Critical Data Literacy, why and how: an Open Education Resource (OER)

This OER was developed for presentation at the Data Power 2017 conference held at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario June 22 - 23. This is primarily a framework for how to go about teaching critical data literacy in the student-centered tradition of Freire, supplemented by the work of Tygel and colleagues. A sample introduction developed for Canadian university students, and a few references, are included. My definition of critical data literacy as used in this OER is: 

critical data literacy is the ability to understand and critique how the beliefs and values of people and groups (including government) influence what data is created, how it is shared and how it used by to tell compelling stories by storytellers whose beliefs and values shape the kind of stories they choose to tell and how they tell the stories. Critical data literacy also means having the ability to create and tell one's own stories using data. 

This OER is released under the terms of copy and share - with love, my latest statement on sharing which can be found at the bottom of this post. The Freire tradition of popular education involves starting with the lived experience of students. In this context, following is what I recommend for anyone who wishes to develop a full critical data literacy program based on the framework. I think that this framework could be adapated for teaching at any level, from community-based learning (led by community groups or organizers or as a participatory action research project) to graduate classes (that's where I teach). Some of the details would change. For example, if you are teaching at a university, some parts of the process are likely to involve formal evaluation (marking), but if you are teaching to the general public or a community group, this would not make sense. Please adjust as needed for your own context.

The overall approach:

1. Identify your student group. Think about what kinds of issues or problems they might have that could potentially be helped by data, the kind of data stories they might be familiar with. 
2. Develop an introduction to critical data literacy. Tygel and colleagues (2015, 2016) found that this was necessary. One way to think about the difference between critical data literacy and basic literacy (reading) is that people who do not know how to read in recent history are likely to be aware of the existence of reading as something that other people do. Data literacy / critical data literacy is not at this point in time as broadly understood as reading.
3. Plan the 3 phases of the framework that follow directly from the Freire tradition: investigation, thematisation, and problematisation. In these phases, students should lead the learning process (active learning), pursuing problems and questions of their own devising. The teacher's role is to provide support. 
4. Plan a systematisation (synthesis) wrap-up approach that makes sense for your student group. In some cases this might be left for the students to decide the approach, and the teacher only helps to guide the students towards this closure. In a formal educational setting, this might involve a pre-determined assignment.
5. Implement!

The 5 phases are: introduction, investigation, thematisation, problematisation, and systematization (synthesis). Details follow. The introduction section is the most fully developed as this is the only teaching portion that involves imparting knowledge; all others begin with the student.

Introduction

As noted above, it will not be obvious to everyone what data literacy or critical data literacy is or why they should learn about it, as discovered by Tygel and colleagues (2015, 2016). For this reason, an introduction to the topic may be helpful. In this phase one might invite in guest speakers from the community who use data in their storytelling and/or to provide examples of data storytelling. This is also where definitions of critical data literacy could be introduced. In addition to my definition (see above), I like this definition of data literacy from the Data Journalism Handbook  because it includes the element of critical thinking; not every definition that I have seen includes this, to me a significant omission.

data literacy is the ability to consume for knowledge, produce coherently and think critically about data [emphasis added] (Grey, Bounearu & Chambers (2012)

Following is a sample introduction developed for an audience of Canadian university students. If you are teaching a different type of student group, I recommend that you develop your own introduction tailored to your group. If you do and you are willing to share this with others, please send me a link (via e-mail to Heather dot Morrison at uottawa dot ca) or as a comment to this post and I will include a link to your work in this post. If you would like to use this introduction as is, please see the link to the full presentation.

Introduction slide 1

This slide presents two conflicting stories that are told using basically the same underlying data. One of these (tax freedom day) will be very familiar to the audience, while the other will not as it is relatively new. 

