Open Agenda Research Articles

Setting the agenda for climate assemblies. Trade-offs and guiding principles

ABSTRACT Citizens’ assemblies on climate change are increasingly popular to support democratic decision-making. Such Climate Assemblies (CAs) convene representative groups of citizens formulating policy proposals after hearing experts and deliberating intensely. CAs may help addressing climate policy issues more effectively partly because their members need not worry about re-election. CAs’ effectiveness depends on their design such as the issues chosen (or not chosen) for deliberation. Agenda-setters exert substantial power by selecting certain issues and by choosing framings that benefit some solutions over others. In this paper I ask: What characterizes agendas that are suitable and legitimate for deliberation in CAs? The aim is to support practitioners in making informed agenda choices for CAs by providing a list of ten widely accepted guiding principles based on expert interviews, policy documents, and information gathered from the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA). The paper systematically discusses trade-offs of various agenda choices in the light of different CA rationales. Results show that those with system-supporting rationales tend to favour narrower agendas tailored to political demands aiming to increase immediate policy impact; those with system-disrupting rationales prefer more open agendas allowing citizens to challenge existing political practices and worldviews. Results support earlier arguments that distinctions of entire deliberative processes in either top-down or bottom-up are too simplistic and that a tool-box approach is more useful. Insights appear relevant for debates of deliberative minipublics more generally. Future research should investigate whom to involve in setting CA agendas and with how much power.

TriWadWalks: enriching knowledge and understanding through immersive engagement with the Wadden Sea landscape

This photo essay reports on two TriWadWalks, which were 5-day landscape explorations into the Wadden Sea region of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. These walks were organised by six universities to foster collaboration in research, teaching, and knowledge creation. A key and recurring observation was that the diverse composition of the group, and travelling through the landscape with an open agenda, distinguished the TriWadWalks from everyday excursions or fieldwork. Our experiences exemplify how being out there in the world, talking to people, and engaging with the landscape and with each other creates human-environment oriented landscape-understandings, in which perspectives blend and (disciplinary) borders are crossed. Building on the TriWadWalk experiences, we see the potential for this collaborative approach to be(come) a transdisciplinary knowledge building tool to be used in the planning and governance of the vulnerable Wadden Sea landscape, and for the education and ‘bildung’ of future landscape professionals.

Educational Research: An Open Agenda for Building a Real Impact in Education

Educational Research: An Open Agenda for Building a Real Impact in Education

Between animal research and animal welfare: Analysing the openness practices of UK Named Veterinary Surgeons.

The use of animals as scientific models is argued to be crucial for producing new scientific and medical knowledge and clinical treatments. However, animal research continues to raise socio-ethical concerns. In recent years, there has been a push for openness amongst the life science community, with the aim of increasing the transparency of animal research to wider publics. Yet, how this push for openness is experienced by those responsible for the care and welfare of research animals requires further study. This paper draws upon qualitative interviews with Named Veterinary Surgeons (NVS) in the UK and explores how they practise openness, avoid openness, and, at times, challenge the way their role is represented within openness agendas. Overall, this social scientific analysis reveals that the current openness agenda has the potential to create tensions for professionals, as they seek to manage regulatory and public imaginaries of the veterinary identity alongside the animal research controversy. The paper concludes by arguing for a culture of dialogue, where openness includes allowing those with responsibilities for animal welfare to express ambivalence or concern about their own role. Finally, the paper calls for sustained academic work on relations between the veterinary profession and wider society, particularly areas that involve contested practices in which care and harm may coincide.

Latin American aquatic mammals: an overview of 12 years focusing on molecular techniques applied to conservation

