I am torn between wanting more of these lists of resources, because there is always something new and exciting to be found in them, and wanting less of these lists, because it takes a lot of time to look through 100 resources, and what I really want is someone else to tell me which ones are the top 5 (3? 10?) tools and give me a little more information on how to use them. It seems that increasingly the value is in the content that helps me find what i want, rather than the content that i think I want, because often, there are lots of almost equally good alternatives for what I want. At least when it comes to online content - It’s totally different for food, where the cheesecake at Birds remains unrivaled.

In the UNESCO OER Toolkit discussion, I posted a question about collecting resources and making sure they are appropriate, updated regularly, and annotated to so readers don’t need to spend much time reviewing tools and content themselves - unless they want to. Unfortunately, it was not a topic that sparked many responses - maybe because reviewing, annotating, and updating links is simply hard work, and does not lend itself as nicely to community-based collaboration models. There is del.icio.us of course, but it’s ranking mechanism is too crude for the particular purpose of the OER Toolkit.

Jon makes a sound argument that top teachers need better compensation and incentives, but in South Africa it is not just the top teachers, but all teachers. Only focusing on the top 1%, and by proxy the top few% of graduates that are taught by these teachers, is not enough. My sense is that many developing countries have a small group (maybe 1%?) of highly-educated and skilled people, but what is needed is a broader middle-class of professionals; and the teachers to educate them.

It’s exciting to see different voices bringing different perspective to the argument for breaking down boundaries, and increasing innovation!

The workshop wiki is online and we would love to get feedback and comments for improvement. Some participants already asked us to run the event in their universities and we are planning to build a workshop blueprint/model that others can use as well.

A few months ago, I looked on Google and Wikipedia for places where people were using the concept of ‘open’. In 30 minutes I found about 15 examples. Obviously, some of these examples used ‘open’ was being well before the idea migrated from software: open systems; open societies; open standards; open space meetings. There are also fields that are taking their inspiration much more directly from things like Linux and Wikipedia: open education; open content; open innovation; open policy making; open design; open media; open philanthropy. And, then, there were a few surprises: open ethics; open religion; open fitness.

Some of this is fluff and fashion, of course. However, there are increasing examples of people very seriously and effectively applying open source thinking – intentionally and unintentionally – beyond software and encyclopedias. Here are three examples: The Open Architecture Network, an online community that shares building designs with the aim of creating low cost, innovative housing solutions for the world’s poor. The MIT Open Courseware initiative and the Shuttleworth Foundation’s own Siyavula project, which are using open source techniques to develop and share learning materials. And BarCamp, which is like an open source conference model for techies, making it easy for people to design events on the fly and for the model to be replicated in different cities around the world. You will hear about many more examples as a part of today’s Open Everything event.

Judging from the titles of the sessions, the workshop will provide some background on patents and innovation (not the same thing of course), and strategies for for “obtaining commercial returns from research”. I fully support efforts that will lead to “commercialisation” of research outputs - in cases where this is needed to turn the results of research into useful products and services, but I am skeptical that patents are always the best way to achieve this. It will be interesting to see how the speakers strike a balance between preserving the benefits of public access on one side, and enabling commercial returns through appropriation that might lead to prices that are out of reach for the majority of South Africans.

The sessions tomorrow include:

• “The PCT at the Center of the International Patent System, Including an Outline of the General Principles of the Patent System” - for researchers, students and postdocs in fields involving technology and science
• “Using Patents and the PCT to Obtain Commercial Returns from Research” - for academics and administration staff in institutions which have, or are developing, technology commercialization policies or programs”
• Further discussions on “Using Patents and the PCT to Obtain Commercial Returns from Research”

There seem to be a number of implicit assumptions, which are worth exploring in the literature before talking about the ways how university policies and strategies can promote patents as a prerequisite for commercialisation.

Are patents the same as innovation? Are patents effective tools to increase research, inventions and commercialisation of research outputs?

Patents are not driving innovation that meets important needs. While the exorbitant costs of brining new medicines onto the market are often cited as the key reason why we need strong patent, protection to ensure continuing development of new and better drugs - the net effects are sobering. Only 1-5 - 3% of drug sales is spent on research that eventually leads to treatments that are better than existing treatments because “only about 10% of drug sales go towards R&D on new products. Only about one-quarter of new drug approvals are rated by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to have therapeutic benefit over existing treatments” (Hubbard & Love, 2004). Where does all the rest of the money go? It is wasted in the inefficiencies enabled by a monopoly-driven business model.