This slide illustrates two very different perspectives on taxation in Canada. On the left, we see the Fraser Institute’s Tax Freedom Day. The Fraser Institute, a right-wing think tank, uses data to tell their story of over-taxed Canadians, working more than half the year for the government before earning a dime for themselves. The idea of tax freedom day has been very effective in Canada over the past few decades. On the right, we see one of the images from the Broadbent Institute’s report The Brass Tax which was published very recently. The left-wing Broadbent Institute challenges the numbers behind the Fraser Institute’s analysis, argues that Canadian taxation is pretty reasonable compared to other countries, and presents a different picture. In this case this graph illustrates Canada’s progressive approach to taxation and makes the point that people with little to no income pay no income tax and only a small percentage of Canadians age 25 to 54 are in the top income tax bracket, paying more than 30% of income in taxes. These are 2 groups of people with a different vision of what society should be like, using the same underlying data to tell 2 very different stories. If we go directly to the data source, will this eliminate the impact of the storyteller? Let’s see.

The following two slides might be more effective as a live demo or in-class lab activity. 

 

One of the underlying datasets used by both groups is the statistics provided by OECD. If you go to the OECD website there are some neat online tools that let us quickly visualize data in different ways. One of the elements of the data story told by the Fraser Institute is that individual families pay too much in taxes. I wondered if there has been any change in the portion of tax revenue contributed through personal and corporate taxes over the years. Here is what I found using the OECD website. It seems that more tax is gathered from personal rather than corporate taxes, but over the past few years the portions don’t seem to have changed much. This is the default view that shows trends from 2000 – 2015. If this had fit what I already believed, I suspect I would have stopped here. But I seem to recall a relative decrease in corporate taxation over the past few decades so I decided to slide the years covered…

And this is what I found. If we slide the start date of the visualization tool back to 1965, it does appear that there has been a relative increase in tax revenue from personal sources and a relative decrease in tax revenue from corporate sources. This shows how easy it would be for two people with different perspectives on what a data trend is likely to be to go to exactly the same dataset and make a slight change to how the data is visualized to tell two very different stories. 

Kaulfuss uses OECD data to tell a story about U.S. health care spending on a blog called Beyond Economics. The story  is that the U.S. spends two and a half times the OECD average on health. It doesn’t surprise me that the U.S. spends more than the OECD average on health, but I am surprised that the difference is this much. What I found even more intriguing is the author’s claim that U.S. public spending on health is above the OECD average. Who knew? Disclaimer: what I am doing here is presenting stories told through data, I have not examined the data itself so cannot comment on the accuracy of the story.

 

Wikipedia has a section called Health Care in Canada. Here in Canada many of us – I include myself – think highly of our public health care system, and I think I see this perspective here. This section states that “most health statistics in Canada are at or above the G8 average” in a paragraph that is followed by the table pictured above. The table draws from a number of data sources and appears to me to demonstrate above-average data literacy skills. However…

 

When you look at the statistics that are presented and calculate the averages, Canada is above average on 3 of 8 measures. This is not “most”. This suggests a need for data literacy. If you look at the specific measures where we are above average, an argument can be made that being above average in life expectancy is a good thing. However, an above-average infant mortality rate is probably not such a good thing. We are also slightly above average on % of government revenue spent on health, but what does this mean and is it a good thing? Looking at some of the areas where we are below average –such as the  # of doctors & nurses per population & % of health costs paid by government – might give one reason to re-consider our narrative that we Canadians are above average in public health. This illustrates a need for critical data literacy. In other words, our beliefs might be getting in the way of understanding what is our existing data tells us.

Some approaches and suggestions  for creating a meaningful introduction     

The reason for the introduction section is because as Tygel and colleagues found there is a need to start with some explanation about what data is and how people use it. There are many potential approaches to introducing the topic such as having guest speakers come to explain how they make use of data and data visualization. 

