After introducing the CC Italy Chapter to you in July and the CC Netherlands Chapter in August, we are now traveling to Southeast Asia to introduce the CC Bangladesh Chapter! 

The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 45 CC Country Chapters spread across the globe. They’re the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.

To help showcase their work, we’re excited to continue our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’re traveling around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open! 

Say hello to CC Bangladesh!

The CC Bangladesh Chapter was formed in June 2018. Its Chapter Lead is Nasir Khan and its representative to the CC Global Network Council is Mostafa Azad Kamal. Since the beginning, the Chapter has been involved in promoting and supporting open education and copyright but over the last year, in particular, it has enhanced its activities covering almost all CCGN Platforms. For this post, we spoke to CC Bangladesh member Mohammed Galib Hasan Abir who told us a bit more about the Chapter’s work. He responded in both English and Bengali! 

CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work?

CC Bangladesh: Currently, CC Bangladesh is working on Open Education, Copyright, and Open Data. We have a group of dedicated volunteers working on these individual activities. Though Open Education is not a new term in Bangladesh, we’re currently working on advancing OER policy-level work for future objectives. We are planning to collaborate more with other organizations to achieve this goal. Our representative Mostafa Azad Kamal personally developed two institutional Open Policies policies so far for Bangladesh Open University and the Dhaka Ahsania Mission—both were supported by the Commonwealth of Learning. Besides this he also worked on National OER policy which is with the ministry for final approval.  

CC Bangladesh: বর্তমানে ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার উন্মুক্ত শিক্ষা ,কপিরাইট,উন্মুক্ত তথ্য ইত্যাদি বিষয় নিয়ে কাজ করছে। আমাদের স্বতন্ত্র স্বেচ্ছাসেবীর একটি দল  রয়েছে যারা এই স্বতন্ত্র প্রকল্পগুলোতে  কাজ করছে । যদিও উন্মুক্ত শিক্ষা বাংলাদেশের প্রেক্ষাপটে নতুন কোন ধারণা  নয় তবে বর্তমানে ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার ভবিষ্যতের লক্ষ্যে উন্নত নীতিমালা বাস্তবায়নের জন্য কাজ করছে, যার জন্য আমরা অন্যান্য সহযোগী সংস্থার সাথে আরও সহযোগী কাজের জন্য পরিকল্পনা করছি। ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্সে আমাদের দেশের প্রতিনিধি মোস্তফা আজাদ কামাল ব্যক্তিগতভাবে দুটি প্রতিষ্ঠানের নীতিমালা বিকাশ করেছেন একটি হলো বাংলাদেশ উন্মুক্ত বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় এর জন্য উন্মুক্ত শিক্ষা নীতিমালা এবং অন্যটি ঢাকা আহসানিয়া মিশন এর জন্য  এবং উভয়ই কমনওয়েলথ অব লার্নিং দ্বারা সমর্থিত ছিল। এছাড়াও  তিনি বাংলাদেশের জাতীয় উন্মুক্ত শিক্ষা নীতি প্রণয়নে  কাজ করেছেন যা বর্তমানে  চূড়ান্ত অনুমোদনের জন্য মন্ত্রানালয়ে  কাছে অপেক্ষাধীন রয়েছে।

CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?

CC Bangladesh: We worked on Open Data and related initiatives by conducting a seminar mini conference. In October 2019, we celebrated Open Access Week with other open source organizations, such as the Bangladesh Open University who contributed as a co-organizer. Besides this, in 2020 we arranged the Open Data Day 2020 Program with the Open Knowledge Foundation, the theme for this year was “Bringing the benefits of open resources to Bangladesh.” We plan to observe these two events every year as it is also a promotional event for us. 

CC Bangladesh: ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টারে আমি ব্যাক্তিগতভাবে উন্মুক্ত তথ্য এবং এর সাথে সম্পর্কিত কিছু কাজের জন্য উদ্যোগ গ্রহন করি এবং কয়েকটা সেমিনার ও ছোটো আকারের সম্মেলন এর আয়োজন করি। ২০১৯ সাল থেকে ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার ওপেন অ্যাক্সেস সপ্তাহ উদযাপন করছে এবং তারা অন্যান্য ওপেন সোর্স সংস্থাগুলির সাথে একটি যৌথ কর্মসূচির ব্যবস্থা করছে যেখানে বাংলাদেশ উন্মুক্ত বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় একটি সহ-সংগঠক হিসাবে অবদান রাখছে  (কর্মসূচির বিস্তারিত), (কর্মসূচির বিস্তারিত)। ২০২০ সালে ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার ওপেন নলেজ ফাউন্ডেশনের সাথে যৌথভাবে ওপেন ডেটা ডে ২০২০ কর্মসূচির আয়োজন করেছে, এই বছরের প্রতিপাদ্য বিষয় ছিল “বাংলাদেশে উন্মুক্ত সংস্থার সুবিধাসমুহ প্রণয়ন” (কর্মসূচির বিস্তারিত)। ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার বার্ষিক পরিকল্পনা হিসাবে প্রতি বছর এই দুটি কর্মসূচি পালনের পরিকল্পনা করছে যা এই চ্যাপ্টারের প্রচারমূলক কর্মসূচির অন্তর্গত।

CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?

CC Bangladesh: Working with the open movement is always a pleasure for us. We have been involved with this movement for the last five years and everyday it is a new day to think about how we can do more social good for society. We believe this kind of movement makes the world smaller and more connected with people of every region. This helps in trying to understand different cultures, histories, etc. We’ve already seen how these types of connections work efficiently in the case of a pandemic, when we have the chance to think about the world as a whole. 

CC Bangladesh: মুক্ত আন্দোলনের সাথে কাজ করা আমার পক্ষে সর্বদা আনন্দকর । আমি বিগত পাঁচ বছর ধরে এই আন্দোলনের সাথে জড়িত আছি এবং যা আমাকে প্রতিদিন সমাজের নিত্য নতুন সমস্যা এবং সমাধান সম্পর্কে ভাবতে সাহায্য করে । আমি বিশ্বাস করি যে এই ধরণের আন্দোলন এবং এর সাথে আমার সম্পর্ক স্থাপনে এটি বিশ্বকে আমার নিকট আরও ক্ষুদ্র আকারে উপস্থাপন করে তুলেছে যেখানে আমরা কোনোনা কোন ভাবে বিশ্বের প্রতিটি অঞ্চলের মানুষের সাথে সংযুক্ত রয়েছি এবং তাদের সংস্কৃতি, ইতিহাস ইত্যাদি বোঝার চেষ্টা করছি। আমরা ইতিমধ্যে লক্ষ্য করেছি  যে এই ধরণের সংযুক্তি যেকোনও ধরণের মহামারীতে কীভাবে দক্ষতার সাথে কাজ করে, যা আমাদেরকে সুযোগ করে দেয় পুরো বিশ্ব সম্পর্কে চিন্তা করার।   

CC: What are your plans for the future? 

