Centre for Internet & Society

The key mandate of the Access to Knowledge project at CIS (CIS-A2K) is to work towards catalysing the growth of the open knowledge movement in south Asia and in Indic languages. From September 2012, CIS has been actively involved in growing the open knowledge movement in India through a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). The current focus of the CIS-A2K team spans over 5 language areas (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu), 2 community strengthening initiatives, and 6 stand-alone Wikimedia projects.

CIS-A2K Logo

Mission

The mission of CIS-A2K is to catalyze the growth of open knowledge movement in South Asia and in Indic languages. Within the Wikimedia universe CIS-A2K specifically strives to further grow the Indic and English Wikimedia projects and communities by:

  • supporting and serving the Indian Wikimedia communities in all possible ways;
  • building institutional partnerships;
  • bringing more content under free license;
  • designing and executing projects with community participation;
  • strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers; and
  • fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem.

 

Work Plans

Work plans and other programme documents can be accessed here:

 

Activities and Feedback

If you have a general proposal/suggestion for Access to Knowledge team you can write on the requests page. If you have appreciations or feedback on our work, please share it on feedback page.

 

Recent Posts

GI-tagged products to get Wiki pages by Prasad Krishna — last modified Jan 27, 2016 04:33 PM
Ever realised that the famous, red hot Naga Mirchi (a special variety of chilli from Nagaland) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page?
Blog Entry This Multilingual Edit-a-thon wants to Improve Indian Content on Wikipedia by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jan 28, 2016 07:23 AM
Ever wondered how many articles the Kannada Wikipedia or the Hindi Wikipedia have relating to India, its social history, literary and cultural heritage and the journey of over 1600 languages?
Blog Entry କେତେ ମାଗଣା ଫେସବୁକର ଫ୍ରି ବେସିକ୍ସ? by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jan 28, 2016 07:23 AM
This opinion piece in Odia on Facebook's Free Basics App was published in Odisha.com. The post highlights several user security and privacy that Free Basics is violating apart from violating net neutrality. It also brings the parallel of Airtel Zero and Free Basics with the Grameenphone project by Mozilla in Bangladesh and the worldwide Wikipedia Zero projects.
Blog Entry Why It's Essential To Grow Indian-Language Wikipedias by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified May 28, 2016 06:52 AM
On 15 January, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia celebrated its 15th birthday, meeting this milestone with 36 million articles in more than 290 languages (the English-language Wikipedia alone has crossed the 5-million article mark). But here I want to address some major questions that we need to ask as Indians.
Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon from Jan 25, 2016 12:00 AM to Jan 31, 2016 11:55 PM India, by Prasad Krishna
Between 25 January and 31 January 2016, CIS-A2K is organizing an edit-a-thon to celebrate India's republic day. The goal of this edit-a-thon is to create and improve Geographical Indications articles.
Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon for Mechanical Engineering students of Sagara from Jan 26, 2016 10:00 AM to Jan 27, 2016 04:00 PM by Ananth Subray
In Sagara, Karnataka, a Kannada Wikipedia edit-a-thon is being planned to be organised during January 26-27.
100 Konkani Articles Added to Wikipedia in One Day by Prasad Krishna — last modified Feb 12, 2016 03:17 PM
This was published in the Times of India.
Blog Entry ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ କିଛି ଅନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ଇଣ୍ଟରନେଟ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ by Subhashish Panigrahi — last modified Jun 18, 2016 04:24 PM
With more free and open software coming in, more people are coming together and collaborating. The ownership of various projects are coming from bigger corporations to the hands of people. It is essential to learn about the global, collaborative and multilingual projects in our language so that it come out of the four walls of literature and become the language of economy and knowledge. In this piece, I have discussed about three open knowledge projects Odia Wikipedia, Odia Wikisource and Global Voices Odia, how they work and how anyone can contribute in these projects.
Telugu Wikipedia Education Program at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada from Jan 12, 2016 12:00 AM to Jan 13, 2016 12:00 AM Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, by Pavan Santosh
In collaboration with Andhra Loyola College (ALC), Vijayawada, Access to Knowledge programme (CIS-A2K) of the Centre for Internet and Society is opening up a Wikipedia Digital Centre in the college so that students and local Wikimedians could grow Wikipedia and other Wikimedia content in Telugu and other Indian languages. To begin with this, a two-day long Wikipedia Education Program is also being initiated which will continue to grow further by expanding local content on Wikipedia.
Blog Entry Digital Futures of Indian Languages - Notes from the Consultation by Tejaswini Niranjana — last modified Jan 15, 2016 05:55 AM
A consultation on 'digital futures of Indian languages' was held at the CIS office in Bangalore on December 12, 2015, to generate ideas and structure the Indian languages focus area of the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund (CDIF). It was led by Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), and Tanveer Hasan, A2K programme at CIS; and was supported by CDIF. Here are the notes from the Consultation.