Suggested sample activity

One activity that would fit here is to have students create their own demonstrations. In the case of tax data, students could do a google search for tax data and limit to images. This search will yield lots of material to work on. The idea is to have students find out who created the visualization and what the story behind the visualization is. If this is done for evaluation purposes, I recommend a pass/fail approach because student success will depend a lot on which images are selected. Being there to hear the findings of all the students is sufficient for this learning exercise. A teacher in an area where computers are not readily available could bring in copies of materials to work with. This introductory phase may be more relevant for some student groups than others, for example university students. If this doesn’t seem to fit, you could skip this stage. 

Investigation, Thematisation & Problematisation

Two key points to keep in mind in these 3 phases: 1) the core focus should be lived experience not imparting abstract knowledge and 2) teaching involves helping people seek and find answers. This is important because in teaching data literacy one might be tempted by starting with the data, teaching people how to understand and work with data. Keynote speaker Gwen Phillips (and BC First Nations data activist) at the Data Power 2017 provided a brilliant example of why not to start with the data: the existing data might not be what is wanted at all. As Gwen said, we should measure what do want (e.g. youth vitality) not just what we don't want (e.g. teen suicide). This introduces a challenge to develop new metrics, but one that seems worthy of pursuit. If we start by teaching about existing data we risk missing the opportunity to identify gaps like this.

Disclosure: in understanding the following 3 phases, it may be helpful to know that although I teach at a university and am very engaged in pedagogy, I do not have an education degree and do not consider myself an expert on pedagogy. If you would like to know more about how to teach in the Freire tradition, I suggest starting with the Tygel references below and if desired supplementing with general educational books and articles covering the Freire tradition. My contributions below are limited to providing a very quick introduction and making the connection with critical data literacy.

Investigation

The investigation phase is the first of 3 phases that follow the Freire tradition. The idea is to begin with lived experience, with real-world problems. If this approach is used for self-teaching by community groups independently or with an academic consultant as a participatory action research project, this is closest to the classic Freire scenario and the best example of a pure investigation stage. To modify this for an education setting, students could either choose problems or issues of direct interest to them, for example student debt, or they might brainstorm a particular target group whose problems they are familiar with such as First Nations, a salient issue here in Canada as many of us struggle to implement the recommendations of our Truth & Reconciliation commission. Classroom activities could include a brainstorm session, individual or small group reflection, and/or presentation of the results of the investigation stage.

Thematisation

 

Thematisation is the first analytic stage. Before searching for what data is available, the idea is to focus on the real-world issue and figure out what kind of data might help to understand or resolve the issue. Examples based on today’s case studies on taxation and health spending could include learning what sorts of taxes are collected and by which governments, or comparing public collective health spending with individual spending.

 

Problematisation 

After thematisation, with some back-and-forth, comes problematisation. This is where we get into research on what kinds of data actually exist that is relevant to the problem, who collects the data and why. Some examples of the types of data sources students might look into at this point if they choose to focus on taxation and spending:

• Canada Revenue Agency
• OECD
• Federation and provincial budgets
• Academic Research 
• NGO / Think Tank research (e.g. Fraser Institute and Broadbent Institute) 

One question that might be raised is whether the existing data is actually sufficient or not, that is, the scope of the inquiry is not focused just on understanding what data is available. but rather what is needed to understand and resolve the problem of interest. 

Systematization

 

Finally, in the systematization stage we put what we have together to come up with an action plan. The nature of the action plan might vary quite a bit depending on the students. An activist community group might want to develop an action campaign or an infographic or other data story to facilitate an existing action campaign. One approach to action could involve citizen data collection. In a graduate class on information policy, like the classes that I teach at the University of Ottawa's School of Information Studies, developing a policy briefing and recommendations for evaluation as academic work might make sense. 

