Centre for Internet and Society

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education"

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T08:51:05Z

Subhashish Panigrahi participated in a state-level seminar on "Number of Odia characters and order teaching in primary education" (ପ୍ରଥମ ଶ୍ରେଣୀରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଅକ୍ଷର ସଂଖ୍ୟା ଓ କ୍ରମଶିକ୍ଷା) co-organised by Institute of Odia Studies and Research, and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan in Bhubaneswar on September 14, 2014.

Subhashish discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.

The reports of the event are given below:


Above: Report of the event published in Prameya


Above: Report of the event published in Dharitri


Above: Report of the event published in Samaja

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/odia-alphabet-and-order-teaching-in-primary-education

Publishing Next

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T07:50:28Z

T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at Publishing Next organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing, a Margao (Goa)-based publishing house that provides publishing services to authors and publishers. The event was held in Goa on September 19 and 20.

For speakers click here. Read the full description on Publishing Next website.

Schedule | publishing next

Schedule

For descriptions of each session, please view this page.

19th September 2014			20th September 2014
	Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)		Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)
09:00 – 10:00	Registration of attendees		09:30 – 10:00	Insight Talk by Klaus Willberg
10:00 – 10:20	Inauguration / Address		10:00 – 11:30	A Pulse on Publishing
10:20 – 11:00	Keynote Address		11:30 – 12:00	Tea
11:00 – 11:20	Tea		12:00 – 13:15	Worse Off Without Verse?	Physical Distribution in a Global World: 12.00-12.45
11:20 – 11:45	Presentation by Netex Knowledge Factory		13:15 – 14:00	Lunch
11:45 – 13:15	Publishing in Indian languages		14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by HP India
13:15 – 14:00	Lunch		14:20 – 15:20	The Art of the Book	Fiction/History/Research : 14:20 – 15:00
14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by NewsHunt		15:20 – 15:45	Q&A on ISBN Issues
14:20 – 15:45	Open Publishing, Copyright and Copyleft	Face to Face: Printers and Publishers: 14:20 – 16:15	15:45 – 16:15	Tea
15:45 – 16:15	Tea		16:15 – 16:30	Presentation by IppStar	Publishing Environments in Brazil and Sri Lanka: 16:15 – 17:00
16:15 – 17:30	The Business of Graphic Books	Publishing Translated Literature: 16:15-17:00	16:30 – 18:00	e-Publishing in India
17:30 – 19:00	Are There Enough Good Books for Children?	eBook Development and Distribution: 17.30-18.30	18.00 – Publishing Next Industry Awards Presentation Ceremony
20:30 – Networking Dinner at Hotel Sandalwood

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/publishing-next

Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia – CIS-A2K and ALC join hands

T Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik — 2014-09-30T05:11:29Z

Students and faculty of Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada aim to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in its quest to catalyze the growth of open knowledge movement in Indic languages recently added another feather to its cap by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Andhra Loyola College (ALC) in Vijayawada on August 14, 2014 to work collaboratively to improve Telugu Wikipedia and Telugu Wikisource. College Principal Fr. G.A.P. Kishore, Vice-Principals Fr. P. Anil Kumar and Fr. Rex Angelo, correspondent Fr. Raju signed the agreement with CIS-A2K programme director T. Vishnu Vardhan.

The MoU signed with ALC is for a period of five years and encompasses four activities: Open knowledge creation in Telugu across various disciplines on Telugu Wikipedia: ALC faculty and students will be trained by CIS-A2K staff and interested Telugu Wikimedians to understand the principles that govern Wikipedia in order to generate quality entries. Faculty from Botany, Physics, Statistics, Ethics, Religion, Telugu Literature, and Music will work with CIS-A2K. Each of the faculty in the coming months will come up with a plan to generate open knowledge in Telugu in their respective disciplines. Content donation and digitization on Telugu Wikisource: ALC through its networks will help CIS-A2K to bring Telugu content under CC-BY-SA 4.0 license. The Telugu department of the college expressed keen interest to work with CIS-A2K in digitizing historical Telugu content and to make it available on Telugu Wikisource. Various competitions will be planned in the future. Creating a free software environment at Andhra Loyola College: 400 machines within various labs on the campus will be converted into FOSS systems with free and open source software including support for Telugu and other Indic languages. It should be noted that all the existing computers of ALC are run on proprietary software. As a pilot initiative CIS-A2K has already converted 30 systems in a lab and named it as Loyola FOSS Lab. CIS-A2K to revise the FIT (Fundamentals in Information Technology): A mandatory course for all undergraduate students which will introduce students to FOSS, Openness and Wikipedia. This is an outcome of the FOSS orientation done by T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahimanuddin Shaik during the two workshops that were held at ALC.

CIS-A2K will put every effort to involve Telugu Wikimedians and FOSS community in taking this collaboration with ALC forward. CIS-A2K will also create a project page on Telugu Wikipedia to actively document and publicly share the detailed plans and progress. More updates will also be shared on this website.


Above: Representatives from ALC and CIS-A2K seen during the signing ceremony.

The signing of the MoU was done at a public event in the presence of students, faculty and management of ALC and various representatives from media. The media covered this event enthusiastically. The Hindu coverage can be found here and Eenadu article coverage is here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/expanding-the-world-of-telugu-wikipedia-cis-and-alc-join-hands

September 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T01:26:03Z

Welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014).

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the ninth issue of the newsletter (September 2014). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

Nishant Shah was part of a working group writing a white paper on big data and social change, over the last six months. This white paper produced by a group of activists, researchers and data experts was published by Oxford.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project Maggie Huang interviewed Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan on the trends and changes in technology and understanding mobile chip manufacturing.

CIS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Andhra Loyola College for a period of 5 years to enhance Telugu Wikipedia through increased contributions to Wikipedia and make it available under free license.
CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.
Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan wrote a report on the workshop Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages for which CIS-A2K was one of the organizers.

CIS joined the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility towards creating due diligence recommendations for online platforms.
CIS organized a workshop on an evidence-based framework for intermediary liability at the IGF held in Istanbul on September 3, 2014. Jyoti Panday coordinated the workshop in collaboration with Stanford Centre for Internet & Society.
Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance in the GISWatch Report.
The Supreme Court of India revised the law on electronic evidence in the case of Anvar v. P. K. Basheer. Bhairav Acharya has done an analysis on this. It was published by Law and Policy in India and subsequently mirrored on our website.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The updated draft is being reviewed by the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Update

Work Report for September (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2014).

