WASHINGTON, April 10, 2012 – The World Bank today announced that it will implement a new Open Access policy for its research outputs and knowledge products, effective July 1, 2012. The new policy builds on recent efforts to increase access to information at the World Bank and to make its research as widely available as possible. As the first phase of this policy, the Bank launched today a new Open Knowledge Repository and adopted a set of Creative Commons copyright licenses.
The new Open Access policy, which will be rolled out in phases in the coming year, formalizes the Bank’s practice of making research and knowledge freely available online. Now anybody is free to use, re-use and redistribute most of the Bank's knowledge products and research outputs for commercial or non-commercial purposes.
“Knowledge is power,”World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick said. “Making our knowledge widely and readily available will empower others to come up with solutions to the world’s toughest problems. Our new Open Access policy is the natural evolution for a World Bank that is opening up more and more.”
The policy will also apply to Bank research published with third party publishers including the institution’s two journals—World Bank Research Observer (WBRO) and World Bank Economic Review (WBER)—which are published by Oxford University Press, but in accordance with the terms of third party publisher agreements. The Bank will respect publishing embargoes, but expects the amount of time it takes for externally published Bank content to be included in its institutional repository to diminish over time.
The World Bank will be adopting an Open Access Policy as of July 1. In addition, the Bank recently launched the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) and became the first major international organization to adopt a set of copyright licenses from Creative Commons. As a result, a wealth of Bank research and knowledge products are now freely available to anyone in the world for use, re-use, and sharing.
Why is this so significant?
How can open access contribute to the goal of eliminating poverty?
How does the new policy impact the Bank's researchers and authors?
How will the OKR benefit users of Bank knowledge, in particular those in developing countries?
Join us in person at the World Bank or online for a lively conversation about these and other aspects of open access to research, and its potential for development progress.
FEATURED GUESTS:
Peter Suber Director of the Harvard Open Access Project and a leading voice in the open access movement
Cyril Muller Vice President for External Affairs at the World Bank
Michael Carroll American University law professor and founding board member of Creative Commons
Adam Wagstaff Research Manager of the World Bank's Development Research Group
Over 11,000 academics have pledged to boycott Elsevier, the Dutch publishing giant, for profiting off their work and making it unavailable to the general public. Now Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is about to turn the world of corporate academic publishing on its head, in the same way that his website effectively took down Encyclopedia Britannica.
Elsevier is part of the Anglo-Dutch company Reed Elsevier, which had 2010 revenues of $9.3 billion and annual profits of over $1.67 billion. It publishes over 250,000 articles in some 2,000 journals a year that range from global publications like the Lancet to more specific ones like the Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society.
Publishers like Elsevier knew they were onto a good thing because before the arrival of the Internet, there was no other way for researchers to tell their peers about the important work they were doing, or vice versa. Plus getting published in a respectable journal was also the key to keeping academic jobs and getting promotions, so the researchers and professors – like rock musicians and best-selling writers – were leery about giving away their work for free.
“(P)ublishing companies became the de facto gatekeepers to scientific knowledge, restricting who could see the latest ideas rather than allowing ideas to spread as far as possible,” writes Aloke Jha in the Guardian.
I now realize that neither governments nor corporations are “fixed” obstacles. In a world of constantly changing information, it is impossible for any structured organization to dominate a larger network—a hybrid network. Such broad, flexible governance without governments being “in charge” is where we need to go.[1] The objective: to implement transparency, truth, and trust across all boundaries.
David Weinberger, cited earlier,[2] is a genius on this point: not only can no one person or even one organization or one country “know” what they need to know to make an informed decision, but if they fail to understand, respect, and “jack in” to the knowledge network with full transparency as the method and truth as the objective, they will make very bad decisions. Of course this does not address the issue of corruption, and the raw fact that most governments and corporations could care less about objective truths, seeking instead to optimize profits for the few at the expense of the many, but their ignorance is our advantage. That is why We the People must recommit ourselves to Open-Source Everything, its underpinnings (transparency and truth), and its outcome: trust you can bank on without a bank.
I will say that again in a different way: the persistent unethical and ignorant emphasis on secrecy and on making decisions for partisan advantage or to pay off campaign contributors and select insiders is not sustainable. We the People have an opportunity to embrace this manifesto of Open-Source Everything and bury “rule by secrecy.” This is this is why I am optimistic about the future.
New, open-source, populist-based, information-era strategies will also serve our increasingly complex lives better in future situations of crisis such as natural disaster, war, and social disintegration. Collapse is cultural, systemic, a failure of process, not of any discrete event, institution, or location. The industrial-era model of command and control cannot adequately process information for a complex system, but an information-era model of distributed localized resilience can.