Ecological information useful for conservation purposes have benefitted from recent and rapid advancements in genetic techniques, revealing unknown aspects of behavior, natural history, population structure and demography of several aquatic mammal species, many of them with conservation concerns. Molecular markers have been used to define management units, to settle taxonomic uncertainties, to control illegal wildlife trade, among others, providing valuable information to decision-making to conserve and manage aquatic mammals. We review genetic studies applied to conservation-related issues involving natural populations of more than 40 species of aquatic mammals in Latin America, covering four taxonomic groups. The main goal was to assess which genetic approaches have been used and to identify gaps in genetic research relating to geographic areas and species. We reviewed studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 2011 and 2022, and found that most were focused on population structure, phylogeography, gene flow and dispersal movements. The review revealed that researchers need to increase and improve the knowledge in those species which face major conservation concern. Scarce findings were related to forensics and its application to wildlife trade. In the era of next-generation-sequencing techniques, just a few studies used genomics as a tool for monitoring gene diversity, an important goal to help us predict how species will cope with climate change events. Looking to the future we suggest which species, geographic areas and genetic studies should be prioritized in a scenario of climate change and increased human threats (e.g., fishery bycatch, habitat degradation, etc.) and the urgent need for conservation actions. Finally, we highlight the benefits of the collaborative works and the necessity of generating a conservation genetic network, with an open agenda to discuss the local and regional problematics. All in all, we strongly emphasize the generation of critical information towards the effective conservation and management of aquatic mammals in Latin America.

Desastres com petróleo e ações governamentais ante os impactos socioambientais e na saúde: scoping review

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the actions taken by governments to face the social, environmental, and health impacts of oil spill disasters worldwide. This scoping review was conducted in Bireme, Lilacs, SciELO, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase databases, considering articles published between 1973 and 2021. The database search returned 22 articles on ten global oil disasters in three continents (Asia, the Americas, and Europe), whose causes were grounding (03), shipwreck (01), collision (02), spill (03), and explosion (01). The actions developed were characterized as intersectoral, economic, environmental, and health-related, and the most frequent were environmental and economic actions. In the actions developed, we observed criticisms of controlling, mitigating, or preventing instantaneous or future damages resulting from oil disasters, which is still an open agenda for social movements in the struggle to ensure a healthy, health-promoting environment that preserves all its biodiversity. The actions to face oil disasters in different countries seem incipient, revealing a governmental inability to guide the confrontation of the impacts of this unusual event.

Toward openness and transparency to better facilitate knowledge creation

AbstractChanges in modes of publication over recent decades and moves to publish material freely and openly have resulted in increased amounts of research and scholarly outputs being available online. These include teaching and other material but consist mostly of research publications. There have been significant UK and European initiatives as part of the Open Agenda that facilitate and indeed mandate the move to open whether that is for educational materials, research output and data, or the mechanisms for ensuring the quality of these materials. A significant issue is that although making research outputs freely available is praiseworthy, without the data on which that research is based, reproducibility and so verification, which are fundamental principles of scholarly methodology, are not possible. When discrete datasets are linked openly and freely, are able to interact by using common standards, they become more powerful with extended possibilities for research questions that cross disciplinary divides and knowledge domains. There are always objections and resistance to new innovations, and open publication is no exception; published research, nevertheless, indicates that publishing material openly is becoming considered to be “good research practice” and that the positives of “new collaborations and higher citation” outweigh any perceived negative effects.

DEMARCATION OF INDIGENOUS LANDS IN BRAZIL AND HEALTH CARE OF ORIGINATING PEOPLE

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of the social context of Brazilian indigenous peoples, seeking correlations between conflicts over land demarcation and the poor health condition of this population. METHODS: The search was carried out in September 2021 using the method: problem identification, literature search, evaluation and analysis of the obtained data and construction of the literature review. RESULTS: Since colonization, there has been a great loss of indigenous peoples' rights over their territories, with recognition of their rights only in 1988. In the current scenario, there is an attempt to protect and guarantee these rights in real terms by the National Foundation for the Indigenous (Fundação Nacional do índio [FUNAI]) and, in the health sphere, by the Subsystem of Indigenous Health Care (Subsistema de Atenção à Saúde Indígena [SASI]), created in 1999. Such public agencies are under great governmental pressure, mainly by the Rural Caucus, creating great insecurity, harming the health and quality of life of these groups. CONCLUSION: Despite the constitutional guarantee of the rights of native peoples, the demarcation of land is still an open agenda that makes the guaranteed continuity of village development unstable, weakening the context of mental and physical health of these citizens, as well as the provision of care and provision of effective care.

EHealth Turning Points as Forced by the Covid-19 Dramatic Experience.

