Centre for Internet and Society

An Interview with Stephen Song

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan — 2012-02-29T14:08:54Z

Stephen Song, the founder of Village Telco, an initiative to bring practical and inexpensive communication network infrastructure to rural and remote areas, speaks about factors that catalyzed the initiative, the benefits of the network, some challenges, and the Mesh Potato.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: When and how did the Mesh Potato come about?

Stephen Song: It came about after I joined the Shuttleworth foundation in 2008. I was aware of the potential of low cost wireless mesh technologies to create affordable infrastructure, but there seemed to be a challenge in getting these technologies to scale, and we had done some interesting pilot work, but nothing had really taken off. And so I convened a workshop in the middle of 2008 with some of the smartest wireless networking people I knew and so began to explore what were the key barriers.

There seemed to be at least a couple of key barriers – one was that setting up a wireless mesh network was a complex procedure that required expertise. And second was that in many areas where we were interested in providing services, people were as interested in voice services as they were in data. Simply delivering data to a particular community, at least to rural communities anyway, seemed to be only solving half of the problem. So the result of that workshop was that we came to the realization, the conclusion, that what we needed was a hybrid of technologies, something that didn’t exist yet, which was a combination of voice and data technologies together.

We were lucky enough to have a brilliant open hardware designer from Australia attending the workshop almost by coincidence, and he said, “Well, why don’t we build our own?” Up until that point I think our dominant way of looking at the world was by asking what sort of North American or European technologies could we take and repurpose in Sub-Saharan Africa to address this issue of access in a more affordable way. The notion of actually manufacturing our own technology wasn’t on the chart at all and it took a little while for the idea to sink in, because it just seemed infeasible at the time. But sink in it did, which led through my fellowship at the Shuttleworth foundation to the funding of a pilot project to see whether it was feasible to complete at least a prototype design. The created prototype design led to a partnership with the manufacturer in Shenzhen, China, and to a short run of production which led to a bigger run of production. And so one thing led to another and now we have our own device that we manufacture.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And how would you describe this device to a regular consumer?

Stephen Song: Well, it is a wireless networking device that works with similar units of its kind to form an autonomous wireless network that delivers voice and data services. So you can open a box of Mesh Potatoes, plug them all in, and instantly have a voice and data network. It is a network for which you don’t require a special voice technology. All you need to do to be able to start making calls is to plug in an ordinary phone into the Mesh Potato. So it doesn’t require any sort of additional smart VOIP hand set technology or anything like that. We deliberately chose to do that because analog handsets are very cheap and lots of people have them already or they cost less than $10 to buy. So it seemed like a very affordable way of creating a voice network.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And how much does a Mesh Potato cost?

Stephen Song: They are about a $100 each.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And how much does it cost to set up a network and what is the largest distance that it can cover?

Stephen Song: The cost of the network is literally just the cost of the Mesh Potatoes and so once you have them and they are powered up, you have network infrastructure that is yours for as long as the technology lasts, which should be many years. So that’s really the core cost; it’s just the cost of the devices. Then if you connect your network to the Internet or to the public switched telephone network you might have to pay for the access to the Internet or for access to voice services.

Each Mesh Potato has a range of about three to four hundred meters but the way the Mesh Potatoes work is each device acts as a repeater for the next one. So as long as the next house that you can see is less than three to four hundred meters away, you can actually build quite a large network, because if you have two houses that are six or seven hundred meters away, as long as you have one house in the middle that’s got a Mesh Potato, then all three of them are connected. Mesh networking has been around for a while but just hasn’t become as mainstream as WiFi hotspots.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: And in what frequency range does this technology operate in?

Stephen Song: It works in the 2.4GHz range which is your standard WiFi technology, which means that for most countries you can use it without requiring a spectrum license.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: So in what countries, other than South Africa, has this technology been deployed in?

Stephen Song: Our biggest network is in the capital of East Timor in Dili. There is an NGO there called FONGTIL that has set up a large Village Telco network and there are a number of other smaller networks – one in Brazil, some networks in Nigeria and Cameroon, and then multiple other smaller more informal networks as opposed to formal Village Telcos.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: Have there been barriers in terms of deploying this technology?

Stephen Song: A barrier for us is bringing the cost of manufacture down. So one of the downsides of being a very small organization is that in terms of negotiating with manufacturers and arranging deals we have very little leverage. So we will want to bring the cost of the Mesh Potatoes down by another 50 percent, which is completely feasible, but it’s a challenge to actually build the relationships with the manufacturers to get things done quickly.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: So what company currently manufactures this technology?

Stephen Song: A company called Atcom.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: Can you provide a successful case study of this technology being deployed where it has made a difference in the village or where it helped create other social endeavors because people had access to this technology?

Stephen Song: Yeah, I think Dili in East Timor is probably the most successful example, in that the NGO that is running the network, FONGTIL, is kind of an umbrella organization for other NGOs in the region that need to connect and talk to each other on a regular basis. However mobile communication is quite expensive in Dili. So the NGOs have really valued being able to communicate easily and cheaply with their partner organizations through the Mesh Potato network.

Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: Sounds good. Thank you very much for your time.

Stephen Song: All right, bye for now.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/interview-with-stephen-song

Francis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World

praskrishna — 2013-08-03T05:36:54Z

The Electronic Publishing Trust recently announced a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developed countries who have made significant contribution for the cause of open access and free exchange of research findings. There were 30 nominations from 17 countries around the world and Dr. Francis Jayakanth from the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore was selected for the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access in the Developing World by a committee that went through all the nominations.

The award function organised by the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore was held at the Sambasivan Auditorium, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Chennai on 14 February 2012. Leading luminaries such as Prof. M.S. Swaminathan, Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Prof. G Baskaran and Prof. K Mangala Sunder participated in the award felicitation ceremony.

Giving the welcome speech, Prof. Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at CIS said that Dr. Jayakanth works for the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has trained many students and helped a number of institutes to set up open access repositories. Prof. Arunachalam added that the event is being celebrated in India as the winner is from India and specified that it is being held at the MS Swaminathan Foundation as this was the institution that hosted the first workshop to promote open access. Prof. Swaminathan had a vital role in arranging funds for the workshop. About 50 people had learnt what open access was, how to set up open access repositories, how to use the EPrints software, etc. For this very reason it was decided to hold the event in Chennai and not Bangalore where Dr. Jayakanth is based.

Felicitating Dr. Jayakanth, Prof. Swaminathan who presented the award added that it is important to highlight the contributions of those who really convert the concept of social inclusion to reality. He said that today every politician talks about inclusive growth. What is this inclusive growth, how do you convert exclusion to inclusion? Exclusion creates large problems, social problems, economic problems, etc. On a concluding note, Prof. Swaminathan said that the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh has declared 2012-13 as the year of science and he hopes that there will be a new science policy and technology policy and that he hopes that a very important component of that should be methods of ensuring open access including open access to knowledge and open access to literature.

In his award acceptance speech, Dr. Jayakanth said that the atmosphere was very overwhelming and never in his two-and-a-half decade old career he had the opportunity to speak amidst such luminaries and added that it was a privilege and prestige to have received the award from Prof. Swaminathan, the father of the Green Revolution in India. He also added that no event in India or elsewhere is complete without the active participation and mentioning of the name of Prof. Arunachalam, the greatest advocate of open access that India has seen so far, and that he wouldn’t have been here at the award ceremony but for the timely intervention of Prof. Arunachalam.

Dr. Jayakanth concluded by saying that he would like to thank Prof. NV Joshi, Prof. Derek Law, Prof. Alma Swan, Prof. Balaram, Prof. N Balakrishnan, Prof. Giridhar, and Prof. TB Rajashekar, and particularly the students of the information and knowledge management programme at the National Centre of Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, who were responsible for the growth of a repository granting more visibility to the 32,000 publications that are part of the repository.

Prof. Mangala Sunder of IIT Madras and Prof. G Baskaran of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, also participated in the event. Prof. Sunder said that it is for the kind of information that we talk about, which we want to make public for which champions like Dr. Jayakanth have been working on the sidelines but working so efficiently to get institution after institution to convert what is known as a rigid framework into a flexible more open policy of bringing their scientific content to their intellectual information content. He said that he works in the area of content development from the point of view of education and he understands the difficulty of bringing material to the public.

There are many issues, such as issues about copyright, issues about people owning the information, issues about people feeling very rigid on what they want to say in the public, etc. Dr. Jayakanth has gone through all these exercises for the last 30 years in slowly creating the “little after little” what are called the waterways to finally see that everyone benefits. The linking of science, knowledge and sustainable development to open access to information, open access to research and open access to content completes the whole cycle of knowledge.

Prof. Baskaran said that it is a very well deserved award and Dr. Jayakanth has definitely raised the bar for future awardees. Prof. Baskaran stressed upon the aspects of open access. He said that as a theoretical physicist he understands the need for open access very well. Physicists, when they have new research results place them in arXiv, the open access repository for preprints in physics. Some people wonder what if some physicists deposit all kinds of articles in the arXiv. Experience has shown that 99 per cent of the articles appear in good journals later. He added that once it is put in the arXiv, the whole world gets access and a bad paper will be noticed and commented upon by many. No one likes to be the author of such a paper! He urged that other sciences, especially the life sciences should have a repository similar to arXiv and requested Prof. Swaminathan to take the intiative at MSSRF.

