Category Archives: oa.politics

What is the Democracy’s Library? – Internet Archive Blogs

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“Democracies require an educated citizenry to flourish– and because of this, Democratic governments, at all levels, spend billions of dollars publishing reports, manuals, books, videos so that all can read and learn. That is the good news.  The bad news is that in our digital age, much of this is not accessible.   Democracy’s Library aims to change this.   

The aim of the Internet Archive Democracy’s Library is to collect, preserve and make freely available all the published works of all the democracies– the federal, provincial, and municipal government publications– so that we can efficiently learn from each other to solve our biggest challenges in parallel and in concert….

Yes, this will cost a small fortune– but it is within our grasp– to collect and organize billions of documents and datasets, preserve the materials for the ages and make them available for many purposes.  While scoping projects in the United States and Canada have now begun, we estimate this project will cost at least $100 million dollars. The big money has not been committed yet, and we’re still fundraising. But to get things kicked off, Filecoin Foundation (FF) and Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW), are supporting the project. The Internet Archive has ramped up government websites and datasets as well as digitizing print materials with many library partners.

Thankfully, we do not have the rights and paywall problems that have been strangling the Internet’s best feature: an essentially free information distribution system.  …”

Burgelman (2021) Politics and Open Science: How the European Open Science Cloud Became Reality (the Untold Story) | Data Intelligence | MIT Press

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Jean-Claude Burgelman; Politics and Open Science: How the European Open Science Cloud Became Reality (the Untold Story). Data Intelligence 2021; 3 (1): 5–19. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/dint_a_00069

Abstract:

This article will document how the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) emerged as one of the key policy intentions to foster Open Science (OS) in Europe. It will describe some of the typical, non-rational roadblocks on the way to implement EOSC. The article will also argue that the only way Europe can take care of its research data in a way that fits the European specificities fully, is by supporting EOSC.

“Care, Control, and the Politics of Access: Ethnographic Research and Open Data” March 23, 09-10am (GMT-6) | Open Scholar Café, Iowa State University

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Calls for open data often center supposedly universal values of transparency and accessibility. This dialogue will examine such calls from the perspective of ethnographic research, where access to research data has historically been limited by design to protect communities, cultures, and individuals. What risks and rewards might openness carry in this context, and how might it reproduce existing forms of power and privilege? Join Marcel LaFlamme (@MarcelLaFlamme_), Open Research Manager at the scientific publisher PLOS, and Sebastian Braun, Director of American Indian Studies at Iowa State University, for a presentation and discussion about openness in ethnographic research in this month’s Open Scholar Café.

Politics and Open Science: How the European Open Science Cloud Became Reality (the Untold Story) | Data Intelligence | MIT Press Journals

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“It is fair to say note the word FAIR here that realizing se European Open Science Cloud (EOSO IS now part and parcel of the European data science policy In particular since EOSC will be from 2021 in the hands of the independent FOSC association and thus potentially way out of the so-called Brussels Bubble”.

This article will document the whole day of how EOSC emerged in this bubbler as one of the policy intentions to foster Open Science un Europe In addition, it will describe some of the typical non rational Toadblocks on the way to implement EOSC The article will also argue that the only way Europe can take care of its research data in a way that fits the European specificities fully, is by supporting EOSC….”

Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access | MIT Press Open Access

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Table of contents:

 

