Open Knowledge Systems Research Articles

Knowledge production at the environment-security nexus: Between orthodoxy and transformation

The question of how changes of the natural environment interact with security receives increasing attention within the context of 21st century global challenges. While abundant knowledge exists, there is no consensus on the nature of the environment-security nexus, and instead, we observe a knowledge battle over predicting the “real” security implications of environmental change. What has received limited attention, however, is the question of how knowledge production on this issue is itself producing “global realities” by strengthening certain practices while foreclosing others. This special issue addresses this gap. It examines how knowledge production influences efforts of governing global environmental change-related (in)securities and how these developments (re)shape the contexts within which they unfold. Providing the analytical framework for this endeavor, this article engages with the role of knowledge production in environmental politics. We extend these debates to security governance, moving beyond discursive (de)constructions, to highlight the importance of tracing the impacts and policies produced by different environment-security knowledge frames. Using Cox’s critical vs. problem-solving knowledge distinction, we provide examples of how knowledge production on the environment-security nexus both reinforces and challenges prevailing ways of knowing, ordering, and securing. Orthodox knowledge production, aligning with state-centric reasoning, remains dominant. Yet, we highlight how shifts in the orthodox/transformative knowledge production spectrum are on the rise, offering potentials for rethinking security in the context of environmental crisis. We conclude by calling for more open knowledge systems and for broadening knowledge-practice interfaces, as pathways for re-focusing environment-security framings towards more just and sustainable visions, practices and policies.

Descartes on Open Knowledge and Human Perfection

Purpose. The purpose is to justify the validity of interpreting Descartes’ teachings as an enquiry into the search for forms and means of improving human nature, which implies a focus on the way he understands the openness of knowledge and education. The problem is considered from the perspective of representatives of university communities (teachers and librarians), historically included in the communication structure and system of the institution, including through the creation, management, use, preservation and dissemination of knowledge. Theoretical basis. One of the tenets of Descartes’ teachings is his desire to improve the human being. For our consideration, it is fundamentally important that Descartes uses "knowledge" not only in a narrow sense – as natural scientific knowledge, but also in a broader sense. In the context of the theme of the study, the most important case is when the thinker recalls the knowledge that every person experiences without referring to philosophy. It is this knowledge that, for Descartes, is key in resolving the central problem of his ethics – how can human nature be perfected? For our consideration of Descartes’ key points, it is fair to focus on the manifestation of the phenomenon of altruism in Descartes’ philosophy and on the representative fact of his inner openness – his willingness to engage in dialogue. He appreciates and encourages his interlocutors to turn to books, which are a form of representation of the vivid personalities of their authors. Originality. For the first time in the research literature, the thesis of René Descartes as one of the forerunners of the open knowledge system is substantiated. The arguments are given for the validity of Descartes’ interpretation of the demand of his own epoch for the search of effective forms of human improvement. Conclusions. The idea of justification of Descartes’ philosophical legacy as a predictor of open knowledge became possible under the condition of paying attention to the anthropological turn he made and finding substantive analogues of openness, including open education. Drawing on Christianity as the basis for altruism, Descartes demonstrates a caring attitude towards the achievements of previous generations on the path of personal self-development. His attention is rightly drawn to education and books as representations of vibrant personalities. Their authentic and productive assimilation is possible only under the condition of a caring attitude towards the public good, which involves the intellectual volunteering of teachers and librarians. It is about self-realization through altruistic self-improvement, i.e. intellectual charity, which is especially evident today during martial law in Ukraine and is voluntary, conscious and free work for the benefit of others.

Protocol for a systematic review of living labs in healthcare

IntroductionHealthcare is increasingly challenged to meet the demands of user involvement and knowledge mobilisation required by the 21st-century patient-centred and knowledge-based economies. Innovations are needed to reduce problematic barriers to...

