We’re pleased to announce today that Creative Commons is taking on leadership and stewardship of the Open COVID Pledge.

Earlier this year, CC joined forces with an international group of researchers, scientists, academics, and lawyers seeking to accelerate the development of diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, medical equipment, and software solutions that might be used to assist in the fight against COVID-19. The result was the Open COVID Pledge, a project that offers a simple way for universities, companies, and others to make their patents and copyrights available to the public to be utilized in the current public health crisis.

Users of Creative Commons licenses will be familiar with the Open COVID Pledge’s approach. Like CC licenses, the Open COVID Pledge offers free, standard, public licenses that anyone can use to remove unnecessary obstacles to the dissemination of knowledge.

Amazon, Facebook, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NASA JPL, Sandia National Laboratories, and Uber are among the dozens of companies and institutions that have used the Open COVID Pledge to make their patents and copyrights open to the public in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. As Creative Commons takes on this new leadership role in the project, we’re energized by the potential to expand its international scope, reach, and impact.

We’ll continue working with large companies to unlock their intellectual property (IP) rights in the pursuit of saving lives. But we also aim to team up with smaller startups, universities, and even individual innovators—especially in parts of the world that aren’t well-represented by the project’s current list of pledgors and supporters and that hold patents and other IP critical to the fight against  COVID-19. We’ll achieve this goal by collaborating with members of our worldwide community, including leading organizations in the international arena working on copyright and IP policy, such as the WHO and other UN bodies. We will also leverage the expertise and our deep relationships with the Creative Commons Global Network. Stay tuned for more information on these internationalization efforts, including ways to get involved in expanding the project in your country and region.

We believe this initiative will have a profound impact beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. The common set of values, tools, and principles for the responsible use of IP in the public’s interest formed during this particular crisis can and should be used as a necessary model for addressing other crises, such as climate change. We hope to carry this conversation and model forward.

As CC takes on leadership and stewardship of the Open COVID Pledge, we are mindful of the many who contributed to its beginnings. In particular, we thank our co-collaborators for their expertise and collaboration in forging this project and helping it come to life. They have provided and will continue to provide critical strategic input into the future of this project and its growth. 

You can support the effort by encouraging your company, university, or research team to make the Open COVID Pledge. Visit opencovidpledge.org or contact us at ocpinfo@creativecommons.org for more information.

The post Creative Commons Is Now Leading the Open COVID Pledge—Here’s What That Means appeared first on Creative Commons.

At Creative Commons, we value sharing, openness, and gratitude. Over the last few months, we’ve had the privilege of working with a group of global volunteers who embody these values. In order to make the CC Global Summit a reality each year, we enlist the help of dozens of volunteers, many of whom are members of the CC Global Network (CCGN). 

This year, we’re pleased to work with an amazing group of volunteers who make up our 2020 CC Global Summit Program Committee. This committee is the backbone of the CC Summit; curating the program, identifying speakers, fielding questions, and exemplifying the open culture. The theme of this year’s CC Summit is “Designing the Commons of the Future: Reflecting on the values that shape the Commons.” This event will be the perfect space for the open community to begin an exercise of internal reflection on how to build a more equitable, inclusive, and accessible world.

As you can imagine, it’s been a particularly challenging year, as we pivot from an in-person event to a virtual event. Therefore, we are so grateful for the hard work, expertise, and vision shown by our Program Committee members this year. 

Meet the 2020 CC Global Summit Program Committee members below!

First, we’d like to introduce our Program Committee Chairs, Susanna Ånäs, and Claudio Ruiz.

• Susanna Ånäs—As the CC Global Network Council representative for Finland, Board member of Open Knowledge Finland, and the GLAM coordinator at Wikimedia Finland, Susanna has worked on Open GLAM initiatives for several years. With Wikimedia Finland, she focuses on serving Saami languages and exploring ways for Indigenous communities to manage their online representations. She also manages other open culture projects like hackathons and tools development for open platforms.
• Claudio Ruiz—As the Director of Ecosystem Strategy, Claudio works to shift Creative Commons to a more open, global, and inclusive organization led by its community. He has experience in free software licensing, as well as advocating for fundamental digital rights and freedom of expression. He is on the board of Derechos Digitales, a nonprofit organization that works to promote, defend, and develop digital rights and civil liberties in Latin America.

