old city. This part of the city is the heart, which supports life way beyond its own space.</p>
<p>The book wholesalers were of special interest to me as I was looking for the front page of the notebooks that kids use in schools. Unlike the time when I studied, the long notebooks these days are full of illustrations in the front and back cover. The bullet trains of Japan superimposed on the Eiffel tower of Paris, the natural environment and the deer chewing grass in strange oblivion, the view of the skyscraper of Singapore or a globe with a tree on top are all seemingly inconsequential images on textbooks these days. I was particularly interested in the ones that make a statement on the city and its parts or rather literally had a whiff of 'space'.</p>
<p align="center"> <img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-7/image_preview" alt="City Poster 7" /></p>
<p> The wall posters that are sold on the streets were also analyzed for the content and focus. The cheaply printed bright coloured posters are a wonderful reflection of our society and by virtue of their content, have a pan-Indian appeal. Salman Khan soaked in blood, Katrina Kaif with pouted lips, the solitary rural lady sitting below a pine tree with her head down and singing “When will you come back my love”, a idyllic rural street with bullock carts or the view of fort area of Mumbai are some such illustrations on these posters.</p>
<p>This particular study of popular modes of representation raises interesting questions from the point of view of perception of space both in terms of the actual lived in experience and the meanings attached to the same.</p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-1/image_preview" alt="City Poster 1" /></p>
<h3>The Nature and the Cities</h3>
<p>The yearning for nature or rather an apparent moral quest for some kind of a harmony seems to be a prevailing attitude in lot of the popular representation that I studied. The intensity of development is often proportionate to the 'prestineness' of the nature that surrounds it. Development is seen as a clean activity in the lap of nature! But on further examination one observes a consistent effort to juxtapose nature and city life in a binary relationship. Even though mixed up together to suggest a kind of romantic co-existence, the treatment makes it obviously as two different realms.</p>
<p align="center"> <img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-6/image_preview" alt="City Poster 6" /></p>
<p>The imagination of cities and nature as two different realms is an important concept and will be explored further.</p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-11/image_preview" alt="City Poster 11" /></p>
<p>I will return to it while describing similar city representation patterns in the historical classical traditions such as Miniature paintings.</p>
<h3>The Made-Up Context</h3>
<p>The range of representation needs further examination from the point of view of the perception of cities and its spaces. Large numbers of posters were actually an interesting collage that somehow brought together picturesque images of iconic building from around the world in a kind of new juxtapositions. </p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-9/image_preview" alt="City Poster 9" /></p>
<p>Authenticity does not matter, nor does context as long as it is reflective of the ‘developed’ countries. Iconic buildings like the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House or Mumbai VT terminal capture the imagination of the people as symbols of human habitation. But what is more important is the fact that these symbols almost purposefully are far removed from the context in which they are produced and consumed. This is interesting as by the virtue of its cultural, spatial and contextual differences, the representations have a dream or unreal aspects to its existence. This feeling of disconnect and the unreal is important in this form of representation as it floats as an imagination that should never ever come anywhere close to reality; A space which is so fictitious that it hardy needs to connect at all with the physical world. Similarly, many posters tried to portray the romance of the rural life of India.</p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-8/image_preview" alt="City Poster 8" /></p>
<p align="center"><img class="image-inline" src="../../city-poster-4/image_preview" alt="City Poster 4" /></p>
<p>The lady waiting for her lover, the village hut and the bullock cart drawn not as a reality but as symbols, juxtaposed to remind its viewers the virtues of the rural living. The caricatured symbols of rural life that are shown in these illustrations elevate the production into a fictional and surreal space that is far removed from cities where it is consumed and also very different from the vast hinterland of the country that they pretend to represent. This hyper and almost mythical representation of space is a very important condition to all these illustrations leading to interesting questions of how our city spaces are imagined. It seems that this fiction or rather the surrealist attitude is very important aspect in popular imagination of space in the Indian context.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-space'>http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/internet-society-and-space-in-indian-cities/internet-society-space</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnainternet and societycybercultures2011-08-02T06:06:25ZBlog EntryCall for Case Studies on ICT
