i4d Information for Development Magazine: Open Publishing

i4donline.net's February 2008 magazine focuses on open publishing. As stated in its opening editorial: "According to the Wikipedia, Open Publishing is a process of creating news or other content that is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available.....Open Publishing should be distinguished from Open Access Publishing, the publishing of material organised in such a way that there [are] no financial or other barriers to the user. (All or almost all the open publishing is in fact also open access.)...In order to fully exploit the potential of the knowledge economy, it is important that it does not get locked in. The concept of the commons and alternatives to licensing regimes that are prevalent in the field of intellectual property is a complex subject and we have tried in this issue to bring to the attention of the readers the latest developments....In order for the materials that are available on the Internet to be legally hassle-free, and accessible to differently-abled people’s requirements, there are some interesting software and development tools that have been examined. It is important to understand that this field is fairly nascent, and there is need to create massive awareness."

Some of the articles included in this issue are:

• Gutenberg Project - the oldest digital library project in the world, which digitises, stores, and manages old books and rare manuscripts, but also intends to ensure transparency, originality, and operational effectiveness for many authors, editors, and publishers;
  
• Moodle Course Management System (CMS) - a free and open source software package for educators, students, and online learning communities, which produces internet-based courses and websites;
• Widgit Software - in order to make the internet more accessible to people who have difficulty with text, whether due to low literacy or language differences, this symbol support for websites enables text to be automatically supported with graphic images;
• Open Webcasting;
• Open Architecture Network (OAN) - follows the Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) model to create and share architectural designs, problem-solving, and networks and already has some 1,266 architectural projects, available to be shared and used;
• Digital Library in India - calls for the digitisation of over a million books and scholarly manuscripts with a comprehensive portal that supports free access to literary resources;
• Cape Town Open Education Declaration - stemming from a September 2007 meeting to accelerate efforts to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education, calling for an open education movement;
• Information on the Farm Front;
• Interview: Gregory Newby and Michael Hart - according to these founders of Project Guttenberg, more than 36 million e-books were given away last year through electronic downloading from their website;
• Workshop on Science Commons - this workshop on science policy looked at the Free and Open Source model of knowledge creation and examined the impact it can have on India, particularly looking at the Open Source Drug Discovery, a programme to fight diseases like tuberculosis;
• ACIA: International Workshop on Asia and the Commons in the Information Age;
  
• Training programme on Biomedical Information Retrieval;
  
• BytesForAll summaries; and
  
• Books: Community radio guide, empowering tools.