The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI)

Open Knowledge Institutions book cover

Universities exist to support the creation and transfer of knowledge. Efforts by universities to enable open knowledge have the potential to broaden the impact of higher education and research institutions. Our team is exploring the mechanisms that will allow universities to work more effectively with local and global communities in the production of knowledge; as well as those that support its uptake and application both within and beyond academia.

The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) group is developing a broad program of work on the theme of ‘open knowledge institutions’, supported in the first instance through a 2-year strategic research grant from Curtin University. The goal of our project is to develop tools and data that will allow universities to understand how effectively they are operating as open knowledge institutions; and to support strategic change in higher education and research.

Combining data science and a critical perspective we are addressing questions of how to collect and manage data at a large scale, as well as how sharing this data and analysis will effect the ecosystem. Using Google Cloud tools to harvest, combine and analyse large amounts of output, staffing, narrative and other data sources we are building new capabilities to support university decision making.

This first major output from the project is the book Open Knowledge Institutions: Reinventing Universities. Currently available here [https://wip.mitpress.mit.edu/oki] as a draft book hosted by MIT Press and open for community comment and review.

Our ultimate goal is to ensure that the tools and data used to evaluate university performance support more open and productive practices. Building a community of institutions and individuals around a shared narrative and open knowledge agenda will be key to this.

To keep updated on the progress of the COKI project, please visit our project webpage.