The openness buzz in the knowledge economy: Towards taxonomy

Authors : Anna Lundgren, Hans Westlund

In the networked information and knowledge-based economy and society, the notions of ‘open’ and ‘openness’ are used in a variety of contexts; open source, open access, open economy, open government, open innovation – just to name a few.

This paper aims at discussing openness and developing a taxonomy that may be used to analyse the concept of openness. Are there different qualities of openness? How are these qualities interrelated?

What analytical tools may be used to understand openness? In this paper four qualities of openness recurrent in literature and debate are explored: accessibility, transparency, participation and sharing. To further analyse openness new institutional theory as interpreted by Williamson (2000) is used, encompassing four different institutional levels; cultural embeddedness, institutional environment, governance structure and resource allocations.

At what institutional levels is openness supported and/or constrained? Accessibility as a quality of openness seems to have a particularly strong relation to the other qualities of openness, whereas the notions of sharing and collaborative economics seem to be the most complex and contested quality of openness in the knowledge-based economy.

This research contributes to academia, policy and governance, as handling of challenges with regard to openness vs. closure in different contexts, territorial, institutional and/or organizational, demand not only a better understanding of the concept, but also tools for analysis.

URL : http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263774X16671312

Commercialising Public Research New Trends and Strategies …

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Commercialising Public Research: New Trends and Strategies :

“Policy-makers have high hopes for public research as a new source of growth. This research has been the source of significant scientific and technological breakthroughs that have become major innovations. Well-known examples include the Global Positioning System (GPS), MP3 technology, and Apple’s Siri voice recognition technology.
The substantial economic benefits from public research, and demands by governments to reap them, have led to increased efforts toward more direct engagement in downstream commercialisation activities. In light of this, institutions and infrastructures that support the networks and markets for transferring and commercialising public research results are being reviewed across many OECD countries, as traditional approaches and models are facing considerable limitations and may be restraining further scientific advance and broader innovation.
The OECD report Commercialising Public Research: New Trends and Strategies looks closely at this evolution and provides a comprehensive review of government and institutional level policies aimed at enhancing the transfer and exploitation of public research results. The publication also compares performance in OECD countries, universities and public research institutions using both traditional and new indicators.”

URL : http://www.oecd.org/sti/sci-tech/commercialising-public-research.htm

Open access publishing a catalyst for scholarly research…

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Open access publishing: a catalyst for scholarly research publication :

“Technology has been a key driving force for change and emergence of new technology has brought a revolution in disseminating and sharing of research outputs at faster speed worldwide. Open access (OA) as a means for free availability of scholarly content via the Internet has enormous benefits accrue to the OA stakeholders. The purpose of this paper is to review all activities that can sensitize researchers and the scholarly community at large regarding the new publishing opportunity for dissemination of their research outputs at faster speed. The paper examines the open access OA concept, characteristics of OA and its growth. It also discusses open access models, OA benefits and copyright in digital era. Critical analysis of the rational for copyright law and fair for dealing were examined. It was inferred that OA as an accelerator for innovation, helps speedy the translation of ideas into innovative new services, products and other commercial ventures that fuel economic growth.”

URL : http://www.idpublications.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Paper-Open-access-publishing.pdf

Libre accès à la communication scientifique et contexte français : prospective, développement et enjeux pour la créativité et l’interdisciplinarité ?

Auteur/Author : Hans Dillaerts

Dans le cadre du développement international du mouvement du libre accès aux publications scientifiques, cette thèse analyse plus précisément la situation française dans le contexte européen.

Cette analyse a été menée à travers une démarche de recherche-action, au sein d’un groupe d’acteurs du Groupement français des industries de l’information (GFII) concernés par le libre accès.

Nous cherchons tout d’abord à mettre en évidence les forces motrices du développement du libre accès en nous appuyant sur une méthodologie prospective développée au LIPSOR/CNAM.

Les résultats nous ont conduit à contribuer à la conception d’un site d’information dont la finalité est l’affichage des politiques des éditeurs nationaux en matière d’auto-archivage afin d’accompagner les pratiques de dépôts au niveau national.

L’analyse prospective a en effet révélé l’importance des embargos pour les équilibres financiers des éditeurs.De façon plus distanciée, nous amorçons également une réflexion sur l’impact réel du libre accès sur deux moteurs semblant jouer un rôle croissant dans l’économie de la connaissance, à savoir la créativité et l’interdisciplinarité.”

URL : http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00768432/fr/

Sharing and the Creative Economy Culture in the…

Sharing and the Creative Economy: Culture in the Internet Age :

“In the past fifteen years, file sharing of digital cultural works between individuals has been at the center of a number of debates on the future of culture itself. To some, sharing constitutes piracy, to be fought against and eradicated. Others see it as unavoidable, and table proposals to compensate for its harmful effects. Meanwhile, little progress has been made towards addressing the real challenges facing culture in a digital world. Sharing starts from a radically different viewpoint, namely that the non-market sharing of digital works is both legitimate and useful. It supports this premise with empirical research, demonstrating that non-market sharing leads to more diversity in the attention given to various works. Taking stock of what we have learnt about the cultural economy in recent years, Sharing sets out the conditions necessary for valuable cultural functions to remain sustainable in this context.”
URL : http://paigrain.debatpublic.net/docs/internet_creation_1-3.pdf
URL : http://www.amazon.com/Sharing-Culture-Economy-Internet-Age/dp/9089643850

Knowledge without Borders : GEANT 2020 as the European Communications Commons

The GÉANT Expert Group’s report on the 2020 Vision for European Research and Education Networking was delivered today to Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda. The report presents the experts’ views on the future of the pan-European research and education network GÉANT. It makes specific recommendations to policy makers, funding bodies and the research and education networks community for supporting and expanding knowledge communities, pushing the state-of-the-art in technology and adapting to change both from a governance and funding point of view.

The GÉANT Expert Group, chaired by Prof. Žiga Turk and composed of six other high-level European experts in different fields of policy, technology and science, was set up in 2010 with the mission to “articulate a 2020 vision for European Research and Education networking and identify an action plan for realizing this vision”.

URL : https://www.terena.org/about/ga/ga36/GEANTExpertGroup.pdf