CC Bangladesh: We plan to engage in further initiatives to promote open education and internet literacy in rural settings—especially female participation in open education and internet activities in Bangladesh, which is needed. Statistics show that women’s participation in the open movement and open internet activities is much lower, so we will focus on this issue and look for increasing women’s participation. One of our members has already been advised to work on gender issues in Bangladesh. Besides that, we plan to run an Internet for All campaign with the support of CC and our local government. Our Country representative Mostafa Azad Kamal is trying to connect with the University Grants Commission, Ministry of Education and ICT Ministry to start a wider open mission. Hope we will see a bigger impact by 2022. We are trying to sync our education system with the open pedagogies under the framework of Digital Bangladesh initiative of the government.

CC Bangladesh: ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ উন্মুক্ত শিক্ষা ও ইন্টারনেট শিক্ষা এবং সেগুলা গ্রামীণ স্তরের প্রচারের জন্য কিছু উদ্যোগের পরিকল্পনা করছে। বিশেষ করে বাংলাদেশে উন্মুক্ত শিক্ষা এবং ইন্টারনেট কার্যক্রমের ক্ষেত্রে মেয়েদের অংশগ্রহনের ব্যাপারে । পরিসংখ্যান দেখায় যে উন্মুক্ত আন্দোলনে এবং উন্মুক্ত ইন্টারনেট ক্রিয়াকলাপে মেয়েদের অংশগ্রহণ ছেলেদের তুলনায় বেশ কম, সে কারনেই আমরা ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার এই বিষয়ে মনোনিবেশ করবো এবং মেয়েদের  অংশগ্রহণ বৃদ্ধি করার জন্য কিছু কার্যক্রম গ্রহণ করবো। ইতিমধ্যে আমাদের চ্যাপ্টারের একজন সদস্যকে মেয়েদের অংশগ্রহণ বাড়াতে কাজ করার পরামর্শ দেওয়া হয়েছে। ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ ও স্থানীয় সরকারের সহায়তায় “ইন্টারনেটের সবার জন্য” কর্মসূচির পরিকল্পনা করা হয়েছে। এছাড়াও আমাদের চ্যাপ্টার প্রতিনিধি মোস্তফা আজাদ কামাল আরও বৃহত্তর উন্মুক্ত আন্দোলন শুরু করার জন্য বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় মঞ্জুরী কমিশন, শিক্ষা মন্ত্রণালয় এবং আইসিটি মন্ত্রণালয়ের  সাথে সংযোগ স্থাপনের চেষ্টা করছেন। আশা করি আমরা ২০২২ সালের মধ্যে তার একটি বড় প্রভাব দেখতে পাব। আমরা আমাদের শিক্ষাব্যবস্থাকে সরকারের ডিজিটাল বাংলাদেশ কাঠামোর আওতায় বিভিন্ন উদ্যোগের সাথে একীভূত করার চেষ্টা করছি।

CC: Anything else you want to share?

CC Bangladesh: We’re keen to promote open activities, open education, and Internet for All activities in Bangladesh. That’s why our members are developing their working module together. With the support of CC and other organizations, we are confident that we can achieve our goals.

CC Bangladesh: ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার বাংলাদেশে সকলের জন্য উন্মুক্ত কার্যক্রম, মুক্ত শিক্ষা, সবার জন্য ইন্টারনেট প্রচার করতে আগ্রহী। এ কারণেই চ্যাপ্টারের সদস্যরা পৃথকভাবে ও দলগতভাবে তাদের কার্যক্রম চালিয়ে যাচ্ছে। ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  এবং অন্যান্য সংস্থার সমর্থন নিয়ে আশা করি ক্রিয়েটিভ কমন্স  বাংলাদেশ চ্যাপ্টার তার লক্ষ্যগুলি অর্জন করতে পারবে।

Thank you to the CC Bangladesh team, especially Mohammed Galib Hasan Abir for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!

: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).

The post Meet CC Bangladesh, Our Next Feature for CC Network Fridays! appeared first on Creative Commons.

Last month we introduced the CC Chapter in Italy to you! This month we’re traveling north to the CC Chapter in The Netherlands! The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 43 CC Country Chapters spread across the globe. They’re the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.

To help showcase their work, we’re excited to continue our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’ll travel around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open! 

Next up is CC Netherlands!

The CC Dutch Chapter was formed in September 2018. Its Chapter Lead is Maarten Zeinstra and its representative to the CC Global Network Council is Lisette Kalshoven. Since the beginning, the Chapter has been involved in promoting and supporting openly licensed music, open GLAM, open education but over the last year, in particular, it has enhanced its activities covering almost all CCGN Platforms. To learn more about their work, we reached out to CC Netherlands to ask a few questions. They responded in both English and Dutch! 

CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work?

CC Netherlands: We like to work together with the whole open sector. Open Licenses are awesome, but even more so when applied to sectors that really benefit knowledge creation and sharing. That’s why we have members from diverse backgrounds. You can see all Open Netherland members here. Are you a person living in the Netherlands? Join us!

CC: Op welke open thema’s is jullie chapter actief? Wat zouden jullie graag willen bereiken?

CC Nederland: Wij werken graag samen met de hele open sector. Open licenties zijn fantastisch, nog meer als ze daadwerkelijk gebruikt worden door de sectoren die kennis creeëren en delen. Daarom hebben we leden van diverse sectoren. Op onze site kun je zien wie er allemaal lid is van Open Nederland. Woon je ook in Nederland! Sluit je dan aan!

CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?

CC Netherlands: We are worried about the implementation of the DSM directive in Dutch copyright law. Exceptions and limitations are paramount in a working copyright system, and automatic filtering threatens those. We have been active in working towards a positive implementation of the new ‘Copyright Directive’ (#DSM) – informing government and parliament on the importance of open knowledge, licenses and broad implementation of exceptions and limitations.

