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World Bank Embraces Open Access and Makes All of Its Research Freely Available
Fluffeh writes "The World Bank is taking steps toward greater transparency. It announced recently that it would be instituting a new 'Open Access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products' beginning July 1. The policy's full title is 'World Bank Open Access Policy for Formal Publications,' and the Bank says it will apply to 'manuscripts and all accompanying data sets... that result from research, analysis, economic and sector work, or development practice... that have undergone peer review or have been otherwise vetted and approved for release to the public; and... for which internal approval for release is given on or after July 1, 2012,' as well as the final reports prepared by outside parties for the Bank. Over 2,100 books and papers from 2009-2012 are already available in the repository"
Can't wait for the rest of it to be transparent.
âoeThat which can be destroyed by the truth should be." - P. C. Hodgell
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Let's say my company wants to sponsor a hackathon in NYC that uses these World Bank APIs and datasets to make demo apps and recruit developers. How would I go about producing and hosting the event? Is there an NYC org that's done this before for other industries?
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make install -not war
From the perspective of the case of the more-or-less-stock academic economists writing studies, who just happen to work for the World Bank rather than some university, open access publishing seems like a good idea for all the same reasons that it does were the same economist to be working at a university instead.
However, and the weasel wording(" or have been otherwise vetted and approved for release to the public; and... for which internal approval for release is given") in the announcement suggests this has already been thought of, it will be very interesting to see if this announcement ends up having any implications beyond PR for the other aspect of the World Bank.
The 'openness' problem that has traditionally dogged the bank among its critics is not the 'Cry, cry, we need to pay Elsevier $30/copy to get studies' one; but the 'The World Bank is a more or less opaque and dubiously accountable instrument by which a fairly cozy group of wealthy nations push dubiously helpful or even well-intentioned schemes on others under the guise of development'. It seems unlikely that open access to some journal articles and research products is going to do much to counter that perception where it presently exists; but we'll see...
That particular international institution lost all credibility when a psychopath with the blood of one million people on his hands was appointed at its head. I was infuriated but well, it did let us know there was something wrong with it.
This is only one more reason for citizens in concerned countries to mobilize, organize and bring back democracy to themselves. We must fight back against the international financial dictatorship in order to keep a livable world for ourselves, and we must denounce western war criminals for what they are : put them out of power, put them behind bars. Our dignity and our democracy depends on this.
The above comment is clearly and unabashedly flamebait and should be modded down, according to the Slashdot moderation rules.
Anyone modding it up is abusing their privileges to push this guy's left wing views and is a violation.
Oh wow, spew propaganda much?
Good point. Truth be damned.
Blood of one million people on his hands?
Be fair, he's managed to keep his hands clean, and put the blame on somebody else. For example, President Obama, who apparently is the sole and explicit cause for everything bad that has ever happened, at least, according to the conservative movement.
Who will probably reply with continual claims that it's actually Obama's fault for blaming Bush for everything. Not that they'll ever say Bush or his cronies did anything wrong, mind you, just blame Obama for pointing out that Bush was in charge when we got into the mess.
World Bank for president 2012!
I wonder how many documents will mention Confessions Of An Economic Hit-man by John-Perkins?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
In fact I wish somebody of authority creates a policy that all school assignments, all thesis, all research be published as Wikipedia edits. Wikipedia will become the new library of Alexandria.
From an essay I wrote about a decade ago: http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
"Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations. "
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Yikes, insert a few "Jews" into that rant and you've got yourself a vintage 1930s Nazi propaganda speech.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Insert a few "I hates" into your comment, and you've got yourself a classic Goebbels comment.
What is your idiotic point?
Over the last several years the World Bank has been moving in this direction. It used to be that most of the World Development Indicators required a subscription. This is an extremely detailed country-level database of everything from GDP and prices to infant mortality and refugee populations. Now, the database in its entirety is free and it has been loaded into statistical applications like Stata and made available by these folks (along with other World Bank datasets).
It's been my experience that the academic-oriented economists at the World Bank try to disseminate their work as widely as possible. Still, centralized repositories for datasets and code under a reasonable CC license should only make this easier. In economics, potential journal articles tend to spend months or years as working papers while they undergo the referee process; this means that keeping up with the latest research involves relatively less access to expensive journals (compared to other disciplines) than it does with being able to easily find the latest version of a working paper. It's still a long way from being able to cut out the for-profit journals, though some open-access journals do exist.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
What is your idiotic point?
That if your goal is a better, more egalitarian society, you can't start it with hate-mongering, scapegoating and lynch mob style accusations?
We are all part of the system, in its current incarnation. If we want to make it better, we must work together, rather than simply blaming some for the inequalities of the world. Don't you see that statements like those of the OP only serve to entrench prior opinions, instead of furthering the ultimate goal of economic equality?
That's my idiotic point. If history has shown anything, it is that you can't stop wars by fighting just "one more war".
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
It's not really the World Bank's fault that it was used as a sinecure for one of vacationing Prince Bush's cronies, nor the details of the salary of his mistress from there who was being paid more than Rice. That corruption came from the outside and has nothing to do with the systemic problems within the World Bank.
Neal Stephenson addressed the difference between money based on objects or land versus money based on activity in his three historical novels about the 1600s in a way better than I ever could. Modern society appears to have only been possible by getting the resources out of the hands of family dynasties (an obvious consequence of such things as a gold standard) and letting others have a go at participating in the economy.
Turning back the clock will only result in a single generation benefit for those that are already very wealthy. You have been conned by those that will benefit into advocating throwing the entire system just because of some examples of corruption. The answer is to clean up the corruption instead of throwing everything that works away as well.
All currency beyond direct barter is "fiat currency" anyway. A gold standard or land ownership or whatever is just a different abstraction.
I tried to avoid hatred when writing, but that you've felt some when reading it is telling. it just means that people, sometimes myself, can't stomach the truth. what can we do exactly if we can't clean up our western governments and if there are no consequence for committing the supreme crime?
It really is. They have the same consultants writing the same drivel for decades. They have no solutions, only more ways to push unsustainable debt onto downtrodden countries. ie. Don't waste your time.
They are mostly useless. Did World Bank predict the Arab Spring? That single event threw a monkey wrench into a dozen middle east country's economies for the next ten years. World Bank research is useless. They are no more than an economic strong arm tool of the US. This in itself is not a problem, most people acknowledge this, it is not a secret. However, the continued harmful policies that the World Bank pushes onto developing nations, such as economic policies, environmental policies, development plans, economic loans ect... continues to cause untold damage and promotes institutional corruption. Want to prove me wrong? Point to ONE success story of the World Bank. Please find ANY country they have intervened in to have a demonstrably positive effect. Answer, there is none.
I find it hard to avoid when you use words like "psychopath", "blood of a million people", "infuriate", "mobilize", "fight back", "dictatorship", "denounce", "war criminals", and then finally the conclusion that unless we listen to you and put some people behind bars we will lose our democracy.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
You won't lose what you don't have. we don't have democracy, we have a government in the pockets of wealthy elite who wage war for profit. the ship already sank.