MediaBerkman

Most tools that scientists use for the preparation of scholarly manuscripts, such as Microsoft Word and LaTeX, function offline and do not account for the born-digital nature of research objects. And most authoring tools in use today are not designed for collaboration, and, as scientific collaborations grow in size, research transparency and the attribution of scholarly credit are at stake.

In this talk, Alberto Pepe — Berkman Fellow and co-founder of Authorea, a science startup — argues that the very tools that scientists use to write scholarly papers create a barrier to Open Science by preventing reuse and sharing, and introduces an authoring platform for research papers which adopts the web as its canvas.

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The Internet exists and persists on the border between helpful and harmful, between freedom and totalitarianism, access to knowledge and censorship.

But as long as technology is adaptable activists will be learning and creating workarounds to spread information and promote change.

Enter the Circumvention Tools Hackfest, a four-day bonanza of coders and freedom lovers gathered together to build and improve applications to help activists in repressive regimes get around censorship and surveillance.

Correspondent Becky Kazansky attended the Hackfest to find out what kind of tools these “hackers” cooked up. As part of our new series — Drone Humanitarianism: Harnessing Technology to Remotely Solve and Prevent Crisis — she filed this report.

(Click to follow our Drone Humanitarianism series!)

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Over the past two decades copyright law has become a major impediment to learning and teaching processes. The use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes is, indeed, at the core of fair use. Yet, the high level of uncertainty regarding the particular scope of permissible uses prevents universities and colleges from exercising fair use on behalf of their students.

In this talk, Niva Elkin-Koren — former dean of the University of Haifa Faculty of Law and the founding director of the Haifa Center for Law & Technology (HCLT) — shares some insights based on the building of a coalition of higher education institutions in Israel and drafting a code of fair use best practices.

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While serving as the de facto standard for secure web browsing, in many ways the security of HTTPS is broken. In the long term, a robust technical and policy overhaul must address the systemic weaknesses of HTTPS.

Nico van Eijk —Professor of Media and Telecommunications Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law — and Axel Arnbak — a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute for Information Law — discuss policy methods for strengthening the security of HTTPS, using specific examples from Europe and around the world.

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Infrastructure resources are the subject of many contentious public policy debates, including what to do about crumbling roads and bridges, whether and how to protect our natural environment, energy policy, even patent law reform, universal health care, network neutrality regulation and the future of the Internet.

Brett Frischmann — professor at Cardozo Law School and author of the new book “Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources” — discusses how society benefits from infrastructure resources and how decisions about how infrastructure is managed can affect everyone.

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The internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

In this talk, Peter Suber — Director of the Harvard Open Access Project — shares insights from his new concise introduction to open access — what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold.

This event includes questions and responses from Stuart Shieber (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Robert Darnton (Harvard University Library), June Casey (Harvard Law School Library), David Weinberger (Berkman Center / Harvard Library Innovation Lab) and more.

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Disseminating knowledge was once a costly undertaking. The expenses of printing, distributing, and housing the work of researchers and scholars left most research in the hands of publishers, journals, and institutions in a system that has evolved over centuries. And the licensing model that has arisen with that system butts heads with the quick, simple, and virtually free distribution system of the net.

The key to breaking free of the traditional licensing model locking up research is the promise of the “Open Access” movement. And the movement has already made significant strides. Over the summer the United Kingdom was enticed enough by the potential for greater innovation and growth of knowledge to propose Open Access for any research supported by government funds.

But Open Access still remains a wonky, hard to understand subject.

Today, Peter Suber — Director of the Harvard Open Access Project — shares insights with David Weinberger from his new guide to distilling Open Access, called simply Open Access.

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In the olden days, a writer hoped to catch the eye of an aristocratic patron who might supply a well-placed word of endorsement. The Gutenberg press wrested authors free from this feudal condition, only transfer writers’ indenture to publishers, who by owning the means of [re]production acquired the final say regarding what volumes would and would not land on store shelves. This gatekeeping privilege of publishers largely survives to this day, and depending on how well you think they do the work, we might celebrate publishers as Stewards of Culture or lament the state of a Literature Held Hostage.

Now digital media and the Internet propose to devolve the means of [re]production upon authors themselves. Any would-be novelist can flog his work in a digital format over Amazon KDP, Smashwords, and other open outlets for textual works.

Brad Abruzzi — Berkman Fellow and practicing university attorney — is one of those would-be novelists. Ten weeks ago, without any word of encouragement or assent from Big Publishing, Brad released his novel, New Jersey’s Famous Turnpike Witch, on Amazon. And now, for Brad, the age-old question recurs: where are my readers?

Brad leads a discussion about self-publication, author independence, and the prospects for a literary culture fostered by reader criticism, rather than publishers’ whims.

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In the last few years, the war among drug cartels and the Mexican authorities has intensified, claiming the lives of many innocent people. Citizens, using Social Media have organized a communication network reporting daily on the dangerous zones of their cities. How did it start and how effective are they? In this presentation Andrés Monroy-Hernández — post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research and a Fellow at the Berkman Center — and Panagiotis “Takis” Metaxas — Professor of Computer Science and Founder of the Media Arts and Sciences Program at Wellesley College — analyze the information sharing practices of people living in cities central to the Mexican Drug War, and examine how a handful of citizens aggregate and disseminate information from social media, many of whom are anonymous.

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Nobel Laureate and Economist Elinor Ostrom passed away last month at the age of 78.

Best recognized for her research into the management of common pool resources, Ostrom broke new ground with her findings that Commons were not inherently tragic, as previous generations of economists believed. In fact, Ostrom found examples of communities that could effectively manage limited resources, like agricultural land or open space, to prevent resource depletion.

Her work paved the way for researchers studying internet communities to explore how norms are established and cooperation is achieved.

On today’s show Berkman researchers and affiliates Benjamin Mako Hill, Judith Donath, Mayo Fuster Morell, and Oliver Goodenough discuss how Ostrom’s work impacted their lives.

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