In this ongoing fall of the year 2021, many disciplines are frightened by the Covid-19 situation. A generalized sense of Scientific and administrative impotence, - in keeping the pandemic under real control, - is felt widely in Society. In this Invited Lecture the author reminds us of the blows suffered, recalls pertinent elements present in our social organization, browses selected eHealth experiences and proposes an open agenda of actions to allow the eHealth to help the population segments better, and individuals as well.

Not just sand: The folly of dismantling the environmental protection of dunes in Brazil

The Brazilian federal government has followed an open agenda and land use policy against existing legislation in the past three years using the false argument that it hinders national development. A recent loss has been the repeal of national resolution CONAMA 303/2002. With the action of the Brazilian government to revoke this resolution, the mobile and eolian dunes are currently without legal national protection, and are available for real estate, industry (e.g., wind farms), and urban development, among other activities. In this context, the occupation of the mobile dunes promoted by the revocation of CONAMA 303 increases the risk of erosion of the beaches, damage to estuaries with mangroves, and destabilization of the coastline as a whole owing to the interruption of wind corridors of sand transport. The dunes are also one of the main freshwater reservoirs in Brazil. Therefore, the occupation of the dunes and encouragement of their impermeabilization by the attempted permanent repeal of CONAMA 303 resolution clearly puts the water security of Northeast Brazil (a semiarid region) at risk. This incentive to occupy mobile dunes by changing legislation will have a synergistic impact and amplify the predicted effects of climate change with negative repercussions on the sedimentary balance, tourist activities, and blue carbon sequestration. In addition, the vast quantity and value of goods and services provided to society and discussed in this article are sufficient to justify their conservation and a permanent decision from Supreme Court to keep the CONAMA 303 active.

Leading by Example, Lighting the World: Open Government, Transparency, and Soft Power in Obama’s National Security Policy

ABSTRACT Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama promoted open government and transparency at home and abroad as instruments of American soft power. President Obama sought to improve the American people’s confidence in democracy by making the executive branch of the national government more open and transparent. Through the power of its example, Obama further sought to encourage other countries to do the same and want what America wants: the strengthening of liberal democracy globally, greater openness and transparency in international relations generally, and reinvigorated American leadership of the liberal international order. This paper relies on Obama’s own words, White House documents, and government reports to demonstrate why and how his administration sought to assert America’s global leadership through the power of America’s example. It identifies Obama’s open government and transparency agenda as a critical tool of the administration’s national security strategy to address growing disillusionment with liberal democratic governance in America and elsewhere and to counter the rising challenge to the liberal order by rival, authoritarian states – China and Russia especially.

Public-Private Partnerships and the Digitization of the Textual and Cultural Record

A range of private-public partnerships, volunteer and crowdsourced labour, local, national, international and commercial agendas, and competing copyright systems intersect with the important but complicated project of digitization of the world's cultural material. These agendas are sometimes open, social, and collaborative (Edmond 2016; Liu 2016) but are also often closed, profit-driven, or sensitive agendas (Thylstrup 2019). This paper investigates a series of case studies of electronic access to books and cultural heritage, each incorporating some notion of a public-private partnership and some notion of the importance of open access agendas. It explores the metaphors that we use to conceptualize a form of open social scholarship based on an open social digitization agenda, including the HathiTrust’s Digital Library, Google Books, and Microsoft’s partnership with the British Library. The paper asks how the principles of open social scholarship contribute to a better and more nuanced understanding of digitization as a cultural practice and asks how a better understanding of the networks, partnerships, and paperwork (agreements, policies etc) of digitization could inform developments in open social scholarship. The public-private partnerships that surround the digitization of the cultural record assist underfunded cultural organizations to do important digitization work but also introduce complexities and contradictions in open social access to information. In addition, the mix of volunteer and crowdsourced labour operating in collaboration with cultural sector professional staff create intricate chains of value over time, space, and sector. The presence of large-scale corporations inside these arrangements has added another layer of complexity over time, and one that many public stakeholders are still struggling to navigate. The case studies examined here illuminate new facets of the large-scale international agenda of digitization at the social and cultural level and provide insight to help establish a framework for digitization that is open, social, and collaborative. The principles of open scholarship provide a useful first step in unpacking this.