Accessibility of Knowledge Systems to Respond to Global Environmental Change

Linking knowledge with action for effective societal responses to persistent problems of unsustainability requires transformed, more open knowledge systems. Drawing on a broad range of academic and practitioner experience, we outline a vision for the coordination and organization of knowledge systems that are better suited to the complex challenges of sustainability than the ones currently in place. This transformation includes inter alia: societal agenda setting, collective problem framing, a plurality of perspectives, integrative research processes, new norms for handling dissent and controversy, better treatment of uncertainty and of diversity of values, extended peer review, broader and more transparent metrics for evaluation, effective dialog processes, and stakeholder participation. We set out institutional and individual roadmaps for achieving this vision, calling for well- designed, properly resourced, longitudinal, international learning programs.

Web-based Knowledge Management System for Camarines Norte State College

One of the issues of the academic institution is knowledge management. How the academe disseminate information over the academic community on real time and the availability of knowledge anytime and anywhere is challenging task in every institution. The objective of this study is to develop Knowledge Management System for Camarines Norte State College that is capable of knowledge sharing, creating and knowledge repository. The developed KM system is designed specifically to cater the requirements of the academic institutions especially Camarines Norte State College in terms of knowledge management. A usability test was conducted to find out how far the academic community can interact efficiently and effectively and how far the system application provides user guidance, provide information, and provide consistent interaction. The pooled mean of the overall usability test was 4.55 with adjectival rating of SA or strongly agree, which means that the system has the functionality needed by the users, easy to use and the system is very useful. Moreover, KMS in Higher Education Institution (HEI) could help in the growth of learner centered knowledge and action learning, growth in work-related learning, movement from closed to open knowledge systems and extensive development in computer-based communication technologies.

An Open Knowledge System for Navigational Science: Zheng He’s Maritime Expeditions and Sino-Foreign Overseas Exchange

The first section of this article begins by investigating the term “going down to the Western Oceans” (xia xiyang 下西洋), which was used as early as the time of Zheng He. It also discusses the origin of the concepts of the Eastern and Western Oceans. The second section discusses the influx of overseas geographical knowledge into China before the time of Zheng He, especially over two important periods: first, the coming of Indian geographical knowledge along with Buddhism to China from the Wei-Jin period (220–420 ce), and second, the advent of Islamic geographical knowledge during the Mongol-Yuan period (ca. 1206–1368). The third section discusses the contributions of foreign members in Zheng He’s fleet, especially fanhuozhang 番火長 (foreign pilot). Through an analysis of the records of three military encounters—the suppression of the pirate Chen Zuyi 陳祖義, the attack on Ceylon, and the battle with pirates on a return journey—we find that the term fanhuozhang appears in all three cases, showing that foreign experts were commonly present in all branches or segments of Zheng He’s fleet, and that it must have been their job to navigate in the Indian ocean portion of the journey. Based on these findings, the author suggests that even before the beginning of Ming, Chinese people had developed an understanding of navigation technology and absorbed expertise from other peoples, and that this knowledge formed the technological foundation of Zheng He’s long-distance voyages, evident of the fact that China’s ancient navigational technology was an open knowledge system.

Transforming future public health professionals through open and distance learning (ODeL)

PurposeOpen and distance e-learning (ODeL) practices have substantial contributions to make in achieving societal development goals. The challenge however remains with enhancing skilling, training and educating professionals who will contribute to this progress. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how transformative education and training in global health can be undertaken through ODeL in increasing the quality, quantity and relevance of health professional education and training.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a descriptive qualitative case study of the International Health and Development Course offered by the University of the Philippines Open University and is thus limited in its scope from other courses in the program.FindingsTransformative education and training through ODeL has the potential of increasing the quality, quantity and relevance of health professionals training. However more critical assessment of transformative learning outcomes is needed via rigorous methods of objectifying such outcomes. Achieving transformative health education and training requires rigorous engagement in constructivist-oriented experiential learning that allow learners to be accustomed to significant interactions achieved by involvement in problem-based methods accomplished through small group e-tivities in order to demonstrate applicability in the real work context.Originality/valueThe outcome of this paper is relevant to institutions in Asia that offer ODeL-based global health programs through open knowledge systems in order to produce graduates who are more responsive to the evolving health needs amid twenty-first century global health challenges.