Dr. Francis Jayakanth

Dr. Francis Jayakanth is a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. He has played a significant role in the establishment of India’s first institutional repository (IR) (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in). He now manages the IR and has provided technical support for establishing IRs in many other universities and institutes in India. He has been the key resource person at many events to train people in setting up IRs and open access journals. He has delivered presentations on IRs, open access journals, the OAI protocol, OAI compliance, and the benefits of open access to authors and institutions and the role of libraries. He has developed a free and open source software tool (CDSOAI), which is widely used. Dr. Jayakanth can indeed be considered an open access ‘renaissance man’, an advocate and technical expert in all aspect of open access development and an inspiration to all, both at the research and policy level.

See Francis's presentation on Who Benefits from Open Access to Scholarly Literature? [Powerpoint, 1523 KB]

See the video of the award function below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/francis-wins-ept-award

Comments on Technical Standards for Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (Phase II)

pranesh — 2012-02-29T09:44:07Z

The e-Governance Standards Division has called for public comments on the draft of the Technical Standards IFEG Phase II. We from the Centre for Internet and Society have given our comments.

The present document is — as the draft IFEG Phase I document was — an excellent step in the right direction, following very ably the policy guidelines laid down in the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance.

The Expert Committee and other contributors have made excellent choices as to the 29 standards that have been laid down in this phase of the IFEG. It is praiseworthy that the majority of these (20) are designated as mandatory, and only nine are designated as interim standards. Furthermore, the system has been quite transparent with the selection of standards, providing concise descriptions for each.

That said, the document could be improved by providing greater detail for those standards which are said to violate the National Open Standards Policy. In the current document, every interim standard is said to violate “clause 2”, rather than providing the more specific details (sub-clause, one-line explanation) about the violation.

It is unfortunate that yet again accessibility-related standards have been passed over in the presentation and archival domain.

As we have mentioned in earlier feedback, many other governmental interoperability frameworks are going beyond merely listing technical standards. Some governments, such as Germany and the EU, go beyond technical interoperability, and also have documents dealing with organizational, informational, and legal interoperability. These are equally important components of an interoperability framework. Other governments also also lay down best practice guides, and other aids to implementation, sometimes even including application recommendations. Further, there are many which lay out standards for the the semantic layer, business services layer, etc.

We at the Centre for Internet and Society are currently advising the government of Iraq on development of their e-Governance Interoperability Framework, and would be glad to extend any support that the Department of IT may require of us, including comments on all further phases.

Section-specific Comments

Section 5.2.8

It is unclear whether by IEEE 802.11-2007, the base version is being referred to or the amended version, since IEEE 802.11-2007 has been amended by IEEE 802.11n-2009 to include the IEEE 802.11n standard. As IEEE 802.11n has also become an established standard, it is suggested that section 5.2.28 make it clear that the amended standard is being referred to.

Section 5.2.13

It is recommended that IMAP v4rev1 (IETF RFC 3501, updated by RFCs 4466, 4469, 4551, 5032, 5182, 5738, 6186, supplemented by RFCs 2177, 4550) be used instead of POP3 (IETF RFC 1939). It is critical that governmental messages be preserved on government servers, and should not simply be downloaded and then deleted as is the default with POP3 implementations. IMAP allows for downloading and offline access to mails as well. Any deletion on the server from the client would be recorded in the server logs, hence allowing for transparency. Given this, and the more advanced features available in IMAP, it should be preferred to POP3. In other government interoperability frameworks where an e-mail access protocol is specified, including those of Germany, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, IMAP is provided as a standard and never is POP3 provided as the sole standard.

Section 5.2.15

SAML 2.0 is a standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains, and is not a ‘Wireless LAN Authentication’ standard. Indeed, section 5.2.8 (IEEE 802.11-2007) talks about ‘Wireless LAN Security’.

Section 5.2.23

WML v1.3, as noted, is a declining standard that is deprecated due to the recommendation by W3C of XHTML Basic v1.1. If it is at all included, it should be included not as “Mandatory – Watchlist”, but as “Additional Standard”, as it is a direct competitor to XHTML Basic v1.1.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/interoperability-framework-for-e-governance

Will open access replace costly commercial publishing models?

praskrishna — 2012-02-23T09:12:10Z

Cost of research journals going up while funds available are coming down, writes Vasudha Venugopal in an article published in the Hindu on February 19, 2012.

Technology has inherently changed the way science education is propagated. Digital libraries, wikis, webinars, videoconferences, open access and repositories — all seem to be excellent tools for sharing scientific knowledge.

Download the PDF

But with the escalating cost of research journals and the economic and logistical challenges that often accompany attending a conference, the open access model is increasingly being recognised as an alternative to expensive commercial publishing models.

Consider the situation at, say, a biological sciences research firm in Chennai. At least 16 per cent of its total budget is spent on the subscription of journals; more than 50 per cent of that going to the two largest publishing companies. Experts say the cost of journals is increasing at an average of eight per cent a year. Further, many academics do not consider work to have been adequately shared if it has been merely published in over-priced journals.

Boycott

Incidentally, last week, more than 5,700 researchers started boycotting Elsevier, a leading publisher of science journals, amid growing concerns at cost and accessibility. More than 3,000 academics have signed a petition that claims the publisher charges “exorbitantly high” prices for its journals and criticises its practice of selling journals in ‘bundles,' forcing libraries to buy a large set with many unwanted journals, or none at all.

"Since 1950, the volume of research results started getting too large for the scientific societies, leading to the entry of commercial publishers into the field. The cost per journal and the number of such journals are proliferating, while the funds available are coming down,” says Francis Jayakanth, who has been instrumental in creating an institutional repository, ePrints@IISc, which has more than 32,000 publications by researchers.

India has nearly 53 registered open access repositories that allow users to download and use documents free.

Open access advocates say Indian papers appear in both Indian and foreign journals, roughly in equal proportions, but most Indian journals have a very poor circulation, many of them below 1,500; and most Indian papers appear in low-impact foreign journals. “Most scientists in India are forced to work in a situation of information poverty. Others are unable to access what Indian researchers are doing, leading to low visibility and low use of their work. Thus, Indian work is hardly cited. Both these handicaps can be overcome to a considerable extent if open access is adopted widely, both within and outside the country,” says Subbiah Arunachalam, an open access advocate.

Experts say many U.S. universities, including Princeton, MIT and Harvard, have their own repositories. Institutions in India, too, need to set up open-access repositories to ensure their work is available to the public even if it ends up being published in an expensive journal. Even if these are made available in different repositories, one can still access them all if all the repositories are interoperable.

Trustworthy

The established method for an academic to circulate his work is to publish in a peer-reviewed journal of repute, and the reader, too, places some degree of trust in the quality of the work being presented. So will open access, with the huge volume of papers, change that? “Not at all, open access is not vanity publishing or self-publishing or about publications that scientists expect to be paid for. Since every paper is peer-reviewed, the quality is never compromised,” says Dr. Jayakanth.

Read the article in Hindu. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam has been quoted in it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/will-open-access-replace-costly-commercial-publishing-models

The High Level Privacy Conclave

Natasha Vaz — 2012-03-01T06:09:21Z

India in dire need of privacy law; experts say government is ironically creating huge national security risks in attempts to prevent crime and terrorism.

Privacy India, the Centre for Internet and Society and the Society in Action Group, with support from Privacy International, have spent 18 months studying the state of privacy across India, conducting consultations in Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Chennai and Mumbai. Today, the results of their research were discussed by representatives from government, industry, media and civil society at a high-level conclave in Delhi. In attendance were Manish Tewari MP, Microsoft Director of Corporate Affairs Deepak Maheshwari and P.K.H. Tharakan former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing. A privacy symposium open to the general public will be held tomorrow afternoon at the Indian International Centre.

The 130-page long Country report details how government bodies like the National Technical Research Organization (NTRO) engage in pervasive and frequently unauthorized wiretapping, listening in on the private conversations of politicians and ordinary citizens alike. The Cabinet Secretary himself, in a report last year, noted that a body like the Central Board of Direct Taxes should never have been authorized to conduct telephone tapping, as the Supreme Court had long ago made clear. Privacy problems are arising from UID, NPR, and other e-governance projects that involve the creation of databases and the collection of personal information. Indian citizens are losing the ability to control who has access to their information, what that information says about them and how that information is used.

Overall, the study paints a picture of a dysfunctional system, with multiple pieces of legislation dealing with sectoral privacy-related issues like health, banking, phone tapping etc and no overarching legal guarantee of privacy. As Manish Tewari observed today, there is a nationwide lack of understanding about new technologies and judges are very rarely technologically literate. This has created a situation in which the government's efforts to fight crime and terrorism by intercepting communications has horribly backfired. By building backdoors into communications systems to allow lawful access, and by restricting cryptography to a 40-bit limit, the authorities have created serious vulnerabilities in India's communications system that can be easily exploited by any malicious third party or foreign government.

Gus Hosein, Executive Director of Privacy International: "In their efforts to preserve and defend democratic society, India has undermined the very thing it wanted to protect. Both citizens and state are now at serious risk of being spied upon by anyone with a small amount of technological know-how and a computer."

Usha Ramanathan, social and political activist, said: "In the name of state transparency, government projects are in fact rendering citizens transparent to the State, rather than the other way round. A comprehensive privacy law for India cannot come soon enough."

Privacy India

Privacy India was established in 2010 with the objective of raising awareness, sparking civil action and promoting democratic dialogue around privacy challenges and violations in India. One of our goals is to build consensus towards the promulgation of comprehensive privacy legislation in India through consultations with the public, policymakers, legislators and the legal and academic community.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/the-high-level-privacy-conclave

An Interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth

praskrishna — 2012-11-24T06:09:54Z

India has been losing out its best talents to the West, however, this trend could be reversed if we create adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, and our scientific productivity and quality of research will improve significantly, says Dr. Francis Jayakanth in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

First of all congratulations for winning the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access.
Thank you very much.
When did you first take an interest in Open Access and what are your research interests?
I have always been impressed with the electronic pre-print servers like the arXiv, Cogprints, etc. I wanted to do something similar for IISc research publications.