Ethics, archives and data sharing in qualitative research

This article investigates dilemmas in the archiving and sharing of qualitative data in educational research, critically engaging with practices and debates from across the social sciences. Ethical, epistemological and methodological challenges are examined in reference to open access agendas, the politics of knowledge production, and transformations in research practices in the era of data management. We first consider practical and interpretive decisions in archiving qualitative data, then map current policy and regulatory frameworks governing research data management, taking Australia as a case-study. We argue that governance and protocols for data sharing have not attended sufficiently to the distinctive ethical and methodological dimensions and knowledge claims of qualitative research. Instead, approaches associated with quantitative data are extrapolated in ways which construct an imaginary of decontextualised data, abstracted from the conditions of its production. We further argue for more critical attention to the double-edged affordances and ambivalent effects of data sharing and openness and to how data archives are imagined, constructed and curated. This includes greater acknowledgement of the affective and temporal dynamics involved in data archiving, understanding them as practices of (re)invention that also curate ‘archives for the future’ and help to foster an historicising imaginary in educational research.

Abstract NS4: Implementing an In-Patient Family Support Group in a Comprehensive Stroke Center

Background: We identified that during the acute critical phase of stroke the families felt removed from the process. All focus is on stabilizing the patient while families are bystanders. Stroke creates a ripple effect; it doesn’t just happen to the patient it also happens to those around them. The purpose of initiating a Support Group was to provide an environment where family and friends are given a voice and support. Methods: The weekly Family and Friends Stroke Support Group was launched in January 2019 in the Family Center, a waiting room between the Neuro-critical Care and Neuro Intermediate Units. A flyer was posted in these Units, the Family Center, and included in education packets. After the inaugural session it was noted that there needed to be a process to increase attendance. Daily rounds were initiated to invite loved ones of current stroke patients to the support group. Discussions included: stroke education, community resources, and access to chaplain services. An open agenda offered a safe space for attendees to share their stories, thoughts, and questions. We measured the response to our intervention by reviewing Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores. Results: Over seven months 122 family members and friends attended the Support Group, an average of 4.5 per session. The overall response by attendees was how they enjoyed the group sessions as depicted in this reoccurring statement: “I really needed this time to talk through my emotions with other people going through the same thing it’s so encouraging!” This initiative significantly improved the patient and family experience as reflected in the HCAHPS score domains. There was an improvement of 4.2% (on a 9-10/10 scale) in the Overall Global Rating of the Hospital domain and of 8.5% (with Strongly Agreed selected) in the Good Understanding and Management of Health domain. Conclusion: A hospital based in-patient Family Support Group is beneficial to the family experience in an acute stroke setting as evidenced by improved HCAHPS scores. Daily rounds and participation of staff ensure the Support Group is well attended. Overall response of attendees has been positive: “This support group has been great I didn't even know I needed to talk until I did, thank you so much!”

Две формы европейского сотрудничества: интеграция в ЕС и Большая Европа

Globalization is the greatest factor in international development. It should be noted that globalization brings enormous opportunities, but also great risks. Often one goes with the other. However, expanding international cooperation and leveraging successful partner experiences can lead to unprecedented prosperity in the world. At the same time, the risk is increasing that, as a result of globalization, this prosperity will be distributed more and more unevenly and that a growing proportion of the world’s population will be disadvantaged. The same goes for increasing wealth when it is bought at the cost of shifting the main burden on future generations. So we need a shared, responsible globalization that includes all people. Such a thing can be successful only if cooperation between states is strengthened and responsibility is shared. The author analyzes the ambitious agenda proposed by the President of the European Commission, Ms. Ursula von der Leyen, which highlights such tasks as concluding a European "green" deal; developing an economy that works for people; creating a Europe that is equipped for the digital age; protecting what makes Europe Europe; strengthening Europe in the world; giving a new impetus to democracy in Europe. It is emphasized that the Commission wants to play a responsible leadership role throughout the world. The EU has the courage to put forward new initiatives for a strong, open and fair international trade agenda. The EU is still the world's largest exporter of manufactured goods and services, as well as the largest export market for 80 countries.