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/call-for-case-studies-ict
<b>CIS invites organisations to participate in a study focusing on best practices in the use of ICTs in education for persons with disabilities.</b>
<p>The study aims to document best practices in the use of ICT tools and platforms in developing countries, especially in the South, to make educational resources accessible to disabled persons. We are interested in looking at new and creative ways of knowledge building and sharing, development and deployment of low cost technologies, and innovative ways in which mainstream resources are made available to students with disabilities in the digital age. The study is intended to serve as a learning tool for educators facing similar challenges in developing countries. If you feel that your organisation could serve as a good example for others, and would like to be featured in our study, please contact Nirmita Narasimhan at nirmita@cis-india.org before 15th August.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/call-for-case-studies-ict'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/call-for-case-studies-ict</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaAccessibility2011-04-02T11:12:44ZNews ItemNetworking? Not working
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/networking-not-working
<b>Concerns about privacy, wastage of time and trivialized communication are some reasons ‘refuseniks’ are going off sites such as Facebook and MySpace, writes Shreya Ray in Livemint.</b>
<p>Pune-based law student Arjun Khera, 24, broke many a Facebook stalker’s heart in April when he announced his decision to quit the network one fine afternoon on his status message. “Guys, I’m deleting my Facebook account. Please send me all your email and phone details,” he said. Almost immediately, there was an explosion of concern in his notification window. Why was the effervescent and popular part-time actor and full-time Facebook enthusiast committing Facebook suicide? “What happenedddddd?” (sic) <br />“Everything ok, dude?” </p>
<p>“It was eating into my life,” Khera says. “I was always logged on, always leaving or commenting on status messages, waiting a few minutes to see if there had been any responses to my comments, and comment some more. I didn’t go out for a walk any more, didn’t get photographs developed because I was only too busy seeing them on Facebook.” Khera signed up for his account in July 2007.</p>
<p>Then, it was the one platform through which he could locate and reconnect with all his long-lost friends. He loved the fact that he could have a pictorial chronicle of his life; that he could “compare friends”, find out if indeed he was a glass of wine (and not a pint of beer) and fit a Shakespearean insult to his current mood. “With time, I got tired of those lame quizzes. I got sick of what it was doing to my time. I hated how it trivialized communication,” he says.</p>
<p>Khera is part of a growing cult of social networking “refuseniks”. Although figures for sites such as MySpace, Orkut, Facebook and Twitter show an overall increase, some recent statistics suggest that not everyone wants to socialize this way. According to a study by TechCrunch Europe, the number of visitors to MySpace, UK, halved in just six months, from “just under 10 million at the start of the year to around 5 million as of the end of June 2010”, leading to a round of layoffs at its London office. “It would appear to show a pretty staggering decline,” says the report, released on 6 July.</p>
<h3>The privacy factor</h3>
<p>Environmental researcher Maddipatla Rajshekhar, 33, alumnus of the University of Sussex, UK, used Facebook to keep in touch with former classmates. On 31 May, however, along with the 30,000-odd people who had had enough of Facebook changing its privacy policies, he quit. “It was getting increasingly intrusive. Its latest feature let me see what some of my friends said on the walls of their friends—(who were) complete strangers to me,” he said. </p>
<p>Although the Quit Facebook group wasn’t a success in numerical terms (30,000 isn’t even close to a drop in the 450-million ocean), it successfully sent a message to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who held a press conference in the last week of May on new privacy policies and changes.</p>
