In October, CC Mongolia ran a workshop to promote national culture and language in the Buryat Republic of Russia as part of their Awesome Fund grant. A full report on their activities can be found here, and a short report by Batbold Zagdragchaa, CC Mongolia coordinator, is below.
If you’re interested in getting involved with our global community, join our Slack to find out more.
The project objective was to promote CC outreach among the national minority group Buryats, in Siberia, Russia. Buryats are ethnic Mongolians who comprise 30% of the population of the Buryat Republic. Young urban Buryats are becoming less proficient in their native language in favor of the Russian language. There is a need to promote Buryat culture, traditions and language. Using CC licenses and adopting principles of openness and sharing can enhance these activities.
There are some factors that can contribute to increasing interests and wider acceptance of CC licenses in Russia and in its Buryatia Republic. CC has been officially adapted into Russian legislation since October 2014. The official websites of the Russian President and the governmentare under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, for example. In 2016, the government of neighboring Tuva Republic started using CC license in its web portals at http://gov.tuva.ru/ and http://opentuva.ru/ .
CC Mongolia organized a workshop on October 14, 2016 at Buryat State University in Ulan-Ude. Around 40 people including educators, students, web developers, and government officials participated in the event. CC Mongolia presentation comprised of two parts:
National OER program in Mongolia for 2014-2024 and its projects
CC license introduction and its use in Russia and worldwide
For the most of audience it was the first time they’ve heard about CC licenses. Several participants expressed their interest to learn more about CC licenses and their willingness to use it for their work.
During the visit, also discussions were held about future potential projects, which can use open licensing and possibilities for public and private organizations to implement an open policy.
The outcomes of the workshop are:
Raised awareness about CC licenses and principles of openness and sharing will
Promoted linguistic and cultural diversity
Potential for future partnership for joint projects
After the workshop, we will continue email communications about open access. In terms of language promotion, we hope in the future to collaborate with UNESCO affiliate institutes and preferably create a network similar to EU’s LANGOER.
In September 2016, Creative Commons Europe hosted a meeting for our European affiliates in Lisbon, Portugal.
We would like to express our gratitude to the kind folks at Escola Das Gaivotas for hosting us, and to Teresa, Fatima, André, and Diogo from the CC Portugal team for being the best hosts ever!
What happens when you put 30 passionate commoners accustomed to meeting only online in a lovely conference venue in an historic city? Lots of talking, group updates, big plans being made, old and new issues being tackled, great projects presented, and new designs of collaboration schemes.
At the end of September, 30 participants from 15 different European Creative Commons teams came together for a meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. CC Representatives from the UK, France, Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovenia, Greece, Belarus, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, and Romania joined the meeting, organized by CC Portugal.
The whole group poses together in Lisbon. Saša Krajnc, CC BY
From this meeting, we learned that the CC affiliate network is interested (and involved) in much more than just licenses. CC teams are vital in new emerging “commons” activities, the sharing economy, 3D printing, open agriculture, open business models, and copyright reform.
Some highlights of the meeting:
The School of Rock(ing) Copyright, an information sharing bootcamp on copyright reform organized by Communia, with support from CC’s Awesome Fund. For a full report on this session, see Communia’s website. We all stand for creativity, innovation, access to knowledge, and development. Copyright laws can either boost or limit these goals, so we are actively involved with making progressive changes to copyright to benefit users, education, and the commons. Having some non-EU affiliates with us as well offered an interesting perspective on the importance of training and support on copyright reform in other regions and other languages than English.
Open business models are about allowing all actors gain a fair share (above and beyond monetary rewards) for their contribution to the commons. Exploring and supporting open business models can also work to tackle the related discrepancies that can possibly turn a flourishing commons into a closed, feudalistic environment. The use of CC can one aspect for creating open, regenerative, and distributed networks.
The kick off for the CC Certificates project raises fascinating challenges for CC in terms of education and validation of information about CC. A certification mechanism will formalize many of our efforts to teach about open, which is a challenge for a network with such a grassroots ethos. The project has a dedicated website where you can check for updates.
A ‘CC infrastructure’ session on what’s going on at tech and legal level. You can check the notes from this meeting here.
We also discussed the Global Network Strategy and next steps for our European community, which we look forward to continuing to work on over the next months, particularly as we prepare for our Global Summit in April in Toronto.
We’ll keep you updated as we continue our work for CC Europe in support of the commons. In the meantime, if you want to join the discussion, you can find us on Slack!
PS If you are wondering about the marvelous artworks in the photos, they’re by Vhils.
