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Monthly Archives: June 2012

Open roadmap, where to next?

Thursday, June 28th, 2012 | SIMON HART | No Comments

 

Following up on the engaging discussion at the second Open minds seminar, where to next….?
Research Universities in Europe are also considering Open issues at an institutional level and have developed a roadmap, refer:  http://www.leru.org/files/publications/LERU_AP8_Open_Access.pdf

This Roadmap traverses some of the landscape and aims to assist Universities who wish to put in place structures, policies and practices to facilitate Open Access.

World Open Educational Resources Congress

Thursday, June 21st, 2012 | SIMON HART | No Comments

UNESCO is hosting the 2012 World Open Education Resources (OER) Congress at its Headquarters in Paris, from 20 to 22 June 2012 to lead the debate on the development of OERs worldwide, with the participation and support of global governments, educators, NGOs and prominent universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The goal of the Congress is to invite Governments to view and discuss the merits of open educational resources and to adopt a Declaration that calls on Governments to support the sustainable development and dynamic use of OERs.

The full program can be downloaded here

Live streams of selected presentations are available here

 

Who pays for Open Access Publishing? Video and audio discussions now on-line

Monday, June 18th, 2012 | Richard White | No Comments

Video and audio material from the Open Publishing seminar, the first in Otago’s 2012 Open Minds series held in February, is now on-line, ahead of our second session on Open Educational Resources on 28 June.

“We’re gonna be payin’ double for a while,” suggested one participant in our first Open Minds seminar, which focused on open publishing. After listening to presentations from Natalia Timiraos of open access publisher BioMed Central (Open Access Publishing – how it works, how it evolves) and from Jane Hornibrook, Public Lead of Creative Commons Aotearoa NZ  (Creative Commons licensing in open scholarship), participants grappled with the issue of who pays for open access to publications, especially with the current co-existence of traditional and open access publishing models.

Some bemoaned the fact that many open access models simply transfer cost from commercial publisher to author – meaning the public would still pay for access, just through a different system (though a new model has since been announced, as blogged below). Others considered the role that the library has to play, given that it currently pays for access to e-resources. Ultimately the general consensus was that we are in a transitional phase and we can’t see exactly what we’ll end up with. One participant argued that the transition would transform the research culture of universities because the internet is forcing us to re-think “the very fundamental question of what we are here to do…how can we now reach this objective in a more efficient, cost-effective, sustainable manner using these new technologies that we didn’t have before” (listen to the whole conversation here).

All the content is licenced CC BY-SA. Thanks to our guest speakers Natalia and Jane for allowing this re-use of their material.

PeerJ to shake the world of academic publishing

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 | Richard White | 2 Comments

On June 12 PeerJ was announced, a new model for peer-reviewed Open Access publishing based on membership and community rather than a charge to cover publishing costs. Make what you will of the neologistic name, PeerJ promises authors the lifetime right to publish for a one-off membership fee from as little as $99. Its founders, including Peter Binfeld, who recently stepped down from heading PLoSOne, also claim to be be re-inventing the peer review process, allowing greater transparency and promising a turn-around of one month. The challenge for PeerJ will be its eschewing of impact factor, with accepted articles being judged on scientific validity alone. (Ed’s note: they’ve responded to this here, among other questions put to them following the launch). Nevertheless, the move promises to shake the world of academic publishing by harnessing the potential of the modern web to bring greater interactivity, transparency and simple speed of process to peer review and publishing.

Read more on Ars Technica or Nature or from among a whole host of media coverage, including a post by the University of Auckland’s champion for OA, Fabiana Kubke, professor of neuroscience, on her Building Blogs of Science site.