One of the important activities of the National Centre for Science (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has been the training programme. Till recently, NCSI was conducting an 18-month training course called Information and Knowledge Management. This was targeted primarily at students graduating from Indian library schools, with a view to providing them with classroom and practical training in the application of ICT. Essentially, the aim was to train the students in how to provide state-of-the-art, computer-based information services. I have been closely associated with this training programme by offering courses and overseeing projects.

As part of the training programme the students are expected do a project. Around the year 2001, one of our students, Mr. Madhuresh Singhal carried out a project work in implementing GNU Eprints.org software developed by the University of Southampton. Incidentally, ePrints is the first professional software platform for building high quality OAI-compliant repositories. The student project successfully demonstrated the self-archiving concept through institutional repositories. The project work was later implemented to set up the country’s first institutional repository, eprints@IISc . Ever since, I have been an OA practitioner and an OA advocate.

I’m not a hard-core researcher. My work interests lies in using free and open source software for providing web-based information services.
Why Open Access is important to science and particularly India?
When researchers publish their works in journals and conference proceedings, they would want their works to be read, cited, and built upon by as wide an audience as possible. Much of the scientific publications are being published by commercial publishers. Subscription costs of such publications are very high, constantly increasing, and beyond the means of most of the libraries. The high subscription costs create an access barrier to the scientific literature because of which the publications do not get the kind of visibility that the researchers would like to. The lack of adequate visibility will reduce the potential impact of the publications. This in turn could affect the advancement of knowledge. It is therefore imperative that the access barrier to scientific literature created because of high subscription costs should be overcome and this could be achieved through OA publishing.

The problems with respect to research literature that India and other developing countries have always faced are two-fold:
- Not being able to access high quality scientific literature because of the high subscriptions costs, and
- Research reported in the national journals does not reach the global audience because most of the journals published from the country are not indexed by Web of Science (WoS) and/or Scopus databases, which are leading citation indexing databases.
If all the journals that are being published in the country could migrate to open access platform then the visibility of research works reported in the journals published from the country will automatically improve with time. This has been the experience of several of the OA journals published by MedKnow and others.
In terms of the number of papers published in refereed journals, the number of citations to these papers, citations per paper, and the number of international awards and recognitions won, India’s record is poor. What needs to be done to improve this?
For a long time now, our country has been losing out the best of the talents to mostly western and other countries. If this trend could be countered by the creation of adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, our country's scientific productivity and also quality of research done in the country will improve significantly. This may also trigger reverse brain-drain.
Indian scientists lack access and visibility. They find it tough to access what other scientists have done, due to the high costs of access and libraries in India can’t afford to subscribe to key journals needed by users. Also other researchers are not able to access what Indian researchers are doing leading to low visibility. How can we overcome these deficits? Will adoption of Open Access within and outside India overcome the aforesaid handicaps?
Access to scientific literature in the country has improved significantly during the last decade or so. This is largely because of the several library consortia that have emerged in the country during that period. However, the existing consortia and the ones that are likely to emerge in the coming years, is not the solution for the access barrier to scientific literature that exists today. There has to be a world-wide adaptation of OA to overcome the access barrier.
Do you support the movement towards making scientific publications as freely accessible as possible and create an institutional repository? What steps are being taken by the Indian Institute of Science to maintain an open access archive?
Yes. Open Access Journals and Open Access Archives or Institutional Repositories (IRs) are the two ways to facilitate OA to scholarly literature. As per the DOAJ statistics, today, there are close to 7500 peer reviewed OA journals and as per the Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) there are more than 2770 institutional repositories across the world.

In a recent study, Bo-Christer Bjork estimated that the overall percentage of scientific literature currently available OA is about 20 per cent. This includes both papers published in OA journals and those deposited in institutional repositories and directly on the Web. So, still a long way to go in achieving 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature! If all the research institutions set up their IRs and ensure that copies of post-prints are placed in the IRs then 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature could be achieved, at least, from now onwards.

ePrints@IISc, the OA institutional repository of IISc was established by NCSI in 2002. The repository holds more than 32,400 publications of IISc making the century-old institute’s research far more globally visible than before. NCSI has also provided technical help and support to several other institutes and universities in setting up their repositories and OA journals.
What are the key challenges of the scholarly publications in India?
Poor visibility and readership of many of the journals published from the country affects the citations of the articles published in such journals. This in turn affects the impact factors (IF) of the journals. No author would like to publish in very low IF journals.
What message would you give to funding agencies, the government and policy makers particularly for implementing a nation-wide mandate for Open Access?
Most of the research projects in the country are being funded by the government agencies. It is therefore imperative that we should have a nation-wide OA mandate for research publications that emerge from research projects funded from tax payers’ money. Such a mandate will not only help in enhancing the visibility of research done in the country; it may also help in avoiding duplication of research projects carried out in the country.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth

Research papers will be available in public domain

praskrishna — 2012-02-17T05:38:36Z

IIT-Madras intends to make circle of knowledge complete, writes Vasudha Venugopal in this article published in the Hindu on 15 February 2012. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam is quoted in the article.

2012-13 was declared the year of science by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, and there is a lot of effort being made all over the country to not only intensify the quantity and quality of research but also ensure greater access for all. For instance, IIT-Madras plans to make available its research papers in all disciplines online, in the public domain. The institute already provides e-learning through online web and video courses in engineering, science and humanities streams through NPTEL.

The attempt now is to convince faculty members to upload their research papers into the institution's repository, says Mangala Sunder Krishnan, Web Coordinator (NPTEL). The move will not only benefit students and faculty members but will also help the circle of knowledge to be complete, he says.

What IIT- Madras plans to do is follow an Open Access policy that would make the access of journals and scientific research public and many other educational organisations plan to follow suite. “Most research publications stay locked up in commercial journals and are inaccessible to many. Open Access is the best way to ensure that research produced in the developing world gets wider visibility,” says Francis Jayakanth, a library-trained scientific assistant based at the National Centre for Science Information, the information centre of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Mr. Jayakanth has been instrumental in creating an institutional repository ePrints@IISc that has over 32,000 publications by researchers.

Subbiah Arunachalam, distinguished fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society explains: “A research produced by the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai which would be of great relevance to researchers, say in a university in Maharashtra, may not be even noticed by the scientists there. Both groups receive funds from the same source - Government of India - and yet what one does is not easily accessible to the other. “Open Access would bridge that gap and make information available to everyone,” he says.

Open Access repositories would help authors place their papers in an interoperable institutional open access archive and anyone with an Internet connection can access it. Researchers say that in most reputed journals, it takes almost six months to get a paper published, and most insist that the paper is removed from the internal repository of the author's institution once it is published. “But 70 per cent of the publishers are now fine with the authors taking the pre-print of their paper uploaded in the repository. And since in open access, every thing is peer reviewed, the quality is never compromised,” says Mr. Jayakanth.

While institutions such as IIT- Madras subscribe to over 2,000 journals, many colleges under Anna University and University of Madras have access to just about 1,500 journals. “There is almost Rs.10 -12 lakh that the institution spends on journal subscriptions so unless there is funding, many self-financed colleges prefer not to subscribe to journals and go for a few mandatory ones prescribed by AICTE. Students and researchers have no way to acquaint themselves with recent updates,” says D. Krishnan, professor, Anna University.

Even if you go through consortiums, you have to spend Rs.20 lakh which many smaller R&D organisations cannot afford to, adds P. Ramamoorthy, librarian at Sameer- Centre for Electromagnetics, a government-funded research agency. “The restrictions imposed by many commercial publishers do not allow one to legally share the published output of his result with his colleague. Open access will relive authors of such hassles,” he says.

The original article was published in the Hindu

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/research-papers-in-public-domain

Digital Natives Video Contest

praskrishna — 2015-05-08T12:35:27Z

The Everyday Digital Native Video Contest has its top five winners through public voting.

A Day in the Life of a Digital Native: Story scripted, shot and edited by Leandra (Cole) Flor. The video is an extension of Cole's photo essay "Mirror Exercises" conceptualized for 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause' Book 1 To Be. Download the book.

Top 5 winners of the Digital Native video contest selected through public votes. From left to right: Marie Jude Bendiola, T.J. KM, Thomas Burks, John Musila and MJ.

The Jury Prize for Two Best Videos goes to John Musila (Kenya) and Marie Jude Bendiola (Singapore)! Congratulations to all winners. The Top 5 winners win the grand prize of EUR 500 each!

