20. … and indicators! http://www.flickr.com/photos/theclaytaurus/511671262/sizes/l/
21. Dr. Peter Parycek, MSc Zentrum für E-Government, Donau-Universität Krems [email_address] +43 2732 893-2312 http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/egov http://linkedin.com/parycek http://www.slideshare.net/parycek http://twitter.com/parycek 21/10/10 21/10/10 Thank you for your attention !
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36040317@N02/3621999401/ Internet and mobile-phone penetration increased worldwide and in developed countries almost reach the whole society. The tools are widespread commodities and almost everyone can afford it. Smart phones like iPhone, blackberry or android phones are the perfect convergence of text, audio and video for passive consuming and active producing. We could call it the “democratization of technology”. But technology is only the base for real change – (the change/progress), how people are communicating and organizing themselves. What Clay Shirky summarized as the change of behaviour in society.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmevans/399406599/sizes/o/ Society has reached enormous communication and organization power. Time Magazin proclaimed in 2007 – you or we together (are in) control (of) the information age. What we experienced in the years 2008/2009 we have reached that time periode. The pre-filters like publishers are loosing more and more of their power and the post-filters – the crowd – are getting more and more important. People are starting to produce from / based on software systems, applications, videos or texts and are even doing research in their spare time. Maybe ‘cause some of them made an unlucky career choice and are using their spare time to give life a meaning .
http://www.flickr.com/photos/h-k-d/3654465786/ The new paradigm (of society) is, that most of the society- produced/ generated content can be reused, rewritten or recreated. So nobody owns it, everybody can use it and anybody can improve it. We are in a “read/write culture”, like Rufus Pollack called it. The base for innovation is accessible and rewriteable content.
Traditional companies have to protect their content, cause they had to pay (their) authors and to run a whole organization including their overheads. On the other hand, society and private authors have completely diverse business models and motivations. Their work is based on the gift-economy model and their motivation is non monetary; but based on social status, image, altruism and fun. In the case of social status and image, people are proud if their content I reused. So there are (two) totally different framework s : Companies have to protect their content of being reused. Individuals are motivating to reuse their content. http://www.creativecommons.at/
As to academic publishing, (for example) “Springer & Co” is protecting it’s content and only allowing access to it’s enormous database if you pay. As we know, it is extremely expensive. E.g. our university can not afford access to all publisher databases. Yet, still most of the high quality papers are published in conventional journals, cause these have more tradition than the OA-journals, which are not ranked in the index systems. As research money allocation in universities is linked to the impact factor, most of us are highly motivated to publish in these closed journals - where even universities cannot afford the access. And of course amateur researches have no access either. http://www.springer.com/ http://www.doaj.org/
www.flickr.com/photos/spursfan_ace/2328879637/sizes/l/ So to change/alter that, we have to work/operate bottom-up, but this is a long process, because it needs time and effort to establish a n OA journal which is ranked. To foster these movements, politics can (and should help to) speed up the open access movement.
Open Government Memorandum, which is (aiming at) opening up the data-base access.
http:// www.data.gov / So that people can access the raw data, which will lead to innovative applications produced by society.
http:// www.creativecommons.at / Administration should also publish their content under a creative commons license. So citizens (will) realize what they are allowed to do with this content. This ensures legal certainty! When administration assigns someone to produce content, they should include reuse rights for the public. Mostly this is not case, for instance with school books in Austria. So teachers are not allowed to reuse or change the content.
http:// www.classcaster.org/resserver.php?blogId =175&resource= open.jpg And this leads (us) direct ly to universities. Especially in Europe, universities are financed by public funds, but (as discussed before) they publish their high-value content in closed journals. In many member states, researches and their institutions are measured by impact factored through (the impact factors of the) journals (in which they publish). So traditional politics are motivating them to continue their tradition and make it even harder to establish open access journals; Currently we are using the wrong indicators, therefore politics has to change the framework. In Austria we have agreements between the ministry ( of Science and Research ) and the universities - development and financing of the universities are negotiated for (a) three years(‘s period) – indicators for monitoring the development are defined; still until now we have no indicators for open access. In Austria we could (and should) change this culture very soon and I’m convinced (that) in (the) other member states (, this would) also (be possible), because universities depend on public financing. So European governments could renew the framework very fast, maybe faster than in US-America, because they are more independent of administration and politics. In this field we could have a better position. The framework should make OA mandatory for all universities this means: Build up central based repositories with bachelor’s, master’s & PhD theses Determine a percentage of papers which have to be published in OA journals, this percentage should be increased year for year until 90% (are reached) Open access to the raw data of surveys and research – especially in (the area of) social science there would be little risk Promote collaboration between universities and try to break up the silos Include society into science
The Apps for democracy example shows how innovative the society /public can be; beside public data they could also use the enormous/huge (value of this) scientific content - from raw data to information . We - the universities - have the responsibility to give our results back to (the) society, which is financing us.
http://desert.marssociety.org/media/images/c01d12eva01.jpg http:// www.citizensky.org /content/about-citizen-sky Cooperation in research (with citizens and NGOs) is also possible, as these two examples demonstrate. Analysis (of data) and interpretation (of research results) could be done by the public as well. Therefore we have to overcome the hurdles.
We - as universities - have to rethink our culture. Public truth is not a (social) privilege, (which is) awarded to universities (alone). Universities have no monopoly on truth. We should use the power of (society/) social cooperation, rethink and focus on more egalitarian work principles. So we should set a good example for transparency and free access. (The picture shows one of the oldest universities – in the 9th century Salerno in Italy (It) was the first (medieval) medical school.) http:// de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:ScuolaMedicaMiniatura.jpg Oldest University Salerno 9th century http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schola_Medica_Salernitana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/theclaytaurus/511671262/sizes/l/ Therefore (as mentioned before) we also have to change the current indicators for universities and research. .