<p>A May report brought out by the Pew Centre for Internet and American Life Project (of the Pew Research Centre, Washington, DC) finds that social media plays a “central role” in building one’s online identity. Quite naturally, privacy becomes a big issue. “Many users are learning and refining their approach as they go—changing privacy settings on profiles, customizing who can see certain updates and deleting unwanted information about them that appears online,” says the report. Interestingly, it also finds that young adults are more likely than older users to restrict what information is available and to whom, contrary to popular perception.</p>
<h3>The next level</h3>
<p>Privacy is not the refuseniks’ only issue, however. What social networking does to actual relationships is another, as Khera notes. Mumbai-based social worker Maya Ganesh, 35, too got tired of the constant blurring between friends and acquaintances, and having to constantly update her “limited” lists. “I regularly ignored friend requests but there were some requests not easy to ignore, especially some work connections. I also wanted a break from all the hectic ‘social activity’ that Facebook is about,” she says of her three-year-old account, which she abandoned in May.</p>
<p>Ganesh had reached what Sunil Abraham, executive director, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, refers to as the end of the “hype cycle”. All technology goes through a standard process, says Abraham: People get hooked to it, then get tired of it, and it disappears. “Some tend to be sticky and last longer; the particular advantage of social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and MySpace is that they bring a critical mass of community to individual users. It’s now difficult for people to get off a network simply because all their friends are on it,” he says.</p>
<p>Conversely, though, he cites Harvard-based social networking researcher Danah Boyd, who says the reducing exclusivity quotient has also put many people off. “Parents getting online also... acts as a self-censorship mechanism,” Abraham adds.</p>
<p>Most of the people who have deleted their accounts are happy with the way their non-virtual life now takes centre stage. Khera enjoys sitting at home and doing nothing; Ganesh says she doesn’t miss being out of the loop. It may take a bit more effort to share holiday photographs or write an email every time you feel the need to connect; but as Rajshekhar says, “Anything for not losing touch, anything for richer conversations.”</p>
<p>Varuni Khosla contributed to this story.</p>
<p>See the original article in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.livemint.com/2010/07/13204938/Networking-Not-working.html?h=B">livemint</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/networking-not-working'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/networking-not-working</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInternet Governance2011-04-02T11:12:33ZNews ItemDigital them about yourself?
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digital-yourself
<b>If you’re on Facebook or have a blog, you could be a digital native, says Akhila Seetharaman. The article was published in TimeOut Bengaluru.</b>
<p>In the offline world 23-year-old Srikeit Tadepalli is a media student; online he is among the first few Indian administrators for Wikipedia. Twenty-six-year-old Rajneesh Bolia is a media entrepreneur who carries his office with him in the form of his BlackBerry, usually spending only a couple of hours a day in his “real” office; in his online avatar he spearheads a Facebook page to promote adoption.</p>
<p>Given the way both Bolia and Tadepalli have embraced digital media and the internet, they were ideal candidates for an ongoing survey by the Centre for Internet and Society that attempts to map the behaviour of techno-savvy individuals who navigate seamlessly across online media, also called “digital natives”.</p>
<p>To truly be a digital native the internet has to be integral to the way you think, communicate or socialise. But even if you aren’t that seasoned a web navigator, an established pattern of behaviour online, a routine of going through different avenues of online media such as Facebook, twitter, email accounts and blogs (often in a particular order) could make you a potential candidate.</p>
<p>“It’s about being ‘native’ to or at home in the online world,” said Tadepalli, whose experience with Wikipedia helped him secure his college admission. “I’ve found internships through Facebook, and before I entered college, I formed an online group for prospective students and found my roommate there.”</p>
<p>With interactivity at its core, Web 2.0 provides more opportunities than ever before for identities online and offline to merge, said Tadepalli. “So at times you live an online identity in the physical world, and at other times you’re playing your offline identity online.”</p>
<p>The CIS survey is described by Nishant Shah, their head of research, as the first ever attempt out of India to get statistical data on how people across the world use the internet. “We’re going to be looking at time spent online, services people access online and how they identify themselves as part of groups and communities online,” said Shah. According to the CIS website, the findings of the survey will be presented at a “multi-stakeholder conference in the Netherlands later in 2010” and will also be “consolidated into a report which will be made available for free distribution and download”.</p>