Our Top 10 contestants: Click on their profile to watch their videos

	Marie Jude Bendiola I come from a third world country where technology seemed to be hard to reach back in the 90s; especially by the not-so-privileged. As we progressed, technology has not only become ubiquitous (in malls, various institutions and technological hubs) but also, it has come to be used by the common man. My video will answer how technology bridges the gap between dreams and reality. It will be a fusion of documentary and re-enactment of real life events and dramas. Read More
	Cijo Abraham Mani The power of digital media will be presented to audience with the help of showing tweet-a-thon panel discussions, blood aid tweets getting spread, etc. Read More
	TJ K.M. My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look. The video will be a mixture of live action and stop motion animation/puppetry where digital devices take on a transcendent character similar to nature spirits in various cultures. I plan to investigate the tendency to exclude digital devices and technology from being categorized alongside nature as if it is somehow exempt from or superior to this category. Using symbolism and motifs from various cultures such as the Native American Hopi, Balinese Hinduism and Japanese Shintoism, my video will create a world where the technology we use daily is viewed not just as a means for socio-cultural exchange and communication but is available for the nurturing of our souls if we so choose. Read More
	Thomas Burks We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about 3 employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are becoming able to provide much higher quality content. We're fully digital; constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits; we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. That will be the gist of our video. Read More
	John Musila Map Kibera Trust is an organization based in Kenya’s Kibera slums. Using digital gadgets and technology, they have transformed the community by placing it on the map as it was only seen as forest when viewed on a map. They also film stories around the community and share them with the world on their YouTube channel and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Through this they have been able to highlight and raise awareness about the challenges the community faces. Our video would show Kibera’s role in bringing about change. Read More
	Andrés Felipe Arias Palma I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What are the advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is run with the power of the Internet? Read More
	Martin Potter Over a period of nearly four years, moving across small towns in Australia and South East Asia, I have seen the most extraordinary innovations at a local community level. My video will focus on these local stories with global impact. I am pursuing a PhD in participatory media and this will lend a uniquely academic perspective on the concept of collaboration, community life and innovation. Read More
	E. James Rajasekaran I live in the temple town of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I am a social worker and the plight of people living in slims is something that my NGO is closely associated with. My video will bring out the efforts of the people who live in the slums of Madurai. Read More
	Anand Jha Bangalore is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives too are constantly driven on the edge, every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their stories, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk prone but more passionate business of technology. Read More
	MJ As a digital native living in a developing country, I have carried out a series of both online and offline projects, which have always striven to benefit Zimbabweans in a number of ways since 2000. These projects have greatly increased my interactions with computers. I might say, I got married to a computer in 2000 when I bought my first PC; in a way, my relationship with my computer is intimate. Even though this computer I bought is an old 386 machine made obsolete by the faster Pentium III models, this did not change my love for the computer. My video will focus on a dream-like moment of my digital life. Read more

Jury Members

Shashwati Talukdar Shashwati Talukdar grew up in India where her engagement with theatre and sculpture led to filmmaking, and a Masters degree from the AJ Kidwai Mass Communication Research Center in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She developed an interest in American Avant-Garde film and eventually got an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University, Philadelphia (1999). Her work covers a wide range of forms, including documentary, narrative and experimental. Her work has shown at venues including the Margaret Mead Festival, Berlin, Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Kiasma Museum of Art and the Whitney Biennial. She has been supported by entities including the Asian Cine Fund in Busan, the Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts among others.
Leon Tan Leon Tan, PhD, is a media-art historian, cultural theorist and psychoanalyst based in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has written on art, media, globalization and copyright in journals such as CTheory and Ephemera, and curated media-art projects and art symposia in international sites such as KHOJ International Artists’ Association (New Delhi, 2011), ISEA (Singapore, 2008) and Digital Arts Week (Zurich, 2007). He is currently researching media-art practices in India, and networked museums as an expanded field of cultural memory making.
Jeroen van Loon Jeroen, digital media artist, investigates the (non-) impact of digital technology on our lives. For two months he went analogue, refrained from connecting to the World Wide Web, and communicated through his Analogue Blog. He is currently working on Life Needs Internet in which he travels around the world and collects people's personal handwritten internet stories.
Becky Band Jain Becky Band Jain is a non-profit communications specialist and blogs on everything from technology to psychology and culture. She spent the last five years living in India and she’s now based in New York. She’s a dedicated yoga and meditation practitioner and is passionate about ICTD and new media.
Namita A. Malhotra Namita A. Malhotra is a legal researcher and media practitioner and a core member of Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India. Her areas of interest are image, technology, media and law, and her work takes the form of interdisciplinary research, video and film making and exploring possibilities of recombining material, practice and discipline. She is also a founder member of Pad.ma (Public Access Digital Media Archive) which is a densely annotated online video archive.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/digital-natives-contest

Deployed

jha.anand — 2012-04-04T10:56:39Z

Name(s): Anand Jha
Location: Bangalore, India
Age: 30
Profession: Information Architect, Artist

Bangalore (India) is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives, too, are constantly driven on the edge; every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their story, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk-prone but more passionate business of technology.

Video Genre

Documentary

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one? Are there factors that contribute to identifying oneself with the term?
Digital Natives are those who are comfortable with a part of their social and professional lives being spent over digital ecosystems. I consider myself one. Considering that this digital ecosystem is still out of reach for many people belonging to the other side of the digital divide, I feel there are clear socio-economic and geographic fault lines differentiating those who are digital natives and those who aren’t.

There is a perception that the digital native is typically a Young, White, Male, American – a geek hooked to his gadgets and apathetic about social issues. Comment.
Stereotypes exist for a reason. The developed countries of Europe and the Americas are the early adopters of digital technology and there will be a trickledown effect on the rest of the world. But the point about digital natives NOT being concerned with social causes is the part I do not agree with. The Internet has been the springboard for several people’s movements across the globe. I remember stumbling upon riseup.net and Pirate Bay in 2005, and most of what the Web is made of today has been politico-social in nature, including the FOSS frameworks that empower it. These are the very same youngsters who initiated these movements.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Yes they can help attract attention to issues but this has to be matched with onsite campaign. With most of the television and print media being controlled by mega-corporations or funded by them, I see a lot of people consuming information from the P2P information channels. I rely mostly on mailing lists, news forums and video channels run by popular activist networks. I was once involved in managing and running such a mailing list, now I am just a consumer.

How effective is digital activism in comparison to traditional forms of campaigning?
Digital campaigns definitely have an impact as a lot of the traditional media outlets are now reflecting information from popular internet broadcasters-aggregators. But I still remain skeptical about the kind of issues that receive focus and how effectively these campaigns contribute to non-urban bases.

What would you say to critics who label digital native campaigns as ‘slacktivism’?
There is a certain audience on Facebook, and most of them are consumerists: they consume godmen and grocery with the same active passive behavior, with little time and patience to get into details and interdependencies. Their responses are also pretty moralistic and shaped up by the same assembly line thought processes that induces them to make the most important decisions of their lives through a template. I am a bit scared about the enthusiasm of “doing something”. People have spent entire lives understanding a lot of these issues that come from public spaces before they make even the slightest intervention. That degree of sensitivity and integrity is required for any solution to evolve. I don’t see that happening with online activism.

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local (neighborhood) causes than with global issues such as environment, poverty, corruption?
I wish there was a trend like that. From where I see it (and I am limited by what I can see). I guess people are broadcasting less and less about local issues. Social Web has still not been able to translate the neighborhood camaraderie into a digital forum buzzing with activity. And since the broadcasts are about generic topics concerning the globe, most of the momentum fizzles out. Often local issues also inspire a more physical behavior….I don’t know if the web is a space for contemplation or for action, especially when we talk about local issues.

Comment on the role of ICTs in fostering citizen action.
Access and agency are two important words that come to my mind. More people should be able to use ICT and in ways that suit them. Localization is still underserved in India. Accessibility in terms of most of the online media being inaccessible to senior-citizens, more demanding of high bandwidth, less on anonymity, English being the dominant language online, etc., are some of the problems that we face. I feel the real potential of such an ecosystem has still not been realized; there is a lot of space for people to start working on. Also, the question of what informs people and how, who is curating information and creating viewpoints and manufacturing opinions, how can information be true to its context and yet not sound like propaganda are frameworks that need rethinking and resolution.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/deployed

Digital Coverage in a Digital World

tjburks90 — 2012-04-04T10:53:19Z

Name(s): Thomas Burks
Location: Birmingham, AL USA
Age: 26
Profession: Cinematographer

Video Genre: Film

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one?
The term digital native, I understand, is any person living a lifestyle dominated by technology. It is a facet in their day to day lives and a staple in
their structure and organization. I do consider myself a digital native; I spend more time a day dealing with technology than not. I don't think your background could have anything to do with someone's status as a digital native, unless their location and situation would keep them from accessing it. But the beauty of the internet and our way of life is that the world is much smaller today. Our window to the world is becoming a doorway.

There is a perception that a digital native is typical of a young, American geek who’s plugged in to his devices 24x7 and apathetic to social causes. You agree?
I agree that this perception exists. Most people's first thought about my country (U.S.) when you think of a techie or a social media addict is a hipster in a coffee shop with an indie band and a hemp beanie. But this is only in my country; I see people of all cultures and creeds flourishing with technology all the time, involved with causes and doing their bit for society, whether they come from America or other countries.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Absolutely! Take the Kony 2012 campaign. Although it ended badly for the director, it caused a major buzz in less than a week. It's only a matter of time before pop culture takes a hold of it and we see it in major media like sitcoms and cartoons. I try to stay involved with film making endeavors going on around my town through Facebook and Twitter. I did a digital ad for "Operation Warm", a charity that provides coats to children in need.

Activism has changed in the last decade. How effective are online campaigns in raising awareness about an issue vis-à-vis onsite deployment?
I think it's much more effective than it was five years ago, and seems to still be growing, especially where the younger generation is involved. The only drawback to the effectiveness of digital activism is that it discourages educating yourself about an issue in its entirety. Once again, take Kony2012, so many people took it at face value. But it raised ire with many due to the Foundation's shaky background and vague details. It's easy to get your message to the masses, but it's also easy to not see the whole picture.

Are digital natives taking the easy way out by what critics say is ‘slacktivism’: tweeting, linking and liking about grave social issues?
Unfortunately, yes I think so. Some get so wrapped up in "getting their message out" that they don't remember to ACT. You'll affect more lives out there on the street, than you ever will behind a computer. You have to find balance in the two.