Blog Entry

Study on Budget Allocation and Expenditure by States on Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (Anandhi Viswanathan; September 29, 2014).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Pervasive Technologies

Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Trends and Changes in Technology (Maggie Huang; September 26, 2014).
Interviews with Semiconductor Industry Professionals in Taiwan: Understanding Mobile Chip Manufacturing (Maggie Huang; September 30, 2014).

Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Event Report

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages (Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan; September 30, 2014). The workshop was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women's Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and CIS-A2K.

Blog Entries

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia (T. Vishnu Vardhan; September 6, 2014).
Expanding the World of Telugu Wikipedia - CIS-A2K and ALC join hands (T. Vishnu Vardhan and Rahmanuddin Shaik; September 17, 2014).

The following were published in August and mirrored on our website in September:

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (Subhashish Panigrahi; OpenGLAM; August 27, 2014).
We are Wikipedia (By Subhashish Panigrahi; Wikimedia Deutschland; August 25, 2014). Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

Event Organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop for Students (Tumkur University; Tumkur; September 27, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop. Fifty people participated in the event.

Event Co-organized

Kannada Wikipedia Workshop (Organized by Basaveshwara Science College and CIS-A2K; September 20, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Implementation of IT in Kannada (Prajavani; September 21, 2014).
105 Kannada books released under Creative Commons (Shyam Prasad S; Bangalore Mirror; September 29, 2014).

Participation in Events

State Level Seminar on "Odia alphabet and order teaching in primary education" (Co-organized by Institute of Odia Studies and Research and Odia Bhasa Pratisthan, Bhubaneswar; September 14, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event and discussed about the applied aspects of Odia language in the context of primary education and need for reforms in the total number and order in the character-set citing problems with computer and internet.
Publishing Next (Organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing; Goa; September 19 - 20, 2014). T. Vishnu Vardhan was a panelist at the 5th edition of Publishing Next the annual conference on the future of publishing. He spoke on Open Access, Copyright and Copyleft.

Internet Governance

Privacy

As part of our Surveillance and Freedom: Global Understandings and Rights Development (SAFEGUARD) project with Privacy International we are engaged in enhancing respect for the right to privacy in developing countries. We have produced the following outputs during the month:

Note: The White Paper below is not a part of the SAFEGUARD project .

White Paper

Big Data and Positive Social Change in the Developing World: A White Paper for Practitioners and Researchers (Nishant Shah; Oxford: Oxford Internet Institute; September 30, 2014). Nishant Shah was part of a group of activists, researchers and data experts in producing this white paper.

Analysis

Anvar v. Basheer and the New (Old) Law of Electronic Evidence (Bhairav Acharya; September 30, 2014).

Announcement

CIS joins the Dynamic Coalition for Platform Responsibility (Jyoti Panday; September 23, 2014).

Blog Entries

The Aadhaar Case (Vipul Kharbanda; September 5, 2014).
UID: A Data Subject's Registration Tale (Mukta Batra; September 11, 2014).
Biometrics: An 'Angootha Chaap' nation? (Mukta Batra; September 19, 2014).
UID and NPR: Towards Common Ground (September 19, 2014): This is an anonymous post.

CIS @ IGF

The ninth Internet Governance Forum ("IGF2014") was hosted by Turkey in Istanbul from September 2 to 5, 2014. A BestBits pre-event, which saw robust discussions on renewal of the IGF mandate, the NETmundial Initiative and other live Internet governance processes, flagged off a week of many meetings and sessions. CIS participated in multiple workshops and panels:

WS112: Implications of post-Snowden Internet localization proposals (Organized by Center for Democracy and Technology, Istanbul, September 2, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS63: Preserving a universal Internet: Costs of fragmentation (Organized by OECD and Centre for International Governance Innovation; September 3, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker at this IGF workshop.
WS2 Mobile, Trust and Privacy (Organized by GSM Association; September 4, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.
Transparency reporting as a tool for Internet governance (Organized by Global Network Initiative; September 3, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a panelist.
WS149: Aligning ICANN policy with the privacy rights of users (Organized by Yale ISP; September 5, 2014). Pranesh Prakash was a moderator.

Other Participation

Launch of the GISWatch Report (Association for Progressive Communications and the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos). Elonnai Hickok contributed a thematic chapter on Intermediary Liability and Surveillance to this report.

Participation in Events

Re-Wiring Women's Rights Debates in the Digital Age (Organized by IT for Change in partnership with Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan and ANANDI; September 13 - 14, 2014). Rohini Lakshane was a speaker.
Workshop on Enabling Information Systems for Local Governance (Organized by Jamia Milla Islamia, Tagore Hall; New Delhi; September 18, 2014). Sunil Abraham was a participant.
National Consultation on Media Law (Organized by Law Commission of India and the National University, Delhi; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari, Jyoti Panday and Anubha Sinha participated in the event.

Upcoming Event

CPDP 2015 : The eighth international conference on computers, privacy and data protection will be held in Brussels from January 21 to 23, 2015. CIS is a moral supporter of CPDP.

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Fighting battles online (Nikhil Varma; The Hindu; September 2, 2014).
Colonial yoke or bureaucratic insouciance? (Vidya Venkat with additional reporting by K.T. Sangameswaran in Chennai; The Hindu; September 7, 2014).
Social Media Aids Rescue Efforts in Flood-Hit Kashmir (Anjana Pasricha, September 10, 2014).
Google aims to win 40% of India with Android One (Varun Aggarwal; Economic Times; September 11, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Event Organized

Consultation on New Figures of Learning in the Digital Context (CIS, Bangalore, September 22, 2014). P.P. Sneha wrote a report on the event.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

Support Us

Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, atsunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director - Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2014-bulletin

NIE Steps in to Grow Konkani Wikipedia

vishnu — 2014-10-10T11:26:26Z

The Centre for Internet & Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoU) with Nirmala Institute of Education, Goa to enhance digital literacy in Konkani in the education sector across Goa.