According to Arturo Rodolfo Sanchez, a member of the ATLAS community and outreach team, “The large hadron collider is running now at 13 TeV. This is an energy level never seen before in a collider.” This exciting development is built on the power of open science – at ATLAS, data sharing and an open, innovative approach to information collaboration has become a fundamental part of this important scientific community.
This year, ATLAS decided to release the data from 100 trillion proton-proton particles to the public under CC0, the first release of 8 TeV data. More than 3000 scientists from 174 countries work on ATLAS, and more are joining every day. At the CERN open data platform educational portal, scientists, educators, and science enthusiasts can access the work of thousands of scientists working together to hunt for the Higgs-Boson particle and other important scientific discoveries.
Sanchez’s vision of science is open, and he believes that CERN’s is as well – working with Creative Commons, he describes a new kind of research organization built with the power of community. Though the 7000 ton ATLAS detector in the large hadron collider lives “100 meters below a small Swiss village,” the data moves far beyond the confines of the institution, providing insights and experimentation to the entire world.
This interview was conducted with the assistance of Noam Prywes, a post-doctoral fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Why is open data and open science important to CERN? Why have you chosen to use CC0 for this dataset in particular?
Open Data, open software and open hardware are very important for us! It is part of our policy in the ATLAS Collaboration and the other Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. This is important for us because we are a scientific community and our main goal is to look for answers as humankind, not as an institution. We are also funded by taxpayers – CERN as an organisation and facility, and the experiments like ATLAS (part of the LHC) use public sector funding.
Independently of the member country, most of them have as policy/law to publicly release any final result, publication, dataset, and conclusion that public funding research institutions generate. In ATLAS, we develop resources (datasets and tools) that can be used mainly for educational projects carrying out by ATLAS and not-ATLAS members. Of course, this is not a restriction! We don’t want to limit the use that a person (educator, scientific, artist, etc…) could have with the data.
The “Histogram Analyser” allows to make data cuts and selections directly from the browser. (Image: ATLAS Experiment/CERN)
There are a lot of people out there with many different ways of thinking, so who knows what can be possible or not possible with those resources? This is why we went for the CC0 license for the datasets released by ATLAS on its Open Data project. The same has been done by the CERN Open Data project. I can complement my answer by mentioning several projects from CERN or CERN groups:
Invenio and Indico: Very successful projects born at CERN: and
Open Lab: Another training and educational project where public and private sector come together
What’s the relationship between your initiative and other open data and open access initiatives in scientific communities? How are you working together? Is there anything unique about your relationship to open access that’s different from other open science initiatives?
As you can see, the CERN community is keen on the involvement of a high number of people, countries, institutions and research fields involved. Therefore, any project that includes two or more groups working at CERN or in CERN-hosted experiments is already an international enterprise!
Let me give you the ATLAS example: we are an experiment with ~3000 members coming from more than 120 universities around the world. Many of them are senior professors in their home institutions. Thousands of students can be or are already involved in ATLAS educational, training or outreach activities. This leaves us with the possibility of having a professor in a North American university using public data to write some code to train her new master’s student. At the same time, an ATLAS college in a German university is running a complete laboratory course in particle physics using the ATLAS public data together with a combination of public software and custom code. Meanwhile, a group of Latin-American ATLAS members are presenting public seminars and running exercises for high school students using public apps and public ATLAS data.
ATLAS experiment detector under construction in October 2004 in its experimental pit; the current status of construction can be seen on the CERN website.[1] Note the people in the background, for comparison. Nikolai SchwergCC BY-SA 3.0Coming back to your question, we are working together with other communities and sharing as much as we can! Different communities in the high energy physics (HEP) sector have meetings and conferences to share their experiences, knowledge, and research with other teams. I don’t think there is anything unique in the way we are doing Open Data and Open Source, in fact, it is this constant feedback between communities that helps to find common frameworks, platforms and even ways to develop and deploy resources. Our community is global and our audience is global, but the approach is in fact local. It is important for us is to understand the difficulties and limitations in each region: it is not the same to teach HEP to students in the United States to those in Venezuela. The languages, resources, culture, and differences in the academic systems are now part of our fine tuning when writing projects and documentation.
Since CERN is so international, how do you choose how you release data and publish research? Is open access a more acute concern because of national boundaries? What about funding sources? Are there countries that demand open access as a precondition for money? Has that influenced scientists from different locales?
The way to release data is in a worldwide common framework: on a web platform, with a lot of files to create the best documentation possible.
This last step is in fact the most difficult one, so, we run local trainings as well, with different audiences in order to get feedback and repair the holes and make the web and user interfaces better every day.