Africa

• Kamel Belhamel—A professor of chemistry at the University of Bejaia in Algeria, Kamel is the author/co-author of several scientific papers in international scientific journals focused on open access and open science. Kamel is also the chapter lead of CC Algeria and was a member of the 2018 and 2019 CC Global Summit Program Committee.
• Mary Job—A Philosopher and Open Source Enthusiast. Mary currently works remotely with Paid Memberships Pro and runs How Do You Tech on the side. She teaches digital skills through their village Uwani Hub to women and teenagers in underserved communities and she is passionate about tech for empowerment, jobs, entrepreneurship, and community building. She believes we have a lot to learn from each others’ stories, she runs a personal blog and believes everyone should do too! She is an active member of the WordPress Communities in Nigeria, & Africa, and the global team rep for 2020. She also volunteers for the Netsquared communities in her free time.

Asia-Pacific

• Amber Osman—With over ten years of experience in research and scholarly publishing, Amber is a passionate expert in open science, an award-winning journal editor for advancing the publishing process by adopting innovative research and publishing solutions. She is also serving as a member of renowned scholarly publishing committees, Amber advocates for best practices in open access scholarly content. She currently works for the Law Offices of Osman & Co. in Pakistan.
• Prodip Roy—Prodip Roy is currently a library officer (Monograph and Digital Collections) at RMIT University, Melbourne. He has been serving as Co-Chair (Elect) of the Special Interest Group for International Information Issues (SIG/III) of Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) for 2019-2021. Mr. Roy is a member of the Creative Commons Australia Chapter and the Creative Commons Global Network and leads responsible for Open Ed (Tertiary). 

Europe

• Teresa Cardoso—As a member of scientific/editorial committees, a teacher, author, and assistant professor, Teresa focuses on open education, mobile learning, and ICT in educational contexts. By working at Universidade Aberta, an “open university,” they’ve had the opportunity to teach about open licensing to a wide audience including students, fellow professors, and administration officials.
• Louise Hisayasu—Louise M. Hisayasu is an independent researcher based between Sāo Paulo and Berlin. Her master’s research focused on Indigenous protagonism in Brazil, studying the movement through the lens of technology and culture production. Through her work, she is primarily interested in understanding memory, as being both individual and collective, intangible and immortalised in things, as intergenerational and the implications in its institutionalisation, within archives. She currently works at Tactical Tech and was previously a guest researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
• Douglas McCarthy—As an active member of the Open GLAM community, Douglas researches, writes about, and promotes open access to digital cultural heritage. He leads a global survey of Open GLAM with Dr. Andrea Wallace and co-edits the Open GLAM Medium publication with Scann. Douglas is the Collections Engagement Manager at Europeana and lives in the Netherlands.
• Diogo Morais Oliveira—An attorney-at-law based in Poro, Portugal, Diogo works in intellectual property (IP) law for the cultural and creative sector. Currently, he’s the legal advisor of DÍNAMO10, a creative hub based in Viana do Castelo, Portugal,  and the legal co-coordinator of CC Portugal Chapter. He is coordinating the project “CC Local Point” that aims to create contact points at creative hubs in order to support the use of CC licensing and the adoption of open business models.
• André Rocha—Starting their career in 2003 designing products with a group of artisans in southern Portugal, André became interested in the parallel environments of tech, education, and design. Today they are an adjunct professor at ESELx – IPL and Fab Manager / Scientific Coordinator at Fab Lab Benfica (ESELX-IPL); open design lead for Open Product Design; and maker community lead at Creative Commons Portugal. 
• Mahmoud Max Wardeh—With a background in technology and media, Mahmoud founded the Open Connective, a platform that helps open projects build diverse communities of contributors. As an adjunct lecturer at Loughborough University London, he has developed OER for online education platforms. He is the founding member of the CC UK Chapter and was a member of the 2017 and 2018 CC Global Summit Program Committee.
• Brigitte Vézina—As the Open Policy Manager at Creative Commons, Brigitte gets a kick out of tackling the fuzzy legal and policy issues that stand in the way of access, use, re-use and remix of culture, information and knowledge. She worked for a decade as a legal officer at WIPO and then ran her own consultancy, advising Europeana, SPARC Europe, and others on copyright matters.