The Access to Knowledge (A2K) programme of CIS, in its sustained efforts to enhance the content and reach of Kokani Wikepedia (which is in incubation), has signed an MoU for a period of five years with Nirmala Insitute of Education (NIE), a Secondary Teacher Education College established in 1963 by the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary in response to the then urgent need for trained teachers in post liberation Goa. The key objectives of this partnership are: a) to design, develop and execute a certificate course titled "Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia", which is aimed at middle and high school teacher-trainees and teachers; and b) to introduce Wikimedia projects into the pedagogic curriculum of NIE.

Both CIS and NIE share a mutual interest in conserving, developing and disseminating knowledge free of cost in Konkani, which incidentally is Goa’s official language. Konkani as a language faces several challenges — it has no official script. The population who speak it are dispersed across the world and have little motivation to further the cause of Konkani, and there are few educational venues that offer a formal course to study Konkani or offer Konkani based curriculum. NIE Principal Dr. Denzil Martins welcomed this MoU and said that "it will guide our teacher-trainees to upload relevant information in Konkani that can be freely accessed by the local population" and "provide the volunteer-trainees with skills that they will be able to use to contribute and enhance the free knowledge in Konkani". The MoU was signed by Dr. Denzil Martins from NIE and T. Vishnu Vardhan (Programme Director, Access to Knowledge, CIS) in the presence of staff and students of NIE and volunteers Harriet Vidyasagar and Gayathri Rao Konkar. Dr. Rita Paes, ex-Principal of NIE who worked to forge this MoU sent her best wishes.

CIS-A2K since 2013, has worked to develop partnerships with key educational institutions to promote and grow Konkani Wikipedia. It has previously worked with NIE to design and implement a program to enroll 100 B.Ed. students to increase the amount of information available in Goan villages and towns on Konkani Wikipedia. A2K has also been instrumental in convincing Goa University to re-release Konkani Vishwakosh (encyclopedia) under CC-BY-SA 3.0 , making it freely available to public, giving them the right to share, use and even build upon the work that has already been done.

The course ‘Teaching in the Age of Wikipedia’ will enable the teacher participant to have a) a comprehensive understanding of changes due to digital technology to the knowledge domain; b) an introduction to various openness movements that inform the discourse on Open Educational Resources; c) exposure and training to participate on open knowledge platforms like Wikipedia; and d) practical examples and best practices of using Wikipedia and sister projects within the classroom context. The parties will also co-design and jointly implement programmes to introduce Wikipedia in the NIE curriculum. The curriculum for this workshop is positioned within the context of indian languages (particularly Konkani) and school education to ensure that any learning is practical and can be applied within the teachers immediate pedagogic environment. Speaking about the relevance of this course Gayathri and Harriet (who have been associated with NIE as volunteers) mentioned that "the Goa government has handed out tablets to all school going children in Goa. In order to use them effectively in the classroom will require teachers to rethink their role and teaching methodologies and this course is an important step towards that". Agreeing with this Denzil Martins feels that this course "will provide the teacher-trainees with ideas and inputs for using Wikipedia in creative ways in the classroom".

This partnership could bring huge momentum and scale for the growth of Konkani as participants who graduate from this course will as teachers act as anchors and mentors to teach and assign Wikipedia editing assignments in their respective schools and classrooms.

As Gayathri feels "such courses once fine tuned should be made available to teachers from all over the country and should be part of the package for introducing the digital technology in the school system. Today it ends with setting up computer labls in schools or distribution of hardware to students - they may have a 'computer teacher' but the class and subject teachers never become part of these new initiatives. Only when this happens can we move away from 'teaching computers' to using computers as tools to learn and teach, which is the primary objective of digital technology in schools".

CIS will develop this open course and welcomes anyone to partner in this effort, which will be made available for anyone to use it within their context. The efforts to build free and open knowledge platforms like Konkani Wikipedia will continue and partnerships like NIE will play a crucial role in building a robust knowledge society in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/nie-steps-in-to-grow-konkani-wikipedia

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2014

praskrishna — 2014-10-04T15:51:15Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of August 2014:

India Access to Knowledge/Newsletter/August 2014 - Meta

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access

Andhra Loyola College (ALC) and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to steward the growth of Telugu Wikipedia and to make available free knowledge in Telugu to all Telugus across the globe.
Highlights

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia.
ALC faculty and students to create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia.
Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance to be produced on Telugu Wikipedia.

Blog Entries

We are Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Global Voices Online, June 18, 2014)
OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014 (by Subhashish Panigrahi, OpenGlam, August 27, 2014)

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia (by H.M.Shruthi, Deccan Herald, August 5, 2014).
CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada (Eenadu, August 15, 2014).
ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014).

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Rahmanuddin Shaikh. One team member Nitika Tandon has left from the organisation -- We wish Nitika all the best for her career. We also have one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana working with us. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here. Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here.

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

Request for Collaboration:

We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

Retrieved from "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=India_Access_to_Knowledge/Newsletter/August_2014&oldid=9929126"

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-august-2014

OpenGLAM at Wikimania 2014

subha — 2014-10-06T05:09:19Z

GLAM activities in the last two months have been quite happening!

Subhashish Panigrahi's blog post was published on OpenGLAM website on August 27, 2014.

After Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin, OpenGLAM members and other GLAM contributors met again during Wikimania London, the official annual event of the Wikimedia movement focused on what people are making with wikis and open content. There were GLAM talks, workshops, discussions and brown bag talks: in this blog I’ll go into some of the highlights, but you can find an overview of all GLAM & Free culture submissions here.

Best practices for the evaluation of GLAM-Wiki cooperation

A GLAM-Wiki evaluation workshop was organized by Beat Estermann, Maarten Brinkerink and Wikimedia Foundation’s Program Evaluation specialist Jaime Anstee to assess the impact of the past GLAM projects and to create a road map by placing evaluation parameters in place for institutional collaboration. From the GLAM wiki residency project at Wikimedia UK, Jonathan Cardy presented the evaluation process needed in place for Wikipedia-in-Residence programs. Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE)’s Lilli Iliev shared information about the evaluation practices WMDE has put in place in order to implement small to large scale GLAM projects in Germany. While working with various cultural institutions in Germany, they focused on qualitative aspects of the content acquired, on goal oriented programs like “GLAM on Tour”, and on mass outreach by popular media and post campaign impact measuring. Four groups were then formed to work on particular GLAM projects, how they plan to evaluate tangible output and measure return on investments.