A recent example of digital native activism is the Get Kony video campaign. What are your thoughts on the criticism it received?
I honestly thought the video was well edited and shot, and delivered a message strongly. But further digging led to details that were not so noble about the Invisible Children’s organization; the possibility that Joseph Kony has not been heard from in years and may be dead. It's just important to step back and say, "Okay, they seem to have a strong argument here, but what if..."

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local causes than with global issues?
It's just easier for most people to tackle things close to home, and that's okay. Imagine if EVERYONE focused on their own community and well being, everyone would be better off. That's no reason to try and help someone who's far away, but you can do more good in person than you can do over the internet. It's good to incorporate it into your strategy, but remember it's you actions that count.

Your thoughts on Citizen Action and the use of ICT
I think we're going through a transition, people are learning more and more through the internet, and have access to such powerful tools. It's going to be a renaissance of knowledge and creativity. I have learned more technical details for my trade off the internet in a year, than I have during my time in school. It's an exciting time to be alive.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/digital-coverage-in-a-digital-world

Inaugural EPT Award for Dr. Francis Jayakanth

praskrishna — 2012-02-27T12:24:25Z

Programme

16.00	Welcome and introduction to the award Subbiah Arunachalam
16.05	Presenting the award and felicitation Prof. M S Swaminathan
16.15	Acceptance speech Dr Francis Jayakanth
16.25	Felicitation by eminent scientists Prof. G Baskaran Prof. K Mangala Sunder
16.35	Vote of thanks
16.40	Tea

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/inaugural-ept-award-for-dr.-francis-jayakanth

Digital Futures: Internet Freedom and Millennials

nishant — 2012-02-15T04:25:50Z

Last year was a turbulent year for freedom of speech and online expression in India. Early in 2011 we saw the introduction of an Intermediaries Liability amendment to the existing Information Technologies Law in the country, which allowed intermediaries like internet service providers (ISPs), digital content platforms (like Facebook and Twitter) and other actors managing online content, to remove material that is deemed objectionable without routing it through a court of law. Effectively, this was an attempt at crowdsourcing censorship, where at the whim or fancy of any person who flags information as offensive, it could be removed from digital platforms, writes Nishant Shah in DMLcentral on 3 February 2012.

While we were still reeling from the potential abuse this could lead to – from weekend drunken games where people send take-down notices on an ad hoc basis to regressive fundamentalists using this to silence voices of protests – we encountered another shock. The Information and Technologies minister of India called some of the biggest social networking platforms that support user generated content to exercise a regime of self-regulation and censorship. Citing content that was considered slanderous to political leaders in the country and potentially offensive to the religious sentiments of certain groups, he called for a ‘pre-screening’ of online content – invoking visions of thought police, where an army of thousands will be trained to read your personal and private information, sift it for offensive content, and disallow it to be published online.

And while we deal with the aftermath of what this might mean to the future of openness and our constitutionally enshrined rights of freedom of speech and expression, there was another shock that awaited us in 2012. Even as I write this, Facebook and Google – two of the largest social media platforms in India – have been 'implicated' in a gamut of civil and criminal charges. It has been alleged that these companies knowingly allowed obscene and immoral material capable of inciting prurience, communal tension, hatred and violence, to proliferate in their systems because it helps generate revenue. Because the people who uploaded the information are outside the jurisdiction of the court, they cannot be punished but these intermediaries that have allowed this content that is deemed ‘obscene, lascivious, indecent and shocking’, are now being held responsible.

There has been a lot of debate in and outside the country about the implications this has for the form and nature of information online. Freedom of speech and expression, information regulation regimes in emerging information societies, resurgence of authoritative governmentality in the face of quickly eradicating sovereignty, and the diminishing openness of the web, have all been variously discussed, much like the debates around SOPA/PIPA discussions in the US. In all of these conversations, there has been talk about the future but not about the people whose futures are the most at stake – digital natives. Pulling from my research, here are some summarized reflections of members of a younger generation pondering their digital futures:

Innovation: One of the tropes that allows digital natives intimate relationships with their technology gadgets, platforms and environments is to innovate. Especially in the global south where we cannot take ubiquitous and affordable access to the internet for granted, innovation is not merely about creativity in producing new content. Innovation is in mobilizing meager resources in order to achieve large tasks. Innovation is in cutting through existing boundaries of inequity and building communities of learning and information. Innovation is in finding ways by which access can be facilitated for large user bases. Free and open information is the reward that follows innovation. There is consensus that restricting access to information is a negative incentive for those approaching the information superhighway. And for some it is also “a challenge to find ways of accessing that information. They can ban it, but by the time they will ban it, our way of accessing it will have changed!”

Information Read/Write: Sometimes the promise of digital networks providing abundant information and knowledge, which is free to access and consume, overrides the actual allure of speech and expression. As one interlocutor explained in Wikipedia terms, “more people access Wikipedia to consume information others have produced rather than contribute to it...and it is the same everywhere. It is fun to write, but it is fun to write only because there is somebody reading it. Sometimes I go online to read rather than write.” The censorship debates often restrict themselves to freedom of speech and expression, but what they overlook is that this also interferes with the freedom to read. Reading is a form of engagement, interaction, formation of trust and affection online. And when information can no longer be easily read, it will have drastic effects on how young people connect and form communities.

Mapping Learning: For many digital natives in my work, the digital domain is not only a playground but also a space of learning. Not learning in its didactic forms, replacing universities and offering abundance of knowledge. For some, the digital space is a new process of learning. It helps them negotiate and cope with their formal curricula and offers alternative sources to understand and analyze reality. As many in our research group mentioned, “we already have access to enough academic material through our libraries. What we find on the internet are things that help us understand ideas through things that are familiar to us.” When pressed for an example, I was shown a wide range of popular and academic, cultural and social spaces – blogs, videos, movies, music, commentaries, tweets, mashups, etc., which the students often map back to their existing curriculum. “Sometimes the textbooks talk about things that happened before we were born. Or belonging to countries we don’t know much about,” explained a 19-year-old. So as a group they try and pull different and more familiar objects back into their discussions, using the web, its search potential, and social networking sites as filters to gain access to relevant knowledge.

It is in the nature of information to be filtered or censored. Even at a personal level we constantly filter out information that is not desirable or useful to us. It is understandable that certain kinds of information that are produced with malicious intent needs to be controlled. However, the recent attempts attack the very structures that define the social web as we understand it now -- openness, distribution, sharing, collaboration, co-creation and interactivity. For digital natives, being digital is not just about infrastructure and access. It is an integral part of how they embed themselves and negotiate with our information society. Regulation of information is not just about resolving the crisis of the present but also about shaping the digital futures for a generation that is growing up digital.

Banner image credit: zebble http://www.flickr.com/photos/zebble/6080622/

Read the original published in DML Central

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/digital-futures-internet-freedom-and-millennials-2

Sense and Censorship

sunil — 2012-01-31T06:15:38Z

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills, at the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, appear to enforce property rights, but are, in fact, trade bills. This article by Sunil Abraham was published in the Indian Express on 20 January 2012.

In developed countries like the US, intellectual property (IP) plays a dominant role in the economy, unlike in economies like India. Countries that have significant IP are keen to increase global and national enforcement activities, while countries with little domestic IP are keen to reduce outgoing royalties in the balance of payments and therefore, keen to expand alternatives, limitations and exceptions like copyleft licensing, compulsory/statutory licensing and fair dealing.

The loss of generic medicines, hardware based on open standards, public domain content, free and open source software, open access journal articles, etc will equally impoverish consumers in the US and in India. SOPA and PIPA, therefore, do not represent the will of the average American but rather the interests of the IP sector, which has tremendous influence in the Hill. There is one more layer of complication for policy-makers to consider as they work towards a compromise of interests in Internet governance — the tension between the old and the new. The incumbents — corporations with business models that have been rendered obsolete by technological developments — versus emerging actors who provide competing products and services, often with greater technological sophistication, higher quality, at a lower cost.

The US, in terms of policy and infrastructure, still controls the global Domain Name System (DNS) and consequently, post-SOPA/PIPA, can take unilateral trade action without worrying about national variations enabled by international law. These bills directly undermine the business models of many Indian companies — generic drug manufacturers like Ranbaxy, software service providers like Infosys, electronics manufacturers like Spice and players in many other sectors dominated by IP rights. So it is baffling that they have not added their voices to the global outcry.

SOPA and PIPA, if passed, will enable the US administration to take three-pronged action against IP infringers — seizure of domain names and DNS filtering, blocking of transactions by financial intermediaries and revocation of hosting by ISPs. While circumvention may still be possible, it will get increasingly laborious — something like the Great Firewall of China, but worse. Unfortunately, the implementation of these blunt policy instruments will require more and more public-funded surveillance and censorship.

The censorship potential of efforts like SOPA and PIPA may appeal to others, as autocratic and democratic regimes across the world have been keen to try technology-mediated social engineering — these efforts have been multiplied in the post-Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street world. Organised religion, social conservatives and those who have been at the receiving end of free speech would all want to shut down platforms like WikiLeaks and political movements like Anonymous and the Pirate Party.

These are equally dismal times for Internet governance in India. Google, Facebook and 20-odd other intermediaries are trying to avoid jail time at the hands of a Delhi court. However, ever since the IT Act amendments were put in place three years back, digital activists have been requesting intermediaries to register their protests early and often, regarding draconian provisions in the statute and in the associated rules. Their silence is going to be very expensive for all of us. We cannot depend on the private sector alone to defend our constitutional rights. As yet unpublished research from CIS demonstrates that private intermediaries only bother with defending freedom of expression when it undermines their business interests. Working with an independent researcher, we conducted a policy sting operation — faulty take-down notices were served to seven intermediaries asking for legitimate content to be taken down. In six of those cases, the intermediaries over-complied, in one case deleting all comments on a news article instead of just those comments identified in the notice. The only take-down that was resisted was one claiming that sale of diapers was “harmful to minors” under the Indian IT Act (because they caused nappy rash). It is clear that the IT Act and its associated rules have already had a chilling effect on online participation by Indians.

