Today’s post concludes our blog series marking International Open Access Week. In this blog, David J. Allen reflects on where we are in the transition to an open research system and who decides where we go from here.
Photo: Geraldine Lewa CC via Unsplash
The theme of this year’s International Open Access Week is equity in open knowledge. This is an issue that’s of particularly importance for PRIO as a peace research institute. Today, we continue our blog series on open access and open science at PRIO with a blog by Lynn P. Nygaard, reflecting on the opportunities and challenges of open access for scholars in the global south.
Photo: Amy Humphries CC via Unsplash
With two special reports (which can be found here and here) released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just after the summer, the awareness of the consequences of climate change and the measures needed to limit these impacts is higher than ever before. Regrettably, there is not a one-to-one relationship between responsibility and consequences, and the burden will be much larger for the already disadvantaged Global South.
Damaged coastal community in Iloilio province in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan hit the area in November 2013. Photo: Mans Unides/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
For today’s blog in our series marking International Open Access Week, we asked Marta Bivand Erdal to reflect on some of the opportunities and challenges of the open science agenda for social scientists working with qualitative methods. Both quantitative and qualitative methods play an important role in the work our researchers do here at PRIO, and this debate is central for our ongoing thinking about open peace research. Here are Marta’s reflections on this important topic
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Practitioners, policymakers, and academics discuss at the 2019 Ceasefire Conference. Photo: Indigo Trigg-Hauger/PRIO
On the surface, it should be easy. Practitioners and policy makers always require better knowledge to make informed decisions, and academics (nearly) always seek that their research makes an impact in the “real” world. Yet this rarely works out. In most cases academic-practice-policy dialogues, forums, meetings and conferences rarely produce the envisaged coming together of minds, cross-fertilization of ideas or collaborative spirit. So, when we recently decided to organize an academic-practice meeting to launch our new ceasefire research project, we knew that we had to do things a bit differently. Our approach produced some big wins, participants engaged in a meaningful, open and engaging fashion, we all learnt a lot about ceasefires from different perspectives, and feedback showed that most people got value out of the meeting. But we also faced familiar problems. We therefore thought it would be great to share a few of our biggest “learnings”.
The Women, Peace and Security Index is one of the most comprehensive measures of women’s well-being around the world. This collaboration between PRIO and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) goes back to 2016. Funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Index ranks countries based on indicators of women’s inclusion, security, and access to justice. The updated 2019 report includes 167 countries.
Here, GPS Director Torunn L. Tryggestad talks about the genesis of the project. Marianne Dahl, who is heading PRIO’s part of the project, highlights some of the nitty gritty details of the Index, including which countries have improved, and which have fallen dramatically down in the rankings.
Girls and boys train and play sports together in Niger. Photo: Association Sportive Les Volcans via Flickr CC
In this second instalment of our blog series marking International Open Access Week, Håvard Strand talks about the importance of open data for the social sciences and for PRIO.
Photo: Christian Fregnan CC via Unsplash
On 9 October 2019, Turkey launched its third invasion in Syria dubbed “Operation Peace Spring”, this time in north-eastern Syria. The previous two operations, “Euphrates Shield” and “Olive Branch” took place in north-western Syria (west of river Euphrates) and established a Turkey-controlled zone between the cities of Jarablus to the East and Afrin/Efrin to the West (see map below).
Operation Peace Spring started with artillery and aerial bombings by the Turkish military and expanded later to a ground advancement by Turkey-backed Syrian anti-regime forces of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Syrian National Army (SNA). The operation came right after US President Donald Trump had announced that US forces will withdraw from the Turkish-Syrian border in north-eastern Syria due to an imminent Turkish intervention.
Yellow: Kurdish controlled territories. Red: Syria government controlled territories. Orange: Territories returned to the Syrian government after an agreement. Purple: Territories controlled by Operation Peace Spring. Light green: Turkey controlled zone West of Euphrates. Dark green: HTS (Syrian al Qaeda) dominated territories. Source: https://syria.liveuamap.com/
This week, we’ll be marking International Open Access Week with a series of short blog posts on open access and open science at PRIO. Today, we kick off the series with a blog by Nils Petter Gleditsch. We asked Nils Petter – a long-standing cornerstone of the community here at PRIO – to reflect on the importance of openness for peace research from the very beginning, and PRIO’s role in this story. Here’s what he had to say.
Photo: Giammarco Boscaro CC via Unsplash
This week is International Open Access Week 2019. The aim of this global event is to raise awareness about open access and open science and to contribute to promoting and mainstreaming open research practices. To mark this year’s OA Week, we’ll be publishing a series of short blog posts exploring different aspects of the debates about open access and open science that are happening here at PRIO.
Photo: Sylvia Yang CC via Unsplash