Have you heard?

In the scope of the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project that he founded, Andy Marbett (http://pigsonthewing.org.uk) spoke about the beauty of having recordings of notable people where they not just pronounce their names in their native languages, but introduce themselves with their dates and places of birth. With BBC’s collaboration, this project has grew to an avenue on Wikipedia to enrich biography-articles. This is indeed a project that has run absolutely in zero cost and aims at making Wikimedians meet their stars and document their voices for ever on the Internet. The full video of the talk is available below.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-glam-august-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-open-glam-at-wikimania-2014

We are Wikipedia

subha — 2014-09-06T03:19:29Z

Wikimedia Deutchland has included a paragraph about WeAreWikipedia on their blog.

@WeAreWikipedia auf Global Voices

Subhashish Panigrahi hat einen Beitrag über das Twitter-Projekt „We Are Wikipedia“ auf der Bloggerplattform GlobalVoices veröffentlicht. Subhashish erklärt unter anderem wo die Idee für das Projekt herkommt und greift einiger der unterschiedlichste Beiträge auf, die über den Twitter-Account in den letzten Wochen liefen. Inzwischen gibt es auch schon eine deutschsprachige Version des Beitrags

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/we-are-wikipedia

Digital Publishing Meeting

praskrishna — 2014-09-09T08:25:32Z

As an initiative towards building a community, a meeting on digital publishing was conducted by C-DAC GIST Pune on August 22, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja attended the meeting.

See the Facebook page of the event here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/c-dac-august-22-2014-digital-publishing-meeting

CIS' Comments on the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science Open Access Policy

sinha — 2014-08-22T15:46:45Z

In July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India released a draft Open Access Policy. CIS participated in discussions along with experts brought on board by the Drafting Committee to develop and review the open access policy. As a follow-up, CIS prepared comments to the draft Policy. This post makes available CIS' comments to the draft Policy.

The Policy was drafted after multiple rounds of consultation with Ministry officials, eminent academics and experts with prior experience of drafting open-access policies, and CIS. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam along with the Open Access Policy Committee led the discussions. The draft Policy may be accessed here. You may access CIS' detailed post on its previous work on the draft Policy here. The comments provided by CIS follow.

Click here to download a pdf version of the comments.

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COMMENTS ON THE

PROPOSED OPEN ACCESS POLICY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF BIOTECHNOLOGY AND DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE

THE CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY, INDIA

I. PRELIMINARY

1. This submission presents preliminary clause-by-clause comments by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) on the Proposed Open Access Policy (“the Policy”) of the Department of Biotechnology (“DBT”) and Department of Science (“DST”).

2. This submission is based on the draft document for an open access policy by the DBT/DST. The draft document may be accessed on the website of the DBT.^¹

3. CIS commends the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India for its efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders prior to the release of its open access policy. CIS is thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of the discussion during the framing of the Policy; and to provide this clause-by-clause submission, in furtherance of the feedback process continuing from the aforesaid draft Policy.

II. OVERVIEW

4. The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-governmental organization engaged in research and policy work in the areas of, inter alia, access to knowledge and openness.^² This clause-by-clause submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles and are limited to those clauses that most directly have an impact on them.

III. CLAUSE-BY-CLAUSE COMMENTS AND ANALYSIS

5. “An important function of DBT/DST is to support basic, translational and applied scientific research through the creation of suitable infrastructure, by providing funding to individual scientists, institutions and start-ups, and through any other means deemed necessary.”

5.1. CIS has observed the superior standard of scientific research and development performed at DST/DBT^³, and the steps taken to create high quality infrastructure by providing direct and indirect funding to several individual scientists, institutions and start-ups.

5.2. CIS strongly supports DBT/DST’s endeavour to extend the benefits of scientific research to the public produced by the persons in the foregoing comment by creating an open access policy.

5.3. CIS believes that the creation of an open access policy will advance the “creation of suitable infrastructure” by DBT/DST. Further, academic literature argues that open access works have a greater impact than works that are not freely available^⁴ and the public ought to benefit from research funded by the taxpayers’ money.^⁵

6. “Since all funds disbursed by DBT/DST are public funds, it is important that the information and knowledge generated through the use of these funds are made publicly available as soon as possible.”

6.1. The Policy proposes usage of the phrase “made publicly available.”

6.2. It is submitted that the phrase “made publicly available” does not sufficiently convey or establish the specific rights of the public with regard to the use of the information and knowledge generated at DBT/DST.

6.3. Under Indian Copyright law^⁶, the Government is the first owner of research “made or published under the control or direction” of any of its department or public undertaking in the absence of a contract to the contrary. Therefore, the Government is the owner of the knowledge and information generated at DBT/DST.^⁷ The author by virtue of section 57 of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, however, retains the following rights in the publication:

a. Identification right or attribution right;

b. Right to maintain integrity in the work; and

c. Right to prevent destruction of the work.

These rights are collectively known as the author’s moral rights. They remain with the author even after assignment of the copyright or first ownership vesting with the Government. Whereas, the Policy permits unfettered access to research, there are limitations on further use of the work placed on third parties by virtue of the aforementioned rights.

6.4. CIS, therefore, in support of maintaining precision of the Policy recommends use of the phrase “made publicly available as soon as possible, subject to limitations prescribed under Indian law.”

6.5. CIS strongly supports the Policy’s rationale to make all knowledge openly accessible because it is produced by public funding. The rationale also aligns with academic literature advocating that the public ought to benefit from research funded by the taxpayers’ money.^⁸

7. “Research funded by DBT/DST results in new ideas and knowledge. However, DBT/DST will not underwrite article processing charges levied by some journals.”

7.1. CIS observes that while a majority of open access publications may not charge subscription or other access fees, they usually cover their operating expenses through other sources by levying processing fees paid by or on behalf of authors for submission to or publication in the journal.^⁹

7.2. CIS believes that the Policy should not cause detriment to persons performing research under DBT/DST, safeguard each person’s interest and career advancement. DBT/DST must create suitable infrastructure to accommodate prevalent practices and ensure the best support for its researchers.