<p>The project also includes a series of regional workshops in Taipei, Johannesburg and Santiago, aimed at bringing digital natives between the ages of 14 and 30 together, and making them aware of the possibilities offered by the platforms they use.</p>
<p>According to Shah, the proliferation of online communities has resulted in new ways of addressing grievances. As an example, he pointed out that when the city’s name changed from Bangalore to Bengaluru, there were fierce debates online about whether the name should be changed on its Wikipedia entry. The city’s name remained resolutely unchanged on Wiki. “Online communities are fiercely local and extremely global at the same time. And the internet paves the way for alternative voices to be heard, and for mobilisation and collaboration,” he said.</p>
<p>Twenty-six-year-old Divya Vijay Iyer, another participant of the survey, has been online since she was 13, and has had a blog for eight years now. She’s sworn off traditional media and believes the way forward is mobile internet. “If you know how to leverage Facebook as a networking tool, there’s very little you can’t accomplish,” said Iyer. She doesn’t read the newspapers; instead, she gets RSS feeds on her mobile. Iyer, who’s passionate about rescuing homeless cats and finding them domicile, believes social media can also pack a punch when it comes to promoting a cause. “It’s not that I think that you can find an animal a home just by adding yourself to a group, but you can definitely spread awareness and information more effectively than through traditional media,” she said.</p>
<p>But although, according to the CIS, most digital natives are people born after 1980, Shah clarified that it isn’t about a generation as much as it is about people of any age who are comfortable using digital technology and are aware of its creative potential for networking and bringing about social change.<br /><br />Elaborating on the way digital natives make use of the reach of digital media and the internet, Bolia said, “We’re in an era when anything can be disseminated to a very large extent. Take the [success of the] Pink Chaddi campaign, for example. It goes to show how, for the right cause, people can be mobilised in large numbers online.”</p>
<p>Click on for the original story in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.timeoutbengaluru.net/aroundtown/aroundtown_preview_details.asp?code=53">TimeOut Bengaluru</a></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digital-yourself'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/digital-yourself</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital Natives2012-01-03T11:07:45ZNews ItemNext CPOV Conference in Leipzig
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/CPOV-conference-Leipzig
<b>Two CPOV conferences have been held so far. The first one in Bangalore and the second one in Amsterdam, the third is to be held in Leipzig.</b>
<p>The Critical Point of View (CPOV), a Wikipedia research initiative organized in partnership with the Centre of Internet and Society (Bangalore, India), has so far successfully produced two conferences: One in Bangalore in January 2010 and one in Amsterdam in March of the same year. Reports, videos, the mailing list and further resources can be accessed at the <a class="external-link" href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/">CPOV website</a>.</p>
<p>A reader based on the conferences is currently being produced and is planned to be released by January 2011 as a part of the INC reader series.</p>
<p>A next conference is foreseen to take place in Leipzig (Germany) 25-26 September 2010 and will be a German speaking CPOV event. For news and updates check the <a class="external-link" href="http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/cpov/leipzig/">project’s website</a>.</p>
<p></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/CPOV-conference-Leipzig'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/CPOV-conference-Leipzig</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaResearch2011-04-02T11:27:16ZNews ItemOpen Access to International Agricultural Research
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research
<b>Open access advocates have urged the top management of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research to give open access to its research publications. A report by Subbiah Arunachalam on 3 June, 2010 was also circulated to all the signatories of the letter.</b>
<p>CIS Distinguished Fellow, Subbiah Arunachalam and 15 other open access advocates wrote to the top management of CGIAR, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, requesting them to mandate open access to all research publications from all CGIAR centres. The letter was addressed to Dr. Carlos Pérez del Castillo and Dr. Katherine Sierra and it was copied to the Director Generals of all the 15 CGIAR centres.</p>