Opening up knowledge systems for better responses to global environmental change

Linking knowledge with action for effective societal responses to persistent problems of unsustainability requires transformed, more open knowledge systems. Drawing on a broad range of academic and practitioner experience, we outline a vision for the coordination and organization of knowledge systems that are better suited to the complex challenges of sustainability than the ones currently in place. This transformation includes inter alia: societal agenda setting, collective problem framing, a plurality of perspectives, integrative research processes, new norms for handling dissent and controversy, better treatment of uncertainty and of diversity of values, extended peer review, broader and more transparent metrics for evaluation, effective dialog processes, and stakeholder participation. We set out institutional and individual roadmaps for achieving this vision, calling for well-designed, properly resourced, longitudinal, international learning programs.

Tacit knowledge mobilization effect due to information structure

This original experiment demonstrates knowledge workers' ability to learn faster when a common knowledge base is represented in the recommended information structures. This paper describes the unique application of these new structures and closed knowledge system techniques in an open knowledge system employed as a collaborative environment. Information technology based collaborative environments can help teammates share by eliciting knowledge capture in these recommended information structure constructs. The new structure, named Multiple Informational Representations Required of Referent MIRRoR Knowledge, is shown to allow knowledge workers to learn faster and do better on posttest questions.Findings: Knowledge bases represented in a MIRRoR Knowledge structure improve men's and women's ability to learn and remember knowledge base content, with 99% confidence.Higher performing teams effectively leverage open knowledge systems to collaborate synergistically. Business stands to reap the practical rewards of higher performing teams when efficiency gains create more enterprise value sooner.

SNHM: Connecting the Public with its Natural History Collections

When compared with renowned and long‐established natural history museums in the world, the number of objects stored in the Shanghai Natural History Museum () is hardly noteworthy; however, the construction of the new Shanghai Natural History Museum represents a major opportunity, thanks to the digital technologies and new media so prevalent in the 21st century, which can be used to construct a museum without borders. The traditional format for exhibiting specimens is being reoriented using information technology and new media to explore the story behind the specimens and to set up a dynamic open knowledge system. The objective is to promote interaction between the public and the collection, providing access to scientific knowledge for evergrowing numbers of visitors.

Service Integration through Structure-Preserving Semantic Matching

The problem of integrating services is becoming increasingly pressing. In large, open environments such as the Semantic Web, huge numbers of services are developed by vast numbers of different users. Imposing strict semantics standards in such an environment is useless; fully predicting in advance which services one will interact with is not always possible as services may be temporarily or permanently unreachable, may be updated or may be superseded by better services. In some situations, characterised by unpredictability, such as the emergency response scenario described in this case, the best solution is to enable decisions about which services to interact with to be made on-the-fly. We propose a method of doing this using matching technique to map the anticipated call to the input that the service is actually expecting. To be practical, this must be done during run-time. In this case, we present our structure-preserving semantic matching algorithm (SPSM), which performs this matching task both for perfect and approximate matches between calls. In addition, we introduce the OpenKnowledge system for service interaction which, using the SPSM algorithm, along with many other features, facilitates on-the-fly interaction between services in an arbitrarily large network without any global agreements or pre-run-time knowledge of who to interact with or how interactions will proceed. We provide a preliminary evaluation of the SPSM algorithm within the OpenKnowledge framework.

MetaMaps: Assessing understanding of large, complex or distributed knowledge domains

Many traditional assessment instruments and procedures are developed for the purpose of assessing a carefully defined degree of understanding of specific items, such as competence in arithmetic or demonstrating a particular physical skill. The knowledge or skill to be assessed is learnt through a limited set of learning experiences, in conjunction with selected texts and other resources as defined in the curriculum—often in a ‘closed’ system. Evaluating learners’ understandings of wider and more complex knowledge systems can require a different approach. MetaMaps—a reflective, hypertext alternative to the traditional essay, provides an alternative approach to the linear essay, term paper or minor thesis for evaluating students’ holistic understandings of open knowledge systems. For students, MetaMaps have the advantage of being developmental, allowing for the ready inclusion of developing knowledge and perspectives, and they make the learning/evaluation cycle more holistic by using the MetaMap as both a learning and assessment tool. This paper describes the development and ongoing revision of the MetaMap concept.