The fact that CERN is a multinational organisation with so many funding governments and institutions consolidate the openness of the research and the resources products of those. Many legal aspects are taking into account and I am do not know all the details, but the spirit is to share and be as useful as possible.
CERN is in such an individual position in terms of the science it does, so what kind of innovative measures are you taking to publicize this science? How are you highlighting the work that scientists and communities are doing with the published data?
We have been working very hard in the communication side by using every possible media out there to communicate results, activities, tutorials, and even how physicists spend their time. This is done by the CERN community and included in each of the experiments now. Our presence in social media is strong (at least for a scientific community!) and more and more people are aware of what we do and why it is important. Students around the world come to visit CERN and the experiments, and some others visit the place virtually. In the case of the data, the challenge right now is to use the power of the media and the web in order to explain how to use it. Developing easy but still powerful user Interfaces is the key! With a lot of energy and ideas we are trying to reach more people every day, even with the limited resources that we have.
I am reaching the end with the beginning of this story – the ATLAS Open Data platform. In the outreach group we are learning and developing tools and protocols that help us disseminate the data publicly, trying to prove to ourselves and the members of the experiment that there is interest to use those datasets and resources by the international community.
Our aim is getting more data out there! We want to make that data and tools available for the world to see.
Creative Commons affiliate team at Notre Dame University—Louaize (NDU) in Lebanon held a two-day symposium on “Open Educational Resources (OER): Trends and Prospects” from September 15-16, 2016 as a part of their 2017 roadmap to create awareness and cultivate openness culture within the university . The symposium highlighted the University’s strategic commitment to the integration of openly-licensed educational resources in the teaching and learning process. The occasion also marked the one-year signing of the Affiliate Agreement between Creative Commons and NDU.
Creative Commons Regional Coordinator for the Arab World. Ms. Zarif meets NDU President Fr. Walid Moussa
To commemorate the event, NDU hosted Naeema Zarif, Creative Commons Regional Coordinator for the Arab World. Ms. Zarif met NDU President Fr. Walid Moussa, who expressed the importance of capitalizing on recent trends in open education to broaden access, foster innovation, and alleviate student textbook costs.
Dr. Fawzi baroud and Ms. Naeema Zarif at the OER symposium
During the symposium, Dr. Fawzi Baroud, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology, described the history of NDU’s involvement with open education beginning with his own participation in the U.S. State Department sponsored Open Book Project in 2014 and the continued collaboration with Creative Commons to create awareness and devise capacity building projects for an optimal OER culture within the university. He also traced the University’s future trajectory with regard to OER and the role it will play in advancing OER in Lebanon and the region. Ms. Zarif went on to speak about CC licenses in a panel titled “Creative Commons Licenses and the Future of Open Education in the Arab World.”
Dr. Kamal Abouchedid, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities
The symposium’s second day (titled “NDU Student Attitudes toward the Use of OER”) focused on the piloting of OER in a university-wide English course targeting close to 600 students in more than twenty sections across three campuses. Dr. Kamal Abouchedid, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, highlighted the integration of OER as a strategic initiative at NDU and as a means of fostering open education.
Joining the discussion from Denmark via Skype, Dr. Ena Hodzik
The design of the course was described by Dr. Sandra Doueiher, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of English. Joining the discussion from Denmark via Skype, Dr. Ena Hodzik spoke about the scholarship of OER, specifically about the issue of quality and utility in the integration of OER. Dr. Hodzik went on to explain that the student survey administered by NDU closely aligned with the major themes in the literature of OER.
Dr. Sandra Doueiher and Dr. George Abdelnour
Survey results were presented by Dr. George Abdelnour, Chair of the Department of English and Translation. The extensive survey sought student feedback on the use of OER based on general attitudes, effectiveness, quality, and learning outcomes of the resources used. By a 2 to 1 margin, he explained, students showed high levels of satisfaction and engagement with OER. The findings also showed a favorable inclination toward enrolling in courses using OER in the future.
My name is Dr. Jane-Frances Obiageli Agbu. I am from Onitsha, a small but vibrant town in the Eastern part of Nigeria in West Africa. I work with the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). I was the Head of NOUN-OER unit from 2014 till July 2016. Currently, I am the Dean of Faculty of Health Sciences of NOUN, which gives me the opportunity to focus on OER-Health. I am also an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology.