CC: Wat is een project waar jullie chapter recent aan gewerkt heeft?

CC Nederland: Wij maken ons zorgen over de manier waarop de Europese richtlijn voor auteursrechten in Nederland wordt geïmplementeerd. Uitzonderingen en beperkingen op het auteursrecht zijn belangrijk voor een goed werkend stelsel. Automatische filters zijn hier een bedreiging voor. De afgelopen tijd hebben we ons ingezet om de implementatie positief te beïnvloeden, o.a. door de overheid en het parlement te informeren over het belang van open kennis, licenties en een juiste implementatie van de uitzonderingen en beperkingen.

CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?

CC Netherlands: The Dutch Chapter and @OpenNederland, the association that runs the Chapter, brings people together from all the corners of the open world in NL, open design, healthcare, heritage, education, and more. Thus far this has led to crossovers that did not take place before, like looking at open education from the user experience of a student: what can open education mean for your entire learning path from toddler to adult? 

CC: Wat vinden jullie inspirerend en waar halen jullie voldoening uit bij jullie werk in de open beweging?

CC Nederland: Het Nederlandse chapter en Open Nederland, de vereniging die het chapter ondersteund, brengen mensen bij elkaar uit alle hoeken van de open beweging. Bijvoorbeeld open design, gezondheidszorg, erfgoed, onderwijs en meer. Dit heeft al geleid tot kruisbestuivingen die niet eerder plaats hebben gevonden, zoals het bekijken van open onderwijs vanuit het perspectief van een leerling. Wat kan open onderwijs betekenen voor iemands onderwijs carrière, van kleuter tot volwassene? 

CC: What projects in your country are using CC licenses that you’d like to highlight?

• We are proud of our open music scene, including Tribe of Noise which also purchased the Free Music Archive in 2019. 
• Dutch GLAMs have been active with open licensing for a long time. Beyond our beautiful Rijksmuseum, also have a look at the Re:VIVE project, which invites artists to remix old archival sounds; @benglabs, which aims to make audiovisual heritage open and searchable; or the beautiful collection of the city archive of Den Bosch, with these billiard playing ladies. 
• Kenny Vleugels, a game developer from NL, creates really cool CC0 game assets. 
• We like to party when it is Public Domain Day in the Netherlands. We organise a fun and informative day with lectures about the Public Domain, but also about the creators whose work now entered the Public Domain. See full videos and photos from the 2020 edition here. International coordination takes place through pdday.org.
• Did you know the Dutch government uses CC0 as their standard on all text and data on websites? They have been doing so since 2010, and were—as far as we know—the first to do so. See the notice here. 
• We also have an award for the best re-use of open government data, the Stuiveling Open Data award. The 2019 winners researched fraud in healthcare using open data.
• Sharing government news in the current Corona-crisis is more important than ever, but it can be tough to weed through. The Open State Foundation has made all local government news accessible through one platform, all openly licensed.

CC: Wat zijn projecten die CC licenties gebruiken en die je graag onder de aandacht wil brengen?

• We zijn trots op de Nederlandse muziek scène, waaronder Tribe of Noise dat in 2019 Free Music Archive overgenomen heeft.
• Nederlandse culturele instellingen delen hun collecties al geruime tijd met open licenties. Naast het welbekende Rijksmuseum zijn er ook initiatieven zoals 
• Re:VIVE, een project waarbij kunstenaars en muzikanten uitgenodigd worden om geluiden uit archieven te remixen, 
• @benglabs, dat audiovisuele archieven ontsluit en doorzoekbaar maakt,
• Of de fantastische collectie van het archief van Den Bosch, met deze biljartsters.
• Kenny Vleugels maakt gave CC0 gelicenseerde game componenten,
• We vieren jaarlijks Publiek Domeindag, een leuke en informatieve dag waarbij we aandacht besteden aan de werken die publiek domein zijn geworden en de makers van deze werken. De foto’s en video’s van Publiek Domeindag 2020 zijn hier te zien. Internationale coördinatie van publiek Domeindag vieringen ondersteunen we met pdday.org.
• Wist je dat de Nederlandse overheid standaard CC0 gebruikt voor alle  tekst en data op hun websites? Dit doen ze al sinds 2010, voor zover wij weten waren ze de eerste overheid om dit te doen. Zie ook deze pagina.
• Er is een prijs voor het beste gebruik van open data in Nederland, de Stuiveling Open Data Award (SODA). De winnaars van 2019 deden, op basis van open data, onderzoek naar fraude in de zorgsector.
• Het delen van nieuws van de overheid is zeer belangrijk in de huidige Corona-crisis, maar het kan lastig zijn om de juiste informatie te vinden. Open State heeft al het nieuws op lokaal niveau op één platform gebundeld, onder een open licentie.

CC: What are your plans for the future? 

CC Netherlands: We hope to grow our membership in the coming year, engage more with our community, and do more outward-facing projects.

CC: Wat zijn jullie toekomstplannen?

CC Nederland: We willen nog meer leden aantrekken, onze huidige leden activeren en meer betrekken bij onze werkzaamheden en meer zichtbare projecten doen.

CC: Anything else you want to share?

CC Netherlands: The rise of algorithms determining possible copyright infringement can also have a negative impact on open content, because these algorithms do not take open licensing in account enough. That’s why we’ve started working on “Filter me niet” (Filter me not) in which we look for ways to indicate that you’re purposefully CC licensing to let others remix your work. The first results are in Dutch only, here.

CC: Wat wil je verder nog delen?

CC Nederland: Toenemend gebruik van algoritmes, om potentiële auteursrechtenschendingen te identificeren, heeft negatieve consequenties voor open content. Deze algoritmes houden onvoldoende rekening met open licenties. Daarom zijn we Filter Me Niet begonnen, een project waarin we manieren onderzoeken om actief aan te geven dat je bewust Creative Commons licenties gebruikt om je werk beschikbaar te stellen voor hergebruik. Een eerste resultaat is te zien op www.filtermeniet.nl.

Thank you to the CC Netherlands team, especially Lisette Kalshoven and Sebastiaan ter Burg for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!

: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).

The post Meet CC Netherlands, Our Next Feature for CC Network Fridays! appeared first on Creative Commons.

Over 300 million images are uploaded to Facebook a day. Yes, just Facebook. Once other social media and photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, Unsplash, Instagram, etc. are taken into account, that number quickly grows into the billions. 

