Peter Suber’s Open Access blog is an indispensable resource for monitoring open access, open content and open source developments, including for trends in the global South.
I’m selecting two items to give you a taste of the kind of reporting that you can find there.
Item 1: Making a commons of new and old knowledge in India
What do seeds have in common with software? Or age-old medicines with copyright lawyers? And, what’s the link between ayurvedic medicines and techies talking free software in Bangalore?
Such issues are getting closely enmeshed in a deepening debate on how knowledge is shared or controlled in this new information-dominated century. This is a debate of vital relevance for a country that is making an increasingly visible global impact through its brain power, and yet has among the most impressive collections of traditional medicines and knowledge.
Diverse views surface on how such issues should be tackled, as was strongly obvious at a 24-25 August “knowledge symposiumâ€? held at New Delhi….
Item 2: Survey of open content projects in five non-western regions
From today’s announcement by Openflows.org:
Openflows.org releases today a survey of open content projects in five non-western regions: Arab countries, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, Brazil and South East and Eastern Europe. The aim of the study is to assess the potential of the open content production process for areas and fields which are under served by the commercial players. While we cannot claim completeness, we believe that the range of projects allows insight into the complex ways in which these projects interact with their particular contexts and the vast differences this creates.