• French introduction

Context: the knowledge society

The increasing importance of knowledge-based markets, the increasing cognitive capacities in the North for the expansion of education at different levels and rapid technological change have led to the transformation of society towards knowledge based wealth. This has been termed by some as the knowledge society and for others the ‘postindustrial information society’.
Therefore, modes of regulating access to knowledge resources, modes of control and appropriation of the production and distribution of knowledge are becoming increasingly important.
But the changes in knowledge use, exploitation, production and dissemination have created a dialectical and often conflictual logic: Claims of free access to information and knowledge compete with claims of private ownership. Concepts of communal ownership in a free information infrastructure or of a ‘Digital Commons’ clash with the logic of private appropriation and private use of information and knowledge.

And the Open knowledge map

Following from the above, within the framework of the cycle of global mobilization and beyond, alternative practical experiences with the creation and management of knowledge are being developed. The Open knowledge map aims to (self and decentralize) build of a compressible overview of those experiences, identifying its main cluster and tendencies, and facilitating a directory tool for the networking among them.

The Okm is part and it is connected to the Open e-library on social transformation. While the e-Library systematize mainly text (articles, e-books, bibliographic references, and also illustrative photos) of a variety of thematic under the social transformation. Rather, the Okm is mainly focused on groups and subjects generating open knowledge.

There is no single definition of knowledge. In this side, by knowledge is referring to any transmittable store and/or cognitive process (based on an heterogeneity of actions or research methods) applied to the transformation of reality.

The initial clusters of the map

There is a rich plurality of experiences and groups around open knowledge. As initial clusters of experiences in relation to their perspectives on open knowledge, the Okm propose the following ones, but they are just the result of initial debates. See that the Okm is also an invitation to build “openly” the axes of an Open knowledge map.

• Knowledge accessibility: “spreading copyleft principles” and “publishing movements knowledge”.
• Activist research/research by and from social movements. Organized by movement‘logic: Resistance narratives, Co-research tradition and consulta method, Research denounce and monitoring, Research on alternatives, Movement’s intellectuals and strategic analysis, Movement’s archive and self-knowledge, Systematization of information and creation of networking tools, Collaborative research: Online collective creation, Mapping and visualization techniques, Research and art: Performative research; and Research methodology reflection.
• Activist research searchers from or related to an academic framework. Research for social movements: Academic Research about social movements, Spaces for academic and activist views linking, Academic formation on alternative contents, Initiatives to make closer the science and society interactions, Making free the knowledge created at the Universities, In defence of the Public University and against the research precarity.
• Others: Non Formal Education

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