<p>A permanent member of the prestigious Harvard University Trade Group, Carlos Pérez del Castillo has received the highest decorations from the Governments of Brazil, Chile, France and Venezuela. Carlos Pérez del Castillo also served as the Chairman of the WTO General Council and as Vice-Minister and Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uruguay (1995-1998) and as Permanent Secretary of the Latin American Economic System (1987-1991). He is a member of the Board of the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC), and a small cattle farmer.</p>
<p>Katherine Sierra, CGIAR Fund Council chair, is the World Bank vice president for sustainable development responsible for people and programs in environmentally and socially sustainable development and infrastructure. Sierra chairs several international consultative groups. These include the World Bank-WWF Alliance for Forest Conservation and Sustainable Use, Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, Cities Alliance, Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, and Water and Sanitation Program. Other international groups that she chairs are InfoDev, which supports information and communication technologies for development, and the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility, which promotes private participation in infrastructure.</p>
<h3>The Letter</h3>
<p>Dear Dr. Carlos Perez del Castillo/ Dr. Kathy Sierra:</p>
<p align="left">Subject: Please make all CGIAR research publications open access</p>
<p>About a year ago, on 20 May 2009 to be precise, Dr. William D Dar, Director General of ICRISAT sent a memorandum on Launching of Open Access Model: Digital Access to ICRISAT Scientific Publications to all researchers and students in all locations of ICRISAT [http://openaccess.icrisat.org/MemoOnDAIS.pdf]. In the memorandum Dr. Dar had said "Every ICRISAT scientist/author in all locations, laboratories and offices will send a PDF copy of the author's final version of a paper immediately upon receipt of communication from the publisher about its acceptance. This is not the final published version that certain journals provide post-print, but normally the version that is submitted following all reviews and just prior to the page proof."</p>
<p>ICRISAT is the only international agricultural research centre with an OA mandate, and is second among the research and education institutes operating from India, the first being the <a class="external-link" href="http://dspace.nitrkl.ac.in/dspace/">National Institute of Technology-Rourkela</a>. ICRISAT publishes a research journal (http://www.icrisat.org/journal/) which is also an open access journal.</p>
<p>Since then <a class="external-link" href="http://dspace.icrisat.ac.in/dspace/">Institutional Repository</a> is growing fast and the portal now has virtually all the research papers published in recent times, and all the books and learning material produced by ICRISAT researchers.</p>
<p>We believe that it would be great if other CGIAR laboratories could also mandate open access to their research publications. Indeed, it would be a good idea to have a system wide Open Access mandate for CGIAR and to have interoperable OA repositories in each CGIAR laboratory. Such a development would provide a high level of visibility for the work of CGIAR and greatly advance agricultural research. Besides, journals published by CGIAR labs could also be made OA. There are more than 1,500 OA repositories (listed in ROAR and OpenDOAR) and about 5,000 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Currently over2050 journals are searchable at article level. Over 390,000 articles are included in the DOAJ service.</p>
<p>The world will soon be celebrating the International Open Access Week [18-24 October 2010] and you may wish to announce the CGIAR OA mandate before then.</p>
<p>As you may be aware, all seven Research Councils of the UK and the National Institutes of Health, USA, have such a mandate in place for research they fund and support. The full list of ~220 mandates worldwide is available at the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/">Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies</a>.</p>
<p>We look forward to seeing an early implementation of open access in all CGIAR labs.</p>
<p>Regards<br />Sincerely,</p>
<p>Subbiah Arunachalam [Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society,Bangalore, India]<br />Remi Barre [Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), Paris, France]<br />Leslie Chan [University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada]<br />Anriette Esterhuysen [Association for Progressive Communications, Johannesburg, South Africa]<br />Jean-Claude Gudon [University of Montreal, Canada]<br />Stevan Harnad [Universite du Quebec a Montreal and University of Southampton]<br />Neil Jacobs [JISC, UK]<br />Heather Joseph [Executive Director, SPARC, USA]<br />Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK]<br />Heather Morrison [University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada]<br />Richard Poynder [Technology journalist, UK]<br />T V Ramakrishnan, FRS [Banaras Hindu University and Indian Institute of Science; Former President of the Indian Academy of Sciences]<br />Peter Suber [Berkman Fellow, Harvard University; Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College; Senior Researcher, SPARC; Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge]<br />Alma swan [Director, Key Perspectives, UK]<br />John Wilbanks [Vice President for Science, Creative Commons]<br />John Willinsky [Stanford University and University of British Columbia]</p>