A lot has changed since the dawn of photography in the 19th century—when Nicéphore Niépce (a.k.a. the “Father of Photography”) peered through his camera obscura from his upstairs window in France and created the oldest surviving photographic image in 1826. At that time, and for over a century, photography was restricted to (primarily white and Western) wealthy hobbyists and career professionals. However, photography has become more democratized, digitized, and open over time. This process began in the 1940s with Kodak’s “Brownie” camera, then quickened with the invention of the digital camera in the late 1980s, and finally culminated with the smartphone in the early 2000s. In 2019, the Pew Research Center estimated that 1/3rd of the world’s population has a smartphone. This means that billions of people have access to a camera! 

Along with the democratization and digitization of photography came the rise of open licensing (the CC License Suite was first released in 2002) and “free” photo-sharing and stock photography websites (Flickr was founded in 2004). Although these trends have many benefits, they’ve generally made professional photographers feel uneasy. As photographer and filmmaker Erin Jennings wrote in a 2019 essay, “Not only has accessible digital photography threatened the commercial photography industry, it has also thrown into question the very self-worth of many photographers whose identities were mired in the exclusivity of the analog process.” As a photographer, I understand this uneasiness as well as the apprehension that comes with publishing images under open licenses. I’ve certainly wondered: Is it OK that I’m willingly handing organizations and companies the ability to use my work for “free”? Will this lead to the expectation that photography should always be free? Does this devalue professional photography?

Along with the democratization and digitization of photography came the rise of open licensing and “free” photo-sharing and stock photography websites; although these trends have many benefits, they’ve also made professional photographers feel uneasy.

Over time, I’ve learned more about the purpose of open licenses and the rights photographers are guaranteed under them. For instance, the attribution requirement under CC licenses can actually help maintain the connection between photograph and photographer because the photographer’s name must be attributed if their work is reused. In the age of image theft and image overload, that’s significant. The range of licenses available also gives photographers more freedom to determine how their photography can be used beyond “all rights reserved,” and clarify that to potential users. For up-and-coming photographers, this can be especially useful for building a personal brand and an audience of potential clients.  Personally, I try to always openly license my work—something I recently learned was possible on Exposure, a storytelling platform for photographers and visual storytellers. After using the platform for years, it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the company had enabled CC BY-ND as a licensing option. It also made me curious: Why did a platform that serves as a creative outlet for professional photographers and storytellers decide to allow open licensing as an option?

To find out, I contacted Exposure Founder and CEO Luke Beard via email. A photographer himself, I also wanted to know his personal thoughts about open licensing and the democratization of photography. Our conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

VH: The growing democratization of photography has led to a plethora of images online, primarily through free photo-sharing and stock photography websites. Has this trend impacted your identity as a professional photographer? Do you think it’s harming the industry? 

LB: I’d argue that Instagram has done more to change photography in the last decade than legacy and fledgling photo communities built around free sharing or stock [photography]. Instagram has a fairly large conversion rate. Its scale, reach, and impact on photography still feels unprecedented. It’s effectively one of the biggest stewards of the medium the world has ever seen.

The “professional photographer” part of my identity has a strong feeling around giving anything away for “free.” There are both potentially good and potentially negative outcomes, but it also depends on the context. You certainly learn a lot about what feels right or worth it by exploring free avenues. The communities that grow around services like Flickr can be incredible, and I’m sure many working photographers today got their start there. The proliferation of ways to discover photography though free, stock, or sharing [platforms] has certainly raised the bar both competition-wise and creativity-wise, and I’d say it has been a net positive.  

VH: There’s an ongoing debate within photography circles about open licensing and whether or not it harms professional photographers. What do you see as the benefits and drawbacks?

LB: The value of photography has simultaneously been raised and lowered as the internet economy has grown. As a visual medium—with amazing screens in the hands of ~3.5 billion people—photography has so much to offer for the foreseeable future.  

Open licensing also has a lot to offer photographers who are looking for new and interesting ways to share their craft and earn work. On the one hand, you have platforms with a huge reach that take on the hard work of distributing and hosting your photos in exchange for an open license (e.g. Unsplash). The long-tail upside might be that someone thinks your style of photography is perfect and hires you for a shoot. The flip side is that free and openly licensed photos may lose all concept that there is a photographer behind the photo. This devalues both the photographer and the photo. I personally struggle with the idea of normalizing good photography as something that has no cost or doesn’t require credit—although, it’s important to point out that CC licenses do require attribution. A comparison would be this one: it’s hard to make good software, but free applications normalize the idea that software should cost nothing. 

There is still lots of work to be done to reap the benefits of open licensing, and the majority of this work falls to the stewards of the platforms and tools.

Without openly licensed photos, however, we wouldn’t have visually rich Wikipedia pages or great collections like NASA’s image gallery. For individual photographers, I think there still has to be a better way. Maybe the answer is a blockchain solution through micropayments or maybe just a better marketplace platform. There is still lots of work to be done to reap the benefits of open licensing, and the majority of this work falls to the stewards of the platforms and tools. I’m hopeful the benefits will greatly outweigh the negatives. 

VH: Can you explain why Exposure decided to offer an open licensing option and if there were any specific challenges when making and implementing that decision?

We have taken baby steps into offering an open license as a feature. For context, it’s a toggle you can switch “on” or “off” for specific stories. As the creator, you agree to a CC BY-ND license for your photography within that story. This idea initially came about because we wanted to give Exposure members the ability to allow their family, friends, or clients to download their photos. Since the launch, however, we have seen it used for academic and non-profit purposes too, so we plan on expanding it this year by adding more licenses and the ability to license entire stories (including written content) and not just the individual photos. Our non-profit customers have expressed how helpful this would be to share their cause.

VH: Does Exposure educate users on this open licensing option or advertise it in any way?

The photo downloads feature is advertised as a paid feature because there is an infrastructure cost associated with allowing photos to be downloaded. When the feature is enabled by the member, we give a full legal description of how the license works and also a “basic” description in simpler terms. When a visitor downloads any photo that is under the open license they also see a similar dialog and download agreement that indicates the requirements of the license, including attribution to the photographer/source. This way, they know how and where they can use the photo before they actually download it.

VH: Taking a step back from open licensing, can you share with us one or two of the most impactful stories that have been shared on your platform?

