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Knowledge Commons Lab (Kai Nishikawa)
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The lab explores institutions for knowledge resources through cases of scholarly information and cultural heritage.
AboutAbout the lab
Thinking about the production and management of knowledge resources from the perspective of institutions
Assistant Professor Kai Nishikawa's lab is interested in how the institutions governing the production and management of knowledge resources should be designed, and studies this question.
In particular, it conducts empirical research focused on cases involving digitized scholarly information and cultural heritage.
The research keywords are knowledge commons, information policy, scholarly communication, and scientometrics.
The professor's book, Chishiki Komonzu to wa Nani ka (What Is the Knowledge Commons?), has the subtitle 'From the Public Domain to Community Governance.'
Key terms
- Knowledge commons
- A concept for understanding the mechanisms by which the people involved produce and manage knowledge as a shared resource
- Public domain
- Works that anyone can use freely, for example because their copyright protection has expired
- Open access
- Making scholarly papers available for anyone to read free of charge
- Scientometrics
- A field that quantitatively examines research activity based on data on papers and citations
NewsLab news
A paper building a classification scheme of motivations for data citation appears in the STI-ENID 2026 proceedings
A paper analyzing long-term changes in academic journal policies is published in Information Research
A paper analyzing open access and cross-field citations is published in Scientometrics
Assistant Professor Nishikawa's book wins the Encouragement Prize of the Telecom Humanities and Social Sciences Award, Telecommunications Advancement Foundation Awards
An analysis of the effect of gold OA on cross-field citations is released as a NISTEP Discussion Paper
ResearchResearch themes
Using the knowledge commons framework, the lab investigates how institutions for producing and managing knowledge resources should be designed. It conducts empirical research centered on cases involving digitized scholarly information and cultural heritage.
*Illustrative imageInstitutions for the Production and Management of Knowledge Resources
The lab examines how institutions governing the production and management of knowledge resources should be designed, using the knowledge commons framework. It conducts empirical research focused on cases involving digitized scholarly information and cultural heritage.
*Illustrative imageOpen Access and Cross-Field Citations
The lab decomposes the effect by which open access makes papers more likely to be cited, and analyzes whether cross-field citations increase. This includes analysis focused on natural science papers.
*Illustrative imageInstitutional Analysis of Journal Policies
The lab analyzes over the long term how the policies set by academic journals have changed over time, from the perspective of institutional change. The research explores institutional change within the knowledge commons.
MembersFaculty
- Assistant ProfessorKai Nishikawa
VoicesStudent voices
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “SPb Hermitage Academic Library Reading room” author unknown / Public domain (cropped)
- Institutions for the Production and Management of Knowledge Resources: “Benton Museum of Art collections vault” Sdkb / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Open Access and Cross-Field Citations: “The Upper stacks in Huron University Library” Gogerr / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Institutional Analysis of Journal Policies: “Compact shelving Leiden Library 2019” Vysotsky / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Museum Informatics Lab): “Costume of a Scythian princess from Ryzhanovka (Archaeological Museum in Kraków)” 作者不詳 / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Information Retrieval Lab (Masao Takaku)): “St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Wash. D.C In 1918 - Corner of reading room - American Library Association - NARA - 20801166 (cropped)” 作者不詳 / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Super-Aged Society Services Lab (Masaki Takeda)): “Rostelecom and evening computer classes for elderly persons 01” Taken by Davit Saroyan for Wikimedia Armenia / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Researcher Productivity Lab): “NADD - Arco Winterswijk - graph visualization via WDQS” Sandra Fauconnier / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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