It is natural to view anything that is ‘open’ and ‘freely available’ with a sort of hesitation or anxiety. It is also natural to presume these types of resources to be of less quality because of our contemporary instinct that almost everything should be paid for, and that the more these materials are hoarded, the pricier they will be. The open movement, with its initiatives around ‘Open Education’, ‘Open Access’, and ‘Open Educational Resources’, can make many people very uncomfortable.
I embraced the concept and practices of Open Education in 2006 when I joined the National Open University of Nigeria. Back then, I was a mother of three very young, and I needed to work close to home. NOUN was just five minutes away from my home. It was a perfect situation, and with very minimal knowledge about open education, I applied and got a job there. At the time, NOUN then was just three years old. However, they offered robust training for new entrants in the open education space, since the concept and practice was relatively new in Nigeria.
My friends and colleagues, who were so used to the conventional face-to-face mode of education, were disappointed with me. They asked me, ‘What is “open” about the open university?’ and said, “You should seek appointment in a ‘normal’ university in order to be respected and advance your career”. these comments were both troublesome and motivating. I wondered whether I made a mistake joining NOUN, but a chance encounter in an elevator with one of our students got me thinking. He simply asked, ‘Do you work here?’, and when I nodded my head, he said ‘thank you for giving me the opportunity to work and learn’. It was heartwarming, and 10 years later I am happily still an advocate of open education.
I became more involved in the Open Educational Resources movement in 2013. It was another chance encounter because the invitation to the workshop that introduced me to OER was initially meant for a senior Professor at my University, but he was busy and I was asked to attend. The workshop took place in Abuja, Nigeria and was organized by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in collaboration with UNESCO and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). There, I met Abel Caine of UNESCO and Alex Gakuru of Creative Commons. Alex said something that really stuck with me: “We are Africans, we live communal lives, we cook together, we work together. It is in us to share, so why are we not sharing knowledge?” I was incredibly captivated with this statement, and I wrote a long proposal to my institution on the need to embrace OER. A year and half later, I was asked to champion OER within NOUN. With support from UNESCO, we were able to organize an OER workshop to educate policy makers, university faculty, and course content developers. In December 2015 we shared our experiences with the Federal government of Nigeria.
You’ll see that my journey toward embracing open education and Open Educational Resources has not been a straightforward one, but it is a life that leaves me with smiles and appreciation. Mysteriously, it appears that some angels have crossed my path in this journey and further helped me to understand the beauty of opening up knowledge for common good.
While pondering on the palpable anxiety for the ‘open’ movement, let me share with you a bit more of my thinking:
Naturally, with whatever knowledge we have, we want to be the “sage on the stage rather than a guide on the side”. This famous statement from Allison King brings back floods of memories for me. I can still visualize my former professors speaking eloquently in class, filling students with respect and awe. I felt anxious and wondered if I could ever get to be as knowledgeable as my professors. They were knowledge personified. But for me, open education has demystified this sort of reverence toward dissemination of knowledge. Open Educational Resources—with its five Rs (reuse, remix, repurpose, revise, retain) and the flexible license options of Creative Commons—has humanized and democratized teaching and learning. Surely there are some that still believe in sole ownership of knowledge. Those people will continue to feel threatened by the ‘open movement’, but we’ve seen the incredible opportunities of open education, and we’ll continue on our path.
Some are also hesitant to share knowledge because of fear of scrutiny. This of course is a natural instinct (no one likes to be criticised), but overcoming this shows that you view criticism as an avenue of learning and improvement. I think we will come to see that the costs of being ‘closed’ are much greater than the costs of being ‘open’, and that in the long run ‘open’ will be more personally gratifying, and help the most people.
Also, is it possible that this initial anxiety toward being more open is triggered by the desire for conformity? It is a lot easier to move with the popular opinion, while advocates of OER and other open initiatives are still in the minority. But we must realize that it takes courage to walk with the less-traveled crowd. And we will realize that we are not alone, and that there is an increasing support network of educators, students, and advocates to rely on and collaborate with.
In March 2016, I was selected as one of the participants for Institute of Open Leadership (IOL2). I met other beautiful individuals that share a similar vision for ‘open’. In a lush garden up high in mountains of Cape Town, we shared our experiences, our projects, and open policy plans. The beauty remains with me as we continue to receive guidance from our mentors and share information amongst the IOL2 fellows.
![ATLAS experiment detector under construction in October 2004 in its experimental pit; the current status of construction can be seen on the CERN website.[1] Note the people in the background, for comparison. Nikolai Schwerg CC BY-SA 3.0](./media/37281a61.CERN_Atlas_Caverne.jpg)
Photo by Jane-Frances Agbu, 
Photo by Jane-Frances Agbu, 