Epistemic Alienation in African Scholarly Communications: Open Access as a Pharmakon – Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou
Scholarly Communications and Social Justice – Charlotte Roh, Harrison W. Inefuku, and Emily Drabinski
Social Justice and Inclusivity: Drivers for the Dissemination of African Scholarship – Reggie Raju, Jill Claassen, Namhla Madini, and Tamzyn Suliaman
Can Open Scholarly Practices Redress Epistemic Injustice? – Denisse Albornoz, Angela Okune, and Leslie Chan
When the Law Advances Access to Learning: Locke and the Origins of Modern Copyright – John Willinsky
How Does a Format Make a Public? – Robin de Mourat, Donato Ricci, and Bruno Latour
Peer Review: Readers in the Making of Scholarly Knowledge – David Pontille and Didier Torny
The Making of Empirical Knowledge: Recipes, Craft, and Scholarly Communication – Pamela H. Smith, Tianna Helena Uchacz, Naomi Rosenkranz, and Claire Conklin Sabel
The Royal Society and the Noncommercial Circulation of Knowledge – Aileen Fyfe
The Political Histories of UK Public Libraries and Access to Knowledge – Stuart Lawson
Libraries and Their Publics in the United States – Maura A. Smale
Open Access, “Publicity,” and Democratic Knowledge – John Holmwood
Libraries, Museums, and Archives as Speculative Knowledge Infrastructure – Bethany Nowviskie
Preserving the Past for the Future: Whose Past? Everyone’s Future – April M. Hathcock
Is There a Text in These Data? The Digital Humanities and Preserving the Evidence – Dorothea Salo
Accessing the Past, or Should Archives Provide Open Access? – István Rév
Infrastructural Experiments and the Politics of Open Access – Jonathan Gray
The Platformization of Open – Penny C. S. Andrews
Reading Scholarship Digitally – Martin Paul Eve
Toward Linked Open Data for Latin America – Arianna Becerril-García and Eduardo Aguado-López
The Pasts, Presents, and Futures of SciELO – Abel L. Packer
Not Self-Indulgence, but Self-Preservation: Open Access and the Ethics of Care – Eileen A. Joy
Toward a Global Open-Access Scholarly Communications System: A Developing Region Perspective – Dominique Babini
Learned Societies, Humanities Publishing, and Scholarly Communication

Activists create public online spreadsheet of police violence videos.

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“Police officers around the country have been responding with violence as demonstrators gather to protest the killing of George Floyd. Much of this violence has been caught on video and has been instrumental in pushing authorities to hold officers accountable. In Buffalo, for example, two police officers were charged after video went viral of officers shoving a 75-year-old protester to the ground. In New York, two police officers were suspended for violence that was caught on video: an officer violently pushing a woman to the ground and another pulling a protester’s face mask down before blasting pepper spray. The sheer volume of material coming out of the demonstrations though makes it difficult to keep track so two activists decided to start compiling the clips into a handy spreadsheet that is available online….

Lawyer T. Greg Doucette and mathematician Jason Miller have been working to compile the videos in the Google Sheet titled “GeorgeFloyd Protest – police brutality videos on Twitter.” The database currently has 428 videos. Doucette started the effort as a Twitter thread. Miller saw that and realized it was going to be long and unwieldy so he wanted to create a way for people to easily access and sort the videos. For those who aren’t obsessively scrolling through their timelines all day, the spreadsheet can help easily locate videos of police violence in their area because they can be sorted by city and state. The activists have also created a Google Drive with backups of all the videos.

Having all video evidence of police violence documented in one place helps counter the argument that these are just isolated incidents. “When they’re shared as one-offs, you see a familiar pattern,” Doucette tells Vice. “The victim ‘was no angel’ or ‘wasn’t perfect’ or ‘just should have complied,’ and the officer is ‘just one bad apple,’ or ‘we shouldn’t rush to judgment,’ or ‘you don’t know what happened before the video started rolling.’” 

Researchers and Publishers Oppose Immediate Free Distribution of Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

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“In a new major letter signaling deep concern, more than 125 organizations – representing publishers in scientific and medical societies, global companies, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – have expressed their strong opposition to a proposed Administration policy that would mandate immediate free distribution of peer-reviewed journal articles reporting on federally funded research. Along with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Chemical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the New England Journal of Medicine are among the many signatories….”

The Challenges of Sharing Data in an Era of Politicized Science | Medical Journals and Publishing | JAMA | JAMA Network

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“Virtually every time JAMA publishes an article on the effects of pollution or climate change on health, the journal immediately receives demands from critics to retract the article for various reasons. Some individuals and groups simply do not believe that pollution or climate change affects human health….

Although the sharing of data may have numerous benefits, it also comes with substantial challenges particularly in highly contentious and politicized areas, such as the effects of climate change and pollution on health, in which the public dialogue appears to be based on as much fiction as fact. The sharing of data, whether mandated by funders, including foundations and government, or volunteered by scientists who believe in the principle of data transparency, is a complicated issue in the evolving world of science, analysis, skepticism, and communication. Above all, the scientific process—including original research and reanalysis of shared data—must prevail, and the inherent search for evidence, facts, and truth must not be compromised by special interests, coercive influences, or politicized perspectives. There are no simple answers, just words of caution and concern.”