Latin America

• Marcela Basch—Born and raised in Argentina, Marcela is a journalist, teacher, and activist. Since 2013, she’s focused on collaborative, free, and open systems—and founded El Plan C, the first website in Spanish focused on these issues. She’s also the co-founder of Encuentro Comunes (Commons Conference) with the goal of spreading awareness about those initiatives.
• Scann—Accidentally living in Uruguay, Scann is a longtime contributor to CC. Her main work has been around digital cultural heritage, the public domain, and copyright. Fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab (2018) and International Visiting Scholar at the American University (2019). Currently is working on the Open GLAM initiative for CC.
• Emilio Velis—An industrial engineer based in San Salvador, Emilio explores how sharing knowledge and technology can impact communities. He was recently appointed as the executive director of the Appropedia Foundation, which shares open content to build sustainability.

North America

• Andrew Lih—As one of the world’s foremost experts on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement, as well as the author of the book, The Wikipedia Revolution (2009), he has worked with multiple cultural and governmental institutions to advance Wikipedia multimedia content and structured metadata in Wikidata. He currently serves as the Wikimedia Strategist at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
• Jonathan Poritz—As a mathematician, Jonathan has worked in various IT firms, from start-ups to multinationals, doing things like AI, cryptography, and consulting on public policy towards technology. He is currently an associate professor of mathematics and OER coordinator at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He’s also written two OER math textbooks and serves on the state OER Council.

Again, we’d like to thank each and every one of our 2020 CC Global Summit Program Committee members for their hard work. We can’t wait for October!

The CC Global Summit will be held online from 19-24 October 2020. See the latest updates, including when to register, at summit.creativecommons.org!

Interested in becoming a sponsor for the 2020 CC Global Summit? Learn more about our sponsorship opportunities by contacting CC’s Director of Development Jami Vass at jami@creativecommons.org.

The post Meet the Program Committee Making the 2020 CC Global Summit a Reality! appeared first on Creative Commons.

Code is just one part of open source;  good documentation is essential for both users and contributors in order for open source projects to succeed. We’re excited to announce that Creative Commons is participating for the first time in Google Season of Docs, a program that pairs experienced technical writers with open source projects in need of better documentation.

We’ve selected technical writers to work with us from September to December 2020 on three different projects related to the CC Catalog API, CC Vocabulary, and our new WordPress base theme.

Meet our technical writers!

Ariessa Norramli

I’m Ariessa Norramli, a freelance writer who happens to be a 3rd-year Software Engineering student from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. I have about 5 years of freelance writing experience in different areas, such as content writing, technical writing, and copywriting. I’ve been a self-taught programmer, first teaching myself programming at 15. I love to read, code, and play the piano during my free time. I was also a Google Season of Docs 2019 participant under GNU Mailman.

Ariessa will work on improving the documentation for the CC Catalog API for both developers and contributors. She will be improving the automatically generated documentation as well as writing some narrative sections to add more context. Ariessa will be mentored by CC’s Software Engineer Alden Page. You can follow the progress of this project through the GitHub repo and the #cc-search channel on our Slack community.

Jacqueline Binya

I am a technical writer and front-end developer from Zimbabwe, a country in Southern Africa. I am passionate about the web and fascinated about how it can be harnessed to effectively solve problems within communities and in businesses. I transitioned into tech in 2019 after years of being a full-time carer to my son with special needs. I am an  Andela FullStack  BootCamp (Kigali, Rwanda Cycle 11) graduate and I have a background in Electrical Power Engineering. I am also an avid blogger, and in my personal blog I write tech-related articles documenting my learning,  occasionally I write about life in general or the odd new JavaScript framework. 

Jacqueline will work on documenting usage of our new WordPress base theme, which forms the basis of our upcoming redesigns to creativecommons.org, CC Certificates, CC Global Summit, and more. Her work will allow the open source community to contribute to those projects more effectively. Jacqueline will be mentored by CC’s Web Developer Hugo Solar. You can follow the progress of this project through the GitHub repo and the #cc-dev-wordpress channel on our Slack community.

