Centre for Internet and Society

Software Patents and the Commons

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T13:23:57Z

Seminar on Software Patents and the Commons in Delhi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/software-patent

Software Freedom Pledge

pranesh — 2015-09-25T12:26:09Z

On September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.

We, who have gathered together for Software Freedom Day 2015, believe that software freedom is both a matter of ethical principle as well as a matter of pragmatism, and is necessary for a democratic, open society.

We believe that it is desirable that all people, but especially governments, use, contribute to, and spread open standards, free/libre/open source software, open APIs, openly-licensed content (including open data, open access, and open education resources), leading to a vibrant public domain, and ensure that all of the above are accessible for all, including persons with disabilities and other marginalised sections of society.

Given that, we pledge to:

use and spread free software amongst our family, friends, and neighbours, both in person and virtually.
demand that services we use in turn use open standards and open APIs, and thus be available for all using free/libre/open source software, without the payment of any royalties.
raise the issue of software freedom with our democratic representatives, to seek that they in turn respect and promote these principles.
as far as possible, making our own work openly available, and seek to convince our employers, publishers, producers, and other persons who might be in a position to restrict
work against any laws, policies — corporate or governmental — or technical restrictions that seek to prevent people from full exercise of their rights, and which are contrary to the above principles.

Signed by:

Abhaya Agarwal
Ananth Subray
Asutosha Sarangi
Chirag Sarthi J
Prakash Hebballi
Pranesh Prakash
Ralph Andrade
Subhashish Panigrahi
Tito Dutta
Veethika Mishra

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015

Software Freedom Day: The Importance of Free and Open Source Software

subha — 2016-09-18T03:46:29Z

Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 17 celebrates the liberty that free and open software and the philosophy of freedom brings into people’s lives. When SFD was started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined. It grew to a whooping 1000 by 2010 across the world. Explaining the aim of the celebration, SFD’s official website says,

The article was published by DNA on September 17, 2016.

Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit organisation Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organise the local SFD events to impact their own communities.

What are FOSS, Free Software, Open Source, and FLOSS?

Free and open source software (FOSS or F/OSS), and Free/Libre and Open-Source Software (FLOSS) are umbrella terms that are used to include both Free software and open source software. Adopted by noted software freedom advocate Richard Stallman in 1983, the free software has many names — libre software, freedom-respecting software and software libre are some of them. As defined by the Free Software Foundation, one of the early advocates of software freedom, free software allows users not just to use the software with complete freedom, but to study, modify, and distribute the software and any adapted versions, in both commercial and noncommercial form. The distribution of the software for commercial and noncommercial form however depends on the particular license the software is released under. The Creative Commons licenses have recommendations for a wide array of free licenses that one can choose for software-related documentations and any creative work they create. Similarly, there are several different open licenses for software and many other works that are related to software development. “Open Source” was coined as an alternative to free software in 1998 by educational-advocacy organisation Open Source Initiative. Open source software is generally created collaboratively, made available with its source code, and it provides the user rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.

Supported by several global organisations like Google, Canonical, Free Software Foundation, Joomla, Creative Commons and Linux Journal, Software Freedom Day draws its inspiration from the philosophy that was grown by people like Richard Stallman who argues that free software is all about the freedom and not necessarily free of cost, but it provides the liberty to users from [proprietary software developers’] unjust power. SFD encourages everyone to gather in their own cities, educate people around them about free software, promote on social media (with the hashtag #SFD2016 this year), even hacking with free software, organising hackathons, running free software installation camps, and even going creative with flying a drone running free software!

From South Asia, there are 13 celebratory events in India, 8 in Nepal, 1 in Bangladesh and 4 in Sri Lanka.

South Asian countries have seen adoption of both free software and open source software, in both individual and organisational level and by the government. The Free Software Movement of India was founded in Bengaluru, India in 2010 to act as a national coalition of several regional chapters working for promoting and growing the free software movement in India. The Indian government has launched an open data portal at data.gov.in portal, initiated a new policy to adopt open source software, and asked vendors to include open source software applications while making requests for proposals. Similarly, several free and open source communities and organisations like Mozilla India, Wikimedia India, Centre for Internet and Society, Open Knowledge India in India, Mozilla Bangladesh, Wikimedia Bangladesh, Bangladesh Open Source Network, Open Knowledge Bangladesh in Bangladesh, Mozilla Nepal, Wikimedians of Nepal and Open Knowledge Nepal in Nepal, Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan in Pakistan, Lanka Software Foundation in Sri Lanka, that are operating from the subcontinent also promote free and open source software.

We promote open source and open Web technologies in the country. We are open to associate/work with existing open source or other community-run, public benefit organisations.

“Internet By The People, Internet For The People” (from Mozilla India wiki)

Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a lecturer from Southern University Bangladesh argues in a research paper that the use of open source software can help the government save enormous amount of money spent in purchasing proprietary software.

A large amount of money of the government can be saved if it uses open source software in different IT sectors of government offices and others sectors, because government is providing computers to all educational institutes from school to university level and they are using proprietary software. For this reason government is to expend a large amount of many for buying proprietary software to run the computers. Another one is government paying significant amount of money to the different vendors for buying different types of software to implement e-Governance project. So, the government can use open source software for implanting projects to minimize cost of the projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/dna-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-software-freedom-day-importance-of-free-and-open-source-software

Software Day Poster

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T13:24:20Z

A poster of the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/software-freedom

Software Day Info

praskrishna — 2011-08-22T13:24:42Z

An information about the competition.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/publications/software-freedom-info

Six Kannada encyclopaedias released

praskrishna — 2014-07-18T05:22:56Z

The first six online volumes of the University of Mysore's Kannada Encyclopaedia were launched on wikipedia's Creative Commons (CC) to mark the 'Muktha Jana Dina Dayu' (Dissemination of Knowledge) today.

Click to read the blog entry posted on Webindia 123 website on July 15, 2014.

Launching the works Vice-Chancellor Prof K S Rangappa said the project seeks to give new lease of life to encyclopaedia editions in Kannada. The repository of information shared on the internet will surely be a boon for many. With this, the works of great Kannada writers and experts will be accessible to all, he added.

The university will encourage more such works and make sure the remaining 14 volumes are launched soon, he said.

The Kannada encyclopaedia project was taken up by Dr U B Pavanaja, programme officer, centre for internet and society, and his colleague Tejas Jain, a software engineer. Mr Pavanja said the initiative will expand the reach of Kannada language across the world. Over a 1000 articles have been shared on creative commons, he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/web-india-123-july-15-2014-six-kannada-encyclopaedias-released

Signing and Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled

nehaa — 2014-05-06T08:32:58Z

The Centre for Internet and Society sent the following letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development on March 14, 2014.