7.3. CIS, therefore, suggests the need to establish a durable mechanism for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.^¹⁰

7.4. The following methods may be elected to further the aforementioned comment:

a. DST/DBT may insert a provision to factor Article Processing Charges into the researcher’s grant; or

b. DST/DBT may establish an OA Publishing Fund. Funding may emerge from potential sources such as the institution al research division responsible with tracking and managing grant funding.

c. DST/DBT may purchase an institutional membership with OA publishers. Several major OA publishers discount their processing charges if an author is affiliated with an institution that has a membership.^¹¹

8. “The DBT/DST affirms the principle that the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author’s work is published, should be considered in making future funding decisions. DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal impact factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.”

8.1. CIS strongly believes that the policy successfully creates a level playing field for assessment of quality of publications by making the title of the journal irrelevant.

8.2. CIS observes that the particular clause uses “title of the journal” to imply that the title is irrelevant as a factor to judge the merit of the work; whereas in the following sentence uses “DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal impact factors” as a factor to assess quality of the work. The synonymous use creates an impression that “journal impact factor” is similar to “title of the journal”, which is a specious representation.

8.3. CIS submits that “journal impact factor” is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal, and is only one of the many methods of calculating quality of a publication.^¹²

8.4. CIS suggests that the clause may be amended as follows, insofar as the preceding comments are concerned:

“The DBT/DST affirms the principle that the intrinsic merit of the work, and not the title of the journal in which an author’s work is published, should be considered in making future funding decisions. DBT/DST does not recommend the use of journal impact factors either, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.”

8.5. Further, CIS submits that open access is in a nascent stage in Indian academia, and a person performing research under DBT/DST may lose external benefits by adhering to this clause. In reality, open access journals are yet to cultivate the high quality readership that certain subscription based journals enjoy. The clause prematurely puts a burden on researchers to not publish in subscription based journals enjoying a stellar reputation. Further, mere posting in online repositories will not ensure that the research will be successfully read and critiqued by other members of the academia.

8.6. CIS believes that DBT/DST should provide sufficient infrastructure and freedom to allow researchers to publish by a method of their choice, and not put unnecessary restrictions on the same.

9. “The DBT/DST believe/s that maximizing the distribution of these publications by providing free online access by depositing them in a gratis open access repository is the most effective way of ensuring that the research it funds can be accessed, read and built upon. This, in turn, will foster a richer research culture.”

9.1. CIS strongly agrees with DBT/DST’s method of disseminating research. The method is in harmony with the principles of open access since it provides free online access by depositing manuscripts in an open access repository.

9.2. CIS submits that the clause may include depositing full-text, metadata and supplementary materials in addition to the paper, in consonance with Clause 12 of this submission.

10. “Grantees can make their papers open-access by publishing in an open-access journal or, if they choose to publish in a subscription journal, by posting the final accepted manuscript to an online repository.”

10.1. The clause indicates that papers may be made open access via two routes, firstly, publishing the paper in an open-access journal, and secondly, publishing the paper in a subscription journal. Publishing the paper in a subscription journal entails the grantee to also post the final manuscript to an online repository.

10.2. CIS strongly supports the Policy’s direction to grantees to deposit “the final accepted manuscript to an online repository” upon adoption of the second route.

10.3. However, CIS believes that to ensure that ends of open access completely meet; the papers should be mandatorily deposited in online repositories which are freely accessible to the public i.e. following the Green OA route completely.

10.4. To strengthen foregoing comment, CIS strongly suggests establishment of a central online repository under the aegis of DST/DBT. This will guarantee open access to the manuscript in the unfortunate case of the institutional repository failing or delaying in tying up with other institutional repositories and the central repository.

10.4. It is submitted that the clause may be accordingly amended as follows^¹³:

“Grantees can make their papers open-access by publishing in an open-access journal and posting the final manuscript to a central online repository, or by publishing in a subscription journal and posting the final accepted manuscript i.e. the pre-print version to the central online repository. A preprint is any version of the paper prior to peer-review and publication, usually the version submitted to a journal.”

What should be deposited?

11. “The final accepted manuscript (after refereeing, revision, etc.) resulting from research projects fully or partially funded by DBT/DST or performed using infrastructure built with the support of DBT/DST and to appear in peer-reviewed professional journals. This also includes review articles, both invited and author initiated, for those who received funding from DBT/DST during that period.”

11.1. It is submitted that the clause fails to declare the applicability of the Policy to non-peer reviewed works, inter alia, doctoral dissertations.

11.2. CIS observed that the DBT offers post-graduate programs, including the DBT Postdoctoral Fellowship (DBT- PDF) programme and Post-Graduate programs, inter alia.^¹⁴

11.3. CIS supports the extension of the policy to works produced under all programs at DBT/DST (mentioned in the foregoing comment) to increase the efficacy of the Policy and to fulfil greatest dissemination of public funded research.

12. “The full-text of the paper and metadata should be deposited. Supplementary materials should be made available along with the publication. At the end of the full-text the acknowledgement should carry the grant number.”

12.1. CIS strongly supports the deposit of metadata, full-text of the paper to be made available along with other supplementary materials.

12.2. This clause rightly seeks supplementary material to ensure holistic access to the research.

12.3. CIS believes that DST/DBT should ensure that the aforementioned material is deposited in a machine readable format thereby permitting accurate search across the open access infrastructure and supporting interoperability. This will lead to a high degree of openness and foster a more rigorous academic culture.

12.4. In furtherance of the preceding comment, CIS submits that DBT/DST may use Digital Object Identifiers (“DOI”) to create persistent citations of publications available online. DOI ensures interoperability across systems and accurate linking of all material in relation to a publication. OECD has successfully implemented the system in its library system, namely, the OECD iLibrary.^¹⁵

12.4. CIS encourages DBT/DST to develop a more detailed policy on issues affecting the infrastructure required to successfully implement open access at it.

13. “Papers resulting from funds received from the fiscal year 2012-13 onwards are required to be deposited. Authors are strongly urged to also deposit final accepted manuscripts from funding received in earlier years.”