That’s a tough one, as there have been thousands over the years, but right now I’m extra proud to host and share stories on climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, this story from Doctors without Borders (MSF) which shares the struggle to get the supplies needed to fight COVID-19 in Yemen; this piece by the United Nations Development Programme’s Climate Office telling the story of climate-resilient farming and food security in the outer islands of Kiribati; and this story of Black Lives Matter protests in Cobb County, Georgia by a local photographer.  

VH: The goal of the open movement is to build a more equitable, inclusive, and innovative world through sharing—do you believe sharing photography, and creative content more broadly, has a role in achieving that goal?

Openly sharing information has always happened within communities. I strongly believe the open movement has achieved great things since the first few days of ARPANET and the birth of the modern internet. Creative content still has room to mature to be a truly accessible, inclusive, and equitable medium as more people get access to the internet. But as a whole, visual content has had a huge impact by engaging most of the world—now more than any other time in history. There are things that worry me about our ability to achieve any sort of “open web” goal, these include the consolidated power of “Big Tech,” eroding net neutrality, and the disparity of access to reliable and affordable (if not free) internet connections—as recently seen with the impact of COVID-19 on students without a reliable internet connection at home.

VH: Photography as a profession has suffered from a lack of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity which has led to a mirrored lack of diversity in the images created (e.g. stock photos). What actions do you think individual photographers like yourself, and platforms like Exposure, can take to help increase diversity in the industry?

A quote mentioned in Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist has recently been very impactful in my thinking about just this. The quote is credited to Harry A. Blackmun from the 1978 Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Blackmun wrote, “…in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”

There is no progress without change and the status quo of taking a neutral stance does not allow for oppressed voices to be heard.

When I think about how this could be implemented in photography and the platforms that support it, I see several paths to a more equitable community: actively raising, promoting, and empowering the work of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and gender diverse photographers; giving resources to those same communities to enhance their ability to work, and; public platforms taking a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech and racism of any kind. There is no progress without change and the status quo of taking a neutral stance does not allow for oppressed voices to be heard. Exposure, as a platform, can do more on all these fronts, but the future looks bright for more giving and more empowering initiatives. Our Black Lives Matter support statement outlines what we are doing right now, and there is more to come in the future. 

VH: Luke, thank you for speaking with me! By the way, there are a growing number of openly licensed collections that are working to increase diversity in stock photography. These include Nappy, the Gender Spectrum Collection, Disabled and Here Collection, and Women in Tech. Check them out!

: Featured image by Kollage Kid, titled “Lighthouse” and licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

The post The Increasingly Open World of Photography: A Conversation With Exposure’s Luke Beard appeared first on Creative Commons.

Did you know that the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 43 CC Country Chapters? Spread across the globe, these CC Chapters are the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They work to implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.

To help showcase their work, we’re excited to introduce our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’ll travel around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open! 

First up is CC Italy!

The CC Italian Chapter was formed in December 2018. Its Chapter Lead and representative to the CC Global Network Council is lawyer Deborah De Angelis. From the beginning, the Chapter has been involved in many fields of the open movement but over the last year, in particular, it has enhanced its activities covering almost all CCGN Platforms. To learn more about their work, we reached out to CC Italy to ask a few questions. They responded in both English and Italian! 

CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work?

CC Italy: The Italian Chapter is involved in advocating for CC licenses, in the process of the DSM Directive implementation in Italy, and has formed an Open GLAM group and an Open Education group. Our goal is to achieve more openness and the widespread adoption of CC licenses in Italy.

Il Capitolo italiano divulga le licenze CC, è coinvolto nel processo di implementazione della Direttiva DSM e recentemente ha costituito al suo interno due gruppi di lavoro, uno dedicato all’Open GLAM e uno dedicato all’Open Education.

CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?

CC Italy: The Chapter participated in the hearing at the Italian Senate for the DSM Directive implementation. It is working on a common appeal for the free re-use of cultural heritage images in the European Union and writing a proposal to the Italian Ministry for the Open Education policies implementation.

Il Capitolo italiano ha partecipato alle audizioni al Senato per l’implementazione della Direttiva DSM. Attualmente sta lavorando ad un appello per il libero riuso delle immagini dei beni culturali nell’Unione Europea e ad una proposta indirizzata al Ministero italiano dell’Istruzione e dell’Università e della ricerca per l’implementazione di politiche di Open education.

CC: What projects in your country are using CC licenses that you’d like to highlight?

You can find some Italian private and public organizations that share their works with CC licenses, here. We would like to mention that the National and Central Library of Rome (not present in the list above) shares its digital content under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

Potete trovare qui alcune realtà italiane pubbliche e private che condividono le proprie opere con le licenze CC. Vorremmo citare anche la Biblioteca nazionale Centrale di Roma (non presente nell’elenco) tra coloro che condividono i propri contenuti digitali con licenza CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?

CC Italy: We strongly believe in the importance of sharing knowledge and culture in order to create a fairer world through a democratic and safe digital space. We work very hard for this purpose and we are rewarded by every small step forward we’re able to achieve.  

Crediamo fortemente che la condivisione della cultura e della conoscenza siano fondamentali per la creazione di un mondo più equo anche attraverso uno spazio digitale  sicuro e democratico. Lavoriamo molto in questa direzione e ci sentiamo pienamente ricompensati da ogni passo avanti che riusciamo a raggiungere con il nostro lavoro.

CC: What are your plans for the future? 

CC Italy: The future is now! We are deeply involved in so many projects and we really hope to achieve even just a part of our goal, and to enlarge and strengthen the Italian CC community. For updates about the CC Italian Chapter’s activities, visit our website or contact us! 

Il futuro è adesso! Stiamo lavorando su tantissimi progetti e speriamo di raggiungere anche solo una parte dei nostri obiettivi e di ingrandire e rafforzare la comunità italiana di Creative Commons. Per aggiornamenti sulle attività del Capitolo italiano CC, visita il nostro sito Web o contattaci!

Thank you to the CC Italy team, especially Laura Sinigaglia and Deborah de Angelis for contributing to the first CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website! 

: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).

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Thousands of strangers working together, almost entirely online, to effectively solve an urgent, global challenge is remarkable—and it’s happening, right now. Recently, we published a post titled, “Open-Source Medical Hardware: What You Should Know and What You Can Do” examining the collaborative efforts by volunteer groups, universities, and research centers to solve the medical supply shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through open-source medical hardware. While researching that story, we stumbled on the work of Just One Giant Lab (JOGL). 