<h3>Status Report on a Suggestion made to CGIAR</h3>
<p>Sixteen open access advocates wrote to the CGIAR leadership – Dr. Carlos Perez del Castillo and Dr. Kathy Sierra – on 19 May 2010, requesting CGIAR to adopt an open access mandate for all research publications from CGIAR centres. [As the names of the signatories were arranged in alphabetical order, my name appeared on the top of the list. I am one of the group and not the leader.] Mr. Richard Poynder posted a write-up on the letter in his famous blog ‘Open and Shut’.</p>
<p>The letter led to a flurry of activity among the ICT-KM professionals of CGIAR. I have heard from ICRISAT (Dr. William Dar, Director General), ILRI (Dr. Peter Ballantyne, Head, Knowledge Management and Information Services) and CIAT (Dr. Edith Hesse, Head Corporate Communications and Capacity Strengthening).</p>
<p>Dr. Dar welcomed the suggestion. Incidentally, he is a champion of open access and is on the Board of Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS). He was also the first in the CGIAR system to mandate open access to all research publications from the centre he heads.</p>
<p>From the mails of Dr. Ballantyne and Dr. Hesse, I could perceive some misgivings about the letter to CGIAR among knowledge managers of some CGIAR centres. In contrast, Dr. Francesca Re Manning of CAS-IP, CGIAR, expressed complete agreement with the proposal made by the OA advocates.</p>
<p>The response of Dr. Enrica Porcari, Chief Information Officer of CGIAR, was ambivalent, almost a tightrope walk. She didn’t say that OA was not acceptable to CGIAR and yet she was not willing to accept OA mandating as an option. She said: “Rather than a policy on ‘open access’ limited to journal articles, I would instead prefer to see us develop a strong and clear CGIAR view and set of practices that balance the need for high quality science with highly accessible outputs, and reinforces the substantial progress we have already made across all the Centers…I would advocate for a concerted effort to ‘opening access to our research’. Is not providing open access to research publications the obvious first step in opening access to our research?”</p>
<p>Probably, Dr. Porcari also thought that the advocates were promoting open access journals. Both Richard Poynder and I clarified that what we suggested for CGIR was open access and not open access journals and explained the difference between the two. Richard clarified that our emphasis was actually on open access archiving.</p>
<p>Dr. Peter Bloch and Dr. Kay Chapman of CAS-IP thought that some of the ideas we put forward were astute and relevant but had some concerns about making papers for which the copyright vests with journal publishers open access as well as papers co-authored with non-CGIAR researchers. In response we pointed out how other organizations which have mandated open access have dealt with these issues.</p>
<p>Prof. Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management , Ahmedabad, and founder of the Honey Bee network that disseminate the innovations of thousands of farmers, craftsmen, artisans and the lay public, endorsed the suggestion stating that Harvard made it obligatory for all the papers published by its faculty to be openly accessible. He said that "once this is made into a policy by CGIAR, the publishers will have to fall in line."</p>
<p>Prof. Michael Gurstein, editor of Journal of Community Informatics, welcomed the idea of making CGIAR research open access, and suggested that we should go one step further and see to it that the research is also made easily applied by the farmers and other ultimate users. Others who endorsed the suggestion include Professors Bill Hubbard, Stephen Pinfield and Chrisopher Pressler of the Nottingham University, David Bollier, Co-founder of Public Knowledge, Prof. Helen Hambly Odame of the University of Guelph.</p>
<p>In the meanwhile, I found that "the Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD) initiative is working to make agricultural research information publicly available and accessible to all. This means working with organisations that hold information or that creates new knowledge – to help them disseminate it more efficiently and make it easier to access. CGIAR, FAO and DFID are CIARD partners.</p>