14 March 2014
Shri Ashok Thakur
Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development
Government of India
New Delhi

Dear Sir,

Subject: Signing and Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled

I write to you on behalf of The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India (“CIS”). CIS is actively involved in work on accessibility[1] and access to knowledge[2]
The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled (“Marrakesh Treaty”) was signed on June 28, 2013 at Marrakesh, Morocco. Reportedly, the Marrakesh Treaty was signed by over fifty countries on the final day of the Diplomatic Conference held to finalize this treaty, in late June, last year.
We are given to understand that reportedly[3] the Union Cabinet had in its meeting held at the end of last year cleared the Marrakesh Treaty for both, signature and ratification.
We write this letter to enquire about the status of India’s signing of the Marrakesh Treaty.
We strongly believe that the signing and ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty would be in India’s best interests, and in consonance with the amendments made to India’s copyright law in 2012, as reflected in India’s Closing Statement at Marrakesh on the Marrakesh Treaty.[4]
In light of this we request you to take the necessary steps for the signature and ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty as a consolidation of India’s long standing commitment to providing access to books and printed material to the blind, visually impaired and persons with other print disabilities.
We would be deeply obliged to provide you with any assistance necessary.

[1]. See http://cis-india.org/accessibility (last accessed 14 March, 2014).

[2]. See http://cis-india.org/a2k (last accessed 14 March, 2014).

[3]. Email correspondence from Dr. Sam Taraporevala, available here- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/daisyforumofindia/tksq9kAdD0Q (last accessed 13 March, 2014). and here- http://lists.keionline.org/pipermail/marrakesh_lists.keionline.org/2013-November/000240.html (last accessed 13 March, 2014).; Email correspondence from Shamnad Basheer, available here- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/spicyip/DupESMX2lkg (last accessed 13 March, 2014). See also http://spicyip.com/2013/12/marrakesh-blind-treaty-okayed-for-signature-and-ratification.html (last accessed 13 March, 2014).

[4]. See http://cis-india.org/a2k/blog/india-closing-statement-marrakesh-treaty-for-the-blind (last accessed 13 March, 2014).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/signing-and-ratification-of-marrakesh-treaty-to-facilitate-access-to-published-works-for-persons-blind-visually-impaired-print-disabled

Should India adopt Plan S to realise Open Access to Public-funded Scientific Research?

sinha — 2019-06-05T13:19:28Z

Timely and affordable access to scientific research remains a problem in this digital day and age. Around three decades ago, the radical response that emerged was making public-funded scientific research “open access”, i.e. publishing it on the Web without any legal, technical or financial barriers to access and use such research. Several Indian public research institutions also adopted open access mandates and built self-archiving digital tools, however, the efforts haven’t yielded much. Most countries including India, continue to struggle with implementing open access. The latest international initiative (created in Europe) to remedy this problem is Plan S. Plan S is has been positioned as a strategy to implement immediate open access to scientific publications from 2021 – which India is considering adopting. This article unpacks the disorderly growth of open access in India, and discusses the gap between the Plan's vision and current Indian scenario in some respects.

Note: This blog entry was first published on May 29, 2019, and later updated on June 5, 2019 to accommodate the revisions to Plan S (released on May 31, 2019 after their public feedback exercise).

Introduction

In 2017, scientific researchers in India produced 1.4 lakh pieces of peer-reviewed literature, of which approximately 27,000 were open access publications (SCImago 2018). This means that only 27,000 pieces were available to the public to freely read and share, despite the fact that Indian tax-payers had funded half of the annual expenditure on R&D that year. The remaining items were largely stuck behind expensive paywalls and subscription systems, doing a huge disservice to the scientific ecosystem as well as the public interest.

Open Access is a movement to make both scientific research and data accessible to everyone in society, and a key tenet of Open Science. It emerged in response to rising costs and barriers to timely access and sharing of research, as well as a crisis of epistemic injustice in science. With the advent of the Internet and World Wide Web, it was expected that costs of publishing and disseminating scholarly research would decrease leading to a more equitable research environment. The principal idea was “to make copies of all the papers they published in scholarly journals freely available on the internet.”(Harnad S 1995). Two principal ways of implementing OA that initially emerged were: publishing on online institutional repositories (of the research institute/ funder) and/or paying the journal to make the paper OA online (i.e. author pays upfront instead of public paying subscription charges to read that research).

Since Harnad’s first call, numerous international conventions, mandates, calls have been issued in support of OA. The latest international response to the problem is Plan S. With its origins in Europe, Plan S was initially positioned as a clarion call to provoke a global flip to OA, and then transformed to achieving the goal of "scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms" from 2021. Plan S invites research funding organisations to become members of cOAlition S, who in turn are expected to abide by the ten principles articulated under the Plan. Crucially, it holds funders responsible for enforcing OA policies and sanction non-compliance.

The Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Government of India announced in February 2019 that India will join Plan S. That could make India the second country in the global south to adopt Plan S (Zambia (via National Science and Technology Council of Zambia) was the first one). Although it must be noted that the announcement was made with respect to an earlier version of the current plan. It remains to be confirmed if India will still abide by its commitment. Even so, at first glance the key tenets underlying the plan remain the same to a large extent. Regardless it is a huge step for India, and perhaps bears the promise of pulling together the various strands of a diffused OA movement in India. Presently, cOAlition S is dominated by European entities. Majority of the entities provide marginal funding support to Indian scientific research, with the exception of two members - the UK based biomedical charity Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Wellcome Trust has been a longstanding global advocate of OA, and also played a crucial role in shaping a key institutional OA mandate in India. Apart from the European Commission and European Research Council, China’s largest funding agency has also made strong statements to support Plan S.

Plan S’ principles prescribe that research should be only published in those journals and on platforms which enable authors to publish articles under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC- BY; alternatively, CC Attribution Share-alike or CC Public Domain licenses); authors should retain copyright in their articles; have a “solid system” in place for peer-review as per the standards in the relevant research discipline; provide subsidies/ waivers in Article Processing Charges (APCs); and do not operate under the hybrid model. More importantly, the Plan prioritises publishing in journals over institutional repositories (IRs) – and requires funding organisations to pay APCs. Further, all kinds of self-archiving platforms (including IRs) should also meet certain registration requirements.