JOGL is a research and innovation laboratory based in Paris, France that operates as an open and distributed mobilization platform for collaborative task solving. When the pandemic started, JOGL’s team recognized that their knowledge of community organizing and their open platform could help create and support many open-source projects. In response, they launched the OpenCovid19 Initiative, which now includes over 4000 healthcare workers, engineers, designers, scientists, technologists, and everyday citizens. The vibrant, global community exchanges thousands of daily messages on hundreds of projects they hope will help save lives; from an open-source syringe to an algorithm that calculates the probability of infection. 

To get a better understanding of JOGL’s mission, its community, and open source work, we reached out to Co-Founder and CTO Leo Blondel via email.

Our interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Q: What’s Just One Giant Lab’s (JOGL) mission? 

Blondel: Our mission from the beginning has been to become the first full-fledged virtual laboratory where users can collaborate and innovate in order to solve problems and answer research questions—we want to be a central hub for open science and innovation. On the social side, we aim to help humanity fix its most urgent and important problems using open science, responsible innovation, and continuous learning. To that end, we partner with academic labs, companies, startups, foundations, NGOs, and public services to create participatory research programs for understanding and solving health, environmental, social, and humanitarian issues. On the technical side, we create and utilize a series of open-source applications to support the research and innovation activities generated by our users. To this aim, we have created a platform where users can launch their projects and collaborate openly with others to solve pressing needs.

Q: What are some initiatives JOGL is working on in regards to the medical supply shortage? 

Blondel: Currently, multiple initiatives are being developed. We quickly identified that many factories, maker spaces, and citizens had a production capacity that could be put to use. Due to the beauty of open-source projects, the number of available prototypes was staggering—over 70 designs for open masks, for example. Therefore a project was created to review, test, and select the designs that were the most relevant, safe, compliant, and easily manufactured by a panel of medical experts. Armed with this idea, we created a partnership with the Paris Hospital Network (APHP) to organize a validation challenge and identified four essential needs: face masks and face shields, syringe pumps, consumables for intubation, and ventilators. So far, the Open-Source Syringe Pump project has been selected, and a team composed of medical doctors, engineers, and manufacturers are working to get the device refined with a foolproof user experience (UX) design and fail proof delivery system. Finally, a long-running open-source respirator project is currently in the testing phase to prove that the design is applicable in a medical setting.  

Q: How is JOGL working across its entire community to help fill the medical supply shortage? 

Blondel: JOGL acts as the central hub that connects citizens, amateurs, medical doctors, researchers, and policymakers. By creating a central repository of knowledge where people can not only document, but also discuss, and collaborate on open research and innovation we accelerate what would normally require established professional networks. An example is the aforementioned Open-Source Syringe Pump project, where JOGL connected the knowhow of the medical doctors at the Paris Hospital Network to engineers in the United States and manufacturers in China. JOGL not only provides the technical tools necessary for this to happen, but also the coordination team necessary to establish relationships between humans and ideas. 

We are also creating and implementing a new open governance scheme so that communities can self organize more easily. For this, we are working with wonderful community members who specialize in management, sociocracy, holacracy, and other new and exciting forms of open governance. We hope that this beta test will help us establish new and clear guidelines and models to create better UX and user flows in order to fast track similar collaborations in the future.

Q: Have you been surprised at the willingness of your community to volunteer their time and resources to help with these initiatives? 

Blondel: I was not surprised. From a historical perspective, times of crisis have more often than not created enormous solidarity movements. Most recently, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico saw the regeneration of community links long lost. People flying back to help and thousands of people rebuilding infrastructure for free—a great read on this would be Naomi Klein’s The Battle For Paradise. As an evolutionary biologist, I think that because we have evolved to be a social species and have empathy, it’s hard for us to stand inactive when we see misery. So I wasn’t surprised that people organized to help. Open communities are the foundational structure of JOGL, and we have always believed in their power to change the world. What did surprise us was the willingness of large institutions to trust initiatives like ours in a time of crisis and to try to establish partnerships with us to strengthen the community effort. We are now seeing a shift in how large actors are seeing open initiatives and I believe it’s for the best! 

Q: What impact do you think the COVID-19 pandemic will have on open source and open science?

Blondel: I think that this pandemic happened at a time where open communities were “ripe.” What I mean by that is for a long time the open world was not very inclusive to the general public. However, thanks to, in part, the citizen science movement, there is general public enthusiasm for open research and innovation. It’s hard to predict the future, but I hope that big institutions like the World Health Organization (WHO) will start funding open science initiatives. 

However, the open science movement still needs to prove itself to the world. By nature, computer code lends itself to being openly accessible more easily; you really only need a computer to work on open-source coding projects. Science, on the other hand, is much harder because there is a lack of access, particularly in regards to physical access to laboratories and resources. The validation process can also serve as a barrier. Therefore, figuring out how to break down these barriers to scientific resources and increase the production of scientific work that is open access is something we are incentivized to work on right now—and something we will continue to work on for many years to come.

If you have a question regarding CC Licenses and how they apply to open-source hardware designs or other projects, please feel free to contact us at info@creativecommons.org.

Stop the spread of COVID-19 by taking these steps outlined by the WHO, including washing your hands for at least 20 seconds and social distancing.

The post Just One Giant Lab Co-Founder Leo Blondel on the Power of Community and Open Source During COVID-19 appeared first on Creative Commons.

Since the founding of Creative Commons (CC) in 2001, we’ve been supported by like-minded organizations and individuals who value open access, the open community, and the global commons as much as we do. As we near our 20th anniversary, we are reflecting on the past and planning for the future. What better way to do that than to hear from the supporters who have made our work possible over the last 20 years?

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been a longtime CC supporter and thought partner. We reached out to the Foundation’s President, Larry Kramer, for his thoughts on the value of open access in the Foundation’s philanthropic work and the future he envisions for the open movement. 

Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

CC: The Hewlett Foundation has been a funder and partner of CC for over a decade. Can you talk about the value the Foundation has found in CC’s work, and why open access is so important?

Larry Kramer: Openness is one of our core guiding principles. We believe that sharing our knowledge and experiences—our challenges as well as our successes—with others can both build trust and invite their ideas for how we can improve. We are committed to continuous learning, and we see open access as a key part of that goal. 

When Creative Commons was founded, the notion that content creators would routinely allow others to use or modify their work seemed far-fetched. Today, Creative Commons stewards a large and growing movement to make knowledge more freely available, to foster collaboration, and to spur advances and improvements that make the world a better place for everyone. At the most basic level, the sharing that Creative Commons facilitates increases the chances that good ideas will be heard and have an impact. We care a lot about that, which is why Creative Commons has been such a longstanding partner. 

