“Academia functions like a ‘tragedy of the commons dilemma’ (or collective action problem) — the widespread adoption of open science practices could benefit everyone in the research community, but their adoption is impeded by incentive structures that reward sub-optimal research and publication practices at the individual level. Our platform functions much like Kickstarter, but for cultural change rather than products. Any researcher can propose a campaign calling for their peers to adopt a particular behaviour if and when there is a critical mass of support in their community to do so. Pledges remain inactive and anonymised until this time, allowing vulnerable individuals to signal their desire for positive culture change without risking their career in the process. Then — after the critical mass is met — all signatories are de-anonymised on the website and directed to carry out the action together, thus creating momentum for change and protecting one another’s interests through collective action. We envisage that over time, these campaigns will grow increasingly larger in size and scope, and eventually become a powerful driving force in aligning the academic system with the needs of research community and principles of science itself….”
Category Archives: oa.pledges
The Open Covid Pledge: lifting the lid | Association for Learning Technology
“Since we launched the Open Covid Pledge for Education, more than 100 open educators and more than 40 organisations have pledged to share their knowledge to support the educational response to COVID-19.
It’s a wonderful expression of solidarity in the face of enormous challenges. But what does an open pledge really mean, and what could it achieve? …”
Creative Commons Is Now Leading the Open COVID Pledge—Here’s What That Means
We’re pleased to announce today that Creative Commons is taking on leadership and stewardship of the Open COVID Pledge.
Earlier this year, CC joined forces with an international group of researchers, scientists, academics, and lawyers seeking to accelerate the development of diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, medical equipment, and software solutions that might be used to assist in the fight against COVID-19. The result was the Open COVID Pledge, a project that offers a simple way for universities, companies, and others to make their patents and copyrights available to the public to be utilized in the current public health crisis.
Users of Creative Commons licenses will be familiar with the Open COVID Pledge’s approach. Like CC licenses, the Open COVID Pledge offers free, standard, public licenses that anyone can use to remove unnecessary obstacles to the dissemination of knowledge.
Amazon, Facebook, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NASA JPL, Sandia National Laboratories, and Uber are among the dozens of companies and institutions that have used the Open COVID Pledge to make their patents and copyrights open to the public in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. As Creative Commons takes on this new leadership role in the project, we’re energized by the potential to expand its international scope, reach, and impact.
We’ll continue working with large companies to unlock their intellectual property (IP) rights in the pursuit of saving lives. But we also aim to team up with smaller startups, universities, and even individual innovators—especially in parts of the world that aren’t well-represented by the project’s current list of pledgors and supporters and that hold patents and other IP critical to the fight against COVID-19. We’ll achieve this goal by collaborating with members of our worldwide community, including leading organizations in the international arena working on copyright and IP policy, such as the WHO and other UN bodies. We will also leverage the expertise and our deep relationships with the Creative Commons Global Network. Stay tuned for more information on these internationalization efforts, including ways to get involved in expanding the project in your country and region.
We believe this initiative will have a profound impact beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The common set of values, tools, and principles for the responsible use of IP in the public’s interest formed during this particular crisis can and should be used as a necessary model for addressing other crises, such as climate change. We hope to carry this conversation and model forward.
As CC takes on leadership and stewardship of the Open COVID Pledge, we are mindful of the many who contributed to its beginnings. In particular, we thank our co-collaborators for their expertise and collaboration in forging this project and helping it come to life. They have provided and will continue to provide critical strategic input into the future of this project and its growth.
You can support the effort by encouraging your company, university, or research team to make the Open COVID Pledge. Visit opencovidpledge.org or contact us at ocpinfo@creativecommons.org for more information.
The post Creative Commons Is Now Leading the Open COVID Pledge—Here’s What That Means appeared first on Creative Commons.
Sign the Open Covid Pledge for Research in Education | Association for Learning Technology
“We pledge to make our intellectual property openly and freely available to the world to support educators, students and decision-makers, to help educational organisations survive and thrive, and to build a fairer and more resilient education system.
We pledge – where possible – to openly license or dedicate to the public domain our intellectual property.”
Gold open access pledge
“Many journals place publicly-funded research behind expensive paywalls, costing the research sector billions of dollars every year and preventing access to life-saving research. Despite these harmful effects on the research community and broader public, many researchers continue to support paywalled journals because their ‘prestige’ is important for career progression. But at the same time, journal prestige depends entirely on the valuable articles and reviews we donate as a research community — if a critical mass of researchers were to unanimously declare their support for Open Access journals, the prestige of these journals would quickly rise and researchers would be free to support progressive journals without risk to individual careers.
By signing this campaign, you will pledge to exclusively support Open Access journals. Your pledge will only go into effect if a critical mass of peers in your field sign the same pledge (choose your own threshold when you pledge, according to your circumstances)….”
