Global Consumer Dialogue on A2K
1566 days ago
Consumers International (CI) will be convening the Global Consumer Dialogue on Access to Knowledge in Nairobi, Kenya, on 23 April 2009. "CI is the world federation of consumer groups that, working together with its members, serves as the only independent and authoritative global voice for consumers. With over 220 member organisations in 115 countries, CI is building a powerful international movement to help protect and empower consumers everywhere" (Source: CI's website).
The Dialogue will serve as a knowledge-sharing platform for capacity building and advocacy in areas of intellectual property rights, access to knowledge and broader communications and media rights. Participants will provide input into CI's activities in these areas, which will include an Access to Knowledge Watch List and a consumer survey on access barriers". See: http://a2knetwork.org/
The purpose of the African Regional meeting is to bring together CI members and other like-minded NGOs from across the region, including the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge Project (ACA2K), in a capacity building and networking exercise. A strategic plan will be developed for the global consumer movement's involvement in A2K for the next few years.
The first of Consumers International's regional meetings on Access to Knowledge was held in Kuala Lumpur in February 2009 . See report.
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Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities
1566 days ago
The Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) has launched its Report on "Opening Access to Knowledge in Southern African Universities".
This Report seeks to provide recommendations on how to address issues and restrictions affecting access to knowledge in the Southern African Region. Some of the restrictions are "copyright practices and regulations, a lack of access to Internet-based technologies, out-dated paradigms for knowledge collection and dissemination, and the lack of creative and effective government supported enabling environments within higher education to match the vision of African leaders for knowledge and innovation in Africa in the 21st century."
"The need to make knowledge produced in Southern Africa widely available and accessible in order to encourage further research, is acknowledged as one of several measures needed to increase research productivity in the region".
See the full report at http://www.sarua.org/?q=content/opening-access-knowledge-southern-african-universities
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Top Science Journals to Go Open Access in South Africa
1568 days ago
A range of South Africa's top academic journals will go open access by the end of March 2009!
The South African Journal of Science (SAJS), the official journal of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), will lead the way in putting African research on the map. It will become the first high-profile open access journal by the end of March, 2009, in a pilot project which will last two years.
Based on the Brazil-based Scientific Electronic Online Library (SciELO), this project aims to provide readers in developing countries with free online access to peer-reviewed academic journals.
"Open Access is relevant to the development of Sub-Saharan Africa, as some of the "closed" journals are expensive and some of our print-only journals do not reach the international academic community", says Kobus Roux from the Pretoria-based Meraka Institute.
Not all journals are eligible for this project - only those listed under international indexes will be considered.
For more information on this topic, see: http://allafrica.com/stories/200903030029.html
Denise Nicholson
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The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
1570 days ago
In his book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, James Boyle of the Center for the Public Domain at Duke University, USA, and Science Commons, "introduces readers to the idea of the public domain and describes how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, why jazz might be illegal if it were invented today, why most of 20th century culture is legally unavailable to us, and why today’s policies would probably have smothered the World Wide Web at its inception."
This book is commercially available but can be downloaded freely under a Creative Commons licence.
Denise Nicholson
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A2K and the WIPO Development Agenda: Time to List the "Public Domain"
1570 days ago
As part of their Project on IPRS and Sustainable Development, UNCTAD and ICTSD have launched a new series of Policy Briefs "addressing a wide number of priority issues on the global agenda relating to intellectual property and development, trade, technology, innovation, knowledge, health, climate change and biodiversity."
In the first Policy Brief entitled "A2K and the WIPO Development Agenda: Time to List the "Public Domain', the author, Dr. Suthersanen of the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, stresses the crucial role that the public domain plays in access to knowledge. She argues that the WIPO Development Agenda is a valuable opportunity to place the notion of the "public domain" at the centre of the intellectual property debate. She recommends the following with regard to A2K:-
"(a). Preserve the public domain and support norm-setting processes that promote a robust public domain;
(b). Initiate discussions on how to further facilitate access to knowledge for developing countries and least developed countreis (LDCs) in order to foster creativity and innovation; and
(c). Establish a forum for exchange of experiences on open collaborative projects such as the Human Genome Project."
"She proposes the creation of an international register for "public domain matter" which countries, particularly developing countries and LDCs, should be able to rely on in order to boost their local innovation and creativity."
For more information, see Policy Brief No. 1, December 2008.
Denise Nicholson
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