Key aspects of Indian scientific research

Funding of research

Currently, scientific research is significantly funded by both government and private sector in India. During 2017-18, the national investment on R&D activities in scientific research was estimated to be approximately one lakh crores, with majority (45%) being met by central government, and approximately 38% from private sector industries (and 7% from state and 5% from public sector organisations). The highest R&D expenditure is incurred by Defence Research and Development Organisation at INR 13,000 crores, followed by Department of Space at 5000 crores, Department of Atomic Energy at under 4000 crores. Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), Council of Scientific and Agricultural Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology (DST) find themselves in the same bracket of 2000-4000 crores roughly, whereas Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) trail with under 1000 crores (Department of Science 2018). Of these institutions, only ICAR, CSIR, DST and DBT have OA mandates.

Indian institutional OA initiatives

The earliest OA efforts in India led to the creation of IRs to support self-archiving in scientific research institutions (Arunachalam 2004). Recommendations presented at the 93^rd Indian Science Congress in 2006 said that an optimal national OA policy should mandate research papers produced either by partial or full government funding to be deposited into IRs immediately upon publication; encouraged such grant holders to retain copyright; and suggested that the government should commit to cover costs for publication in OA journals (i.e. cover APCs). These recommendations found support in a 2007 report by the erstwhile National Knowledge Commission, a high-level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India. The Commission envisaged a national academic OA portal for sharing research articles, and highlighted the need for the government to allocate funds for digitisation of books and periodicals in the public domain (material outside the scope of copyright protection). Additionally, it recognised the digital divide as an impediment to access to scientific knowledge. More importantly, it required the government and research institutions to bear the cost of publishing in OA journals, instead of passing the financial burden to authors/ scientists.

Soon key public-funded institutions such as the Council of Scientific and Agricultural Research (CSIR), Department of Science and Technology and Department of Biotechnology (DST-DBT), Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Institute of Mathematical Sciences adopted OA mandates. However, the thrust of all policies happened to be on IR deposits and not financial support for APCs. The concept of IRs took root to a considerable extent, although many IRs later ran into issues for various reasons and stopped functioning (Das 2014). A few initiatives such as the CSIR-URDIP (which developed a centralised IR to make OA journals discoverable across institutions funded by CSIR and DST-DBT) remain under-populated despite being stably maintained. This is either due to absence of or uneven implementation of OA mandates – for example, only some institutional beneficiaries (approximately 20) have implemented the DST-DBT mandate, and a meagre 3000 papers have been made open thus far in various IRs. Problems cited for under-populating of repositories include disinterest by administrators in implementing the mandates (DST Centre for Policy Research 2018).

Plan S' vision and current Indian scenario

Mandatory copyright retention by authors

If India signs up for Plan S, IRs under Indian OA mandates will be required to publish articles under Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY; alternatively CC BY SA or CC0, and CC BY ND in exceptional cases), wherein the copyright shall be retained by the author without any restrictions. Unfortunately, “copyright retention by authors” hardly finds support in Indian OA mandates as a fundamental principle. None of the institutions with OA mandates (mentioned previously) provide a clear stance on copyright retention, thereby implicitly leaving it to individual authors to negotiate their own arrangements with publishers. For example, the DST-DBT OA policy states that “It is not the intent of this policy to violate copyright or other agreements entered into by the researcher, institution or funding agency...” Individual arrangements largely take the shape of mandatory copyright transfers in favour of the publishers (with an embargo condition on author’s freedom to re-publish). Mandatory copyright transfers harm the agency of authors to publish/ share their works in other places of their choice. This is the primary reason for legacy works to remain locked up with the publishers until the copyright term expires; and in many cases even after the work has become a part of the public domain, publishers are loathe to release such works.

This happens despite two things: firstly, in most cases in India, authors’/ researchers’ institutional employment contracts require that all IP vests with the institutions; secondly, as per the applicable law - Indian Copyright Act, 1957, copyright in such works in ordinary circumstances vests with the employer. Thus, if public institutions so desired, they should be able to retain the copyright in the work produced under their aegis (and transfer it to the authors).

Removal of embargoes

Both OA and closed access journals routinely impose embargoes averaging a year for peer-reviewed outputs to be made open. Presently, most Indian OA mandates accommodate an embargo of six months to one year, and accept both post-prints and pre-prints (the two terms roughly refer to the version of author’s manuscripts before and after peer-review) for publication in IRs. Such conditions again run contrary to the Plan’s requirement of making the final peer-reviewed published version of articles (post-print version) to be made open immediately upon publication– i.e. without an embargo period.

Addressing the menace of predatory publishing

Separately, another thorn in the side of OA’s reputation has been the rise of predatory journals. Predatory journals are outfits that dress themselves as a genuine OA journal, often charging unsuspecting authors high APCs, but conduct abysmal peer-reviews and provide poor editorial services and exhibit such conduct amounting to fraud. Such outfits have irreparably damaged many researchers’ reputations and careers, especially for vulnerable authors in the global south, with their unchecked manuscripts getting published without requisite quality checks (Sinha 2016). While this is an issue that requires special immediate measures; Plan S can potentially check the growth of such journals since it requires all publication venues to be completely transparent about their editorial policies and editorial board members, and also prohibits them from using APCs as bait to guarantee publication.

Publishing in 'prestigious venues' cannot be a criterion for evaluating scientific merit

The growth of OA has further been hindered due to a misguided tendency amongst authors to publish only in select prestigious journals, many of which are closed access. Such select journals have cultivated a brand of reputability and prestige over decades, they demonstrate as much by their high JIF (Journal Impact Factor) credentials. Traditionally, JIF has been the measure of a journal’s prestige – a proxy for the impact and influence of a journal’s publications. Despite having been discredited as wholly inaccurate (Kiermer 2016), many funding agencies continue to consider a publication’s worth in terms of the JIF of the journal it was published in, in hiring, promotional and other career advancement decisions. So long as we continue to judge the worth of research by the venue of its publication (assuming a uniform high quality of peer review and other checks) and not by its actual contribution to science, OA publishing is bound to be a less favourable option, because most OA journals are new and have not raked up a high impact factor score. Yet Indian funding agencies continue to use and promote JIF metrics, for a lack of awareness or wanton dis-interestedness in improving the system. Another reason for an immediate need to break the religiosity surrounding JIF is that many journals (both OA and closed access) in the global south enjoy good reputations but do not carry a high JIF as they are newer and their citation metric pales in comparison to their more dominant western counterparts. This disparity is starker for fields wholly situated in the global south. In this respect, the Plan clearly requires funders to only evaluate a publication on the basis of its intrinsic merit, and not factor in publication channels, impact factors or the publisher.