EIFL endorses Open COVID Pledge | EIFL
“EIFL has pledged its support for the Open COVID Pledge that seeks to remove barriers to the use of intellectual property (IP) to help end and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pledge was developed by the Open COVID Coalition, an international coalition of legal experts, engineers and scientists who are calling on companies, universities and other organizations to make their patents and copyrights temporarily available free of charge to accelerate the rapid development and deployment of diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, medical equipment and software solutions in this urgent public health crisis….”
No free view? No review!
“Many scientific articles are currently published in subscription journals and locked behind paywalls. This model impedes research and diverts public funding to parasitic publishers, while relying almost entirely on the unpaid work of researchers. We believe that science should evolve towards a different publishing model in which all scientific publications are freely available to readers as open access, without charging authors unfair prices.
For this reason, we will avoid serving as peer reviewers for venues that do not make publicly available the research that we review. Instead, we will give priority to open-access venues in how we allocate our reviewing time and organizational efforts….”
Open COVID Pledge Aims to Break Down Barriers to Innovation – SPARC
“As people around the world wrestle with how to manage the global pandemic, it’s clear that development of testing kits, vaccines, medicine, medical equipment, and software can’t happen soon enough. The Open COVID Pledge was launched in April to help speed this process, by encouraging organizations to make their patents and copyrights freely available in the fight against COVID-19….”
Microsoft commits patents to help fight COVID-19 – Microsoft on the Issues
“I am very pleased to announce that, today, Microsoft is committing to the Open COVID Pledge by making its patents available free of charge for use in efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic and minimize the impact of the disease. This step joins our other efforts to use technology and innovation to help track the disease and develop solutions, such as mobilizing AI for Health to fight COVID-19 and the Bing COVID19 Tracker. Additional information about Microsoft’s COVID-19 efforts can be found here.
We are always looking for ways we can use our patents to contribute to positive outcomes, and the fight against COVID-19 is one of the most urgent issues of our time. Pledges and open licensing of this kind can help spur innovation, especially in a crisis like this one. Researchers, scientists and others working to fight the virus should be able to develop and deploy effective solutions at scale without obstacles such as being threatened with patent litigation….”
Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge
Momentum continues to swell in support of the Open COVID Pledge, with the announcement today by Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories, that they are pledging their patents to the public to freely use in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. Following in the footsteps of Intel, Fabricatorz Foundation, and many others, these companies join as Founding Adopters of the Pledge by releasing hundreds of thousands of patents for use worldwide by researchers, scientists, and others who are working to end the and minimize the impact of the disease, including through research, diagnosis, prevention, and containment.
Creative Commons announced its formal support for the project earlier this month, joining forces with legal experts, researchers, and scientists to create the pledge and licenses. This included the publication of two new licenses last week. The licenses now give adopters the ability to choose between licensing all of their copyrights and patents, and licensing only their patents. You can learn more about the licenses on the website.
CC’s involvement in this coalition is a natural fit given our goal of supporting and promoting the sharing of intellectual property freely with the public in order to advance the dissemination of knowledge. Our work since the announcement has focused on building informational resources including a new set of FAQs, drafting and updating the licenses, connecting with those wishing to adopt the pledge and license their IP, and strategizing with other members of the coalition about how the project can best connect adopters with those using the licensed IP to maximize impact. We look forward to continuing this work and sharing these success stories.
Companies, universities, organizations, and individuals can make or support the Open COVID Pledge by visiting https://opencovidpledge.org or contacting opencovidpledge@gmail.com.
The post Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge appeared first on Creative Commons.
Making and Implementing the Open COVID Pledge
“Immediate action is required to halt the COVID-19 Pandemic and treat those it has affected. It is a practical and moral imperative that every tool we have at our disposal be applied to develop and deploy technologies on a massive scale without impediment.
We therefore pledge to make our intellectual property available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease.
We will implement this pledge through a license that details the terms and conditions under which our intellectual property is made available….”
Mozilla Supports the Open COVID Pledge: Making Intellectual Property Freely Available for the Fight Against COVID-19 – The Mozilla Blog
“The Open COVID Pledge, a project of an international coalition of scientists, technologists, and legal experts, has been created to address this issue. The project calls on companies, universities and other organizations to make their intellectual property (IP) temporarily available free of charge for use in ending the pandemic and minimizing its impact.
Mozilla is grateful to the organizers of and contributors to the Open COVID Pledge, and is proud to support this critical effort. We are an organization dedicated to keeping the internet open and accessible to all. We support the open exchange of ideas, technologies, and resources in our day-to-day work and recognize the power of removing barriers in this time of crisis to preserve the social fabric and save lives.
We invite others to join us in supporting this important initiative to help combat the spread of COVID-19.”