References

Fraser Institute (n.d.). Tax freedom day calculator. Retrieved June 9, 2017 from https://www.fraserinstitute.org/tax-freedom-day-calculator

Grey, J., Bounegru, L., & Chambers, L. (2012). Data Journalism Handbook. OKFN. (as cited in Tygel & Kirsch 2016)

Kaulfuss, R. (2017). Health care: human right or expensive entitlement? Beyond economics. Retrieved June 15, 2017 from  https://beyondeconomics.org/2017/03/15/health-care-human-right-or-expensive-entitlement/

OECD (2017), Tax revenue (indicator). doi: 10.1787/d98b8cf5-en (Accessed on 15 June 2017)

Shillington, R. & Shaban, R. (2017). The brass tax: busting myths about overtaxed Canadians. Ottawa: Broadbent Institute. Retrieved June 9, 2017 from http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/the_brass_tax

Tygel, A.; Campos, M.; De Alvear, C. (2015). Teaching open data for social movements: a research strategy. The Journal of Community Informatics 11:3. Retrieved June 19, 2017 from http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/1220/1165
 

Tygel, A.; Kirsch, R. (2016). Contributions of Paulo Freire for a critical data literacy: a popular education approach. The Journal of Community Informatics 12:3 pp. 108 – 121. Retrieved June 19, 2017 from http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/1296.

Wikipedia (n.d.). Healthcare in Canada. Retrieved June 15, 2017 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Canada 

Terms:  Please copy and share with love.

What does this mean? In brief, I have no interest in using intellectual property law to prevent anyone from using or re-using my work with intentions such as furthering the collective knowledge of humanity (truth with justice and compassion), protecting or restoring the environment or making the conditions of life of humanity better. That is what I mean by with love. If your motives in using my work are something other than love, such as making a profit for yourself or a corporation that you work for, subverting truth, justice, or compassion, then note that I reserve all rights under copyright. Please use attribution as appropriate. For example, if you use my work in an academic or journalist context, you need to acknowledge me as author in order to avoid plagiarism (and confusion).

This post is part of the Creative Globalization series. 

Comparing OA article processing fees with academic salaries

Update September 12: data added from Ayalew's (2012) research indicating that gross annual salary for an associate professor in Ethiopia is 56,400 Ethiopian birr, or approximately $3,400 US (ETB 16.6 = U.S. $1.00). Assuming that at least the equivalent of $400 is paid in tax, that means that a scholarly publisher charging $3,000 for an open access article processing fee is paying a sufficient amount to cover a full-time salary for an Associate Professor in a country like Ethiopia. My recommendation is that research funders supporting work in the developing world should consider carefully before supporting gold open access article processing fees. Do the math. Instead of paying publishers like Elsevier and Springer $3,000 to make a single article open access, why not require green open access archiving and use the funds to support a full-time academic in the developing world instead? 

My advocacy interests include both open access and sustainable scholarly publishing. One area in need of further attention is the impact of publisher costs (whether subscription or open access) on resources to support academics (salaries and research funding).

One concern that I have with the push for payment of gold open access article processing fees (the RCUK approach) is that publishers are likely to set standards based on the UK approach which then impact scholars around the world, because scholarly publishing is global in nature.

One area of research in need of attention is comparison of open access article processing fees with academic salaries. This is particularly needed in the developing world, but even in the developed world it is worth noting that the $3,000 OA fee charged by some scholarly publishers is more than many adjuncts in the US are paid to teach a course (see for example this table by the American Psychological Association): http://www.apa.org/workforce/publications/12-fac-sal/table-32.aspx

Considering the high percentage of voluntary labour involved in scholarly publishing (unpaid writing for research articles, peer review and much of the editing), it is possible to publish using models that involve extremely low dollar costs. See, for example, Shieber's post An efficient journal detailing how the Journal of Machine Learning publishes at an average of $10 per article. Valuable as open access is, the research and writing needs to be done and we academics should be asking ourselves whether we want universities and research funders to be paying a $3,000 article processing fee, or whether we would prefer DIY at $10 or so per article and directing the funds to support academic salaries and research grants instead.

