Open Policy Research Articles

Open Data Hackathons and Open Innovation Policies: The Case of OpenTusk

ABSTRACTThe paper aims to contribute to the debate on open data and public open innovation policies by focusing on hackathons as initiatives supporting value creation, innovation, and regional development. The paper refers to open data hackathons as a powerful open innovation tool to activate mechanisms of collaboration and collective intelligence within a regional ecosystem populated with data and a plurality of stakeholders. Despite the actuality of the issues and the large consensus around them, their integration in a consolidated theoretical framework is still far from a full achievement and requires additional contributions. Therefore, a theoretical framework has been developed for defining the research gap and addressing the development of an exploratory qualitative study carried out on OpenTusk, an open data hackathon promoted by the Department of Economic Development of the Apulia Region (south Italy) in the frame of a participatory public policy aimed at exploiting the value of regional open data. Findings demonstrate that the hackathon can create positive conditions for the preliminary exploration of the entrepreneurial value of open data by shaping several thematic areas of interest for the regional agenda of smart specialization. Furthermore, the case suggests that the effectiveness of an open data hackathon derives from an articulated strategy consisting of sensitization campaigns and preparation activities useful to stimulate the development of entrepreneurial ideas. Implications for theory and practice have been synthesized in the conclusion in terms of areas for future investigation and practical contexts of applications.

New evidence finds young people in Mainland China are now bicultural.

This study reports new evidence that young people in Mainland China are now bicultural. We followed the established method of testing biculturalism by priming participants with images from two different cultures and measuring whether those images activate different thought styles. First, we replicated findings from 25 years ago that college students in Hong Kong are bicultural (Study 1). Next, we found that priming Mainland Chinese college students with Chinese culture increased external attributions (which are more common in China), whereas priming American culture increased internal attributions (which are more common in the US; Study 2). Next, we tested a "negative control" group that we expected should not respond to bicultural primes. Older adults who were born before China's Reform and Opening policy in 1978 showed no evidence of biculturalism (Study 3). This new evidence extends biculturalism to Mainland China, and it provides a crucial negative control test for biculturalism research.

Older people’s social work safe staffing supply and workforce demands analysis: A case study from Northern Ireland

Abstract In the UK, a range of operational tools and policy guidelines regulate staffing in various Health and Social Care sectors. Nonetheless, frameworks to ensure safe staffing in social work remain less advanced. This study focuses on older people’s social work community teams in Northern Ireland due to the high volume of cases and vacancies within these teams. Our findings provide evidence based on actual caseloads (direct work with service users) and workloads at individual, team, and regional levels within this programme of care. The analysis revealed systemic issues that require systemic solutions in relation to staffing supply and service demands. Frontline social workers and managers frequently faced overwhelming worker-to-caseload ratios, routine use of waiting lists, and team vacancies. These findings lay the groundwork for evidence-based strategic planning, guiding the development and enactment of safer and more effective social work policies and legislation in the years ahead. The project was commissioned by the Department of Health, Northern Ireland in preparation for policy and legislative developments expected between 2025 and 2028.

The Belt and Road Initiative and Urban Entrepreneurship: Evidence From the Opening Policy From China

ABSTRACTEntrepreneurship is a vital source of high‐quality employment in China and is crucial in advancing Chinese‐style modernization. Using panel data from 281 prefecture‐level cities in China from 2003 to 2021, this study employs difference‐in‐differences and double machine learning models to examine the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on entrepreneurship. The research findings are as follows: The BRI implementation significantly enhances entrepreneurship at city and provincial levels, with results remaining robust across various tests. The BRI promotes entrepreneurship through industrial innovation, digital trade development, and economic agglomeration. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the BRI's positive effects on entrepreneurship are more pronounced in small and medium‐sized cities and central and western regions. Furthermore, the BRI exhibits significant spatial spillover effects, stimulating entrepreneurship in neighboring cities. The initiative also effectively reduces relative disparities in entrepreneurship across regions, particularly between eastern, central, and western areas, thus promoting coordinated regional development. Additionally, triple‐difference results indicate that the BRI's positive effects on urban industrial innovation are mainly concentrated in manufacturing sectors such as energy, equipment, and information technology. This study complements the BRI's effects and provides policy implications for narrowing regional entrepreneurship gaps and promoting high‐quality full employment in China.

