In an open letter the Harvard Faculty Advisory Council to the Library request that staff and students consider the following options in response to large journal publishers [that] have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive:

1. Make sure that all of your own papers are accessible by submitting them to DASH in accordance with the faculty-initiated open-access policies.

2. Consider submitting articles to open-access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to open access.

3. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as open access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning.

4. Contact professional organizations to raise these issues.

5. Encourage professional associations to take control of scholarly literature in their field or shift the management of their e-journals to library-friendly organizations.

6. Encourage colleagues to consider and to discuss these or other options.

7. Sign contracts that unbundle subscriptions and concentrate on higher-use journals.

8. Move journals to a sustainable pay per use system.

9. Insist on subscription contracts in which the terms can be made public.

(see: http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448)

There’s a useful article about the move toward Open Educational Practices (OEPs) in a recent issue of the Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society. The authors discuss the ways in which there is a shift in focus from OERs, which have mainly engaged educators, to a wider focus on OEPs which also require the engagement of administrators, managers and even politicians.

The recent DEANZ conference (April 11-13) had several keynotes which drew attention to the changes that are occurring in the (tertiary) educational landscape as a result of the move to open-ness in education. The OER aspect challenges some notions of how and when learners will choose to study and the concept of ‘digital badges’ seems to be emerging as a potential alternative informal accreditation mechanism… where do Universities fit and how can they engage with these changes?

The OERu model provides one answer, and there are others…  a quote from the article …. ” …many other new models may well lead to a de-institutionalization of education (Bates, 2008, 2011/10/25) whereby students are able to build up e-portfolios of work from various institutions and informal learning and then apply for certification at the university of choice.”   which brings us back to the need to be much more willing to be open and to develop a greater sense of OEPs…. read the article …