Fortunately for us, during the previous parliamentary session — Jayant Chaudhary, Lok Sabha MP from the Rashtriya Lok Dal, asked for the revision of rules concerning intermediaries, cyber-cafes and reasonable security practices. The next Parliament session is the last opportunity for the House to reject these rules and intervene for a free Internet.

The writer is executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society

Read the original published in the Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/sense-and-censorship

Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

praskrishna — 2012-01-30T16:24:40Z

The Western Ghats Portal team had organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: technology behind biodiversity informatics, scientific commons and policy and biodiversity portals in India. It hoped to provide an opportunity to interact and learn from similar endeavors in this emerging discipline. The workshop was held at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.

There were 5 speakers and 10 panelists representing as many portal initiatives, participating at the venue or via WebEx, addressing an audience of 75 comprising of students, researchers, representatives from governmental bodies and technological platforms.The entire day’s sessions were peppered with questions and discussions, directed to the presenters as also within the members of the audience.

The technology session presented an Indian initiative, Bhuvan, a geospatial data alternative to GoogleEarth that was pertinent to the India centric audience. The second presentation was the Atlas of Living Australia, an international endeavor that was able to give a broad overview of how government funding for the sharing of government data on a public platform was able to source large information and present it for open access on a portal. The project aims to serve a variety of users from scientists, citizen scientists to policy makers and activists in biodiversity and conservation. The WGP was presented by a discussion of architecture and design of participation interface for recording and accumulating biodiversity observation data. The scientific commons and policy session covered a wide range of topics: the interpretation of the Indian laws for portal developments across disciplines, the governmental policies that may hinder the development of Open source platforms, the creative commons licenses and how they work for scientific data, and whether developing a biodiversity commons would help the community at large.

Global initiatives in the area of scientific commons were presented. Views from the participants on various aspects and the practicality of a legal framework were discussed. There are plans to discuss and evolve a draft of a charter for scientific commons that would be relevant for biodiversity and conservation. A clearly articulated and agreed data policy is also one of the deliverables of the project.

The third session centred on the experience of India-centric biodiversity portals. Two of the panelists presented their portals and attended the session over WebEx from the United States. A spectrum of portals was presented. Some of them were focused on single taxa, or a theme focus from medicinal plants to thematic citizen science initiatives. The IBP and WGP were presented as broad based with large collections of spatial data and species data. Perspective plans of large biodiversity portal initiatives, like the GBIF node for India, INBIF, were outlines to showing the things that may come in the next few years.

The discussions revolved around scientific rigor versus citizen participation, large-scale projects v/s small-scale focused portals, and maintaining quality with crowd sourced data. Ideas about how peer recognition and scientific status could be achieved were discussed. Focused portals closely managed by experts to provide valuate biodiversity and species data were discussed, with methods of maintaining quality and curating data. The event concluded by discussions of how each portal can maintain its identity and focus but at the same time evolve mechanisms for interoperability and exchange of information. There were open discussions on whether we can network and provide easy toolkits for building focused participation sites.

Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

Objectives of the Workshop

Over the last few years, Biodiversity Informatics has emerged as a field to aggregate and consolidate biodiversity information across the world. With the increased penetration of the Internet into developing economies, and the widespread adoption of web technologies, biodiversity informatics has spawned an impressive variety of initiatives. These initiatives range from global knowledge bases and networks, national initiatives, eco-region based initiatives, as well as sharply focused initiatives which address a single species or event. There have been tangible advantages for stakeholders from these initiatives which has inspired many other endeavors. Success stories exist at both global and local level, and learning from these experiences can help one understand the multi-faceted nature of this discipline.

The Western Ghats Portal team organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: i) technology behind biodiversity informatics, ii) scientific commons and policy and iii) biodiversity portals in India. The workshop was intended to bring together technologists, open data policy experts, leaders of portal initiatives and user groups and stakeholders to meet and discuss experiences and approaches to Biodiversity Informatics.

Seventy five participants attended the workshop covering governmental agencies, NGO’s, academic institutes, student groups, CEPF grantees and other relevant stakeholders. There were 5 speakers and 10 panelists representing as many portal initiatives, participating at the venue or via WebEx from the continents of Australia and North America.

Plenary I: Technology behind biodiversity informatics - 0930 - 1115 hrs

This session was introduced by Dr.B.Ramesh of the French Institute of Pondicherry, who welcomed the participants of the workshop. He highlighted the growth of Biodiversity Informatics leveraging the Internet. In this emerging discipline, stressed the need to take stock of the latest developments in the area.

Development of Information System, Open Data standards, Archive and Geospatial solutions, Visualization in Bhuvan - M. Arulraj, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Arulraj gave an overview of the Bhuvan project, ISRO’s geo-portal serving as a rich geteway to Indian earth observations. The project was launched in August 2009 and has made rapid strides since then to expose earth observation images and thematic maps on the Indian sub-continent. The Bhuvan project has multiple modules, which include 3-D and 2-D visualizations; a data archive and data download; thematic land use and land cover maps; a mobile application; and a discussion forum. The project is in active development and in beta, but is adding many features and data to the portal. In addition to data dissemination it provides a webGIS platform with the ability to do analyses and create geographical layers by users. The Bhuvan portal conforms to the national map policy while exposing spatial information and imagery through its evolving portal.

Arulraj explained the architecture of the portal and surveyed the webGIS and open source technologies that were available. A demo terminal of Bhuvan was exposed during the lunch session. During the discussions on map policy, Arulraj quoted that as per Remote Sensing Data Policy (RSDP)-2011, all satellite data of resolutions up to 1 m shall be distributed on a nondiscriminatory basis and on “as requested basis” by NRSC/ISRO.

Architecture and design of participation interfaces - Anand Janakiraman, Western Ghats Portal

Anand Janakiram spoke about the design of participation interfaces for the Western Ghats portal. The intent was to engage with user groups on the user interfaces and usability of an observation interface, where users will be able to upload a multi-media object; provide a location for the observation; make a species call with a certain level of confidence; and provide notes and comments on the observation. The observation will be rated by the crowd. Species calls could be changed if necessary and agreed or disagreed upon.

Various rating systems were discussed. These included a 5 or ten star rating system, like movie rating systems; a multi-dimensional rating system like in Wikipedia; a “like” rating system that is used in many sites; and an expert based rating system. There was a lot of discussion on rating systems among the participants concerning the necessity of an expert based system; the wisdom of the public in identifications; a simple and easy to use rating system on the portal.

Challenges on the emerging discipline of Biodiversity Informatics - Donald Hobern, Atlas of Living Australia - Web participation.

Donald Hobern participated in the session from Australia over the Internet. His talk and presentation was viewed by the participants via two-way WebEx where he answered questions and interacted with the audience.

Donald presented the Australian Government supported multi-institutional project called the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). The ALA is a multi-institutional project with large funding to build a comprehensive biodiversity site focused on Australia. The conceptual model for the portal is to build a platform that will aggregate biodiversity information resources from specimen records, field observations, literature, images, experts and amateurs. The information will be integrated as species pages, distributions, regional atlases, and nomenclature. Through this, the portal aims to serve a whole range of users ranging from researchers, taxonomists, land-use planners, and conservation and park managers.

Donald explained the typical specimen, field occurrence and occurrence data and how it is the data is presented via collections. He also explained the services to manage sensitive data and name services available to the public through APIs. The ALA also has rich mapping tools that help relate biodiversity to spatial parameters like rainfall, temperature and other abiotic and biotic factors.

ALA also develops user communities among various stakeholders that include resource management groups, conservation groups, ecological researchers, environmental agencies, field naturalists and taxonomy researchers. They also develop specific use cases and applications for each of these groups.

The questions and interaction session was animated, even though it was on the Internet. One of the issues raised was that the ALA seems to be building an all encompassing and comprehensive portal, without any particular focus theme or focus group. How was the planning of features and functions being done? Donald’s response was the portal team would build functions that they thought would be useful and then engage with user groups to better and fine-tune the application. They engage with user groups about functions on the portal.

The Western Ghats Portal team would like to thank Donald Hobern for his active participation in the workshop with a valued presentation on the state-of-the-art of a comprehensive biodiversity portal.

Plenary II: Scientific commons and policy - 1130 - 1300 hrs

The session was chaired by Dr. Ravi Chellam of the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust. Ravi introduced the session and the speakers. The idea was to generate discussions on data sharing policy among the participants in the context of the Indian legal framework of map policy, biodiversity act, intellectual property, scientific creative commons, and the culture and attitude of Indian scientists. Ravi suggested that the session should lead to further discussions to evolve a policy for data sharing among biodiversity and conservation researchers and to evolve a charter for the best practices among the community.

Commons in the context of Biodiversity Information - Danish Sheikh, Alternative Law Forum

Danish Sheikh from the Alternate Law Forum (ALF) discussed the creative commons and stressed that it maintains the copyright of the contributor. Creative Commons only specifies the terms of sharing the information and in today’s Internet driven world open access to information was essential. With a complex legal framework of creative commons, map policy, biodiversity act, and research interests of individuals, for sharing biodiversity data we must consider property versus propriety. The sharing of information on the portal must be seen from the non-commercial and academic nature of the information as well as the use of data for social good of conservation. Government data in the form of maps and reports should be sharable on an artistic license and they could be deployed on the portal. In the sharing of biodiversity information, there are no concrete cases of violations of laws and thus there are no examples to learn from.