Contextual Analyses of Open and Distance Learning Policies in Malawi: Towards the Reconstruction of Distance Education Policies in Public Universities

Contextual Analyses of Open and Distance Learning Policies in Malawi: Towards the Reconstruction of Distance Education Policies in Public Universities

Determining a manufacturing-delivery policy for a multi-item EPQ system with multi-shipment, quality assurance, overtime, postponement, and external source

Facing current client expectations for high quality, timely order response, and multiple shipments of various needed merchandise, today’s producers must simultaneously satisfy external requirements and operate internally with minimum overall expenses and capacity constrained. Aiming to help present-day producers achieve the operational goals mentioned above, this work develops a decisional scheme to determine the best manufacturing-delivery policy for a multi-item economic production quantity (EPQ) system with multi-shipment, quality assurance, overtime, postponement, and external source. Combining a production postponement strategy in our multi-item batch fabricating procedures intends to first make all required standard/common parts for various client-needed merchandise and make finished goods in the 2nd phase. Two fabricating-uptime-shortening strategies are adopted: contracting out a proportion of the standard part’s batch and overtime-making of finished goods. We include screening and rework tasks in fabricating procedures to help us remove the identified scraps and correct the repairable faulty items. The quality-assured finished batches are divided into multiple equal-amount shipments transported to meet client requests. The overall manufacturing-transportation relevant expenses, including quality and uptime-expedited costs, are mathematically modeled and minimized using optimization methodology to help derive the best manufacturing-delivery operating policy. Moreover, we offer an illustration to validate the results and our research scheme’s capability numerically. This work mainly contributes to the literature by presenting a practical decision-making model. It enables the producers to expose numerous crucial problem-related managerial insights to facilitate producers in deciding the most appropriate manufacturing-delivery policy to meet clients’ multi-criteria demands.

How does data sharing affect the sustainable development of agribusiness? Evidence from public data openness

Agriculture is an important production sector in Chinese national economy, and sustainable development of agribusiness is related to the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, public data openness policy is continuously injecting new power into development. However, no study focused on the relationship between public data openness policy (OPEN) and the sustainable development of agribusiness (SDA). Based on the data of A-share listed agribusiness firms from 2012 to 2021, we uses the public data open platform as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a difference-in-differences model to examine the impact of public data openness on the sustainable development of agribusiness. The findings of this paper are as follows. First, public data openness significantly contributes to the sustainable development of agribusiness. After a series of robustness tests, the above conclusion still holds. Second, the results of the mechanistic tests show that public data openness contributes to sustainable development mainly by improving the operational capacity and innovation capacity of enterprises. Third, the positive impact of public data openness on the sustainable development performance of non-state-owned and small-scale agribusinesses is more significant than that of state-owned and large-scale agribusinesses. Fourth, good innovation environments help to enhance the positive impact of public data openness. This paper has theoretical value for the development of agribusiness in the context of the public data openness and can also guide policymakers in further improving related policies.

Competition Concerns and Antitrust Responses to China's Health and Medical Data Openness Policy