Grýta þetta pakk: Haturstjáning í íslensku samhengi

Hatursorðræða er talin vaxandi vandi í hinum vestræna heimi í dag. Oft hefur verið vísað til tjáningar Donalds Trumps og stjórnmálamanna sem tengjast Brexit sem samþykktar á tjáningu haturs og, samhliða því, sköpunar jarðvegs til áframhaldandi haturstjáningar. Einnig deila ákveðnir fjölmiðlar hatursfullum boðskap gegn minnihlutahópum. Innan þessa jarðvegs haturs spretta upp ýmiskonar haturssamtök sem beita sér gegn minnihlutahópum, bæði í orði og með ofbeldi. Þessi grein skoðar heimasíður þar sem fram kemur neikvæð umfjöllun gegn minnihlutahópum á Íslandi. Fjallað er um heimasíður stjórnmálaflokka, fjölmiðla og haturssamtaka með það að markmiði að greina framsetningu þeirra á minnihlutahópum hérlendis. Til viðbótar eru tekin nokkur dæmi um neikvæð viðhorf til minnihlutahópa sem sjá má í umræðu stjórnmálamanna. Niðurstöðurnar endurspegla það að neikvæð tjáning í garð ólíkra minnihlutahópa er nokkuð almenn, en jafnframt má greina fjölgun á rýmum þar sem einstaklingum virðist finnast þeir geta tjáð mjög neikvæð viðhorf. Þá ber mest á neikvæðri tjáningu í garð múslíma.

Destroying the silo: how breaking down barriers can lead to proactive and co-operative researcher support

In this article we evidence some of the opportunities which the Research Excellence Framework (REF) open access agenda has created for closer collaboration between the Library Research Support Team and the Research Office at Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU). Drawing on personal reflections and shared experiences, we suggest that this new co-operative spirit has yielded three important outcomes.First, it has allowed for the dismantling of research support silos and forms of duplication. Second, it has enhanced the visibility and profile of research within academic departments and across the University as a whole. Thirdly, it has enabled relationships and engagement to be developed beyond our institution, allowing us to learn from others. This leads us to further suggest that in the context of research support within an institution, the library should take an active role to engage with collaborative forms of research support.

Open Educational Practices in Australia: A First-phase National Audit of Higher Education

For fifteen years, Australian Higher Education has engaged with the openness agenda primarily through the lens of open-access research. Open educational practice (OEP), by contrast, has not been explicitly supported by federal government initiatives, funding, or policy. This has led to an environment that is disconnected, with isolated examples of good practice that have not been transferred beyond local contexts.This paper represents first-phase research in identifying the current state of OEP in Australian Higher Education. A structured desktop audit of all Australian universities was conducted, based on a range of indicators and criteria established by a review of the literature. The audit collected evidence of engagement with OEP using publicly accessible information via institutional websites. The criteria investigated were strategies and policies, open educational resources (OER), infrastructure tools/platforms, professional development and support, collaboration/partnerships, and funding.Initial findings suggest that the experience of OEP across the sector is diverse, but the underlying infrastructure to support the creation, (re)use, and dissemination of resources is present. Many Australian universities have experimented with, and continue to refine, massive open online course (MOOC) offerings, and there is increasing evidence that institutions now employ specialist positions to support OEP, and MOOCs. Professional development and staff initiatives require further work to build staff capacity sector-wide.This paper provides a contemporary view of sector-wide OEP engagement in Australia—a macro-view that is not well-represented in open research to date. It identifies core areas of capacity that could be further leveraged by a national OEP initiative or by national policy on OEP.

Comment on “The Future of East Asia’s Trade: A Call for Better Globalization”

Comment on “The Future of East Asia’s Trade: A Call for Better Globalization”

Linking Open Data and the Fight Against Corruption in Indonesia

In 2015 the G20 Anti-Corruption Open Data Principles were developed, as a first step towards leveraging open data as a crucial tool for enabling a culture of transparency and accountability in order to address corruption. The purpose of this study is to assess the extent to which Indonesia is meeting its commitments towards fighting corruption by applying and implementing the principles and actions set out in the G20 Principles. Hence, the G20 Anti-Corruption Open Data Principles is used as an analytical framework to guide the analysis. The research findings show that the government of Indonesia puts the disclosure of public information at the front and center of both its open government and anti-corruption agenda, which is consistent with the first of the G20 Anti-Corruption Open Data Principles. However, the current legal frameworks lack the proactive disclosure and openness components advocated by the open data principles.