Recent steps by Indian government and agencies

Indian agencies’ approach to addressing these issues has been chequered, and does more harm than good. In 2017, the Universities Grants Commission (UGC) released a pre-determined list of journals that researchers should publish in, and linked researchers’ career advancement to publishing in the select listed journals (Pushkar 2016). This approved list contains approximately 39,000 journals that are indexed in Web of Science, SCOPUS and Indian Citation Index (Universities Grant Commission 2018). UGC’s step was seen as an attack on academic freedom with serious doubts about its competence to create a credible exclusionary list of journals in multiple disciplines – and it has indeed been shown that the procedure of making the list is flawed (Patwardhan et al. 2018). Separately, the Ministry of Human Resources and Development notified to National Institutes of Technology (NITs) that papers published in journals levying APCs will not earn career advancement credits (Mukunth 2017). MHRD’s notification dismisses all paid journals irrespective of their quality. This has the effect of placing genuine high-quality OA journals on the same pedestal as predatory journals, and ultimately dents the growth of OA business models looking for modest support via APCs that are helpful in covering operational costs (software platform and an editorial team), and do not come close to unreasonable APCs levied by the biggest commercial players in the field. The reality is that most OA journals charge authors to publish (Bastian 2018).

These steps led to much consternation amongst the Indian research community. Another government central committee has proposed to award cash bonuses for publications (with a higher bonus for publishing in international journals over national journals). This has been criticised by Indian scientists on two grounds: firstly, that the scheme may lead to a spike in predatory or sub-standard journals; secondly, it devalues national journals, and reinforces the prestige factor to favour international journals (Vaidyanathan 2019). A 2011 study has shown that cash incentives appear to encourage submission of research that has low regard for quality (Franzoni et. al 2011). In fact in 2010, UGC introduced APIs (Academic Performance Indicators), which was essentially a system of reward points against number of publications for researchers and faculty members ostensibly to improve scientific publishing. However, this ended up triggering a race to publish poor quality research in fake journals (Pushkar 2016), and the UGC recently changed the scheme to in order to do damage-control.

Government will have to foot APC bill

Crucially, the Plan requires funding organisations to commit to funding APCs, in addition to research grants. The PSA in his announcement on Twitter (relating to Plan S) has said that, “We will negotiate for APCs normalised to India.” The Plan also emphasises on waivers and discounts for low and middle income countries. Studies show that Indian authors spend anywhere between INR 500 to 3 lakhs per article on APCs, and during 2010-14 the estimated payment to open access journals (the immediate OA kind) was INR 16 crores per year, on an average costing INR 76,000 per paper (Madhan et al. 2016). It has been estimated that Plan S will cost India INR 616.46 crores per year (Mukunth 2019). The estimate is more than half of the annual investment in public institutions such as DBT and ICMR.

Imperfect competition in the scholarly publishing market

Does the academic publishing market have any justifications for exorbitant APCs? A European University Association study highlighted the oligopolistic structure in this market sector, which functions with an absolute lack in pricing transparency (through strict confidentiality agreements with institutions), large profiteering through public funds and asymmetry in negotiating power (European Universities Association 2018). In 2015, five companies controlled more than half of the market for academic publishing: RELX (formerly Reed Elsevier, UK), Taylor and Francis (UK), Wiley-Blackwell (UK), Springer Nature (Germany), SAGE (US). Majority of the most important closed-access journals continue to be owned by these publishers (Larivière et. al 2015). It does not help that many of the top OA journals are also owned by the same publishers (who are responsible for charging the highest APCs). It will be interesting to see which journals will change their model to comply with Plan S requirements.

Conclusion

Nonetheless, after many years of piecemeal OA reforms within Indian institutions, the PSA’s announcement indicates a renewed interest in OA. Elimination of copyright transfer agreements and embargoes will give authors surely more control over their works – steps that should have been implemented and strictly enforced by Indian institutions long ago.

However, it makes little sense for developing countries to spend an enormous amount on APCs demanded by a foreign publishing oligopoly. Latin America continues to be opposed to Plan S as a matter of its principled position against APCs. If India signs up for Plan S, it is could be the case that we will find ourselves in a situation where our public institutions will be paying for subscriptions as well as APCs for a long time to come. One of the plan's principles does say that "... When Open Access publication fees are applied, they must be commensurate with the publication services delivered and the structure of such fees must be transparent to inform the market and funders potential standardisation and capping of payments of fees." Since the coalition is currently overwhelmingly Eurocentric, it remains to be seen how a fair and reasonable analysis will be worked out across geographies. In this sense, Plan S is not exactly a breakthrough plan for the global south as it does not sufficiently undercut the market power of the oligopoly.

There is plenty that can be done in the interim to realise the vision of OA, as we continue to ponder and debate the feasibility of Plan S in the global scheme of scientific publishing as well as India. For starters, it would be ideal to conduct a nationwide consultation with the research community in India. Strengthening the infrastructure underlying institutional repositories – in terms of developing more powerful search tools for IRs, linking IRs, making deposited articles more discoverable over the Web are steps that do not require relatively large funds (vis-à-vis APCs), yet stand to contribute to improving visibility of our research. The government must also look out for authors’ interests by actively negotiating stricter terms with publishers, so that authors aren’t coerced into signing away their copyright (or by fait accompli). Transparency of commercial agreements should become a non-negotiable principle in institutions’/ libraries’ dealings with publishers, which is also reiterated as a key principle of the Plan. Such steps may not result in an immediate shift to OA, if implemented strictly and uniformly can perhaps be more radical and fruitful than anything that the Indian research community has seen in decades.

References

Arunachalam, Subbiah (2004): “India’s March Towards Open Access,” SciDevNet, https://www.scidev.net/global/publishing/opinion/indias-march-towards-open-access.html

Bastian Hilda (2018): “A Reality Check on Author Access to Open Access Publishing” https://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/

Das, Anup Kumar (2014): “Open Access to Scientific Knowledge: Policy Perspectives and National Initiatives,” CSIR –NISTADS (ed): India - Science and Technology, Vol 3, pp. 292-299

Department of Science and Technology (2018): “Annual Report 2017-2018” https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IPKUdbSx0Da2Zi_ufzC4u-T3jCFzPred/view

DST Centre for Policy Research (2018): “Panel Discussion on Equitable Access to Knowledge, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH_kjoFRjAQ

European Universities Association (2018): “The lack of transparency and competition in the academic publishing market in Europe and beyond” https://eua.eu/component/attachments/attachments.html?task=attachment&id=1691

