Puneet Varma (Editor)

Open Knowledge International

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Abbreviation
  
OKI

Tax ID no.
  
05133759

Headquarters
  
Cambridge, United Kingdom

Type
  
Nonprofit organization

Founded
  
20 May 2004


Formation
  
20 May 2004 (12 years ago) (2004-05-20)

Focus
  
Open knowledge broadly, including open access, open content, open science and open data

Location
  
St John's Innovation Centre, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Motto
  
Sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata ...

Founders
  
Martin Keegan, Rufus Pollock, Jo Walsh

Similar
  
Sunlight Foundation, Open Rights Group, Code for America, mySociety, Open Source Initiative

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Open Knowledge International (OKI) (known as the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) until April 2014, then Open Knowledge until May 2016) is a global non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 24 May 2004 in Cambridge, UK.

Contents

Aims

The aims of Open Knowledge International are:

  • Promoting the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why is it a good idea.
  • Running open knowledge events, such as OKCon.
  • Working on open knowledge projects, such as Open Economics or Open Shakespeare.
  • Providing infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. For example, the KnowledgeForge service and CKAN.
  • Acting at UK, European and international levels on open knowledge issues.

    • People

    In April 2015 Pavel Richter took on the role of CEO of Open Knowledge International. Pavel was formerly Executive Director of Wikimedia Deutschland. Pollock remains in a leadership role.

    The Open Knowledge International Advisory Council includes people from the areas of open access, open data, open content, open science, data visualization and digital rights. In 2015, it consisted of:

    Network

    As of 2015, Open Knowledge International has 9 official chapters and 49 groups in different countries.

    Working groups

    It also supports 19 working groups.

    Operations

    Many of Open Knowledge International's projects are technical in nature. Its most prominent project, CKAN, is used by many of the world's governments to host open catalogues of data that their countries possess.

    The organisation tends to support its aims by hosting infrastructure for semi-independent projects to develop. This approach to organising was hinted as one of its earliest projects was a project management service called KnowledgeForge, which runs on the KForge platform. KnowledgeForge allows sectoral working groups to have space to manage projects related to open knowledge. More widely, the project infrastructure includes both technical and face-to-face aspects. The organisation hosts several dozen mailing lists for virtual discussion, utilises IRC for real-time communications and also hosts events.

    Advocacy

    Open Knowledge International is an active partner with organisations working in similar areas, such as open educational resources.

    Open Knowledge International has produced the Open Knowledge Definition, an attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity surrounding the terminology of openness, as well as the Open Software Service Definition. It also supported the development of the Open Database License (ODbL).

    Outside of technology, Open Knowledge International plays a role in advocating for openness broadly. This includes supporting the drafting of reports, facilitating consultation and producing guides.

    Rufus Pollock, one of Open Knowledge International's founders, and current board secretary sits on the UK government's Public Sector Transparency Board.

    Technical

    The foundation places a strong interest in the use of open source technologies. Its software projects are hosted on GitHub, which utilises the Git version control software. Some of the projects are listed below:

  • CKAN, a tool that provides store for metadata. This enables governments to quickly and cheaply provide a catalogue of their data.
  • Datahub, a community-run catalogue of useful sets of data on the Internet. Depending on the type of data (and its conditions of use), Datahub may also be able to store a copy of the data or host it in a database, and provide some basic visualisation tools.
  • Open bibliography, broadly construed as efforts to catalogue and build tools for working with and publishing bibliographic resources, with particular emphasis on those works that are in the public domain and public domain calculators. Examples include the Bibliographica, Public Domain Works, Open Shakespeare, Open Text Book and The Public Domain Review projects.
  • OpenGLAM, an initiative that promotes free and open access to digital cultural heritage, held by GLAMs: Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. OpenGLAM is co-funded by the European Commission as part of the DM2E (Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana) project.
  • Open Economics
  • Open Knowledge Forums
  • Information Accessibility Initiative
  • Open geodata
  • Guide to open data licensing
  • "Get the Data" — a web-site for questions and answer on how to get data sets.
  • POD - Product Open Data

    • Events

    Much of the collaboration with other related organisations occurs via events that the foundation hosts. Its premier event is the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon), which has been held occasionally since 2007. Other events have been organised within the areas of data visualisation and free information network infrastructure.

    Annually, Open Knowledge International supports International Open Data Day

    Panton Principles and Fellowships (Open data in Science)

    The Panton Principles (for Open Data in Science) in 2010 had large contributions from Open Knowledge people and in 2011 Jonathan Gray and Peter Murray-Rust successfully obtained funding from OSF for two fellowships, held by Sophie Kershaw and Ross Mounce. In 2013 OKF obtained sponsorship from CCIA for 3 fellowships, which were awarded to Rosemarie Graves, Sam Moore and Peter Kraker.

    Other

    Open Knowledge International also supports Apps for Europe, and D-CENT, a European project created to share and organise data from seven countries, which is running from October 2013 to May 2016.

    References

    Open Knowledge International Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA