Sridhar Gutam
The knowledge which we all have gained while we were progressing as a society is slowly being made as a commodity, misappropriated and kept reaching out to the people unless they pay for it. We know that from data, information is generated and from the data and information, knowledge is generated. When this data and information is kept in closed access under paywalls, how do we get to know the new knowledge? And how can we lead ourselves into the world where knowledge is free (free as in freedom)?!
Every human being should have access and freedom to use the data, information and the knowledge generated. For the public good, the new knowledge developed by using the existing knowledge should again be made available for the public to reuse and build upon for accelerating the progress of the society and mankind. With this philosophy, a worldwide movement to make open the data and information and to liberate the knowledge has been started and is gaining momentum towards building an open knowledge society!
It is said that the free software movement whose objective is to build and make the software which is free to use, study, share and build upon has influenced the other open movements like Open Culture, Open Science, Open Source, Open Access, Open Data, Open Education, Open Source Seeds, Open Source Biotechnology etc. only to stop the commodification of knowledge which may be building a new colonization on the earth.
Not all the research produced by the public funded research is openly available to build upon. We need to understand that only by reviewing the existing knowledge we can develop the new knowledge. Now with the pandemic situations like Covid19, need for more collaborative activities arising especially in sharing the data and information to make informed decisions in managing the situation going to bad or worse.The scientists are now sharing their works openly in scholarly repositories and are working together to find the solution to the problem. While the funders are mandating the research to be made available, the institutes are establishing scholarly repositories and making available the research produced.
The Open Access movement in the world has made us learn that by sharing the research results immediately for the public to use will help the science to progress rapidly. What is Open Access? It’s opening up access to the scientific literature produced. It is actually a subset of Open Science which also includes Open Data, Open Educational Resources, and Open Licensing etc. The data generated by scientific studies or by the government while doing the administration when freely available can be used to build information to study the trends and thereby develop new knowledge.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
– Isaac Newton (1675)
Public sharing of the data and knowledge speeds up the process of technological developments which are for the public good. But when they would like to share, it’s a good practice to share with a suitable license, which informs the user what the usage rights are. The free software languages and codes written to develop the products are freely available on the World Wide Web in the repositories. Once can use them to extract and analyze the data, write code to get the meaningful patterns from the silos of the data. The communities are building subject, country and region specific repositories only to make available all the knowledge produced in the world and seek collaborations.
“The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it.”
– Aaron Swartz – Guerilla Open Access Manifesto (2008)
Not all the scientific knowledge is not available publicly for everyone to use. Much of the research produced is locked behind the paywall, or locked due to technical and legal barriers. To make available the locked up research articles, Alexandra Elbakyan had created ‘Sci-Hub’ website in 2011 which provides access to the published research which is behind the paywalls. She got frustrated when she could not get access to the publications while she was doing research. She is sued for copyright infringements, but many of the students and young researchers who have got access to the literature are praising her and are using the site.
The internet, World Wide Web invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 is not patented and is open to everyone to share, learn, do business and use it as anyone wants it. However, the open web is now in trouble: It’s being taken over by some who had built their businesses using it. In many of the places on earth the internet is still locked up due to some political, legal and technological barriers. The Open Internet is at stake!
As mentioned earlier, this pandemic situation has made us work and learn online. The most affected are our school going children who without access to gadgets, internet, electricity and funds to procure them.The Open Hardware movement is making all efforts to build technologies using which, low cost gadgets or computers can be built to be used. And the Free & Open Source Software community is working to develop software which works on low bandwidth and can help both the teachers and the students learn online. The Open Educational Resources contributed by many are being used by the teachers in their online courses. Many capacity building initiatives for the development of open curriculum and open learning systems on open learning management systems are required and the governments should encourage and support the development of freely available educational resources like Open Textbooks, Videos and other educational materials for everyone to use and re-use and open educational repositories to house them. Though there are efforts, not all the resources available are open educational resources and are not licensed openly.
All the data, information and knowledge developed from the public funds should be openly licensed so that there would not be any technical and legal barriers to access, use, re-use and build upon.The Creative Commons initiative is building licenses using the prevailing copyright rules and regulations. By applying a suitable license one can share their works openly and freely on the terms they like.
Not many like to share all their works. There is a greater need to increase the advocacy for open sharing and building movement with greater momentum for opening up access to knowledge. When good people have built good things for the public good, it is our duty to make use of them most and contribute towards the growth of such open technologies which build and save lives. Aaron Swartz in the ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’ writes: “Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves” and he calls all of us to join him in “opposing the privatization of knowledge” and making it “a thing of the past”.
In the world many free knowledge societies and initiatives are working towards the establishment of the free and open knowledge society and these alternative movements is not restricted to one country or the region, its worldwide and we can see ‘Open Access India’, ‘Open Access Bangladesh’, ‘Open Access Nepal’, ‘Open Access Pakistan’, ‘Open Access Africa’, ‘Open Access Arab’, ‘Open Access South Asia’ etc. These communities are working for creating awareness (advocacy) on Open Access, Open Data and Open Education. There is a greater need to consolidate the movement in the Global South with South-South Cooperation. So, let’s join the movement and take part in building the open knowledge society which Kavi Guru Rabindranath Tagore had thought of by sharing our knowledge freely and openly for the public good.
About Author:
Convenor,Open Access India, Bengaluru. The author is also a Research Scientist at ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru.
Contact:
Email: sridhar@openaccessindia.org
In case of India, high quality of research articles should be available to researchers. Most of the early career researchers prefer to read simple scientific language articles through lower category journals. And it is obvious they will generate the idea from that material, which will be not countable. At the same time they are doing similar hard work to publish the work as they are supposed to do after reading high quality journal’s articles or problems. So I advocate the open access research journals and open access resources for education and science. Thank you for the details sharing here.
Regards
Dr Sushil Kumar