open definition website

[Janet Hawtin]

Here is a link from Alex:

================
Alexander: hi
this looks interesting -
http://www.opendefinition.org/

The Open Knowledge Definition (OKD) sets out principles to define
‘openness’ in knowledge.
=================

Other groups might separate open from free.
Not sure where this website sits on that spectrum.

Cheers

janet

[Leigh Blackall]

Thanks for relaying Janet, this comes with good timing for me.

I'm involved in a research project evaluating openness in the Australian Research Council's (ARC) Excellence in Research for Australian (ERA) initiative. The ERA is the primary driver and reward process for research conducted in Australian universities, partly by putting out a list of academic journals that they recognise as 'quality', and rewarding researchers based on what research is published in which journals. Some of you may have caught the news recently that the rankings in the ERA list has been dropped, acknowledging that it was having an adverse effect on research directions in Australia. The overall thinking behind the ERA initiative, is to somehow quantify research in Australia, hold publicly funded research more accountable, and to be in a position someday to report on Australian research outputs in an international comparison (I can't help but see Globalism in that).

Of the many unintended consequences of the ERA initiative, our research is focusing on its influence over academics at our university who might be attempting to adopt open academic practices. Our research is evaluating both the journal lists, as well as the ERA guideline documents, for any recognition of principles of openness, especially in the light of the obvious policy trends internationally, not to mention market trends such as major publisher's attempting to develop open publishing within their existing business models, such as author pays for open access. 

We are still in the early stages of our project, but can already see that the ERA lists have next to no open journals in the discipline areas of education, health and governance, with our criteria for open journal being:

• Accessible (online)
• Reusable (copyright)
• Reusable (format)

We would have liked to have included "open governance" in our criteria, such as the reviews of articles being also accessible, but elected not to include it this time.

While we've been using older initiatives to develop that evaluation criteria (such as the Free Cultural Works Definition), this new site passed by you from Alex helps support our criteria further.

On another note, and in a new post entirely, are my questions about openness as they relate to Neil Postman's ideas around Technopoly and information glut...

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[Janet Hawtin]

accessibility often is used to mean that a format can be used by
people with vision or other disabilities.
online is not always accessible, sometimes networks are vpn virtual
private networks, sometimes data is behind a paywall.
Might availability alsoapply for a paper book which can be owned,
reused, borrowed, shared, republished?

> Reusable (copyright)
it might be useful to be explicit about what kind of reuse. derivative
works? verbatim redistribution/republishing?
in the same way that the link was talking about
'open' which imho means currently free but with no guarantee for
future use eg. bsd license
but also mentioning a license as a way to ensure an item remains free,
eg, gpl, sharealike
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

> Reusable (format)
yes safe open standards will be important if data is to avoid being
locked into formats with tpm's technological protection measures
which in Australia are formats which it is illegal to break into even
if you have a legal copyright purpose for the data therein.
it is interesting that it is uncommon to hear people talk about
free(instead of open) formats
when a continuity of the license on a format for data is probably even
more important than free for specific data.

> We would have liked to have included "open governance" in our criteria, such
> as the reviews of articles being also accessible, but elected not to include
> it this time.
> While we've been using older initiatives to develop that evaluation criteria
> (such as the Free Cultural Works Definition), this new site passed by you
> from Alex helps support our criteria further.

Be careful because I feel that site tends to obfuscate between open and free.
Creative commons licenses are usually specific about the kinds of use.

[Janet Hawtin]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 9:13 AM, Janet Hawtin <lucy...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> Accessible (online)
> accessibility often is used to mean that a format can be used by
> people with vision or other disabilities.
> online is not always accessible, sometimes networks are vpn virtual
> private networks, sometimes data is behind a paywall.

> Might availability also apply for a paper book which can be owned,
> reused, borrowed, shared, republished?

It probably is odd to advocate paper in TALO
I guess I am cautious to assume that internet always means available.
Depending on the audience of the work and whether they are in the field
or in a context which might favour other kinds of availability.
For example if funding is limited being able to purchase a book once might be
a more available resource than paying subscription on an ongoing basis to
an online journal and web connection. An online journal might only be available
for the length of time that it is profitable to make it available as a
subscription
the resource may no longer exist if the hosting site has a change of policy
or ownership. Christchurch after the earthquake had folks using ham radio
and diesel gen sets for their communications systems in a context where
power and internet were disrupted.
I guess I worry about how easy it is to assume that internet == available
without checking the fine print =)

Good luck with the project.