Danish Sheikh had prepared a draft of declaration to be discussed and agreed upon by the community. This was to be circulated to the participants, comments solicited and a broad consensus evolved on the best practices for sharing biodiversity information. The discussions centered on the map policy and the need to carefully study the map policy and the biodiversity act from a legal perspective and arrive at a policy for the portal that will conform to the laws and acts in India.

Open data in the scientific realm - Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society

Sunil Abraham from the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) spoke on various national and international initiatives on open data in the scientific realm. National consultations and discussions have been going on towards evolving a National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) among scientists and researchers in the country. The principle of the policy is based on openness, flexibility, transparency, legal conformity, protection of intellectual property, formal responsibility, and professionalism. Based on these principles, various definitions have evolved. He stressed upon a clear articulation of non-sharable data in the negative list based upon the legal framework and Right to Information Act; restricted access data and open access data.

Sunil Abraham also discussed various international initiatives on scientific data sharing especially in the ecology and biodiversity realm. He spoke of the Eye on Earth initiative for evolving a sharing policy, the framework of the Shared European Environment Information System (SEIS) and various standards for data sharing.

Discussions were around the issues of motivations for data sharing and building social networks and peer encouragement for data sharing. He opined that there was no recipe for engaging the crowd towards building and participating on social networks and sharing information.

Sunil also suggested that the community should evolve a best practices policy document by discussions and debates among themselves. CIS should be seen as a service provider and advocate for evolving a shared policy and lobbying with government if necessary. But the biodiversity community should provide the lead in this effort and the CIS would only be advisory.

Plenary III - Biodiversity portals in India - 1400 - 1700 hrs

The session was moderated by MD Madhusudan of the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore. Over the last few years there has been a multitude of portals focused on aggregating and publishing biodiversity information of the Indian sub-continent. Some of these portals are focused upon a region or taxa or subject of interest and some portals address a wider canvas of issues on biodiversity and conservation. The session was focused on presentations by each of the portals, presenting the key features and focus of their portals; the experience of building and running the portals; key lessons learnt and future plans for the portal.

The response for the sessions on biodiversity was enthusiastic. Over 12 portal initiatives were presented. Some of the presentations were by participants in the United States, who run portals on India. The presentations and participation was done over WebEx sessions overcoming the challenge of different time zones.

Madhusudhan moderated the session, keeping focus, and allowing time for discussions and debates.

V.B Mathur, Indian Biodiversity Information Facility (InBIF)

VB Mathur presented plans for a GBIF node to be set up in India at the Wildlife Institute of India called Indian Biodiversity Facility (InBIF). The project is just being initiated and is conceived as a broad and participative initiative to address the challenges to conservation in the 21st century India. With a growing economy, the objective is to provide biodiversity information to build sustainable development for larger and inclusive populations of India. The InBIF has developed a vision and mission statement and will produce a concept paper by a consultative process by next year 2012. InBIF recognizes that such an inclusive biodiversity portal will require significant funding and the involvement of already present biodiversity portals. InBIF proposes to seek substantial funding based on the concept paper via the 12th Five-Year-Plan period starting 2012-2013.

Suhel Quader, Season Watch (http://www.seasonwatch.in), Migrant Watch (http://www.migrantwatch.in)

Suhel Quader presented two portals Seasons Watch and Migrant Watch focused on citizen science initiatives. The Seasons Watch portal is focused on the observation and recording of seasons as revealed by trees, by their fruiting, flowering and leaf fall patterns. About 100 species are observed all over the country. Migrant Watch observes the arrival and departure of migrant bird species across the sub-continent. Both these large citizen science efforts are focused on the recording and understanding of seasons to create a base-line of data on seasons and their variations. These sites are driven by questions and hypotheses. The sites have an active citizen participation. The portals are planning to expand significantly into school networks. The data generated by citizens are freely available on the portals and it encourages others to download, explore, analyze and publish analysis on the data accumulated on the portal.

Sanjay Molur, Pterocount (http://www.pterocount.org/)

Sanjay Molur presented Pterocount a South Asian bat monitoring program. The project is aimed at creating awareness about bat conservation issues and developing data on the status of South Asian bat populations. There are about 3500 species of bats and data on the bat roosts and their populations is collected through online portals as well as offline forms. The information from all these sites will be compiled and analyzed for trends in the population of bats, to identify key threats to roosts and to provide recommendations for their conservation. The data collected is contributed to the IUCN and is shared with other researchers under creative commons licenses. The study is currently focused on a single bat species Pteropus giganteus, but plans to expand to other bat species as well.

Suma Tagadur, Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (http://envis.frlht.org)

Sathya Sangeetha presented the medicinal plants’ envis site maintained by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions. The site is focused on the development of a database for medicinal plants with details of taxonomy, local names, status, distribution and trade. The site undertakes a systematic update for 12 medicinal plants per year. They also study the conservation status of medicinal plants and help in the identification of a plant red list. They have plans to develop a children’s portal for increasing awareness of medicinal plants among children. With a focused agenda, the site has a specific and valuable role in biodiversity and conservation of India.

Ramesh BR - Western Ghats Portal (http://www.thewesternghats.in/)

BR Ramesh presented the Western Ghats Portal. This is a relatively young initiative launched about six months ago building on the India Biodiversity Portal. The focus of the portal is to collect biodiversity and conservation information on the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot. The portal has a map module, a species pages module, a collaborative module and integrative theme pages. The portal has aggregated significant available data on the Western Ghats and deployed it on the portal. The portal plans to add an observation recording interface and campaign for large scale participation on the portal, and species identification keys.

Shwetank Verma, Biodiversity of India, formerly Project Brahma (http://www.biodiversityofindia.org)

Shwetank Verma presented the Biodiversity of India Portal. The portal is developed and managed completely by voluntary effort, and is aimed at being a wiki resource on the biodiversity of India. The site aggregates data on Indian biodiversity from various public sites and presents it attractively on the portal. It has an effective search engine LigerCat that helps index all information on the portal. It aims to add and enrich information on the human and cultural aspects of species and their uses. The portal is keen on networking and sharing information with other biodiversity sites by building necessary APIs for interactions between various biodiversity sites.

Krushnamegh Kunte, ifoundbutterflies (http://ifoundbutterflies.org/) web participation

Krushnamegh Kunte presented the ifoundbutterfiles portal over a WebEx session from the United States. ifoundbutterflies is a community site on the butterflies of India. It contains information on species pages, life cycle pages, photographs, and identification keys of over 600 species of butterflies in India. All information is carefully peer review and curated a team of biologists studying and researching butterflies. The data is assuredly authenticated and verified and will form a reliable source of butterfly information on India.

Vijay Barve, DiversityIndia (http://diversityindia.org/) web participation

Vijay Barve presented the DiversityIndia, a social network group over a WebEx session from the United States. The effort started off as a yahoo group and then moved to facebook as a more convenient platform to share information on the biodiversity of India. It plans to aggregate the information posted in these groups into a site that will maintain and develop biodiversity databases. The group is open to sharing information and resources with other portals working on the biodiversity of India.

Deepak Menon, India Water Portal (http://www.indiawaterportal.org/)

Samuel Rajkumar presented the India Water Portal. Their portal is supported by campaigning for participation and awareness among various fora on water resources. The features include a question bank and an interaction with experts on water; a data repository on water; and a children’s section. The portal is currently working on a data project aimed at accumulating a large repository of water related data on the portal for open access. The portal intends on expanding with a map component and a data visualization module.

Chitra Ravi, India Biodiversity Portal (http://indiabiodiversity.org/)

Chitra Ravi presented the India Biodiversity Portal. The portal was started in 2008 after the first phase of portal development. Over the past year, the portal has been enriched with checklists and species pages. The portal is closely integrated with the Western Ghats Portal sharing the platform, its features and the data. A comparison of the availability of data in EOL showed that for the lesser known flora and fauna, there is very little information publicly available. The portal expects to fill this gap, by generating rich species and distribution content for Indian species.

M.D. Madhusudhan, Status of Golden Jackals in India

MD Madhusudhan presented a focused and time-based project on the Golden Jackals on India. The site campaigned and crowd sourced on the current and historical occurrence of the golden jackal in India. The enthusiasm for participation was evident with large data collection. The data was analyzed and made available publicly and freely to whoever wanted to use the data. There was a need felt for a generic portal to support such focused time-based crowd sourcing and citizen science efforts.

K.Sankara Rao, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc

K Sankara Rao, presented the Center for Ecological Sciences’ creation of a virtual herbarium database from the rich herbarium available at the Institute. The herbarium is Father Saldhana’s collection on the flora of Karnataka and has the best representation of plant specimens of Karnataka. The effort to digitize the herbarium is a passionate project that will make the herbarium resources to be more widely available. Sankara Rao requested volunteers to come forward and work on the project.

Discussions and summary of the day:

The discussions centered on a range of topics and concerns for Biodiversity Informatics in India. They focused on the following themes:

Large and comprehensive portals versus narrow and focused portals. While focused portals seem efficient in achieving their objectives, large portals are trying to explore different mechanisms of harnessing and disseminating information. While such large and comprehensive portals are necessary, they will require larger efforts, longer periods and significant funding to deliver useful content in biodiversity.

Participation and Quality. There were different views on crowd sourcing information and validation mechanisms. The importance of expert-driven efforts on ensuring quality was appreciated, while there was recognition that amateur naturalists and hobbyists could be very knowledgeable and reliable.