Results of a research collaboration by the "Laboratory for Institutional Analysis (LIA) from the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow, Russia, and the Boston College Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) in the United States in collaboration with experts from 28 countries around the world" links here finds that even after adjusting for differences in currency using the purchasing power parity (PPP) method, the local equivalent of $3,000 is more than a month's salary for an academic at the top rank for 7 of the 28 countries studies (25%), and more than a month's salary at 11 of the 28 countries studied (more than a third). Even the PLoS ONE fee of $1,350 is more than month's salary at the PPP equivalent at the top academic rank in 3 countries (China, Russia Federation, and Armenia). Method: go to Quantitative Data, download the data for academic salaries (only PPP provided), sort by rank (I used top rank and rank 3).

This is very preliminary data, shared in the spirit of open research and also as an illustration of the kind of research that is needed before global approaches to paying for open access are even considered. This data would appear to suggest that at some countries, not necessarily even the world's poorest countries, even local equivalents of open access using article processing fees at the rates of PLoS ONE or Springer would cost more than a month's salary for a top ranked academic.

As a next phase, I'm thinking of looking into the actual data not adjusted for currency differences to compare the actual academic salaries with open access article processing fees.

Reference

Ayalew, E. (2012). Salary and incentive structure in Ethiopian Higher Education. In: Altbach, P. ; Reisberg, L.; Yudkevich, Ml; Androushchak, G., and Pacheco, I. , eds. Paying the professiorate: a global comparison of compensation and contracts.  Routledge: New York and London, 2012. [Note: I have access to a copy of this book through the excellent collection at the University of Ottawa's library. How many academics in less affluent areas would have ready access to a work like this?]

Academically appropriate comments are welcome.

ACTA: end the secrecy. Democracy now!

Update March 28: Major library associations are calling for transparency in ACTA, including the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL) and the American Library Association (ALA)

Update March 11: as reported by Michael Geist, the European Parliament has "today overwhelming approved a resolution on ACTA calling for transparency and raising concerns about substantive elements in the treaty such as the prospect of three strikes and personal border searches".

Further issues raised in the final text:

* the European Parliament "deplores the calculated choice of the parties not to negotiate through well-established international bodies, such as WIPO and WTO, which have established frameworks for public information and consultation"
* It says "further ACTA negotiations should include a larger number of developing and emerging countries, with a view to reaching a possible multilateral level of negotiation"
* provides that "any agreement must include the stipulation that the closing-off of an individual’s Internet access shall be subject to prior examination by a court"
* warns that "ACTA provisions, notably measures aimed at strengthening powers for cross-border inspection and seizure of goods, should not affect global access to legitimate, affordable and safe medicinal products – including innovative and generic products – on the pretext of combating counterfeiting"

Hear, hear!

thanks, European Parliament!!

Thanks to Michael Geist for keeping us posted on leaks from the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

Under discussion: international intellectual property laws, such as anti-circumvention measures, notice and notice versus notice and takedown - see Geist for as much as we've been able to figure out so far. Until recently, these kinds of discussion were a matter of national law-making, for most of us under democratic principles.

Today, these discussions are held in secret, with no opportunity for democratic participation.

Have we - all of us in the so-called free world, that is - lost the franchise?

ACTA - and all of the countries involved in these discussions: END THE SECRECY! Let's have DEMOCRACY - NOW!!

A huge thanks to whoever is responsible for the leaks.

Open Access and Open Education for Development

This slideshow is a brief presentation for a class that I am auditing this semester at SFU, Communication in Development, co-taught by Bob Anderson and James Busumtwi-Sam.

In brief, there are tremendous resources available to scholars and educators in the developing world, including more than 4,000 fully open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals, over 32 million free publications, and major YouTube courseware suites produced by prestigious universities such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science and MIT.

Developing countries are leaders as well as beneficiaries in the open access and open education movements. The Latin American countries are leaders in the open access journals movement with the Scielo project. Africa has a pan-continental journals portal called African Journals Online. South Africa is a leader in the open educational movement, India in national open access policy development.

Resources and supports for developing countries are discussed. Two approaches to sharing knowledge are presented. One is described as a charity model, involving northern countries sharing access to journals in a limited way. The other model, open access, involves sharing by all; OA is seen as a superior model as the means to equity on a global scale.