As a policy trend in many jurisdictions around the world, health care data openness can effectively improve the level of public governance, drive innovation in the medical industry, and promote market competition in the medical industry to a certain extent. However, the process of opening up health care data often comes with the risk of competition. First, the opening of health care data may lead to more efficient and stable collusion in reaching and implementing collusion. Second, the opening of health care data will also lead to more exploitative and exclusive abuse in the health care industry. Third, the opening of health care data will also lead to the frequent occurrence of data-driven and leveraged mergers and acquisitions risks. In order to effectively eliminate competition risks, China should propose new anti-monopoly countermeasures. On the one hand, China should strengthen the legislative regulations on the opening of health and medical data, including the regulation concept of monopoly agreement should be adjusted from information transparency to the implementation of classification and classification, and the regulation of abuse of market dominance should pay attention to the quantification of market power and the identification of specific behaviors, so as to include operators' commitments in the regulation of data-driven mergers and acquisitions. On the other hand, China also needs to introduce a full-chain regulatory system that combines the dual effects of competition advocacy and law enforcement, in the form of prior routine market investigations and fair competition reviews, as well as a flexible in-process and after-action regulatory approach. In addition, it is also necessary for China to build a coordinated regulatory model across multiple departments. On the basis of emphasizing the fundamental position of competition policy, we should make full use of the power of social supervision to regulate the restrictive competition behavior in the process of health and medical data opening in a more comprehensive way, and improve the safety and innovation of health and medical data opening to the greatest extent. 健康医疗数据开放作为世界范围内多个司法辖区的政策趋向，能有效提高公共治理水平、驱动医疗行业创新，以及在一定程度上促进医疗行业的市场竞争。然而，健康医疗数据开放过程通常伴随着竞争风险。其一，健康医疗数据开放可能导致共谋的达成与实施更高效，以及共谋合意更加稳定。其二，健康医疗数据开放也会导致医疗行业的剥削性滥用与排他性滥用行为更加普遍。其三，健康医疗数据开放还会导致数据驱动类与杠杆并购类风险的频发。为了有效消除竞争风险，中国应提出新的反垄断应对方案。一方面，中国应强化健康医疗数据开放的立法规制，包括垄断协议规制理念应从调整信息透明度到实施分级分类，滥用市场支配地位的规制则需注重市场力量的量化与具体行为的识别，将经营者承诺前置纳入数据驱动型并购的规制中。另一方面，中国还需要导入全链条监管体系，以结合竞争倡导与执法的双重功效，具体表现为事前常规性市场调查与公平竞争审查双管齐下，以及构建弹性的事中与事后监管方式。此外，构建多部门的协同监管模式对中国而言同样必要。在强调竞争政策的基础地位上，充分借助社会监管的力量，较为全面地规制健康医疗数据开放过程中的限制竞争行为，最大程度提高健康医疗数据开放的安全性与创新性。

Challenges and motivating factors for integrating geostatistical models in targeted schistosomiasis control: A qualitative case study in Northwestern Tanzania.

To address problems of over- and under-treatment with preventive chemotherapy resulting in ongoing transmission of schistosomiasis, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends targeted mass drug administration (MDA) interventions at a sub-district level. In Tanzania, the lack of sub-district (ward) prevalence data has inhibited a transition to targeted treatment. Model-based prevalence estimation combined with routine surveillance data can be used to overcome this gap. We created a geostatistical model to estimate parasitological prevalence in the wards of the Lake Zone regions of Tanzania to investigate opportunities for enabling targeted MDA for schistosomiasis. With no precedent on how outputs from a geostatistical model could be used to inform decision-making in Tanzania, this qualitative study explores perceptions on what may challenge and motivate program staff in Tanzania's national schistosomiasis control program to integrate the models into routine planning to guide disease control interventions. Seven semi-structured, key informant interviews were conducted in 2022 examining perceived programmatic challenges and motivations of integrating the geostatistical model into current programming through various thematic areas: information systems, financing, services and operational capacity, policy and planning, and coordination. Key informants included decision-making staff in the Ministry of Health's neglected tropical diseases (NTD) control program, WHO NTD staff, schistosomiasis MDA implementing partners, academic experts studying the control of schistosomiasis, and central-level NTD coordinators. Informants unanimously acknowledged that the geostatistical model could be useful in guiding targeted interventions, and found several factors that may motivate programmatic uptake including providing a financially feasible method to comprehensive prevalence estimates, facilitation of essential implementation tasks like site selection for MDA and screening, as well as annual calculation of treatments required for requesting medicine. Key challenges to integration were seen in limitation of existing modeling expertise, sensitization, and most importantly in the lack of WHO recommendations surrounding model use, as national disease control strategies and policies are built around WHO guidelines. Geostatistical models like the one presented can feasibly be integrated in decision-making for targeted interventions based on domestic capacity, financial availability and readiness. However, the lack of WHO guidance on the use of these tools calls for action to translate the potential of such models into recommendations that encourage routine integration from national programs. Overcoming this key inhibiting factor will be a crucial first step toward the integration of such models.