Nimish Nikhil Bongale

Hello! I am Nimish Bongale, a final year Information Science Engineering student, pursuing my bachelor’s degree at Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India. I possess a well-cultivated knowledge of Front End Web Development (ReactJS, VueJS), App Development(React-Native, Native Android), and Data Structures & Algorithms. I finished writing a research paper on “Spider Monkey Optimization” and completed a group project on streamlining the interactive medical diagnosis flows. During the past few years, I learned the importance of utilizing my skill sets for the betterment of society. This led me to take part in many technical events promoting social good. My main hobbies are playing chess (which you could most definitely call an addiction), badminton, and my guitar. I’m also particularly interested in blogging, communicating, and speaking to the masses!

Nimish will work on developing a comprehensive usage guide for CC Vocabulary, our web design system that has just begun to be deployed across CC websites. His work will improve the experience for both CC Vocabulary contributors and CC staff. Nimish will be mentored by CC Vocabulary maintainer Dhruv Bhanushali with assistance from CC’s Web Developer Hugo Solar and Front End Engineer Zack Krida. You can follow the progress of this project through the GitHub repo and the #cc-dev-vocabulary channel on our Slack community.

We’re very excited to be working with these talented writers and can’t wait to get started! 

Want more technical updates? Including the latest updates on these projects? Follow the Creative Commons Open Source blog and @cc_opensource on Twitter! You can also join #cc-developers on our community Slack.

The post Introducing Our Google Season of Docs 2020 Participants appeared first on Creative Commons.

Last month, cOAlition S released its Rights Retention Strategy to safeguard researchers’ intellectual ownership rights and suppress unreasonable embargo periods—Creative Commons (CC) keenly supports this initiative. 

Modernizing an outdated academic publishing system 

Under a traditional publishing model, researchers who want to publish their articles in a journal typically need to assign or exclusively license their copyright in the article to the journal publisher. Basically, they hand over their rights to the publisher in exchange for the opportunity to be published in the publisher’s journal. While this model may have worked several decades ago, it is currently unsuitable to the ways in which academic research is funded, conducted, and disseminated. It unjustifiably raises legal, technical, and financial barriers around knowledge and perpetuates unbalanced power relationships among the various players in academia and beyond, from researchers and research institutions to publishers, libraries, and the general public. 

Nowadays, with the help of new technologies and the internet, academic knowledge is produced, shared, and built upon at a pace and through methods that call for a completely different approach to publishing—one that favors access, collaboration, and fairness. Many funders (particularly governments and philanthropic foundations) require that research outputs be published openly to guarantee that the public can access, use, reuse, and build upon the knowledge created. This is where open access (OA) publishing comes into play. 

Open Access and Creative Commons licenses 

OA is a publishing model aimed at making academic and scientific research outputs (publications, data, and software) openly accessible. We are strong supporters of OA and open science and our licenses are the global standard for OA publishing. Our efforts are focused on encouraging and guiding public and private institutions and organizations in creating, adopting, and implementing OA policies. For example, we routinely submit comments to consultations on how to promote better access to publicly funded research, science, and educational content. A few examples include the 2013 White House memorandum on public access to the results of federally funded research, the 2020 US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) consultation on Research Outputs, and the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) consultation on its OA policy.

CC consistently advocates for OA policies on publicly funded research outputs; this has been demonstrated to stimulate knowledge creation and sharing, spur innovation, and provide a better return on investment for funders. Specifically, we advise research funders to require that their grantees publish their research results under the following conditions: 

1. Zero embargo period, so everyone, everywhere can read the research fully and immediately at the moment of publication; 
2. A CC BY license on article(s), to allow for text and data mining, no-cost access, and 
3. CC0 on the research data, to be clear that the data is in the worldwide public domain to the fullest extent allowed by law.

The COVID-19 crisis has only reinforced the notion that openly sharing research is the best way to do research. How could anyone justify an embargo period on COVID-19-related research articles? Or impose a NoDerivatives condition, thereby preventing translations and other valuable adaptations of important scientific discoveries? In order to solve this crisis, scientific research must be shared as rapidly and as broadly as possible. 

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and guided by these  “open” values, we helped develop and are leading the Open COVID Pledge: a global initiative that works with organizations around the world to make their patents and copyrights freely available in the fight against COVID-19. We are also working with international organizations such as the World Health Organization in operationalizing the desire of many to freely share their intellectual property related to COVID-19 with anyone who needs it.