Students with an interest in open access: this is a wonderful and fun way to introduce classmates and faculty alike to open access. As a bonus, it is easy to find creative commons licensed content to include in your presentation.

The Open Access Imperative and Education

As originally posted to the liblicense list, May 12, 2009.

Recently, a question was raised on liblicense as to whether open
access is necessary outside of the field of medicine.

The answer is: YES!!

While the moral imperative of open access is perhaps most easily seen
in the field of medicine, the same arguments apply across the
disciplines.

One example is the field of Education. Even at the very
wealthiest universities where students and faculty have access to
all the literature in this field, access to the scholarly
literature for the practising educator, parents and other
professionals involved in education (such as school-based social
workers), is for all practical purposes limited to what is freely
available. Evidence-based practice is this area - teachers who
are able to keep up with the latest in their field and look up
answers to issues that come up in the classroom - requires open
access. School library budgets tend to be very limited; a school
library that has all the resources that it needs to meet the
needs of the students is indeed fortunate. A school library with
sufficient resources to meet the needs of teachers and
administrators is truly exceptional.

Fortunately, ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Centre,
has been making education indexing freely available for some
time, and is now providing as much full-text as possible.

The ERIC website can be found at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Education is a common human need, and is of necessity taught at
many post-secondary institutions that are not so wealthy. Here,
freely accessible resources can make a huge difference in the
quality of education for the future educator.

Outside of the wealthy, developed world, free access to scholarly
educational information could well be the key to making it
possible to training new educators. In our global world, we need
an educated populace around the world. If our neighbours
understand about environmental issues and how to identify and
deal with a potential new pandemic, we all benefit. This
understanding requires education, starting with the basics.

What goes around, comes around. Fortunately, lately a good deal
of what is going around is free access to the best of the
knowledge of humankind, our scholarly literature.

Towards the corporation of the commons

Kudos to drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company, for a radical shift in strategy that is anticipated to stun the industry. The new head of GSK Andrew Witty, in an article in The Guardian:

Excerpt:

He said that GSK will:

• Cut its prices for all drugs in the 50 least developed countries to no more than 25% of the levels in the UK and US – and less if possible – and make drugs more affordable in middle-­income countries such as Brazil and India.

• Put any chemicals or processes over which it has intellectual property rights that are relevant to finding drugs for neglected diseases into a "patent pool", so they can be explored by other researchers.

• Reinvest 20% of any profits it makes in the least developed countries in hospitals, clinics and staff.

• Invite scientists from other companies, NGOs or governments to join the hunt for tropical disease treatments at its dedicated institute at Tres Cantos, Spain.

Comment:

It is the shift in view of intellectual property that is likely to be seen as most radical by other drug companies - and most transformative from the author's point of view, as an early example of what may become the corporation of the commons: leading in both innovation and responsibility. Is this approach the perfect solution? It is far too soon to tell. There is room for criticism - what impact will this have on current approaches to generic drugs in the developing world, for example. Nevertheless, it is a bold move, and a huge leap in the right direction.

Thanks to Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

This post is part of the Creative Globalization series.

Who Knows Where the Next Great Idea will come from? Why open access to the world's collective knowledge is a great boon in tough times

These are indeed difficult times. Businesses built for the industrial age are failing; jobs and businesses are disappearing, tax revenue is down. What we need to do now is not to prop up the past, but rather to prepare for the future: the kinds of economics that will thrive in a greener and largely knowledge-based economy.

At a time like this, it is fortunate indeed that we already have open access to a considerable portion of the world's collective knowledge. We can readily share our scholarly knowledge with the developing world, at no cost. Many scholars in the developing world are freely sharing their knowledge through open access, and this is a very good thing, as the developing world has a bit of an advantage right now; they are used to having less money, and so have lots of ideas and incentive to develop the kinds of low-cost solutions that we in the developing world could use right about now. This topic is explored in more depth in my post Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Open Access, the Developing World, and the Cost-Effective Solution.