Harnad, Stevan (1995): “Universal FTP Archives for Esoteric Science and Scholarship: A Subversive Proposal”, Scholarly Journal at the Crossroads, Washington DC: Association of Research Libraries

Kiermer, Veronique (2016): “Measuring Up: Impact Factors Do Not Reflect Article Citation Rates,” PLOS Blogs, https://blogs.plos.org/plos/2016/07/impact-factors-do-not-reflect-citation-rates/

Franzoni, Chiara & Scellato, Giuseppe &Stephan, Paula (2011): “Changing Incentives to Publish,” Science, http://www.utstat.utoronto.ca/reid/sta2201s/2012/Science-2011-Franzoni-702-3.pdf

Larivière, Vincent & Haustein, Stefanie & Mongeon, Philippe (2015): “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era,” PLoS One. 10 (6), p. 1-15.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

Madhan, Muthu & Kimidi, Siva Shankar & Gunasekaran, Subbiah & Arunachalam, Subbiah (2016): “Should Indian researchers pay to get their work published?,” Current Science http://dst.sciencecentral.in/17/1/Current_Science_Sept2016.pdf

Manupriya (2017): “Helping institutions embrace open access,” IndiaBioscience, https://indiabioscience.org/news/2017/helping-institutions-embrace-open-access

Mukunth, Vasudevan (2017):“Scientists in the Lurch After Imprecise MHRD Notice About 'Paid Journals'”, The Wire, https://thewire.in/education/mhrd-open-access-nit-predatory-journals-career-advancement-impact-factor

Mukunth Vasudevan (2019): “Six Concerns Over India Joining the Plan S Coalition for Science Journals”, The Wire, https://thewire.in/the-sciences/six-concerns-over-india-joining-the-plan-s-coalition-for-science-journals

Patwardhan, Bhushan & Nagarkar, Shubhada & Gadre, Shridhar & Lakhotia, Subhash & Mohan Katoch, Vishwa & Moher, David. (2018): “A Critical Analysis of the ‘UGC-Approved List of Journals’”. Current science. pp 114.

Poynder, Richard (2019): “Plan S: What strategy now for the Global South?” https://richardpoynder.co.uk/Plan_S.pdf

Pushkar (2016): “The UGC Deserves Applause for Trying to Do Something About Research Fraud,” The Wire, https://thewire.in/education/the-ugc-deserves-applause-for-rrying-to-do-something-about-research-fraud

SCImago (2018): “SJR – SCImago Journal and Country Rank” viewed on 2 April 2019 (https://www.scimagojr.com/countrysearch.php?country=in )

Sinha, Anubha (2016): “Why Open Access Has To Look Up For Academic Publishing To Look Up”, The Centre for Internet and Society, https://cis-india.org/openness/the-wire-anubha-sinha-october-12-2016-why-open-access-has-to-look-up-for-academic-publishing-to-look-up

Universities Grants Commission (2018): “Annual Report 2017-2018” https://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/5595965_UGC-ANNUAL-REPORT-English-2017-18.pdf

Vaidyanathan, Gayatri (2019): “Indian payment-for-papers proposal rattles scientists,” Nature India, https://www.natureasia.com/en/nindia/article/10.1038/nindia.2019.18?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureInd#.XGlrKLpUnPU.twitter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/should-india-adopt-plan-s-to-realise-open-access-to-public-funded-scientific-research

She Leads Bootcamp 2025

Soni Wadhwa — 2025-02-19T14:30:11Z

CIS-A2K is committed to bridging the gender gap within Indian Wikimedia communities, and to further this goal, last year we launched the impactful She Leads program. This initiative is designed to empower female Wikimedians to take on leadership roles within their language communities, promoting diversity and inclusivity.

She Leads offers vital support and resources, helping women bring their ideas and initiatives to life, while fostering an inclusive, supportive environment that encourages growth and collaboration.

The response and feedback from the first iteration of She Leads illustrated a larger need to nurture female leadership in the open knowledge movement. Subsequently, we had several conversations with remarkable women in the open knowledge space to explore avenues to foster female leadership. We are grateful to Rosie Stephenson Goodknight, Masana Mulaudzi, Netha Hussain, Sneha PP, Amrita Sengupta, Manavpreet Kaur, and Medhavi Gandhi for their support and guidance in conceptualizing She Leads Bootcamp 2025. A special shout out to Satdeep Gill for being an ally and contributing to the program design.

The She Leads Bootcamp 2025, which was held in Bangalore from January 31st to February 3rd, 2025, aimed to further these efforts by gathering budding women leaders from Indic Wikimedia communities. This immersive, in-person event provided participants with the tools, resources, and connections necessary to thrive as leaders. The She Leads Bootcamp 2025 helped create a robust network of women leaders who were able to collaborate and support each other’s initiatives. The training sessions focused on leadership skills, feminist methodologies, project management, and advocacy strategies. Organizers fostered a sense of belonging among participants, encouraging them to share experiences and learn from one another.

Click to download the event report authored by Soni Wadhwa and edited by Chris and Nitesh Gill.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/she-leads-bootcamp

Shape of IPRs and Agriculture post the WTO Nairobi Ministerial

sinha — 2016-05-05T07:11:16Z

CIS is running a series of meetups focused on intellectual property to bring folks interested in IP law to discuss developments in access to knowledge, climate change, health, trade, etc. At the first meet-up in February, Prof. Biswajit Dhar delivered a short talk on intellectual property rights and agriculture in a post-Nairobi Ministerial world. This post is a summary of his talk.

Extension of abeyance of Non- violation complaints

At the Nairobi Ministerial, members agreed to extend the non-applicability of non-violation complaints for two years. There are two kinds of disputes which can be initiated at the WTO -first, when the partner country does not fulfill a commitment and such a non-implementation is injures the member country, leading to either nullification or impairment. Second, a country may deem itself to be injured even though the partner country has fulfilled its obligations. For instance, despite India's compulsory license grants complying with TRIPS, the US initiated a dispute against India.

Need for greater negotiating muscle and coalition building at multilateral fora

The Convention on Biological Diversity(CBD) came into force in 1993, followed by the TRIPS agreement in 1995. India became a member of the CBD and gained sovereign rights over its diversity. Before CBD, inventions related to diversity were protected by private rights. The turmeric case, and increasing bio-piracy led to introduction of requirement of disclosing the source. India proposed that along with other details, the source of the biological material should be mandatorily disclosed, including any associated traditional knowledge. Subsequent benefits arising out of use of biological resources had to be shared with the country- it was important to acknowledge that the community had nurtured these resources. The coalition in favour of the disclosure requirement was an interesting one because it was between India, Brazil, sometimes South Africa, Andean countries and Pakistan. This was pushed for in WIPO where the need for a treaty was advocated. The consensus around the disclosure requirement was an example of developing countries forming coalitions to make their interests more pronounced.