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Collaboration and consensus is the Epoch B way, but from the philanthropic foundations to the non-governmental organizations to all others, there is still a dearth of information-sharing that is both expensive and incapacitating. While the United Nations has committed itself to coherence, with the meme of “Deliver As One,” they do not have the intelligence—or the integrity—to actually do that. Similarly, governments talk of “whole of government” operations, and corporations of “matrixed management,” but these also fail the intelligence and integrity tests.
Much has been written about how mass collaboration—alternatively called Collective Intelligence, Smart Mobs, Wisdom of the Crowds, Army of Davids[3]—has not been possible in complex situations in the past because the industrial era introduced (imposed) a cumulative series of information pathologies that deprived the group of access to all relevant information, while favoring an elite few with privileged access that allowed them to concentrate both power and wealth. In the public domain, many artificial—that is to say, contrived—obstacles to informing the public emerged in the past century, such as the following, each a book title:
Fog Facts.[4] These are facts that are “known” to some and publicly accessible but only if you know where to look. The mainstream media “blacks out” this knowledge. Modern examples include U.S. government support for dictators and U.S. government tolerance of massive fraud, waste, and abuse in return for fractional campaign contributions to presidential and legislative candidates who strive to remain in office “at any cost.”
Forbidden Knowledge.[5] This includes both knowledge forbidden for public consumption by governments (e.g. restrictions on pornography) as well as corporations (e.g. concealment of known pathologies such as the effect of tobacco on cancer, or toxins associated with household goods) and religions (the triumph of dogma over consciousness).
Lost History.[6] The most prominent modern example is the deliberate classification as secret of clandestine and covert operations by the U.S. government such that a modern history of foreign relations cannot be written—this is the documented complaint of the historians responsible for this task on behalf of the Department of State.[7] The role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the introduction of massive amounts of cocaine into the USA under the pretext of supporting “strategic” operations “at any cost” is especially frightening to anyone upholding the Constitution.[8]
Manufacturing Consent.[9] Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman first discussed this aspect of a modern democracy, and now, decades later, their work has been updated by Sheldon Wolin in his book, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism.[10] Corporations now “own” not just the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, but the judiciary as well, with the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United being the more reprehensible evidence of the corruption of the highest court in the nation.
Missing Information.[11] Bill McKibben did something never done before—he recorded all the television channels being broadcast in his area in one twenty-four-hour period, and watched them all over the course of time. He then spent twenty-four hours alone in the wilderness. Comparing the two experiences, he produced a truly brilliant exposition of how much “missing information” there is in our lives.
Propaganda.[12]Propaganda, put most simply, is the development of manipulated (i.e., not truthful) information and the delivery of that information to an audience in such a way as to impress upon them views and beliefs that are not rooted in fact or deliberative dialog. Propaganda, which includes advertising that itself fosters an appreciation for planned obsolescence, waste, and toxic foods and goods, is the antithesis of transparency, truth, and trust.
Rule by Secrecy.[13] As we have all now realized, and as Occupy is now confronting on Wall Street and around the world, secret banking networks, not governments, have been making decisions about war and peace, poverty and prosperity. It is banks that profit most from wars, followed by the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, and We the People that suffer most. Government secrecy enables massive lies—such as the 935 documented lies[14] delivered by Dick Cheney that took us into a multi-trillion dollar losing war in Iraq[15]—and this is one reason why I have committed the balance of my life to Open-Source Everything: transparency, truth, and trust are the true currency for human transactions, and everything else is a cancer.
Weapons of Mass Deception.[16]Whereas Rule by Secrecy is about secret cabals making decisions on the truth as they know it, Weapons of Mass Deception are about blatant lies—many of them allowed to go unchallenged by the media, think tanks, university specialists, and all others who should be thinking in the public interest but instead choose to “go along” out of a selfish and unethical dependency on funding from the government doing the lying. A form of mass hysteria is achieved, one best illuminated by the manner in which the three singers of the band Dixie Chicks , were treated when they publicly protested and questioned the veracity of the White House.[17] Now, years later, as with Jane Fonda on Viet-Nam, we know that the White House was committing treason, and the Dixie Chicks were both ethical and correct in their protestations. Mass hysteria – and mainstream media corruption – prevented the broader public from recognizing the truth at the time.
