Open Knowledge

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Open Knowledge
Open Knowledge logo.png
Founded May 20, 2004 (2004-05-20)
Founder Rufus Pollock
Type Nonprofit organization
05133759[1]
Focus Open knowledge broadly, including open access, open content, open science and open data.
Location
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Area served
 International
Key people
 Rufus Pollock
Slogan Sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata...
Website okfn.org

Open Knowledge (known as the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) until April 2014)[2] is a global non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data.[3] It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 24 May 2004[4] in Cambridge, UK.

Aims

Joris Pekel[5] presenting at GLAM-WIKI 2013[6]

The aims of Open Knowledge are:[1]

  • Promoting the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why is it a good idea.
  • Running open knowledge events, such as OKCon.
  • Working on open knowledge projects, such as Open Economics or Open Shakespeare.
  • Providing infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. For example, the KnowledgeForge service and CKAN.
  • Acting at UK, European and international levels on open knowledge issues.

People

In April 2015 Pavel Richter took on the role of CEO of Open Knowledge. Pavel was formerly Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland. Pollock remains in a leadership role.[7]

The Open Knowledge Advisory Council includes people from the areas of open access, open data, open content, open science, data visualization and digital rights. In 2015, it consisted of:[8]

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Network

As of 2015, Open Knowledge has 9 official chapters and 49 groups in different countries.[9]

Chapters

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Local groups

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Working groups

It also supports 19 working groups.

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Operations

File:Entrevista Michael Bauer CCCB.webm
Interview to Michael Bauer[disambiguation needed] at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona[10]

Many of Open Knowledge's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project, CKAN, is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess.[11]

The organisation tends to support its aims by hosting infrastructure for semi-independent projects to develop. This approach to organising was hinted as one of its earliest projects was a project management service called KnowledgeForge, which runs on the KForge platform. KnowledgeForge allows sectoral working groups to have space to manage projects related to open knowledge. More widely, the project infrastructure includes both technical and face-to-face aspects. The organisation hosts several dozen mailing lists[12] for virtual discussion, utilises IRC for real-time communications and also hosts events.

Advocacy

Open Knowledge is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources.[13]

Open Knowledge has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness,[14] as well as the Open Software Service Definition.[15] It also supported the development of the Open Database License (ODbL).[16]

Outside of technology, Open Knowledge plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation[17][18] and producing guides.[19]

Rufus Pollock, one of Open Knowledge's founders, and current board secretary sits on the UK government's Public Sector Transparency Board.[20]

Technical

Banner for the Geodata project in Spanish
OpenGLAM logo

The foundation places a strong interest in the use of open source technologies. Its software projects are hosted on GitHub, which utilises the Git version control software. Some of the projects are listed below:[21]

  • CKAN, a tool that provides store for metadata. This enables governments to quickly and cheaply provide a catalogue of their data.[22]
  • Datahub,[23] a community-run catalogue of useful sets of data on the Internet. Depending on the type of data (and its conditions of use), Datahub may also be able to store a copy of the data or host it in a database, and provide some basic visualisation tools.
  • Open bibliography, broadly construed as efforts to catalogue and build tools for working with and publishing bibliographic resources,[24][25] with particular emphasis on those works that are in the public domain and public domain calculators. Examples include the Bibliographica,[26] Public Domain Works,[27] Open Shakespeare,[28] Open Text Book[29] and The Public Domain Review[30] projects.
  • OpenGLAM,[31] an initiative that promotes free and open access to digital cultural heritage, held by GLAMs: Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.[32] OpenGLAM is co-funded by the European Commission as part of the DM2E (Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana) project.[33]
  • Open Economics[34]
  • Open Knowledge Forums[35]
  • Information Accessibility Initiative
  • Open geodata[36]
  • Guide to open data licensing
  • "Get the Data" — a web-site for questions and answer on how to get data sets.
  • POD - Product Open Data

Events

Much of the collaboration with other related organisations occurs via events that the foundation hosts.[37] Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held annually since 2007.[38] Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation[39] and free information network infrastructure.[40]

Annually, Open Knowledge opens the biggest event internationally for Open Data called International Open Data Hackthon.

Panton Principles and Fellowships (Open data in Science)

The Panton Principles (for Open Data in Science) in 2010 had large contributions from Open Knowledge people and in 2011 Jonathan Gray and Peter Murray-Rust successfully obtained funding from OSF for two fellowships, held by Sophie Kershaw[41] and Ross Mounce.[42] In 2013 OKF obtained sponsorship from CCIA[43] for 3 fellowships, which were awarded to Rosemarie Graves,[44] Sam Moore[45] and Peter Kraker.[46][47]

Other

D-cent logo.jpg

Open Knowledge also supports Apps for Europe,[48] and D-CENT, a European project created to share and organise data from seven countries, which is running from October 2013 to May 2016.[49]

See also

References

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External links

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  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  19. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Open Knowledge Projects
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ http://okfn.org/get-involved/working-groups/
  33. ↑ http://dm2e.eu/community-building/
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  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  47. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  48. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  49. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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