13.1. CIS strongly agrees with the scheme of depositing papers.

13.2. It is submitted that this clause will dispel ambiguity for requirement of depositing papers published prior to 2012.

Where to deposit?

14. “The manuscript should be deposited in the grantee’s own institution’s interoperable institutional repository (IR). If the institution does not yet have an IR of its own, then the paper should be deposited in the central repository, which will be created by DBT/DST.”

14.1. CIS strongly supports depositing papers in the aforementioned repositories.

14.2. It is submitted that the manuscript may be mandatorily be deposited in a central online repository (as suggested in the preceding comments), in addition to the grantee’s own institution’s interoperable institutional repository.^¹⁶ This will guarantee open access to the manuscript in the unfortunate case of the institutional repository failing or delaying in tying up with other institutional repositories and the central online repository.

When to deposit?

15. “Deposits should be made within one week of acceptance by the journal. However, if the journal insists on an embargo, the material should still be deposited, but the repository will keep the deposited papers non-OA and only make it fully OA at the end of the embargo period.²Suggest that the period of embargo not be greater than one year.”

15.1. CIS strongly supports the time-frame provided for depositing the paper, and the subsequent clause for keeping the paper “dark OA” in the case of an embargo placed on the paper by the publisher.

15.2. CIS suggests that the sentence “Suggest that the period of embargo not be greater than one year” be re-framed to reflect a conclusive position of the DST/DBT.

15.3. CIS submits that the clause may be amended as follows:

“Deposits should be made within one week of acceptance by the journal. However, if the journal insists on an embargo, the material should still be deposited, but the repository will keep the deposited papers non-OA and only make it fully OA at the end of the embargo period. The embargo should operate for a maximum period of one year.”

Who should deposit?

16. “This policy applies to individual scientists/institutions who have directly received ad-hoc funding or other support/benefits/infrastructure from DBT/DST as well as to scientists working at DBT/DST-aided autonomous institutions who benefit directly or indirectly from the infrastructure and core funding provided by DBT/DST.”

16.1. CIS strongly supports the inclusion of scientists and researchers into the scope of the Policy.

16.2. It is submitted that extending the scope of the Policy to apply to direct beneficiaries as well as indirect beneficiaries of DBT/DST funding/infrastructure shall ensure open access to a large amount of invaluable research.

16.3. The clause may be amended as follows:

“This policy applies to individual scientists/researchers/institutions who have directly received ad-hoc funding or other support/benefits/infrastructure from DBT/DST as well as to scientists/researchers working at DBT/DST-aided autonomous institutions who benefit directly or indirectly from the infrastructure and core funding provided by DBT/DST.”

17. “The principal investigator (PI) or someone authorized by the PI, or anyone authorized by the head of the institution where the work is carried out (such as the librarian), can deposit the papers. Both the PI and the head of the institution will be responsible for timely deposit of the paper.”

17.1. CIS supports the process chalked out to deposit the papers.

17.2. It is submitted that a formal procedure shall ensure efficient and timely deposit of the papers.

Depositing in a repository is mandatory

18. “Unless the deposit ID is quoted in the project report as well as in future proposals for funding, the proposals will not be considered.

Unless the deposit ID is quoted in the project report as well as in future proposals for funding, the proposals will not be considered.

In the rare case where the PI or head of the institution has some valid reasons for not complying with these requirements they should give a suitable explanation in the final report.

For research carried out in institutions under the administrative control of DBT/DST:

Authors of papers that will have no such deposit ID shall not be considered for promotion/appointment/ award/Fellowship/Research Grant.”

18.1. CIS supports the procedure to ensure mandatory deposits in a repository.

18.2. It is submitted that creating unique deposit IDs shall ensure that the PI or head of the institution oversees the process of making a paper open access more efficiently. Further, the clause incentivises authors to gain a deposit ID by depositing their papers in a repository, thereby maximizing open access.

How to deposit?

19. “In case of IRs, the IR administrator (and his/her team) will deposit the material on behalf of the authors. If one wants to deposit the material in the central repository, the author (or one of the authors in case of many) should forward the material to the administrator of the central repository. Those who want to self-archive in an IR may obtain the credentials from the administrators.”

19.1. The clause prescribes the methods prescribed in the Policy to deposit a paper.

19.2. However, CIS believes that depositing papers in the Central repository should be mandatory, since tie-ups with the institutional repositories may fail or get delayed. The Policy should aim at reducing administrative barriers in interest of making papers open access in the least amount of time.

Copyright

20. “In case the scientist produces research as part of her employment with a government body, the copyright vests in the government body, unless otherwise agreed upon to the contrary. Therefore, if the copyright continues to vest in the Government, transfer of rights would have to be by the Government, or by the scientist after prior permission from the Government. If the research has been produced by the scientist in the course of her employment with any institution, copyrights vests in the institution concerned, unless otherwise agreed upon to the contrary. The institution should retain the right to make the articles freely available gratis, whether the journal is open- access or subscription-based.”

20.1. CIS strongly supports the Policy in regard to informing the author about their ownership rights in the research.

20.2. CIS strongly supports a legal arrangement whereby the author is transferred complete copyright in his/her work; and the Government retains a non-exclusive, irrevocable and perpetual licence to disseminate the work publicly for the purposes of this Policy.

20.3. In furtherance of the preceding comment, the clause may be amended as follows:

“In case the scientist/researcher produces research as part of her employment with a government body, the copyright legally vests in the government body, unless otherwise agreed upon to the contrary. In the interest of the authors, the Government will transfer copyright in the work to the author, subject to reservation of certain rights. The Government should retain the right to reproduction of works, to issue copies of the works freely available gratis, whether the journal is open- access or subscription-based.”

21. “The DBT/DST recommend/s that all authors receiving funds from DBT/DST should, at the time of returning the copyright transfer form, inform the publisher that they would retain the right to place the full-text of the final author version in the institution’s IR and DBT/DST Central. This can be achieved by attaching to the copyright transfer agreement the DBT/DST author addendum.”

21.1. CIS strongly supports the pre-condition to be placed by the authors before the publisher before permitting publication of their papers.

21.2. It is submitted that retaining the right to deposit papers in the appropriate repositories shall ensure open access to research produced by the authors, and place a legal obligation on the publisher to honour the principle of open access by virtue of the copyright transfer agreement.