Mozilla Supports the Open COVID Pledge: Making Intellectual Property Freely Available for the Fight Against COVID-19 – The Mozilla Blog
“The Open COVID Pledge, a project of an international coalition of scientists, technologists, and legal experts, has been created to address this issue. The project calls on companies, universities and other organizations to make their intellectual property (IP) temporarily available free of charge for use in ending the pandemic and minimizing its impact.
Mozilla is grateful to the organizers of and contributors to the Open COVID Pledge, and is proud to support this critical effort. We are an organization dedicated to keeping the internet open and accessible to all. We support the open exchange of ideas, technologies, and resources in our day-to-day work and recognize the power of removing barriers in this time of crisis to preserve the social fabric and save lives.
We invite others to join us in supporting this important initiative to help combat the spread of COVID-19.”
Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19
Creative Commons has joined forces with other legal experts and leading scientists to offer a simple way for universities, companies, and other holders of intellectual property rights to support the development of medicines, test kits, vaccines, and other scientific discoveries related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic. The Open COVID Pledge grants the public free, temporary access to IP rights in support of solving the COVID-19 crisis, removing unnecessary obstacles to dissemination of the knowledge and inventions that could save lives and limit suffering.
The Pledge, developed by a coalition of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, gives broad permission to anyone to use technology and content otherwise inaccessible in its absence, in most cases, replacing the need for a costly license or royalty agreement.
Intel has joined the effort as a founding pledgor, along with Unified Patents and Fabricatorz Foundation.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with these experts with the goal of creating a tool that allows the development of diagnostic tools, treatment, and preventative solutions—possibly even a cure or vaccine—to halt the spread of this disease. Although developed quickly due to exigent circumstances, Creative Commons looks forward to working closely with the many talented international legal and policy experts in our Global Network on next steps to make this Pledge an impactful reality.
“Intellectual property rights are intended to encourage creativity and invention for the ultimate benefit of humanity. It’s fitting and inspiring that many intellectual property owners recognize that at this moment humanity needs all of the intellectual resources we can muster right now—from educational resources for online learning, to designs for protective equipment, to patented pharmaceuticals” – Molly Shaffer Van Houweling; Chair, CC Board of Directors
The Pledge has received public expressions of support from organizations around the world including Creative Commons; Mozilla; Unified Patents; the Idea Laboratory for Intellectual Property in Bogota, Colombia; Universities Allied for Essential Medicines; The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital); and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law, among others.
CC is proud to support the Open COVID Pledge, and the many other efforts directed at accelerating the pace of discovery during the pandemic and thereafter, including pushing for Open Access policies, especially for publicly-funded research.
Please support the effort by encouraging your company, university, or research team to support the pledge. Visit opencovidpledge.org to learn how you can contribute and read our full press release for more info.
The post Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19 appeared first on Creative Commons.
Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19
Creative Commons has joined forces with other legal experts and leading scientists to offer a simple way for universities, companies, and other holders of intellectual property rights to support the development of medicines, test kits, vaccines, and other scientific discoveries related to COVID-19 for the duration of the pandemic. The Open COVID Pledge grants the public free, temporary access to IP rights in support of solving the COVID-19 crisis, removing unnecessary obstacles to dissemination of the knowledge and inventions that could save lives and limit suffering.
The Pledge, developed by a coalition of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, gives broad permission to anyone to use technology and content otherwise inaccessible in its absence, in most cases, replacing the need for a costly license or royalty agreement.
Intel has joined the effort as a founding pledgor, along with Unified Patents and Fabricatorz Foundation.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with these experts with the goal of creating a tool that allows the development of diagnostic tools, treatment, and preventative solutions—possibly even a cure or vaccine—to halt the spread of this disease. Although developed quickly due to exigent circumstances, Creative Commons looks forward to working closely with the many talented international legal and policy experts in our Global Network on next steps to make this Pledge an impactful reality.
“Intellectual property rights are intended to encourage creativity and invention for the ultimate benefit of humanity. It’s fitting and inspiring that many intellectual property owners recognize that at this moment humanity needs all of the intellectual resources we can muster right now—from educational resources for online learning, to designs for protective equipment, to patented pharmaceuticals” – Molly Shaffer Van Houweling; Chair, CC Board of Directors
The Pledge has received public expressions of support from organizations around the world including Creative Commons; Mozilla; Unified Patents; the Idea Laboratory for Intellectual Property in Bogota, Colombia; Universities Allied for Essential Medicines; The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital); and the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law, among others.
CC is proud to support the Open COVID Pledge, and the many other efforts directed at accelerating the pace of discovery during the pandemic and thereafter, including pushing for Open Access policies, especially for publicly-funded research.
Please support the effort by encouraging your company, university, or research team to support the pledge. Visit opencovidpledge.org to learn how you can contribute and read our full press release for more info.
The post Open COVID Pledge: Removing Obstacles to Sharing IP in the Fight Against COVID-19 appeared first on Creative Commons.