Open Knowledge and Digital Regional Futures

Benefits, Challenges, and Recommendations

Dr Xiang Ren

What Is Open Knowledge?• Open knowledge refers to knowledge that is free to

use, reuse, and redistribute without legal, social or technological restriction. (Wikipedia)

• Open Knowledge Foundation: “A world where knowledge creates power for the many, not the few.A world where data frees us — to make informed choices about how we live, what we buy and who gets our vote.A world where information and insights are accessible —and apparent — to everyone.”

Open Knowledge Areas

Open knowledge

Open access publishing

Open educational resources

Open source software

Open data …

Open science

Open government

Benefits of Open Knowledge

Access

Collaboration

Participation

Innovations

Access by All

• Willinsky: open knowledge should be accessed by “… all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it”

• Pursuing knowledge for (a) pleasure and avocation; (b) business and profits; (c) education; or (d) in preparation for a new life activity

• Regional knowledge demands, equity, social justice

Social Collaboration

• Sharing and mass collaboration online

• Innovations happens in collaborative networks

• Regional innovators join the global networks

Public Participation

• Citizen science and Scientific crowdsourcing and crowdfunding

• Scientifically literate and data/evidence-based policy debates

• Citizen advice for national research agenda

A Catalyst for Innovation

• Creating a space for innovation

• Transforming the industries: e.g. Open Access Publishing; From OERs to OEPs; open data and Precision Agriculture

•User literacies

•Sharing cultures

•Networks and communities

•…

•Public and private

•Content licenses

•Business models

•Motivations of intermediaries

•Sustainability

•Information organization

•Searching

•Tools and toolkits

•Data mining and machine learning technologies

•…

Technological challenges

Economic challenges

Others Socio-cultural

challenges

Technological Challenges

• Open “access” is not enough…

• Searching academic articles is complicated and inefficient

• Compatibility, interoperability, and standardisation

• Internet connections in regional areas

Economic Challenges

• Public vs. private

• Increase of public funding and priories effective uses of open resources

• Content licenses: commercial reuse issues

Socio-cultural Challenges

• “The larger challenge … is changing this mindset and the culture.”

• Academics value the advancement of knowledge instead of the access to it

• Digital literacies/digital inclusion/sharing cultures

Recommendations

Image Created by Meredith Atwater for opensource.com

User-friendly Open Resources

• Easy discovery

• Open licenses including commercial uses

• Standardized formats and interoperability

• Open source toolkits for discovering and using open resources

Community-based Infrastructure

• Information that is tailored to local conditions and issues: e.g. from institutional Repositories to Community repositories

• Shaping infrastructure and agendas of open knowledge based on regional communities and knowledge demands

Open Knowledge Networks

• Connected to global open knowledge networks

• Develop regional open networks based on digital inclusion and sharing cultures

• Adequate funding and policy supports

Dr Xiang Ren Australian Digital Futures Institute, University of Southern Queensland|email: xiang.ren@usq.edu.au|Twitter: @renxiangcn|Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/XiangREN|Academia.edu: https://usq.academia.edu/XiangRen