Innovation in steam-engines makes an interesting example. As Nuvolari (2005) shows the “the practice of information sharing resulted in a marked acceleration in the rate of technical advance” after the patent had expired. Furthermore, it was the rights holders (Watt and his business partner Boulton who lobbied for an extension of patent protection during their monopoly, providing a blueprint for future corporate lobbying strategies in this field. (See Ghosh & Soete 2006)

In countries that have promoted university patenting, have the results met the expectations of increased returns to fund more research, and increased value to the economy as a whole?

University patenting in other countries have not had the desired results of higher returns (to fund more research). A recent study of university patenting in the US as a result of the Bayh-Dole Act, indicates that patents do not significantly increase knowledge flows from the university to the private sector, but that many other factors (inventor entrepreneurship, consulting with private sector, etc.) are equally or more important (Mowery et. al, 2001).

If patents are not useful, why are there more and more of them?

There are more and more of them, because for some organisations patents are good - however, that does not allow the conclusion that they are good for all organisations or all countries. In the U.S. Lerner and Jaffe (2004) show that two changes to the way patents were administered provide at least some explanation for the “patent explosion” from the mid 1980s: the establishment of a special court of appeals to deal with all IPR issues, and a change in the fee system of the patent office, which meant that it would only get paid for issued patents, not for review and decline of non-valid applications.

Secondly international patenting activities show increased patenting by developed country corporations in developing country patent offices. That is an indication that these corporations see profit opportunities from off-shore patenting, not that developing countries benefit from stronger IPR.

Are strong intellectual property regimes really good for countries at a lower level of a developmental trajectorys?

Using a historical approach, Ha-Joon Chang’s “Kicking away the ladder” shows that today’s developed countries (Examples include the UK and the US) needed access to knowledge in order to achieve their current developmental levels. Throughout their development, these countries frequently blocked, circumvented, broke, or simply ignored others IPR.

More recent evidence is inconclusive, but as cited in a recent WIPO report on Patents stronger patent protection “by itself do[es] not promptly stimulate domestic innovation”. However, “implementation of patent laws will stimulate innovation in countries with high level of economic development, education and economic freedom (Qian, 2007)”.

Theory aside - In terms of costs, is it feasible for an entrepreneur in South Africa to defend herself against a litigation by an international corporation; is it feasible for her to litigate against such a company that might be infringing her patent? The cost of litigation against an existing patent granted outside the scope of patentable subject matter (in other words, the patent should never have been granted) will require a budget of at least 1,000,000 ZAR. Very few small and medium sized companies in South Africa can take such a risk.

Strong international IPR allows pharmaceutical companies to target many of their products at a very small income band at the top of the economy, preventing access to life-saving and life-prolonging innovations for large parts of developing societies. Example: Thailand, South Africa, etc.

References

H. Chang. Kicking away the ladder. Anthem London, 2002.

R. Ghosh and L. Soete. Information and Intellectual Property: The Global Challenges. Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 15, Issue 6, pp. 919-935, 2006, 2006. Working paper available here

Hubbard T, Love J (2004) A New Trade Framework for Global Healthcare R&D. PLoS Biol 2(2): e52 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020052

A. Jaffe and J. Lerner. Innovation and its Discontents (2004) Princeton. Princeton University Press.

David C. Mowery, Richard R. Nelson, Bhaven N. Sampat and Arvids A. Ziedonis, The growth of patenting and licensing by U.S. universities: an assessment of the effects of the Bayh-Dole act of 1980, Research Policy, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2001, Pages 99-119.

Qian, Y. (2007), “Do national patent laws stimulate domestic innovation in a global patenting environment? a cross-country analysis of pharmaceutical patent protection, 1978–2002.”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 89(3), pp. 436-453.

WIPO, Report on the International Patent System, Standing Committee on the Law of Patents, Prepared for 12th Session, Geneva June 23 - 27 2008. Available here

The Open Courseware Consortium is the largest global network of universities that publish open educational resources. It was originally established at MIT, but with a clear mission to become an independent entity that represents institutions from all over the world, increase the amount of open courseware that is shared and developed, and increase its reach and impact. Over the past year, some members have worked very hard to develop the necessary governance documents and processes, which led to the election of the first Open Courseware Consortium board and the OCWC will shortly be incorporated as a non-profit organisation. From the perspective of our work at UWC, we were very happy to be voted onto the first board of the Open Courseware Consortium for the next two years. Three other institutions are represented for two years (the MIT, the Open University UK, and Keio University in Tokyo) and four others will participate for one year initially (TU Delft Netherlands, University of Korea, Tecnologico de Monterrey Mexico, and University Juan Carlos III Spain) to ensure sufficient board turn-over. Affiliate board members are the Utah State Universities Center for Open and Sustainable Learning and CORE, the Chine Open Resources for Education project.

The fact that an open courseware project from a small, previously disadvantaged institution in South Africa was asked to help shape the work of this global university network, is both indicator for the consortium members’ commitment to increasing reach and impact, and comes with a big responsibility for us to represent the needs and perspectives of institutions in developing countries. As every business consultant will say - a great challenge, and a tremendous opportunity!