Total Cepelia

The article presents the structure, strategy and operational policy of the famous Cepelia (Folk and Art Industry Headquarters), launched in 1949 and active until 1990. In the People’s Republic period (PRL), it was the largest and most important enterprise of artistic production, which combined the areas of manufacturing and promotion with a certain scope of research. The fundamental areas of its activity included folk art and craft, as well as artistic products. The former referred to maintaining and reviving traditional rural production, along with its potential use as inspiration for contemporary industrial design. The latter employed professional artists to create utility and decorative items. Cepelia operated on the basis of regional co-operatives production, but also purchased ready products from cottage industry, and its offer was available from shops all over the country, a few foreign ones as well. It also conducted a vital exhibition and promotional activity. The scale and range of this enterprise resulted in its very real taste-forming influence on the Polish society for several decades, and solidified the image of Poland as the country of folklore and artistic craft. In parallel, Cepelia’s dwelling on the rural tradition and culture was not free of propaganda, and served to implement the communistic slogan about the folk foundations of national culture. Keywords: design, artistic craftsmanship, Cepelia (Folk and Art Industry Headquarters), Polish People's Republic (PRL)

Turning Open Access to Reality: The Case of Lithuania

Objective: This article aims to estimate the changes in the number of open access publications by Lithuanian authors at the national level, based on institutional publication data, as well as the impact of open access policies at the national and institutional levels on these changes. Methods: bibliometric analysis of scientific publications in the databases Scopus and Web of Science was carried out to assess the open access publications of Lithuanian authors and their changes over ten years. Results. Lithuanian author's publications from 2014 to 2023 by open access status increased by almost 33% (WoS) and 31% (Scopus), whereas the share of open access publications funded by the Research Council of Lithuania increased by 24% (WoS) and 37% (Scopus); the share of open access publications by authors from Kaunas University of Technology increased by 31% (WoS) and 26% (Scopus). When analyzing OA publications by open access mode, it is observed that the largest percentage of OA publications are Gold Access and Green Access publications. Conclusions. Lithuanian authors publish OA not only because of institutional and national funders policies but also by international funders, including EC, requirements on OA. When open access policies are guidelines, they have less impact than in those cases when they are mandatory. To measure authors' publications on the national scope, there is a need for metrics and tools to track all publications by Lithuanian authors.

Axiological Vectors of Functioning of the Library Digital Repository in a Higher Education Institution

The aim of the article is to define main value orientations, according to which the institutional repository of the library in a higher education institution can develop as a socially oriented means of providing open access in the concept of open science. Research methods. In this study, general scientific methods of cognition (analysis, synthesis, abstraction), semantic analysis of the documentary flow of scientific publications, the method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete in order to determine and highlight a value component as an essential feature of the digital repository functioning, content analysis of scientific publications to identify main axiological components in functioning of the library institutional repository in a higher education institution are applied. The scientific novelty is to determine axiological vectors of functioning of the library digital repository in a higher education institution, caused by interaction with certain external factors and existence of a system of general rules for the library activities in a higher education institution in its various aspects, main value guidelines, according to which the institutional repository of the library in a higher education establishment will develop as a socially oriented means of providing open access in the concept of open science. Main conclusions. The digital repository of the library in a higher education institution is a socially oriented information product, which, additionally to outlining technological aspects, requires the definition of axiological vectors of its functioning in the context of the open science policy, the principles of the university academic community and the value orientations of the library activity in the higher education establishment and its staff. The conceptual approach in the study of digital transformations of libraries in higher education institutions should be the library humanism, as well as among the methodological approaches to its study should be the value (axiological) one, which can allow to avoid a technocratic approach to the development and use of digital repositories of libraries in higher education establishments.

Should Egypt be afraid of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam? The consequences of adversarial water policy on the Blue Nile

ABSTRACT Although large dams can provide multiple benefits, they may negatively impact downstream riparians, and could be used to cause harm by withholding water. Concern about deliberately adversarial operation of the Grand Ethiopia Renaissance Dam (GERD) is mounting in Egypt and overshadows the regional negotiations around water resources. We simulate a range of operational policies for the GERD, including an adversarial operation policy, which could reduce annual water releases from the High Aswan Dam (HAD) by 2.72 billion cubic meters (annual exceedance probability of 0.02) compared to operations that seek to reduce downstream water shortages. However, such a policy would reduce annual GERD hydropower generation by 1 TWh, which is equivalent to 7% of the GERD's annual electricity generation. The threat of Ethiopia withholding water is only occasionally credible, as it requires the reservoirs at the GERD and the HAD to both be unusually low, which we show will rarely occur.

