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M Sasikumar
Open Content Movement
M SasikumarCDAC Mumbai
(c) Sasikumar M, CDAC Mumbai, 2009. You may use these slides for academic purposes with acknowledgement.
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Overview
● Open content?● Examples● Implications
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Open content
● Open source software movement across the world
– Freedom with the software, to copy, to study, to adapt
● Open content – borrows the same philosophy
– Knowledge getting locked up, knowledge should be freely accessible
– Allow copying and modification by anyone.
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Open Content
● From shakespeare to Walt Disney, everyone draws upon on others' work (usu. Open content!)
– “Commons” - collectively held property, like outerspace, streets, etc.
● Nature of content is changing....– Written text, printed text, e-text, pictures,
photos, videos, simulations, ....– Associated eco-system are different:
● Production, distribution, copying, etc.
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Open Content
● “Can you imagine, they used to have libraries where the books could not talk to each other?”
● With open content and internet, we can almost do this!
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Open Content
● Wikipedia largest and best known example.
● OKD – Open knowledge definition– OSI like definition of open content– http://www.opendefinition.org
● Public domain, creative commons, GNU Free Document License – example licenses
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Open Knowledge Definition
● Access● Redistribution● Reuse● No technology
restriction● Attribution● Integrity
● No descr against persons
● No descr against fields
● License distribution● Package specificity● No restriction on
other works
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Copyright and OC
● Copyright is automatic; “All rights reserved”.
● Copyleft/OC – Some rights reserved.
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Why Open?
● Reach out to a larger segment of population: poor countries/segments
● Way to establish yourself, when you are new!
● Avoid intermediaries – publishers, agents, etc
– Also gets more direct feedback
● Low cost to set up● Work as expression of yourself.
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Why Open?
● Access to a far wider range of materials.● Can make and keep copies of useful
materials.● Can use material in own work without
fear of copyright violation!● Library budget a high burden for most
places.
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Why Open?
● Open access to research and development work is being sought:
– Most of these are done with public money; results should be accessible to them.
● NIH, USA; European Research Council; many Funding agencies;
– Results must be OA, within a given time frame.
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The terms
● Open content: by David Wiley, not necessarily educational material.
● Open access: open content from peer reviewed journals.
● Open educational resources (UNESCO) – OCW, but no need to put as courses.
● Open courseware (OCW Consortium): free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials organised as courses.
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Relevant Forums
● Open content alliance (OCA)– Large consortium – reaction to google
books– 300,000 books– Many universities, Yahoo!, etc. as
partners.
● OCW Consortium: portal linked to OCW around the world
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MIT OCW
● Pioneering effort● Nearly 3000 courses● Voluntary for faculty● Lot of positive feedback from around the
world– Use by underground community in some
country
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Public Library of Science● plos.org● Peer reviewed, open access journal in
medicine; liberating research, accelerating science
● “nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.”
● Under CC license, authors retain ownership of their articles but agree to make them legally available for reuse, without permission or fees, for virtually any purpose. Anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse these articles, as long as the author and original source receive credit.
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Public Library of Science
● Journals in Biology, medicine, neglected tropical diseases, computational biology
● New experiment with Plos-ONE - interactive publication
● Among top-class journals in their areas.● Donations and fee to publish: source of
revenue.● To be self-sufficient by 2010.
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Universal Library
● ulib.org● Aka Million books project: India, China,
etc also major contributors● Over a million books already – simple
scanned images, no OCR and other formats.
● Cover all heritage books – 100 million or so.
● Accessible to everyone anytime.
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OER Commons
● Clearinghouse for those wanting to share their content, and look for open content
● Focus on fresh content by people across the world, spanning all subjects and grades
● Authors can indicate their preferred license, though most are in CC-NC-SA.
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Other sources
● Internet Archive● Mobilebooks● Gutenmark● Wikibooks● Literal systems● Munseys – for mobile devices● Classical archives - music
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Other sources
● Sofia – Sharing of free intellectual assets– For community colleges
● CORE – China Open Resources for Education
– Translating OCW into Mandarin– And Chinese resources into English
● ARTstor – images and works of art● Jstor – journals, etc at affordable rates
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Labs online● Lot of lab simulators available freely:
chemistry, physics, etc.● Next level of content to go open!● Internet accessible labs project; part of
iCampus project● Ilab shared architecture – to replicate
similar setup elsewhere● Expensive equipments and resources can
be shared● Not open content today!
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What do these mean?
● Lot of freely available resources.● Freedom to use, contribute and build on.● Everyone can be a knowledge
contributor!– Edit a word, sentence, para to document– Every one can have a contribution to
wikipedia; how many can do to Enc.Britannica and the like?
● Cooperative competition
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What does these mean?
● Higher quality standards– Doubts about the results/claims in a
paper? Not able to reproduce results as claimed?
– May be you are not alone; now you can find out.
– Blogs, forums to discuss supported by OA sources.
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What do these mean?
● Better impact analysis.● Citation analysis – the primary tool so far.● We can add:
– Blog coverage– Social bookmarks– Online discussions– Download analysis– Relevance of citations
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What does these mean?
● Imagine Google without the freely accessible information on the web!
● Imagine only paid services over the web!● More intelligent, more focussed
responses to queries.– Need not be dependent on title and
abstract!
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Open Content - Future
● Faster turn around of resources, faster access.
– Everybody gets to work at the cutting edge of research!
● Plagiarism etc easier to track● More effective information retrieval – find
a definition, example, etc.– Semantic Web? Ontology?
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Future...
● Web 2.0 more effective with open content – detailed analysis, summariser, social network interface, etc.
– Plos ONE?
● Download analysis, citation navigation, citation analysis, reader profile analysis
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Open Content and Library
● From static books to e-content● No charge or subscription● Type of license
– Can I photocopy or print this book?
● Access:– read in lib– issue out: limited period? On mobile? On
user account?
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Library
● Library: physical to virtual?– Large racks and shelves?– Role as maintainer of knowledge?
● Where can you find a reliable copy?● “Librarians also recognize that a key societal function of
libraries -- the archival function -- is at risk because electronic information is so seldom actually available for purchase and permanent retention or preservation”
– OC resolves this problem.
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Library
● You can build your own repository– Resources relevant to your users/orgnsn– Adaptable with time
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Conclusion
● Everything is going open! Open data, open service, open hardware, open standards, etc
● Significant change on various aspects of life
– Education, business, scholarship, publishing, etc
● New opportunities...