<p>I refer to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ciard.net/ciard-manifesto">CIARD Manifesto</a> here. It is all for open access. Both DFID and FAO also have adopted open access. Please refer to the R4D portal of DFID. Why R4D? In the past it was difficult to find out what research topics, projects, and programmes DFID was funding or had funded. Researchers all over the world (and even DFID staff) had to rely on a network of personal contacts or inspired detective work to discover who was already working in a particular area, what was already known, and what lessons had been learned. R4D responds to a demand expressed by many DFID stakeholders for better and open access to all this information. It is and will always be only one piece of the jigsaw, but it is a high-quality piece, as in order to have received DFID funding the research posted on R4D will have met strict criteria and quality standards in both formulation and execution.</p>
<p>FAO has complied with all the 13 CIARD requirements for developing institutional readiness and increasing the availability, accessibility and applicability of research outputs. Indeed FAO is the only institution to have done so.</p>
<p>Dr. Ballantyne of ILRI himself has championed open access. Responding to New publication: Learning to Share Knowledge for Global Agricultural Progress, he wrote on 21 March 2010, "Great to see this experience all written up. I was going to complain at the lack of open access to this CGIAR research output… but then I found the author version ‘available’ in full on the CIAT website. Excellent example of I can’t remember which CIARD pathway! Would be even better if your author version was ‘accessible’ in a proper CGIAR/CIAT repository that is harvestable, etc., and not just uploaded on the web!" This is precisely what the 16 signatories to the letter to CGIAR want for all of CGIR research publications!</p>
<p>There should be no difficulty for CGIAR – the Consortium Board, the Science Council and the Programme Committee to accept the suggestion that they adopt an open access mandate for all their research publications.</p>
<p>It is likely that a few knowledge managers were unhappy that people outside the system made the suggestion. It may be their immediate response. It should not be difficult for them to realize, on sober reflection, that all we mean is to bring access to CGIAR research on par with access to research done at some of the best institutions in the world such as MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and Southampton, and to make CGIAR policy the best in the world – even better than the OA policies of NIH, the Research Councils of the UK and the Wellcome Trust. We assure those who have any misgivings that our intentions are honourable, our suggestion was made in the best interest of CGIAR, and they can cast away their misgivings.</p>
<p>Regards,<br />Arun</p>
<p>The Central Advisory Service for Intellectual Property (CAS-IP of CGIAR) organised a successful workshop in Rome in early July. CAS-IP hopes to conduct a workshop on open access for all CGIAR librarians and knowledge managers before the end of the year.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-access-international-agricultural-research</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessOpen Access2011-08-25T08:13:43ZBlog EntryCIS featured in the Report on Research and Funding Landscape within the Arts and Humanities in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-and-funding
<b>Centre for Internet and Society has been listed as an area of excellence and innovative research in this report.</b>
<p>Research Councils UK had undertaken a mapping exercise to gain a better understanding of the research and funding landscape within the arts and humanities in India. The India Foundation for the Arts won the tender to undertake the exercise.</p>
<p>The report highlights:</p>
<ul><li>The challenges of definition with the term ‘arts and humanities’ and ‘social science’ in India and subsequently how this affects funding for research in these areas </li><li>The strengths, current themes and challenges of arts and humanities (and in some cases social science) research in India </li><li>The challenge of creating an accurate arts and humanities archive in India </li><li>An overview of the Indian funding and research structures </li><li>The challenge of funding fine and performing arts separately from traditional arts research disciplines </li><li>A discussion on significant shifts in theory and approaches in some of the disciplines and this impact on the current research landscape </li><li>A list of centres of excellence in arts and humanities research in India </li><li>A list of centres with potential or those which are working in innovative research areas </li><li>An outline of government, non-government and foreign funders</li></ul>
<p>Click here for the<a class="external-link" href="http://www.india.rcuk.ac.uk/reslandscape/default.htm"> Report</a>.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-and-funding'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/research-and-funding</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaResearch2011-04-02T11:27:38ZNews Item