Primate Phenotypes: A Multi-Institution Collection of 3D Morphological Data Housed in MorphoSource

The field of phenomics is experiencing unprecedented advances thanks to the rapid growth of morphological quantification based on three-dimensional (3D) imaging, online data repositories, team-oriented collaborations, and open data-sharing policies. In line with these progressions, we present an extensive primate phenotypic dataset comprising >6,000 3D scans (media) representing skeletal morphologies of 386 individual specimens covering all hominoid genera (except humans) and other selected primates. The digitized specimens are housed in physical collections at the American Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of Natural History, the Royal Museum for Central Africa (Belgium), the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Stony Brook University. Our technical validation indicates that despite the diverse digitizing devices used to produce the scans, the final 3D models (meshes) can be safely combined to collect comparable morphometric data. The entire dataset (and detailed associated metadata) is freely available through MorphoSource. Hence, these data contribute to empowering the future of primate phenomics and providing a roadmap for future digitization and archiving of digital data from other collections.

Implementing Port Operation Policy through Collaborative Governance Perspective

This research aims to explore the operational policy implementation process at the Prigi commercial port by utilizing a collaborative governance framework. This study uses policy implementation theory (Van Meter & Van Horn, 1975) which focuses on dimensions such as standards and resources, communication objectives, interorganizational characteristics, and enforcement activities of implementing agencies, economic, social, and political conditions, implementer dispositions, and performance. Additionally, it integrates collaborative governance theory (Emerson & Nabatchi, 2015) which emphasizes the importance of cooperation, coordination, and involvement of various stakeholders, including government port operators, port users, and local communities, in designing and implementing such policies. This approach is believed to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability of port operations, ensuring that policies reflect diverse interests and needs. This research adopted a qualitative descriptive approach and was conducted at the Prigi commercial port, Trenggalek Regency, Indonesia. Thirty-two informants participated in this research, consisting of government officials including legislators (DPRD) and executives (regents, regional government secretaries, regional planning agencies, transportation agencies, and development administration bureaus), private sector representatives (business associations), NGOs, academics, community leaders, and the media. Findings show that operational policy implementation at Prigi port faces challenges due to lack of clarity in policy standards and objectives, limited human resources, weak inter-organizational communication, complex characteristics of implementing agencies, and limited commitment from regional leaders as well as low involvement of NGOs, academics, leaders society, and media. This study recommends the issuance of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as an agreement of honor between all stakeholders to optimize the operations of the Prigi commercial port. In addition, this research provides opportunities for further research using alternative perspectives of policy implementation theory and collaborative governance theory in port governance.

You’re not welcome! Violence and support for an open grazing ban policy in Kaduna, Nigeria

This study examines the effect of victimization and religious affiliation on support for a policy banning the open grazing of livestock in the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna. This policy, which aims to reduce the incidence of conflicts between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers, has been implemented to varying degrees in some states across Nigeria. Kaduna is a suitable case study for investigating these relationships because, despite having the third-highest incidence of farmer–herder conflicts out of Nigeria’s 36 states, the state government has not implemented an open grazing ban policy there. The regression results show that victimization by herders increases the likelihood of supporting the policy. On average, Muslims are more supportive of the policy than Christians. The higher support among Muslims is quite surprising because most of the respondents who have been victimized by herders are Christians. Muslims might be more supportive of an open grazing ban policy due to a contagion effect: the common religion of Islam that they share with nomadic herders could lead to the attribution of blame for farmer–herder conflicts to Muslims, making them more eager to see an end to the conflict. This eagerness might be what leads to increased support for an open grazing ban policy. JEL Codes: D74, N57, Z12

PIMCoSim: Hardware/Software Co-Simulator for Exploring Processing-in-Memory Architectures