IV. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

22. The Centre for Internet and Society welcomes the opportunity to comment on the proposed Open Access Policy of the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science and commends the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India for its initiative in seeking inputs from the stakeholders.

23. To that end, reiterating its commitment to the values of access to knowledge, openness, freedom of information, protection of general public interest and safeguarding various stakeholders’ interests and rights, the Centre for Internet and Society presents the following concluding observations:

a. That the Policy uses the phrase “made publicly available as soon as possible, subject to limitations prescribed under Indian laws” to adequately convey its purposes.

b. That the Policy may create various mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which the respective institutions would not be expected to provide funds. The mechanisms are as follows:

(i) DST/DBT may insert a provision to factor Article Processing Charges into the researcher’s grant; or

(ii) DST/DBT may establish an OA Publishing Fund. Funding may emerge from potential sources such as the institutional research division responsible with tracking and managing grant funding.

(iii) DST/DBT may purchase an institutional membership with OA publishers.

c. That the Policy should clearly distinguish between journal impact factors and title of the journal in respect of assessing the quality of the publication

d. That to ensure that ends of open access completely meet; the papers should be mandatorily deposited in a central online repository (established by DBT/DST) which is freely accessible to the public i.e. following the Green OA route in toto.

e. That non- peer reviewed works produced at DBT/DST, in addition to peer reviewed works also be deposited by the authors and therefore be included in the appropriate clause.

f. That to ensure that the full-text, meta data and supplementary material is deposited in a machine readable format thereby permitting accurate search across the open access infrastructure; The policy may develop a more rigorous plan for creating adequate infrastructure to ensure interoperability.

g. That the Policy may consider using DOI to establish a robust infrastructure.

h. That the manuscript may be mandatorily deposited a central online repository, in addition to the grantee’s own institution’s interoperable institutional repository to ensure that ends of open access are met.

i. That the copyright should vest with the author and the Government may retain rights to reproduction of the work in order to issue free copies of the work to the public.

j. That certain sentences be suitably modified, as discussed in the preceding sections of these comments.

k. That the Policy fails to establish a target timeline to achieve the objectives and setting up of required infrastructure, thereby rendering the collaborative obligations and duties of various stakeholders undefined. The Policy may insert a clause for the same as follows:

“Targets of the DST-DBT Open Access Policy Implementation (broadly):

Conclude the final terms and conditions of the Policy by <insert date>.
Create a central online repository for authors to submit their material by <insert date>.¹⁷
Encourage institutions to create respective institutional repositories.
Create a website with a user-friendly interface to enable access to the public by <insert date>”

That the Policy fails to address the remedies for non-compliance of its terms and condtitions by any party i.e Government, institution, researcher/scientist. A clause may be inserted as follows:

“Compliance

Researcher/scientist

1. In the event of the researcher/scientist entering into an agreement with a journal publisher, which stipulates unreasonable conditions on the accessiblity, thereby being incompatible with the Policy, the terms of the Policy shall have an overriding effect with regard to making the material publicly accessible.

Institution

2. The insititution shall faciliate and assist the author in depositing the required material in the central online repository.

Government

3. The Government shall enter into a copyright transfer agreement with the author contemporaneously alongwith the conclusion of the employment agreement, and agree to transfer the copyright to the author whilst reserving a non-exclusive, irrevocable and perputal right of reproduction and dissemination of the material deposited. In the absence/violation of a copyright transfer agreement, the Policy grants the researcher/scientist the copyright in the material so authored.”

24. The Centre for Internet and Society would be willing discuss these submissions with the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India; and supplement these with further submissions if necessary, and offer any other assistance towards the efforts at developing an open access policy for the DBT/DST.

On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society

Nehaa Chaudhari

Anubha Sinha

August 19, 2014

1See “DBT-DST Open Access Policy” available at <http://dbt india.nic.in/docs/DBT-DST_Open_Access_Policy.pdf> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

2See www.cis-india.org (last accessed August 11, 2014) for details about CIS’ work.

3See “Annual Report 2012-13”, Ministry of Science and Technology, available at http://www.dst.gov.in/about_us/ar12-13/annual-report-2012-13.pdf (last accessed August 11, 2014).

4See ‘Do Open access articles have a greater research impact?’, Kristine Antelman available at <http://eprints.rclis.org/5463/1/do_open_access_CRL.pdf> (last accessed August 5, 2014).

5 See “Academic knowledge, Open access and Democracy”, available at http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/media/5454/open-access.pdf (last accessed August 11, 2014)

6Copyright Act, 1957.

7Section 2(k) of the Copyright Act, 1957 read with Section 17 of the Copyright Act, 1957.

8See “Academic knowledge, Open access and Democracy”, available at http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/media/5454/open-access.pdf (last accessed August 11, 2014)

9See “Compact for Open access publishing Equity”, available at <http://www.oacompact.org/compact/>(last accessed August 10,2014)

10ibid.

11See “Funding open access journal publishing”, Christine Fruin, Fred Rascoe, available at <http://crln.acrl.org/content/75/5/240> (last accessed August 10, 2014)

12 See “Impact factors: arbiter of excellence?”, Martin Frank, available at < http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC141180/#n102> (last accessed August 14, 2014)

13 See “Open Access Overview”, Peter Suber, available at <http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm> (last accessed August 14, 2014).

14See “Human Resource Development: Program”, available at <http://dbtindia.nic.in/uniquepage.asp?id_pk=16> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

15 See "We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables", Green T, available at < http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/ece/ces/ge.40/2010/wp.8.e.pdf> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

16See “CORE: Three Access Levels to Underpin Open Access”, available at <http://www.dlib.org/dli b/november12/knoth/11knoth.html> (last accessed August 11, 2014).

17See “Streamlined Manual Deposit Progress” available at <https://wiki.library.ucsf.edu/display/OAPI/Streamlined+Manual+Deposit+Progress> (last accessed August 4, 2014)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/cis-comments-to-the-department-of-biotechnology-and-department-of-science-open-access-policy

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

praskrishna — 2014-08-22T00:51:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai is organizing a two-day workshop for students at Jadavpur University on August 25 and 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

ALC signs MoU for better net access

praskrishna — 2014-08-20T06:50:48Z

Andhra Loyola College (ALC) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society – Access to Knowledge (CSI-A2K) here on Thursday.