Further, greater the evidence, better is a country’s case in negotiations. After the Turmeric case, India realised that it needs written and not oral evidence to produce in the US Courts. That realisation led to the creation of a documentation project for traditional knowledge(Traditional Knowledge Library Database). Since the last decade, India has been sharing this database with patent officers. Since 2009, TKDL has also contested patents in various jurisdictions. At the EPO, India contested 94 patents, while in Canada the number is 25. Although there has been some success in US but major success has been in EU only. However, there is a shortage of manpower to work on the challenges, and as a consequence the efforts have largely failed to push the process of the law. Mounting these challenges also proves to be be exorbitantly expensive. There are indeed very few countries which have effectively done this without succumbing to international political pressure- India is one of them. It is possible to use this democratic space wisely to push back the dominant powers.

Trade is imminent and there will be trade. However, if we do not deal with trade effectively, it will spell doom for us. The Transpacific Partnership(TPP) and Nairobi ministerial should serve as a warning for us. The prevalent fear has been that countries in favour of TPP will be multilateralised. India's steps indicate a roll back of its role at the WTO. Once it moves out of the WTO framework and the Doha agenda fails, TPP signatories will begin to exert pressure on WTO. Granted that there is very little window to move forward, nevertheless, India should try using its influence to fight at the WTO with all resources available. WTO has limitations but such organizations are the only bet we have against multilateral organizations. Currently, India is allowing these organizations to be shaped in an undesirable manner. We have not used the WTO truly well enough, and neither have we been able to influence ongoing negotiations. There is, therefore, a need to rethink our strategy. It is time to step up and engage with lawmakers instead of only engaging with bureaucrats.

Negotiating teams at these multilateral fora are of utmost importance, because of their unique position to influence the law making process at the top-down level. In the long term, they are also a cost saving measure (compared to mounting opposition to patents, etc). Unfortunately, India has kept silent as it watches US and its allies taking over ASEAN. Through TPP, rules are changing and the US-led alliance is taking over countries beyond Pacific Rim, by moving into ASEAN. India is in an isolated position right now and needs a group of its own to collaborate and work as a formidable force against US.

India should have seized the opportunity to group with African nations in the India-Africa forum to consolidate its position. Similarly, Latin countries may also be pursued. These regions are important since India's support at the WTO has been on a sharp decline.

Agriculture

India is also under pressure to remove agricultural subsidies. The subsidy regime was crafted by the EU and US to enable them to exempt their subsidies in an exempt list (green box). Further, US cleverly protected its own export credits so that its own subsidies became exempt. In this manner, even subsidies pertaining to export competition are not totally eliminated. However, other countries like India have raised an issue that in these countries, export subsidy is but one part of total subsidies. The latter has come down and this is problematic because countries like India simply must have potential to safeguard against hunger. The public distribution system is essential for this. India has a system of Minimum Support Price(MSP) and input subsidy. On the other hand, US provides direct income support, arguing that markets should be as close to their pristine form as possible. And input subsidy and MSP do not reconcile with this. According to them, income transfers are better because that does not manipulate prices.

In US and EU, the irony is that, they have farm policies. US has had a farm bill every 4 years since 1933, and EU has a common agricultural policy. India does not have any such policy. The US and EU inform their producers their about expected subsidies for the next 4 years, enabling the producers to plan in advance. In this case, income transfer can work. Therefore, the farmers can take higher risks and can manipulate prices. Their farm rate price is well below the economic cost and international price since they have protection because of the income transfer. The international price is supposed to be efficient (in almost 3 decades, international prices have been same). Since their prices are below international prices, they can dump in the international market. On the other hand, nobody else can enter the US market. Ironically, this income support, which affects international trade so unfairly, is kept out of the scope of WTO deliberations - no questions asked. Further, while the US Farm Bill expenditure has gone up, in contrast, India has a limit on subsidy. Food subsidy is counted in the 10% limit prescribed by the WTO.

The situation is can be summarised as, thus: US's activities eventually escape the WTO, while Indian programmes fall within the scope, more than the usual. Before the Food Security Act, the below poverty line population were the only beneficiaries. And now, the Act benefits two-thirds of the population. As a result, quantum of subsidized food has gone up. If the government decides to give income transfers (instead of subsidies), in order for it to be successful, the tiller has to be the owner of the land, which is problematic in India. Although people want to follow direct benefit transfer for agriculture as well, the question remains that how many workers will actually benefit from it.

It is evident that agriculture is suffering- Mint recently reported on how India is becoming an agro importer. Sugar output has suffered. India might import sugar next year along with pulses, wheat. Productivity is going down. This is will make way for support for genetically modified crops-- which is again what the US wants. If the WTO gets populated by TPP signatories, India cannot continue with providing subsidies because TPP eliminates agricultural subsidies. The only relevant factors are market entry and tariff. This could be agriculture’s deathbed.

Negotiations on agricultural issues have not been effective because of divisions within it. Fragmentations have caused a lack of unity - even a bare common minimum position does not exist. Further, US and allies have used diversionary tactics such as repeatedly asking for evidence, not bringing anything concrete to the table, etc. When the process is frustrated frequently, activist movements also die down.

Loss of bargaining power has led to fatigue within various activist groups in the country. On the other hand, corporations continue prospering. India had put up a strong fight for TRIPS flexibilities, but today elements like TPP are destroying balanced regimes across the world.

Thanks to our intern Aniruddha Majumdar for his assistance on this post.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/shape-of-ip-and-agriculture-post-the-wto-nairobi-ministerial

Several Publications Now Available under Creative Commons License

subha — 2014-12-28T03:05:06Z

The Centre for Internet and Society has got the following publications under Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0) license. These are from multiple authors.

Samadrusti Publications

Samadrusti is a Bhubaneswar based organisation working on issues related to the development sector. Their publications are mostly related to their work in rural Odisha. They have relicensed 3 essay books authored by many authors on notable people and industrial work and issues in rural Odisha (many of which are of interest for Wikipedia as well), a poem collection and a catalogue of books published by them. Some of the books will be shared in the future in the form of digital typeset so there will not be any need for re-typing the books.

Dr. Gayatri Mishra

7 books (poems, stories, etc.)

Manoj Kumar Panda

Book: "Hada bagicha" (Story compilation)
This is a critically acclaimed book and many readers have requested if this could be brought into Wikisource.