Over the past few years, I have been commenting on the imbalance between the OER movement’s statements about supporting developing nations and the allocation of funding, which went almost entirely to well established and resourced institutions in developed countries. During the meeting I spoke to many of the participants from the developed countries about this issue and get the sense that there is a real interest and willingness to engage in order to find solutions together - but that there also seems to be a lack of strategies that are effectively put forward by developing country institutions. Of course, that is related to lack of capacity and awareness, but that creates a dilemma - as the South does not want to patronised and “developed” by the North, yet the North does not understand how it can effectively engage and collaborate. This is definitely an area that I will put some of my energy into in the next 2 years.

I also want to thank the Shuttleworth Foundation for providing a last minute travel grant to support my attendance at the meeting and hereby enabling African representation at the first board meeting.

What does it mean? South African bloggers have found a variety of ways to look at this process from different perspectives. Andrew Rens argues positively that in fact most of the world rejects OOXML since India, China, South Africa and Brasil all voted NO; and Brian Bakker points out that Microsoft Corrupted the ISO Process, which will increasingly be a problem as corporations are looking for ISO approval of their solutions, to fulfill government’s request technology that supports open standards.

“In the future, universities will no be competing with other universities only, but they will compete with the Web. And you can’t compete with the Web.”

I spoke just after Andreas and it was great to use his very practical examples to support my broader theoretical argument that looking at the universities’ position towards governance of knowledge — open or closed — is a good starting point to redefine the social role of the institution.

Both papers will be available from the GUNI website shortly.

Feedback would be great!

United Nations University
Public Announcement
4 February 2008
MR/E03/08

United Nations University Launches Online OpenCourseWare Portal

New initiative offers free online access to training courses

Today, 4 February, United Nations University launches the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal, accessible at http://ocw.unu.edu. Initially, the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal offers open access to about a dozen courses developed by three of UNU’s Research and Training Centres and Programmes (RTC/Ps) and the Tokyo-based UNU Media Studio.

The intent of the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal is to make the course materials used by UNU RTC/Ps available on the Web, free of charge, to any user anywhere in the world. The initiative is not meant to replace degree-granting higher education or for-credit courses, but rather to provide content that can be used by educators for curriculum development, by students to augment their current learning resources, and by individuals for independent self-study.

The long-term goal of the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal is to promote the development, use and distribution of training materials under Creative Commons licenses. The initiative is part of the Global OpenCourseWare Consortium (http://ocwconsortium.org), a collaboration of more than 100 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world with a common mission of advancing education and empowering people worldwide through OpenCourseWare.

Expressing his support for this initiative, UNU Rector Konrad Osterwalder said, “This signifies our commitment to broadening access to high-quality educational materials and will contribute to the United Nations University’s core mission, which seeks to further the generation and sharing of knowledge in order to strengthen individual and institutional capacities to resolve pressing global problems.”

Resources available in the initial phase of the UNU OpenCourseWware Portal include six courses on electronic governance, developed by the UNU International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST, Macao); five Ph.D. training courses on the economics of technical change, innovation and development, developed by the UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research and Training Centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT, the Netherlands); and two courses on mangrove biodiversity and integrated water resources management developed by the UNU International Network on Water and Health (UNU-INWEH, Canada). Several more UNU system units are currently preparing course materials for inclusion in the portal later this year.

Project coordinator Brendan Barrett notes that UNU is committed to sharing the expertise developed through this initiative by offering support and guidance to universities in the developing world that are seeking to open up their courses.

Philipp Schmidt, who is responsible for the project at UNU-MERIT and who recently participated in drafting the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, said, “So far, the OpenCourseWare movement has focused on distributing content from the developed to developing countries. Through our partnership with institutions like the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, we are trying to reverse this trend and make locally created content more accessible.”

In the Asia–Pacific, UNU is collaborating with several Japanese universities, including Keio University, Waseda University, the University of the Ryukyus and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, to jointly run open courses on such important topics as climate change, sustainable energy and disaster management. Many of these universities are members of the Japan Opencoursware Consortium (http://www.jocw.jp). UNU is very pleased to take this opportunity to announce its intention to officially join JOCW in March 2008.

For more information, visit the UNU OpenCourseWare Portal (http://ocw.unu.edu) or contact:

Brendan Barrett
UNU Media Studio
United Nations University Centre
53-70, Jingumae 5-chome, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo 150-8925, Japan
Tel: +81-3-5647-1318
Email: barrett@hq.unu.edu
Web: http://www.unu.edu; http://www.mediastudio.unu.edu

More here, or go straight to the job description. Good luck!