CC: In 2014, the Hewlett Foundation extended its open licensing policy to all grantees, writing: “Solving the kinds of challenges the Hewlett Foundation chooses to address requires good ideas, but ideas are not enough. Asking grantees to make sure their ideas are shared, so others can learn from and build on them, will help those ideas go further, be challenged and strengthened, and, in the end, do more good.” 

Can you take us through the process behind this decision?

Larry Kramer: The Hewlett Foundation has long had a policy of making information related to our grantmaking available under an open license so that others can learn from our experience. We share evaluations that our organization commissions, as well as our strategy papers and non-confidential information about individual grants. In 2014, we extended our commitment to open licensing to include, under most circumstances, materials created with our grant dollars. The basic decision was not difficult: we believe in openness and the benefits it produces, and it seemed straightforward to apply that principle to things produced with our funding as well as to things we produce ourselves. But we also knew that a blanket rule would not work, because we support diverse areas of work, produced in many different contexts, by organizations with different operational models. For example, a policy like this would affect researchers at a think tank quite differently from artists in a performing arts organization. So we thought this through carefully and only acted after conversations internally and with grantees, crafting a policy to ensure that it did not inadvertently hurt or burden grantees. At the end of the consultation process, we emerged with a new language for project grants and a toolkit for grantees to understand how to implement these requirements. 

Happily, the shift has worked out very well. In fields with very scant resources, understanding how to actually go about openly licensing something can be confusing. We have tried to build an understanding amongst our grantees and peer funding partners of what open licensing is, and how it can contribute to their goals. Where necessary, we sometimes provide legal counsel to grantees who are trying to figure out the best way to do this. 

CC: Advocates of open access believe that it can lead to a more accessible, equitable, and innovative world. Can you share any examples of how the Foundation has seen this idea at work? 

Larry Kramer: One concrete example is our Images of Empowerment collection of 2,000 openly licensed images of women in 11 countries around the world. It’s well established that visuals can both create and change our biases and inspire action. Several years ago, one of our program officers in our Global Development and Population portfolio wanted to change how we “see” women in developing countries. Working with Getty Images, we funded a new set of stock photos that show women making decisions, earning income, and accessing reproductive health care and services to care for themselves and their families. Our purpose was twofold: provide a more accurate, positive representation of women’s lives and make the images a public good, free for any nonprofit to use. We knew that open licensing would be a necessary component to help encourage use and reuse. Nonprofits seldom have affordable or easy access to images that tell their stories or show their impact. The photographs were intended to fill that gap for both advocates doing this work and newsrooms that cover these issues. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation have since added to the collection, and the full set now includes 2,000 high-quality, editorial images of women working and acting in their communities in Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Thailand, Uganda, and the United States. 

Another example is our long-term investment in free, remixable, revisable learning materials, termed as open educational resources (OER). Like CC, Hewlett has been investing in OER since its inception in 2001. We believe that access to knowledge should never be a barrier to learning, and OER provides a stream of high-quality educational opportunities for students around the world. Creative Commons was among our first OER grantees because it provides the backbone of OER’s infrastructure. As OER has grown in usage and as a field, Creative Commons has provided consistent support to our grantees. That work is now benefiting countless students all over the world who have been forced abruptly to switch to distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are lessons being learned about how well these materials can work that will carry over once the pandemic ends. 

CC: What challenges and/or barriers exist that may be stopping other philanthropic foundations from adopting open access policies? 

Larry Kramer: There are at least two sources of hesitation when it comes to embracing open access policies, both of which may apply more broadly than just to philanthropic foundations. First, there’s a lack of understanding about open licensing—what it is, why it matters, and how it works. Open access is an entirely new topic for many organizational leaders. Second, there is also hesitation to impose a new priority of this sort onto the culture of an organization or its grantees. A truly impactful open access policy has implications for every department in the organization—from technical assistance required from a legal team to the Communications Department’s choosing of images for the organization’s website. Change management is always difficult, and something this far-reaching can be a heavy undertaking. 

To encourage open access policies, Creative Commons could build on initiatives like the CC Certificate that approach the topic of open access from different perspectives. While the work itself is about legal licensing, open access can help solve a variety of problems, and it’s important to show that to organizational leaders—to offer stories about what works and how open access can help. It would also help to connect open access policies to other change management efforts that are undertaken at periodic intervals in philanthropic organizations. 

CC: As we look forward five to ten years, what do you think “success” looks like in regards to open access policy and advocacy?

Larry Kramer: The global COVID-19 pandemic has deepened and highlighted longtime inequities that have plagued access to education and basic healthcare around the world. It has also shown how important it is for people to be able to collaborate, learn together, and build on each other’s thinking. It would be wonderful if, in the wake of everything happening in 2020, nations around the world adopt policies that require all publicly funded research and learning resources to be openly licensed. Given the crisis of access to learning materials exposed by the need to use distance learning, we should see an increase in educational institutions’ support for creating and using OER. We would also welcome commitments from other foundations to join us in adopting open access policies so that efforts and products intended to benefit the public good can be owned and freely used by the public. 

Please consider donating to Creative Commons so that we can continue stewarding the CC licenses and building the open access tools and platforms individuals and organizations, like The Hewlett Foundation, use to share. If you’d like to learn more about implementing open access policies and utilizing open licenses, check out the CC Certificate course or this free ebook. 

Thank you to Larry Kramer for offering his time and thoughtful words, Neha Gohil for helping us pull this piece together, and the entire staff of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for their support. 

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In response to the global health emergency caused by COVID-19, we’ve seen an array of organizations, publications, and governments make COVID-19 related research open access. For example, the U.S. National Library of Medicine recently released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)—a machine-readable coronavirus literature collection with over 29,000 articles available for text and data mining (TDM). 

These actions are not surprising given the urgency of the current situation. In our previous post, “Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why” we explain that rapid and unrestricted access to scientific research and educational materials is necessary to overcome this crisis. However, while we applaud the recent moves by organizations, publishers, and governments to open access to scientific research related to COVID-19, we believe the same level of sharing should be applied to all scientific research. Not only for the public good but also for the good of science. Science can only function properly if results, data, and insights are made openly available. “Universality is a fundamental principle of science,” explains the open access consortium cOAlition S, “only results that can be discussed, challenged, and, where appropriate, tested and reproduced by others qualify as scientific.”

