The benefits of open access (OA) are undeniable and increasingly evident across all academic disciplines and scientific research: making academic publications1 freely and openly accessible and reusable provides broad visibility for authors, a better return on investment for funders, and greater access to knowledge for other researchers and the general public. And yet, despite OA’s obvious…

استطاعت منظمة المشاع الابداعي من خلال العمل مع المؤسسات غير الحكومية، الجامعات، الهيئات العامة، و المؤسسات التابعة وأصدقاء المشاع الابداعي في العالم العربي ترك اثر كبير على المجال العام كماً و نوعاً في مختلف القطاعات من التعليم والبحث حتى مجالات الإرث الثقافي, البيانات, التصميم, و المعدات التقنية  كانت السنتين الماضيتين مفعمة بالنشاط و الحيوية خصوصا…

Mangrove forests have been described by the World Wildlife Fund as one of the world’s most threatened tropical ecosystems. In an effort to protect and raise awareness around this problem, MapWorks Learning launched the first of what they plan to make an annual Mapathon for ecological preservation and learning. The inaugural event engaged schools, universities,…

Arts Engine‘s annual Media That Matters Festival — now in its 12th year — is accepting new entries for short films! In addition to being a “premier showcase for short films with big messages” Media That Matters will give filmmakers the opportunity to connect with educators, activists, and nonprofits around the globe, helping to move…

The Open Society Foundations (OSF) have adopted a new copyright policy that encourages its grantees to release their outputs under CC licenses. The OSF have long been releasing their own work products under a CC BY-NC-ND license, but now they have introduced a new clause to encourage OSF grantees to do the same: “We believe…

It’s happened before with music albums, where releasing work openly online did not hurt actual sales of the product. The authors of Machine of Death clearly get this. They explain why the science fiction anthology of stories about people who know the manner by which they die (but have no idea when), has been made…

At the beginning of summer, many of you told us how much you share in a survey for Shareable Magazine. The results of that survey have been translated into a study of “The New Sharing Economy” by Shareable and Latitude Research. Visually, the study features nifty diagrams depicting what we share the most and how…

The event I blogged about in December, TEDxNYED, is happening this Saturday, March 6, in New York City. TEDxNYED is “an all-day conference dedicated to examining the intersection of education, new media, and technology.” For those of you who can’t attend, the conference will be livestreamed from 10am EST to 6pm EST at http://tedxnyed.com. The speaker…

You’ve all heard of the TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design), the annual meeting of great minds with amazing 20 minute speeches that share what they’ve been doing with their lives. But not all of you may have heard of TEDx—spinoffs off TED that are independently organized around a central theme or idea. TEDxNYED is one…

Al Jazeera has just launched the latest of its online project called Al Jazeera Blogs. The website features blog posts written by prominent journalists and correspondents from the global Al Jazeera television network. It also hosts several sub-blogs sections divided by geographical areas, such as the Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. In…