The scientific status of a portal can be enhanced with careful expert driven peer review mechanism. Portals could also serve as repositories for data papers publications and citations that would be valued by the scientific community. Target users for the portal. Discussions on target users for the portal covered the whole spectrum from specialists and scientists to activists and concerned citizens. A biodiversity portal was expected to provide information to a variety of users and stakeholders, including managers and policy makers.

Data exchange between portals: There was a general consensus on the interaction and exchange of data among portals. This was heartening to note, but since all the portals are new and evolving, mechanisms of exchange and building APIs for exchange was lower in priority for most portals. However, all portals were open to sharing information. Many of the citizen science portals have made their data public and downloadable.

There were discussions on larger projects like the WGP to engage in technology facilitation for various citizen science projects. This was discussed and opportunities for such technology facilitation need to be explored.

Various mechanisms, such as quiz competitions, interaction with experts, bio-blitzes, campaigns and road shows; to involve and engage citizens on the portal were discussed. There were open-ended discussions on how each portal can maintain its identity and focus, but at the same time evolve mechanisms for interoperability and exchange of information, and on whether we can network and provide easy tool kits for building focused participation sites.

Dr. Prabhakar, concluded the event with a thank you note and by expressing hope that the biodiversity conservation community can build together on the momentum the workshop has created.

List of participants present at the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics, 25th November, 2011, ATREE, Bangalore

Sr.No	Name	Affiliation	Role
1	Abhisheka	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
2	Ajith Ashokan	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
3	Amruta	Research and Action in Natural Wealth Administration (RANWA)	Audience
4	Anand Janakiraman	Western Ghats Portal	Speaker
5	Aneesh A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
6	Anup Prasad K S	TCS, Bangalore	Audience
7	Anuradha S	University of Maryland, College Park	Audience
8	Aravind N A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
9	Asha.A	Centre for Ecological Sciences - Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Audience
10	Ashwini H S	Kuvempu University	Audience
11	Avinash K S	Kuvempu University	Audience
12	Baiju Raj	Agra bear rescue facility	Audience
13	Balasubramanian D	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
14	Baranidharan.K	Forest College and Research Institute	Audience
15	Chitra Ravi	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Panelist
16	Danish Sheikh	Alternate Law Forum	Speaker
17	Deepak Menon	ARGHYAM	Panelist
18	Devayani Khare	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
19	Dharnidharan	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
20	Dinesh T B	Servelots Infotech Pvt. ltd	Audience
21	Dr. B R Ramesh	French Institute of Pondicherry	Panelist
22	Dr. Bhaskar Acharya	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
23	Dr. Chikkaswamy	Om Bioscience Research	Audience
24	Dr. Easa	Asia Biodiversity Conservation Trust (ABCT)	Audience
25	Dr. Gautam Talukdar	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
26	Dr. Gladwin Joseph	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
27	Dr. Jagdish Krishnaswamy	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
28	Dr. K N Ganeshaiah	University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore	Panelist
29	Dr. Karthikeyan Vasudevan	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
30	Dr. L Shashikumar	Jnana Bharathi, Bangalore University	Audience
31	Dr. M H Swaminath	Addl. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildife)	Audience
32	Dr. M Sanjappa	Botanical Survey of India(BSI)	Audience
33	Dr. N S Hallikhed	BISB	Audience
34	Dr. R Sukumar	Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc	Audience
35	Dr. Ravi Chellam	Madras Crocodile Bank Trust	Speaker
36	Dr. V B Mathur	Wildlife Institute of India	Panelist
37	G Areendran	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
38	G Muthu Sankar	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
39	Harinandanan P V	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
40	Jagadish	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
41	Jyotish M S	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
42	Kavitha A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
43	Kiran M C	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
44	Krushnamegh Kunte	Harvard University	Panelist
45	M Arulraj	National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad	Speaker
46	M D Madhusudan	Nature Conservation Foundation	Audience
47	M Sathya Sangeetha	Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions	Audience
48	Madhura Niphadkar	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
49	Meganath V	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
50	Naveena N L	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
51	Nishadh	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
52	Prashanth M B	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
53	Priti Gururaj	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
54	Prof. K Sankara Rao	Centre for Ecological Sciences - Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Audience
55	R C Prasad	Spatial Informatics Lab, IIITHyderabad	Audience
56	Radhika Santhanam	Śramani	Audience
57	Rahul Yadava	Strand Life Sciences	Audience
58	Rajan Pilakandy	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
59	Rakesh K N	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
60	Ramesh Kannan	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
61	Ravikanth	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
62	Sabah Rubina	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
63	Samuel Rajkumar	Independent web-developer	Audience
64	Sangeetha Sathya	FRLTH-IAIM	Audience
65	Santosh S Gaikwad	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
66	Seena Narayanan K	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
67	Senthilkumar Umapathy	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
68	Shashank P R	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
69	Shrinivas K R	Kuvempu University	Audience
70	Shwetank Verma	Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Panelist
71	Sivarajan	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
72	Sreerupa Sen	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
73	Suhel Quader	National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)
74	Suma Tagadur	Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions	Panelist
75	Sunil Abraham	Centre for Internet and Society	Speaker
76	Supriya K S	National Center for Biological Sciences	Audience
77	T Bala	Keystone Foundation - Flora of Nilgiri	Audience
78	Veeranagappa P	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
79	Vidyadhar Atkore	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
80	Vijay Barve	Diversity India	Panelist

Also see Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/summary-of-the-minutes-of-the-workshop-on-biodiversity-informatics

Technology for Accessibility in Higher Education

nirmita — 2012-01-31T06:29:03Z

Education for students with disabilities has long been a serious cause of concern in India, as also in other countries around the world. A person with a disability studying in mainstream educational institutions in India experiences many difficulties in navigating through the obstacle course of the Indian educational system, writes Nirmita Narasimhan in this IIMB Journal brought out on the occasion of the conference 'never-the-less - Enabling Access for Persons with Disabilities to Higher Education and Workplace - Role of ICT and Assistive Technologies.

Problems exist in many areas – course content, staff, facilities, resources as well as the educational and examination process. The relative physical inaccessibility of educational institutions, unavailability of accessible content in different languages, lack of trained and sensitive teachers, and the lack of awareness about developments in enabling technologies have hitherto rendered the educational environment itself rather difficult to access. In addition to the long waiting periods in getting the course materials digitized into accessible formats, as well as the assignment of scribes unfamiliar with subject topics for students to write the examinations put students with print disabilities at additional disadvantage – as if there weren’t enough problems already! Thus the educational experience often becomes a nightmare for a student who is disabled. However, compared with the situation from a decade earlier, the education scenario for persons with disabilities has, thanks to the sustained advocacy and interventions of disability organizations, gradually improved and promises to get better in the years to come.

Today, technology has made it possible for persons with disabilities to read and work independently. Some institutions for higher learning around the country, like St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, Delhi University and Loyola College in Chennai have already set up ICT centres which facilitate reading and working students who are print impaired. They offer support through digitization, training, and facilities. Organisations like National Association for the Blind and other Daisy organizations convert study materials for blind students and make them available in formats and media of the students’ choice. Students themselves, through peer to peer networks and mailing lists are able to collaboratively produce and share accessible study materials on a variety of subjects ranging from graduation to competitive exams. Another really big boon is the advent of the mobile phone as a suitable platform for listening to books. Today, two international mobile screen reader software - Nuance Talks and Mobile Speak - are available in the Indian market at competitive prices and this has led to an increase in the incidence of mobile adoption amongst persons with print disabilities, at least in the metropolitan cities.

There are many areas of improvement, which institutions of higher education can adopt for enhancing the education experience for students. For instance, the provision of digitized reading materials, access to computers with assistive devices, choice of examination methods, maintaining accessible web sites, promoting open access and open educational resources will go a long way in furthering education amongst students who have disabilities. Institutions could explore new models of imparting education which are proving successful in other parts of the world. Furthermore, existing sources of information and knowledge, such as information in the public domain and knowledge imparted through distance education should be made accessible to a wider audience.

Click here for the conference details held in IIM, Bangalore on 20 and 21 January 2012.
Download the original published in the Journal: Enabling Access for Persons with Disabilities to Higher Education and Workplace [PDF, 1422 KB]

Nirmita Narasimhan is a Programme Manager with the Centre for Internet and Society and works on policy research and advocacy related to IP reform and technology access for persons with disabilities. She received a National Award from the President of India in 2010 recognizing her contribution to the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/accessibility-in-higher-education

Centre for Internet and Society

An Interview with Stephen Song

Francis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World

Dr. Francis Jayakanth

Comments on Technical Standards for Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (Phase II)

Section-specific Comments

Section 5.2.8

Section 5.2.13

Section 5.2.15

Section 5.2.23

Will open access replace costly commercial publishing models?

Boycott

Trustworthy

The High Level Privacy Conclave

Privacy India

An Interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth

Research papers will be available in public domain

Digital Natives Video Contest

Our Top 10 contestants: Click on their profile to watch their videos

Jury Members

Deployed

Video Proposal

Interview

Digital Coverage in a Digital World

Video Proposal

Interview

Inaugural EPT Award for Dr. Francis Jayakanth

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Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

Objectives of the Workshop

Plenary I: Technology behind biodiversity informatics - 0930 - 1115 hrs

Plenary II: Scientific commons and policy - 1130 - 1300 hrs

Plenary III - Biodiversity portals in India - 1400 - 1700 hrs

List of participants present at the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics, 25th November, 2011, ATREE, Bangalore

Technology for Accessibility in Higher Education