Open access and rights retention: the fundamentals 

It’s important to remind ourselves that when researchers publish their articles under an OA model using a CC license, they retain their copyright. They do not give any rights away to anyone, whether it be in the form of an assignment to a publisher, as it is the case under most traditional publishing models, or otherwise. Instead, researchers give several broad permissions to anyone to use and reuse the research article, but they continue to hold their rights and can enforce them in the event the reuser fails to adhere to the license. 

Further, all CC licenses include multiple safeguards against reputational and attribution risks. These safeguards, that are in addition to and not in replacement of academic norms and practices, are in place to provide an additional layer of protection for the original researchers’ reputation and to alleviate their concerns over changes to their works that might be wrongly attributed to them. CC licenses are also non-exclusive, which means that researchers publishing their articles under any CC license remain free and legally authorized to enter into different publishing agreements with different parties. 

Publishing under an OA model and transferring rights over to a publisher are antithetical. The mere suggestion that a researcher would give away their rights to a publisher defeats the whole purpose of what OA aims to achieve. By retaining their rights, as cOAlition S promotes through the aforementioned Rights Retention Strategy, researchers are empowered and keep their freedom to share their research outputs in ways that benefit the academic community and society as a whole. 

: Featured image titled “2010 PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows” sourced from PopTech (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The post Why cOAlition S’ Rights Retention Strategy Protects Researchers appeared first on Creative Commons.

It is an honor to be joining the Creative Commons team on the eve of its 20th anniversary year.

For nearly two decades, this organization has worked to make the world a more open and equitable place.

When CC first launched in 2001, I was a recently-elected Member of the European Parliament at a time when copyright and access issues were beginning to receive attention.

But throughout my 20 years as a legislator, directly representing over five million people in Scotland and delivering change for over 500 million Europeans, I took on the task of championing digital policy issues including copyright reform, citizen privacy and data protection, and improving public access to digital tools.

As I reflect, we today find ourselves in a very different world. And as I look to the future, I know the work of CC has never been more important.

We have the opportunity to play a leading role in the global fight to remove obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity.

This matters because of the pressing challenges facing us, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak human and economic devastation across the globe.

Inequality is on the rise, and injustices have been exposed.

The tragic killing of George Floyd sparked the global Black Lives Matter movement, while there have been pro-democracy protests in several countries, including in Belarus only last week.

CC stands with those grieving and protesting against injustices, and with those fighting for justice, representation, and equality around the world.

The challenges and the crises we have witnessed during this extraordinary year have raised legitimate questions about power and privilege.

Who has access to knowledge in our unequal society?

We know that too often it is the hands of the few, not the many, and access is often denied to women, people of color, LGBTQI communities and people from the global South.

We have a role to challenge power and privilege, and the solution to that is to open up access and share knowledge.

During the coronavirus crisis, we saw some progress being made.

Paywalls came down, and research was shared. The race to find a vaccine for COVID-19 demonstrates why rapid and unrestricted access to scientific research and educational materials is so vital.

It’s a shame that it took a global pandemic to realize this, but I hope the lesson has now been learned.

Yet for every step forward there is also a step backwards.

Some nations have imposed restrictions on the right to information and not all have reinstated them.

And too much knowledge remains out of reach, with museum and library doors still shut in many countries, and digital access not available for so many.

Breaking down barriers is not easy.

Take the example of the National Emergency Library, designed by the Internet Archive to make over 1.3 million e-books available for checkout, free of charge during the pandemic.

A consortium of four publishers filed suit and the library was forced to close. This demonstrates the challenges that remain.

But there is also hope.

I have been a longstanding champion of the need to unlock digital access to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity for everyone in society.

I’m excited by the opportunity to make a difference.

The work of CC has already proved crucial during this devastating pandemic. The Open COVID Pledge has made it easier for universities, companies, and other holders of intellectual property rights to support the development of medicines, test kits, vaccines, and other scientific discoveries.

And we have worked to make publicly funded educational resources openly licensed to help the public access reliable, practical information.

There is much more to do.

Our world faces an uncertain future and it is vital that open access policies are adopted by organizations and governments.

Technological advances have brought many people closer together, and yet also pushed too many apart.

Our mission is to build a shared future for all, and I can’t wait to get started.

The post From CC’s New CEO: Working Towards Our Shared Future appeared first on Creative Commons.