The MoU will enable faculty and students to have more access on internet world, said the ALC management.

Read the original article published in the Hindu on August 15, 2014.

Institute principal Fr. G.A.P. Kishore, vice-principals Fr. P. Anil Kumar and Fr. Rex Angelo, correspondent Fr. Raju and CSI-A2K programme director T. Vishnu Vardhan signed the papers. Faculty of various departments participated in the programme. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Kishore said for the first time in AP, ALC has made the MoU with CSI-A2K to work collaboratively to improve Telugu Wikipedia. Very soon the digital content in botany, physics, Telugu, chemistry, ethics, religion, music and other subjects of the institution would be produced in Telugu Wikipedia, said the principal.

“A ten-member core committee has been constituted to train the faculty in each department in the college on A2K, who will teach the students. CSI will train the trainers and upload the material from time to time,” said Mr. Rex Angelo. Mr. Vishnu Vardhan said that CSI is promoting institutional partnerships across the country to promote regional languages. The society has plans to team up with more colleges in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and take up more outreach programmes in the next few days.

“Wikipedia has access to over 287 languages and 3.5 crore essays in the world. It is very unfortunate, that it has very few items in Indian languages,” said the programme director.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-august-15-2014-alc-signs-mou-for-better-net-access

Andhra Loyola College and the Centre for Internet & Society sign MoU for Better Net Access

rahim — 2015-01-20T18:47:13Z

Highlights

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
For the first time an educational institution in the state of Andhra Pradesh is signing an MoU with CIS-A2K to work collaboratively to qualitatively improve Telugu Wikipedia.
ALC faculty and students to create free e-content in Telugu on Telugu Wikipedia.
Digital content from the fields of Botany, Physics, Chemistry, Telugu, Statistics, Ethics and Religion, Music and Dance to be produced on Telugu Wikipedia

This is a big leap for the college in opening up itself to the internet world. The college is planning to train its faculty and students to create free econtent in Telugu. These resources will in turn be dedicated to the society.

The signing of the MoU took place in the college premises on August 14, 2014 at 2.00 p.m.

Ten theosophical books authored by Rev. Fr. P. Jojaiah, SJ was released under free license (CC-BY-SA-4.0) on the same stage.

The event was organized by ALC and CIS.

CIS-A2K has been closely working with ALC. They have organised 4 workshops for students and faculty. CIS-A2K also helped in QR coding of the institute.

Now, this MoU would further enable CISA2K and ALC to collaboratively work on creating free and open knowledge in Telugu across various disciplines on Telugu Wikipedia. This collaboration is set to benefit millions of Telugus to freely access knowledge in Telugu on the internet.

Media Coverage

ALC signs MoU for better net access (The Hindu, August 15, 2014)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/alc-cis-sign-mou-better-net-access

CIS-A2K Signs MoU with Andhra Loyola College in Vijayawada: Coverage in Eenadu

praskrishna — 2014-09-09T09:22:23Z

This article was published in Enadu on August 15, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/cis-mou-with-alc-coverage-in-eenadu

Now, Christ students will contribute to Wikipedia

praskrishna — 2014-08-06T05:33:41Z

The department of languages at Christ University has set a precedent by including contribution to Wikipedia as a part of the undergraduate course work.

The article by H.M.Shruthi was published in the Deccan Herald on August 5, 2014.

Introduced last year on a pilot basis, the programme is all set to get a new outlook this year.

As a part of the initiative, students are required to submit an article to Wikipedia in an Indian language (the second language subject chosen). The languages offered are Kannada, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Tamil.

Earlier, much to the chagrin of lecturers, students were most often found rehashing material online for their assignments. On the contrary, the students will now be contributors for online content. But this is just one of the outcomes. Through this, the department has not only set out to enrich the regional language resources online, but has also turned students into knowledge producers.

Speaking about the initiative, Kannada Department HoD, Y S Shivaprasad, finds that students have become passionate about digital resources. “There are at least 500 students. In the first two years of the undergraduate degree, students study second language. Even if 10 per cent of them take it forward later, we can enrich our online Kannada resources.”

Since it was the first time last year, the faculty made a list of topics for inclusion in Kannada Wiki. “We were able to bring out 25 good quality articles. Interestingly, this turned out to benefit rural students, as they took a lot of interest in it,” Shivaprasad said, adding that RBI, Yakshagana, poet Raghavanka and Kuppalli were some of the topics covered.

Redesign this year
As per the redesigned format this time, in their first semester, students will digitise one page of an existing piece of literature in the Indian language concerned. This has been included to help them gain typing skills, apart from strengthening vocabulary.

In the second semester, students will be digitising four or five pages of literature. In the III semester, they will have to write one assignment in the second language of their choice and the fourth semester will be dedicated to an article (in Indian language) on the theme of their choice from any core subject.

T Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, Access to Knowledge at Centre for Internet and Society (the university is implementing the programme in coordination with this organisation), sees this as an initiative for production of knowledge in Indian languages. “From the past several years, there have been talks about how there is no production of knowledge in Kannada (or other regional languages). This is a step towards it.”

“Adding fun to the otherwise hectic course work, the Wiki assignments helped us acquire editing skills and strengthen vocabulary in Kannada,” said Tejas N K, a final year science student at Christ University.

Having found his love for it, he has decided to contribute articles even in his final year, though it is not part of his course work this time. “It presents a challenge of learning something new and thinking creatively. More over, it is satisfying to know that the information we compile is of use for people seeking online resources in regional language.”

Transformation
Sharing similar enthusiasm is Komal K J, a final year BCom student, who hopes to contribute articles even after completing her degree. She sees a significant transformation: “Earlier, we were collecting information from Wikipedia. Now, we are contributing for it,” the student said.

She has submitted an article to Sanskrit Wikipedia. From formatting the article to inserting images and learning to attribute sources to the information uploaded on Wiki, she takes pride in the responsibility. “It is open for people across the globe to read. Hence, it is a huge responsibility. We have to make sure the information is authentic.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-shruthi-august-5-2014-now-christ-students-will-contribute-to-wikipedia