General data

Göteborg University College was established in 1891 with the help of private donations. The first classes were held by seven professors teaching seven subjects to twenty-one students, four of whom were women. In 1907 it became an independent university college with the same status as the two national universities of Uppsala and Lund. Göteborg University was formally founded in 1954 through the amalgamation of this college with the Medical College, which had been established in 1949. During the years a number of previously independent colleges have been incorporated into the University. Today Göteborg University can offer the most comprehensive range of courses and degree programmes in Sweden. Göteborg University has about 40,000 students, a staff of well over four thousand, and almost as many part-time teachers spread over approx. 70 departments.

The department of Informatics is part of the School of Business, Economics and Law and conducts research and teaching in the application of information technology in society on different levels. The department has wide sphere of interdisciplinary research projects and collaborates widely in research and teaching. Amongst our projects we have a strong commitment to research on both Open Standards and Free Software development and implementation.

Main activities

• The department offers graduate and post-graduate degrees in Computer Science
• The department is the leading research department in its field in Sweden.
• The department of Informatics currently offers specialised courses in FOSS (theory/philosophy & political science).
• Creative Commons – CC is a licensing scheme intended to help users share copyrighted material. Dept of Informatics at the University of Göteborg is responsible for CC Sweden.
• Licensing issues – using Open Access and Creative Commons to help spread teaching materials and methodologies. The department has experiences in licensing issues and dealing with questions of this nature.
• Legal issues – the department have long experience working with IP licensing in issues relating to CC and the GPL.

Brief description of activities in the field of Open Standards & Free Software

The department has an active research agenda within the area of Open Standards and Free Software. This is coupled to an active research in the effects of FOSS licensing models on creativity and copyright related projects.

These activities run parallel to a PhD dissertation project (due early 2006) on the regulation of technology within society.

International contacts & Indicators of quality and reputation

The department has a strong research presence and will be hosting the European Conference on Information Systems http://www.ecis2006.se in 2006. The representative for this project (Mathias Klang) is project lead for the International Creative Commons initiative http://www.creativecommons.org. In addition to this Mathias has been a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science http://www.lse.ac.uk between August 2003-2005. Mathias has also published several articles in international journals and conferences, in addition to editing two books containing contributions from international scholars of rank.