As the scope of artificial intelligence (AI) expands and the structure becomes more complex, the amount of data for inference and training has increased. In traditional computer architectures, the memory bandwidth limitations have intensified bottlenecks in AI systems, and processing-in-memory (PIM) architectures have been proposed to overcome this issue. PIM is an architecture that performs computations within memory, thereby reducing data movement between the CPU and memory. However, since PIM is difficult to optimize as a general-purpose architecture, it is essential to adopt an architecture suitable for the target application. While various simulators and emulators have been introduced for the design space exploration (DSE) of different PIM architectures, simulators are limited in debugging hardware operations, and emulators face challenges in flexibly modifying the system configuration, as emulators implement the entire architecture in hardware. Therefore, this paper introduces PIMCoSim, a comprehensive hardware–software co-simulator for the DSE of DRAM-PIM systems. This co-simulator partially emulates simplified hardware-implemented processing elements (PEs) and integrates software models for memory operations, facilitating the DSE of PIM systems. To validate PIMCoSim, we analyzed results for different computational workloads by varying PIM structures and operational policies, demonstrating the efficiency of DRAM-PIM systems. The co-simulation approach in PIMCoSim aims to contribute to analyzing DRAM-PIM configurations and adopting optimized structures.

Operating policies for robotic cellular warehousing systems

Robotic Cellular Warehousing Systems provide an innovative robot-to-goods picking approach designed to improve robot transportation efficiency, where robots move to pick items and transport the picked items to workstations. In this study, we investigate the optimal operating policies for such a system by comparing two picking strategies (pick-while-sort and pick-then-sort) and three robot-to-workstation assignment rules (random, closest, and dedicated). Specifically, we develop dedicated closed queuing networks to model robot-to-goods picking and estimate warehouse throughput under different policies through single-class and multi-class models. The effectiveness of these analytical models is validated through numerical simulations, with an average gap of 5.53% between simulation and analytical results. Additionally, we conduct a series of numerical experiments to examine the impact of various factors on warehouse performance, including the numbers of robots and workstations, robot capacity, order size, and sorting efficiency. Based on the experimental findings, we provide managerial implications that offer insights into optimizing resource allocation and system configuration. These insights enable warehouse managers to improve operational efficiency and overall performance.

John Dewey's Aesthetic Legacy in China

Abstract Modern China's acceptance of Dewey's legacy of aesthetic thought is divided into three main periods. In 1906–49, Dewey's Art as Experience was noticed, but due to the fact that China was more concerned with the social realities and national crisis at that time, its aesthetic thought appeared as an accessory to Dewey's social philosophy and educational thought, and its rich significance was properly realized only within the practice of aesthetic education. From 1949 to 1978, Dewey's aesthetics was effectively suppressed through China's ideological storms. From 1978 to the present, benefitting through China's policies of reform and opening, Dewey's aesthetics gradually gained the attention of Chinese academics and found expression in considerable research that develops the book's legacy in distinctive forms of contemporary Chinese aesthetics: life aesthetics, somaesthetics, and ecological aesthetics.

Air quality monitoring and assessment based on AIS data

Abstract Indonesia is an archipelagic country, where sea transportation is highly needed to connect the islands among Indonesian regions. Indonesian waters are also passed by international shipping passing through the Indonesia Archipelagic Sea Lane. Number of ships tends to increase by increasing the economic activities in Indonesia. The increasing number of ships will potentially cause the increase of air pollution in Indonesia waters. AIS consortium has been established since 2020 focusing on conducting join research and development on several issues that can be solved using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data gathered from AIS devices that have been installed in several universities as members of the consortium. One potential use of AIS data is the estimation of capacity and spreading of air pollution caused by shipping activities in Indonesia waters. As AIS can provide ship’s navigation status time-to-time, the estimation of fuel consumption as well as the emission can be estimated in real time. For highly accusation fuel oil consumption prediction is done by using the Random Forest Model and ship emissions including CO2, NO2, SO2, PM2.5, and PM10 are estimated based on emission factors from ships. This analysis is mapping the contribution of air pollution based on ship type in the Tanjung Perak port area. Later, it is expected to become the basis for Indonesia’s maritime operation policy in order to monitor and control the emission contributed by the ships in Indonesian waters.