Put simply, open science is the best way to do science. This is why CC has consistently recommended the following best practices for sharing research openly:

• Zero embargo period so the public has immediate access 
• CC BY on the article so it’s available for TDM
• CC0 on the research data so other scientists can scrutinize the conclusions, replicate the study, and advance the science

In order to examine this issue further, as well as provide some guidance for scientific researchers and organizations specifically, we reached out to intellectual property and copyright law expert Dr. Lucie Guibault, an associate professor at the Schulich School of Law and associate director of the Law & Technology Institute at Dalhousie University.

Our conversation below is slightly edited for clarity and length. 

CC: Why does open access to scientific research and data matter in moments of crisis?

Dr. Guibault: When time is of the essence, like now with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific research results must be made available as soon as possible so that other scientists, policymakers and the general population can rely on sound scientific data in their decision-making process. Contrary to the traditional publishing model, which puts scientific publications behind a paywall or puts a 6 to 12-month embargo on self-archiving (depositing scholarly research in an online repository or open archive), open access allows for immediate, worldwide access to scientific and scholarly publications. Actions based on new findings can be immediate. For example, open access to a broad corpus of articles can certainly help reduce duplication of work, but most of all it enables easy text and data mining (TDM) which leads to new insights and knowledge. Through TDM scientists can make predictions on where a virus will emerge, when it might peak, what drug might work, etc.

CC: Why do you think organizations are adopting open access policies and actions in response to this crisis?

Dr. Guibault: It must be because, in their line of activity, these organizations have discovered the tremendous advantage of having immediate, free access to current, replicable, reliable, verifiable scientific results upon which they can base sound and informed decisions. This would most likely not be possible if the vital research results were not made available under open access conditions, as the alternative is either to pay for access, to wait for the expiration of the embargo period, or to base their decision on less reliable sources.

CC: If an organization is interested in adopting an open access policy, what are the steps they need to take?

Dr. Guibault: Institutions should become more familiar with open access policy documents before making decisions about it. Administrators should read on and about the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. Once they know more about the issue, they should consider adhering to these three declarations. The next step is to develop a realistic implementation strategy.

CC: What advice would you give to researchers who are unaware or unsure about open access?

Dr. Guibault: Individual researchers who are unaware or unsure about open access should try to become familiar with the advantages and drawbacks of open access. Of course, it’s easier for a researcher if their institution has adhered to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment because it guarantees that the researcher’s individual efforts in publishing articles and releasing data under open access conditions will be rewarded. When the institution employing the researcher has no clear open access policy, researchers may be more hesitant to publish in open access journals, especially if high author processing charges are involved. Nevertheless, they should at least endeavor to always self-archive their publications.

CC: What impact do you think the COVID-19 crisis will have on open access policies? 

Dr. Guibault: Open access is in itself such a worthwhile goal that it shouldn’t need a catastrophe like the COVID-19 virus to push it forward. But if it did, it would be a very small consolation.

For guidance on implementing an open access policy or using the CC License Suite, please contact us at info@creativecommons.org—we’re here to help. 

Stop the spread of COVID-19 by taking these steps outlined by the WHO, including washing your hands for at least 20 seconds and social distancing.

The post Dr. Lucie Guibault on What Scientists Should Know About Open Access appeared first on Creative Commons.

Today is the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI).

You may be wondering why this day is necessary—particularly in 2019, when the average person is inundated with an estimated 34 gigabytes of information every day, from emails and text messages to Youtube videos and news programs. In fact, it’s easy to take information for granted. However, access to public information, in particular, is not universal.

“Although technology has increased the amount of information and systematized the collection of data, people and communities across the world still lack access to critical, public information,” explains Bushra Ebadi. As a researcher and Executive Committee Member of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, Bushra relies on public information to study and develop solutions for issues such as insecurity, corruption, inequality, and climate change.

Access to information “is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression” and “a key enabler towards inclusive knowledge societies.”

According to Moez Chakchouk, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, access to information “is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression” and “a key enabler towards inclusive knowledge societies.” Despite this, UNESCO says that many governments “do not have national legislation on access to information as a specific expression of the law,” otherwise known as freedom of information legislation. This means that millions of people do not have the right or the ability to access public information. Further, “Even when these laws exist they are not necessarily abided by,” adds Bushra, “there can be a lot of red tape to access information in a timely manner.”

This lack of access is particularly worrying for researchers and activists, like Bushra. Without universal, open access to data from governments or research institutions, for example, developing effective solutions to global problems is difficult.

A Closer Look At Government Data

Increasingly, governments are using tools like Creative Commons’ CC0 Public Domain Dedication (CC Zero) to maximize the “re-use of data and databases” by clarifying that these resources are in the public domain and not restricted by copyright. However, there are many instances when data collected by governments are not made easily accessible (e.g., through an online data portal or open source data set).

In 2017, the World Wide Web Foundation found that almost every country included in its Open Data Barometer report failed to adequately share important data with the public. For example, only 71% of the observed government data sets were published online, only 25% were available via an open license, and only 7% of government data sets were truly open—meaning they “can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose.” The Foundation also reported that many of the available data sets were “incomplete, out of date, of low quality, and fragmented.”

In her work, Bushra often relies on government data to conduct policy research, but has routinely experienced problems. “The relevance of the data is largely dependent on how and what information was collected, as well as the format it is available in,” she explains. While studying issues related to forced migration and gender discrimination in the Global South, for example, she found it difficult to access reliable data.

“By restricting access to those who can afford it or have power and privilege, we support a system and culture of elitism…”

To compensate for this lack of data, researchers must often rely on data collected by non-government entities—which are typically kept behind expensive paywalls. According to Bushra, this is particularly detrimental. “By restricting access to those who can afford it or have power and privilege, we support a system and culture of elitism in which a select group of people with access are able to dictate what is done with information and how it is used.”

The Power of Information

Universal, open access to public information, particularly government data, not only facilitates scientific collaboration and innovation, it also empowers communities that have been historically marginalized and silenced.

“Access to information is intrinsically tied to the right to know and the right to exist,” Bushra emphasizes, “and without access to information, citizens lack the tools they need to hold their governments and people in power accountable.”

Information is powerful—that’s why, even in 2019, the International Day for Universal Access to Information remains not only important, but necessary.

To learn more and get involved, visit UNESCO’s website or sign up for their newsletter.

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