Janet

[Leigh Blackall]

Sorry I didn't reply today Janet, I agreed with your advice of course, but reckoned that the 3 criteria we're using cross covered the issues you highlighted.

For example, regarding access to print: if an article is openly available online, in a reusable format and with a reusable copyright license, then someone is able to take that digital resource and create print formats for distribution if they had the resources. It is however, unrealistic to evaluate a journal on the basis of whether or not they make their printed articles openly available to anyone. So, for a community who has little or no access to the Internet, or to reliable resources for print, they must rely on a mediator such as a local newspaper, a library, or even commercial distributor to provide them their access, as the print format is more costly to distribute than a digital file online - which was the original "problem" that the Internet has "solved". 

My personal ideal would be an internet distribution and re retrieval system, linked to a microfilm library with sun based viewer, linked to a pedal driven newspaper printer and a postal system for letters to the editor, and a generator powered radio transmission tower for audio based broadcast, and walk in/telephone talk back, that is all digitised and fed back into the Internet system. Social media goes across mediums.

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[Janet Hawtin]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Leigh Blackall <leighb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry I didn't reply today Janet, I agreed with your advice of course, but
> reckoned that the 3 criteria we're using cross covered the issues you
> highlighted.

ok

> For example, regarding access to print: if an article is openly available
> online, in a reusable format and with a reusable copyright license, then
> someone is able to take that digital resource and create print formats for
> distribution if they had the resources.

For so long as that resource is hosted.

For example some government departments post their policies online
and then when policies are changed or organisation restructured
the old website is replaced with a new one so that it is difficult to
have reliable access to comparisons of policies over time.

I once saw a librarian making library entries for policies which
were no longer online because it was her only way to indicate that
the information existed and was missing. If we cannot learn from
the policies we have had in the past we are more likely to repeat mistakes?

Internet data tends to be more fluid and so that does change
the useful life of any resource that depends on being able to
link to remotely hosted references.

imho I feel we are at a point where we are comfortable with the advantages
of internet technologies but that we could have more enduring
shared knowledge base if we had better agreements or shared commitments
to the durability of data availability.

I think it would be good if libraries, universities were able to participate in
that kind of collecting and hosting perhaps beyond the profit life but
still within
the cultural life of resources.

j

[Chris Harvey]

Quite a while ago I think Kim Tucker came up with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libre_knowledge
It might be of interest

Warm Regards
Chris Harvey
http://chrisharvey.id.au

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[Janet Hawtin]

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 5:28 PM, Janet Hawtin <lucy...@gmail.com> wrote:

> For so long as that resource is hosted.

Brendan Scott writes an interesting post about the UC Berkeley podcasts
about availability, hosting and formats.
http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/loss-of-the-uc-berkeley-podcasts/

[botheredbybees]

Brendan pointed to the answer in his post... Use and support
archive.org

The content is still dependent on you having a suitable device to
access and present it, but at least it will be available and in an
open format


On Jul 7, 8:08 am, Janet Hawtin <lucych...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 5:28 PM, Janet Hawtin <lucych...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > For so long as that resource is hosted.
>
> Brendan Scott writes an interesting post about the UC Berkeley podcasts

> about availability, hosting and formats.http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2011/07/02/loss-of-the-uc-berkeley-...

[Leigh Blackall]

YES!

Use, support and promote Archive.

Why the hell Austarlian libraries do not, is beyond me!

Remember this interview I did with Stewart Chefait?

http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/interview-stewart-cheifet-archiveorg-director-of-collections/

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[Janet Hawtin]

On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 8:02 AM, Leigh Blackall <leighb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> http://learnonline.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/interview-stewart-cheifet-archiveorg-director-of-collections/

you had trouble uploading with firefox and needed to use IE? is that
still the case?
you had trouble with the blip.tv connection, is that still the case?
agree with your questions about open formats.

he says it is the yahoo/microsoft alternative to google books.
it is interesting that the copyright/copyleft choice is that the archive
is using open material given its sponsorship.

did you manage to get an archive connection with Otago?

j

[Leigh Blackall]

Archive uploader now works on all browsers. Blip.tv link was always fickle. And I've not manage to convince a single librarian to listen to that interview, let alone typing archive.org in their browser and discovering a way to save a couple of hundred grand.