Through services like libraries, the Scientific Commons, Internet search engines, and the Directory of Open Access Journals, any bright person with no job but even as much as a modicum of curiosity can be learning, and many, I hear, are already doing so by returning to formal education. If even a small fraction of those in this situation focus on this learning, and a small fraction of this learning yields brilliant ideas for new ways of doing things, all it takes is a spark of an entrepreneurial spirit - and an open, neutral network - to get a start on the types of businesses that can sustain families and communities, or even thrive and grow into new economic engines.

Other thoughts to kickstart the new economy

In addition to an open internet, to kickstart this type of new business, it would be a good idea for governments examine how easy or difficult it is to start up a new business. While we all need protection from spam and fraud, it should be possible for an honest citizen to set up a new, simple web-based business to sell their own works or services and figure out how to pay their taxes, in just a few clicks. Maybe other countries have this figured out, but in Canada there are people with good ideas and business plans who are totally stymied but the apparently insoluble problem of how to start up a business and pay your taxes like a good citizen. Who knows, if this was made easy enough, I just might have IPJE Commercial (for t-shirt sales and stuff) up and running, already. Maybe I'd have enough sales to have to hire someone to help out.

Make microloans available. Sure, we'd all like to have big businesses employing lots of people in high-paying jobs, but let's not forget that may of these big businesses started out in someone's garage. And if all people want to do is to support or help support their families and communities, there is nothing wrong with that!

Support people who want to try out a micro-business idea. Look at this as a reasonable option for people on employment supports, especially in areas where there aren't a lot of immediate job prospects.

This post is a part of the Creative Globalization and Essential Efficiencies Series.

An open net means open opportunity

Some economic speculation, from a poetic economist:

Now is the perfect time for an open internet, one that is characterized by net neutrality and ready access to a wealth of content that is freely shared. Why? An open internet means open opportunity, for the new types of businesses that will thrive in the coming economy, an economy that will be much more green and serve the needs of the emerging knowledge economy and society.

With broadband and an open internet, anyone whose job or business have been lost in the current economic crisis, with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, has a ready means of starting up a new business with a potential global market. Some of these businesses will thrive, and create local jobs for those who are not so entrepreneurial by nature.

What do governments need to do to kickstart the new economy? Enact strong net neutrality legislation, so that the citizens and votes in your area have an equal opportunity to get started in a new business. Provide as much free content as possible; for example, make the information produced through government dollars available for free, so that everyone can explore the potential for new business ideas, or adding value and reselling the information.

Work to make sure that such new businesses can get the credit that they need. Governments and the financial industry should especially look to microloans, as there are likely very smart people who have suffered financial losses, but have great ideas to get new businesses started, with just a little help.

Speaking of help, there is a lot that could be done to make it easier to get a business set up, and figure out how to pay taxes. Why not have a simple webform to let people get set up with a new business in just a few clicks, and an ombudsman to help anyone who cannot get a business started because the government doesn't understand how the taxes would work?

If the current economic crisis gives a great many people reason to try out a new business idea, this is a good thing. At the very least, it gives everyone hope and at least a possibility to move forward from a difficult financial position. It seems reasonable, though, to speculate that if a great many new businesses get started, while some will no doubt fail, others will sustain families and communities, and a few will emerge as economic drivers in the years to come.

Richard Poynder interviews Leslie Chan

The University of Toronto's Leslie Chan is one of the Canadian early leaders in the open access movement, recognized around the world (and here at home) for his work on open access, particularly for the developing world through his work as Associate Director of Bioline International.

Richard Poynder's interview ofLeslie Chan in Open and Shut is well worth reading, both to learn about Leslie Chan and for some interesting perspective on open access, scholarship and the developed and developing worlds.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the tip and a useful excerpt. My recommendation, though, is to read the original.

This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.