Asim Basu

Book: "Kathare Kathare" (autobiography)
Asim Basu is a notable stage artiste, director, painter, art director and writer from Odisha. His autobiography is also a historical documentation of the art scenario in general and Odia film production, Odia typography and book cover design in particular.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/publications-under-creative-commons-license

Seventh Global Intellectual Property Convention

praskrishna — 2015-02-12T16:59:01Z

The Seventh Global IP Convention took place in Mumbai from January 15 to 17, 2015. Rohini Lakshané attended the event.

Agenda

Time	Detail
08.00 09.00	Registration
09.00 10.30	Inaugural Session (Majestic I & II)
10.30 11.00	Coffee Break and Networking Session
11.00 12.30	Plenary Session I: Power of IP: Gateway to Growth (Majestic I & II)
12.30 13.30	Lunch Break & Networking Session
13.30 15.30	Technical Session: I, II & III
15.30 16.00	Coffee Break and Networking Session
16.00 18.00	Technical Session: IV, V & VI

For more info on the event, click here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/seventh-global-ip-convention

Sessions on Kannada Wikipedia at Tumkur University

praskrishna — 2014-04-06T04:50:42Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja conducted a session on Kannada Wikipedia for students of M.Sc. Library and Information Sciences followed by an advanced Kannada Wikipedia session for students of M.A. Literature on March 27, 2014. The event was organized by Tumkur University.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sessions-on-kannada-wikipedia-tumkur-university

September 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-12-06T04:53:12Z

The newsletter for the month of September 2019.

Highlights for September 2019
Centre for Internet & Society's application for membership of the Christchurch Call Advisory Network has been accepted! As a part of this network, we, along with other civil society groups based out of various jurisdictions, would be providing inputs on making the Call a robust, human rights-centred initiative. A book by Amber Sinha titled 'The Networked Public: How Social Media is Changing Democracy' was published by Rupa Publications. The book looks at how networks exert unchecked power in subverting political discourse and polarizing the public in India. Towards that, it investigates the history of misinformation and the biases that make the public susceptible to it, how digital platforms and their governance impacts the public’s behaviour in them, as well as the changing face of political targeting in a data-driven ecosystem. Akriti Bopanna and Gayatri Puthran co-authored a research paper which compares the Manila Principles to Draft of The Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines(Amendment) Rules], 2018, introduced by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in December, 2018. Gurshabad Grover and Torsha Sarkar along with Rajashri Seal and Neil Trivedi co-authored a paper that examines the constitutionality of the government prohibition on the broadcast of news against private and community FM channels. The authors also mapped chronologically the history of the development of community and private radio channels in India. Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi generated empirical evidence about the CCTV programme well underway in Delhi. The case study was published by Centre for Development Informatics, Global Development Institute, SEED, in the Development Informatics working paper series housed at the University of Manchester. Shruti Trikanand and Amber Sinha published a blog post titled Core Concepts and Processes by which the authors hope to arrive at a shared vocabulary to discuss and critically analyse digital identity systems, both within our team and in engagements with other stakeholders. Pooja Saxena and Akash Sheshadri contributed to the project. The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace released a public consultation process that sought to solicit comments and obtain feedback on the definition of “Stability of Cyberspace”, as developed by the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC). CIS gave detailed commentary on the definitions and suggested a new definition of cyber stability. CIS is undertaking a study on digital mediation of domestic and care work in India, as part of and supported by the Feminist Internet Research Network led by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The study is exploring the ways in which structural inequalities, such as those of gender and class, are being reproduced or challenged by digital platforms. The project sites are Delhi and Bangalore, where we are conducting interviews with workers, companies, and unions. In Bangalore, we are collaborating with Stree Jagruti Samiti to collect qualitative data from different stakeholders. The outputs of the research will include a report, policy brief, and other communication materials in English, Hindi, and Kannada. This study is being led by Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi, along with Sumandro Chattapadhyay. CIS-A2K has put up a call for joining the Free Knowledge movement #Wikipedia #Wikimedia. Are you an individual or do you represent any organisation, institution, groups or enterprises? You can actually help the ‘Free Knowledge’ movement by donating photos, media, content or archives.

CIS and the News

The following articles and research papers were authored by CIS secretariat during the month:

Doing Standpoint Theory (Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi; Gender IT.org; September 1, 2019).
Traffic Rules, Mindset and On-Time Payments (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; September 4, 2019).
Kashmir’s digital blackout marks a period darker than the dark side of the moon (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; September 15, 2019).
The Networked Public: How Social Media Changed Democracy (Amber Sinha; Rupa Publications; September 19, 2019).
Capturing Gender and Class Inequities: The CCTVisation of Delhi (Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon; Centre for Development Informatics, Global Development Institute; September 27, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS secretariat was consulted for the following articles published during the month in various publications:

Why having more CCTV cameras does not translate to crime prevention (Manasa Rao; The News Minute; September 3, 2019).
Android 10 out, big on ‘privacy’ (Roshan H. Nair; Deccan Herald; September 4, 2019).
Internet pour toutes (Isabelle Grégoire; L'Actualite; September 11, 2019).
Chennai residents rue fuzzy CCTV surveillance (Vivek Narayanan and R. Srinivasan; The Hindu; September 18, 2019).

Millions of kids in India access the Net on their parents’ devices, says study (Varun Aggarwal; Hindu Businessline; September 27, 2019).
SC directs govt to further regulate social media: Is it necessary? Experts weigh in (Geetika Mantri; The News Minute; September 28, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape.

Wikipedia

Under a grant from Wikimedia Foundation we are doing a project 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.

News

Bhuvana Meenakshi elected Mozilla Rep for July 2019 (Bhuvana Meenakshi was selected as a Rep of the Month (July 2019) by Mozilla for her active contributions).

Openness

Participation in Events

FOSSCON India 2019 (Organized by KLS Gogte Institute of Technology; Belgaum; August 29 - 31, 2019). Bhuvana Meenakshi gave a talk on "The revolution of WebXR".
DevFest'19 (Organized by Google Developers Groups; Coimbatore; September 14, 2019).
React India 2019 (Organized by React India; Goa; September 26 - 28, 2019). Bhuvana Meenakshi was a speaker.

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. As part of internet governance work we work on policy issues relating to freedom of expression primarily focusing on the Information Technology Act and issues of liability of intermediaries for unlawful speech and simultaneously ensuring that the right to privacy is safeguarded as well.