Weapons of Mass Instruction.[18]Underlying the ability of a treasonous White House and a complicit Congress (which must abdicate its Article 1 responsibilities when going along with known lies to permit an undeclared war at great cost) is a national educational system that is at best mediocre and at worst a crime against humanity. We are imposing on children of the Internet era—digital natives—an industrial-era system that is mindless: rote learning of old knowledge, sitting silent for hours on end, listening to lectures best left silent and so easily replaced by more vibrant multimedia communications. Teachers and the educational stakeholders who are complicit in the criminally negligent continuation of a retarded educational system are a foundation for an uninformed, unengaged public.[19]
[1] Two useful books on this concept—but devoid of understanding of collective intelligence and advances being made in information sharing and analysis technologies, are Wolfgang Reinicke and Michael Armacost, Global Public Policy: Government Without Government (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), and Wolfgang Reinicke et al, Critical Choices: The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance (Ottawa, ON: IDRC Books, 2000). I did not realize, until searching for the above two books, that James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, Government without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992), was an earlier book on this topic. At a practical level, the best book I have found to date on actually “doing” global governance “around” government, is Ken Conca, Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2005).
[17] During a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lead vocalist Maines said “we don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States (George W. Bush) is from Texas”. The statement offended many Americans, who thought it rude and unpatriotic, and the ensuing controversy cost the band half of their concert audience attendance in the United States. The incident negatively affected their career and led to accusations of the three women being “un-American”, as well as hate mail, death threats, and the public destruction of their albums in protest. Source: Wikipedia/Dixie Chicks citing film “Shut up and Sing,” and “Dixie Chicks Shut Up and Sing in Toronto,” MSNBC, seen 10 Aug 2006.
[19]Cf. Karen De Coster, “How the Public Schools Keep Your Child a Prisoner of the State,” LouRockwell.com, 31 January 2012; and also “19 Crazy Things That School Children Are Being Arrested For In America,” endoftheamericandream.com, undated.
[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 98 (Monday, June 18, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1326-E1327]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RECOGNIZING THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF CAROL DUMAINE
______
HON. JAMES P. MORAN
of Virginia in the House of Representatives
Monday, June 18, 2007
Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the accomplishment of Ms. Carol Dumaine, of Reston, Virginia, and a proud member of our civil service. Ms. Dumaine, an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, has contributed to our Nation's future security through the establishment of the Global Futures Forum (GFF), a highly innovative think tank which coordinates international expertise to enhance intelligence analysis.
As the 9/11 Commission confirmed, intelligence and law enforcement officials had uncovered a number of warning signs that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil was imminent, but the failure to recognize the links between the intelligence precluded authorities from stopping the attacks. Ms. Dumaine has created a forum which allows for more thorough intelligence analysis from a cadre of outside experts. Global Futures Forum (GFF) unites intelligence experts from different nations with professionals from diverse fields so that emerging issues can be recognized quickly and collectively addressed. The GFF reviews intelligence in the public domain and promotes open, interactive linkages to knowledge and insight that exists outside of traditional security organizations.
GFF delegates represent the wide spectrum of intelligence and security organizations, multilateral institutions, academia and non-
government personnel from more than 30 nations. A series of forums in 2005 and 2006 brought these experts together to work face-to-face, providing them with an opportunity to strengthen international partnerships and to share knowledge about global security challenges. To ensure that partners would have opportunities to collaborate outside of the conferences, Ms. Dumaine created the GFF website to provide a constant means of collaboration, allowing GFF partners to share their latest thoughts, research and analysis through their own interactive blogs or chats with other participants. Her work ensures that the dialogue fostered by the GFF never really ends.
Ms. Dumaine created a global community that increases exposure to diverse perspectives and catalyzes discussion on adapting intelligence organizations to address nontraditional challenges. These partnerships created through Ms. Dumaine's effort will help ensure that potential security threats will be handled properly, allowing for the best response possible. For her great contribution to the intelligence community, she has been selected as a finalist for the Partnership for Public Service's “National Security Medal”.
Madam Speaker, I commend Ms. Dumaine for her leadership, and I am proud to have her live in Virginia's 8th Congressional District as she contributes to the greatest civil service in the world. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors.
ROBERT STEELE: A large company paid me to write this in 2004, ostensibly as a white paper to be delivered to then newly-appointed DNI John Negoponte. In fairness to that company, even if they were honest on this point and not just buying my playbook, the prime contract they won with the Open Source Center (OSC) then being managed by Doug Naquin was designed to fail — OSE has never understood OSINT as HUMINT, and is further handicapped by the CIA's Clandestine Service forbidding them from engaging Subject Matter Experts (SME) outside their narrow online surfing and translation lanes. Together with my white paper faxed to then DCI John Deutch, and my memorandum to Vice President Joe Biden, this remains one of my most useful documents for actually creating a national Open Source Agency.