Freedom of Speech & Expression

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Research Papers

Examining the Constitutionality of the Ban on Broadcast of News by Private FM and Community Radio Stations (Gurshabad Grover, Torsha Sarkar, Rajashri Seal and Neil Trivedi; September 27, 2019).
Comparison of the Manila Principles to Draft of The Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines(Amendment) Rules], 2018 (Akriti Bopanna and Gayatri Puthran; September 30, 2019).

News

Turning off the internet: Chips with Everything podcast (Gurshabad Grover and Ambika Tandon recorded an episode with the Guardian's podcast on digital culture, called Chips with Everything).

Privacy

Under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC we are doing a project on surveillance. CIS is researching the history of privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhar. As part of our ongoing research, we bring you the following outputs:

Submission

Submission to Global Commission on Stability of Cyberspace on the definition of Cyber Stability (Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok; September 11, 2019).

Participation in Events

Policy Design Jam (Organized by Whatsapp and ISPP; Qutub Institutional Area, New Delhi; September 16, 2019). Pallavi Bedi, Akash Sheshadri and Anubha Sinha attended the event.
Conceptualising India's Digital Policy Vision (Organized by National University of Juridical Sciences; National University of Juridical Sciences; Kolkata; September 18, 2019).
All Partners Meeting (Organized by Partnership on AI; London; September 26 - 27, 2019). Elonnai Hickok reprsented CIS as the co-chair for the Labour and Economy Expert Group.

Digital Identity

Omidyar Network is investing in establishment of a three-region research alliance — to be co-led by the Institute for Technology & Society (ITS), Brazil, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) , Kenya, and CIS. As part of this Alliance, CIS is examining the policy objectives of digital identity projects, how technological policy choices can be thought through to meet the objectives, and how legitimate uses of a digital identity framework may be evaluated.

Featured Research

Core Concepts and Processes (Shruti Trikanand and Amber Sinha; September 13, 2019). Research by Shruti Trikanad and Amber Sinha. Conceptualization by Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha. Illustrations by Akash Sheshadri and Pooja Saxena.

Artificial Intelligence

With origins dating back to the 1950s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not necessarily new. However, interest in AI has been rekindled over the recent years due to advancements of technology and its applications to real-world scenarios. We conduct research on the existing legal and regulatory parameters:

Participation in Events

AI in Healthcare (Organized by Center for Information Technology and Public Policy and International Institute of Information Technology; Bangalore). Radhika Radhakrishnan gave a talk.
Responsible AI Workshop (Organized by Facebook; September 17, 2019; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham participated in the meeting.
Constitutionalizing Artificial Intelligence (Organized by Constitutional Law Society; National University of Juridical Sciences; Kolkata). Arindrajit Basu delivered a lecture.

Researchers@Work

The researchers@work programme at CIS produces and supports pioneering and sustained trans-disciplinary research on key thematics at the intersections of internet and society; organise and incubate networks of and fora for researchers and practitioners studying and making internet in India; and contribute to development of critical digital pedagogy, research methodology, and creative practice.

Announcement

Digital mediation of domestic and care work in India: Project Announcement (Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rathi; October 1, 2019).

Essays on #List — Selected Abstracts

In response to a recent call for essays that social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the #List, we received 11 abstracts. Out of these, we have selected 4 pieces to be published as part of a series titled #List on the r@w blog.

Blog Entries

#HookingUp (Akhil Kang, Christina Thomas Dhanraj, Dhrubo Jyoti, and Gowthaman Ranganathan; August 1, 2019).
Call for Contributions and Reflections: Your experiences in Decolonizing the Internet’s Languages! (P.P. Sneha; August 7, 2019).
Simiran Lalvani - Workers’ fictive kinship relations in Mumbai app-based food delivery (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 16, 2019).

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum.

Monthly Blog

Traffic Rules, Mindset and On-Time Payments (Shyam Ponappa; September 4, 2019).

About CIS

CIS is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

Follow CIS on:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

Support CIS:

Please help us defend consumer and 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.

Collaborate with CIS:

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@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-2019-newsletter

September 2017 Newsletter

Admin — 2017-11-21T15:19:25Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS filed a request under the Right to Information Act in March 2016 as part of research for the paper: Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance (July 2017). Rohini Lakshané has captured the developments in a blog post. Last month’s judgment by the nine judge referral bench was an emphatic endorsement of the the constitutional right to privacy. Amber Sinha has dissected the various aspects of the right to privacy as put forth by the nine judge constitutional bench in the Puttaswamy matter. The papers on fundamental right to privacy can be accessed here. With offline as the theme of the third Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC18), CIS has invited teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, October 22, 2017. The conference is expected to be held in Himachal Pradesh during February 22-24, 2018. The venue and dates will be confirmed soon. Anonymity-based internet apps like Sarahah may not be as vicious for those surrounded by the comfort of social status. If your experience of Sarahah has been positive, it might be good to reflect on your own cultural and social capital, wrote Nishant Shah in an article in the Indian Express, dated September 10, 2017.

CIS in the news:

Privacy is now a right in India. Here's what that means for the tech industry (Rishi Iyengar; CNN Tech; August 29, 2017).
Russian social network VKontakte temporarily blocked in India for Blue Whale threat (Kim Arora; The Times of India; September 12, 2017).

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Access to Knowledge
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Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is 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

RTI request to Indian Patents Office for Form 27 (Statement of Working of patents), March 2016 (Rohini Lakshané; September 9, 2017).
RTI request to Indian Patents Office for Form 27 (Statement of Working of patents), 2015 (Rohini Lakshané; September 9, 2017).

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Participation in Event

Praja - Enhancing Democracy Through Access to Open Data: What Are the Roles of Government and Civil Society? (Organized by Praja; September 8, 2017; New Delhi). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a speaker.

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

►Privacy

Blog Entries

Rethinking National Privacy Principles: Evaluating Principles for India's Proposed Data Protection Law (Amber Sinha; September 11, 2017).
The Fundamental Right to Privacy: An Analysis (Amber Sinha; September 27, 2017).

►Big Data

Upcoming Event

Emerging Issues in the Internet of Things (CIS, Bangalore; October 23, 2017). Andrew Rens will give a talk on the research that he is doing at the Internet Governance Lab.

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

Revamp Telecom Sector & Revive The Economy (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; September 7, 2017).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Article

Digital native: What’s in a name? Privilege (Indian Express, September 10, 2017).

Announcement

Internet Researchers' Conference 2018 (IRC18): Offline - Call for Session (P.P. Sneha; September 20, 2017). Teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, October 22, 2017.

Blog Entry

The Digital Humanities from Father Busa to Edward Snowden (P.P. Sneha; September 4, 2017).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

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► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2017-newsletter