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Yearly Archives: 2015

Open Access Week round up.

Tuesday, October 27th, 2015 | Sarah G | No Comments

Here is a round-up of events held at the University of Otago over Open Access Week.

Monday

Richard White, Manager Copyright and Open Access took a lunchtime session entitled Open Access What is it and Why Should I Care where he talked in some depth about the theory and practicalities of Creative Commons licences, described what OPen Access is, and the benefits and challenges of open access publishing for researchers. Richard’s slides are available here.

Richard launched the University of Otago Open Access Publishing Survey at the conclusion of his session. “This survey will give us a good sense of the extent to which Otago researchers are engaging with OA, their attitudes towards it and what support they need. Our results will be shared with the University community, including the University Research Committee.” A link to the survey has been emailed to staff. The survey is available here.

Tuesday

The Australasian Open Access Supporters Group held a Twitter Chat from 2-3pm. The archive can be read here. Main themes discussed were Open Access Mandates and the possibility of an Antipodean OA week at an earlier (less busy!) point in the year.

CC0

CC0

From 3-4pm Subhashish Panigrahi [@subhapa], based in Bangalore, described the concept of How to do Guerrilla GLAM.  Given the emergence of Wikipedian in Residence projects overseas and at particular institutions in NZ (see a recent panel at NDF 2015), we were intrigued by what he had to say.

It was an interesting session which generated much discussion. For those of us in NZ where we are fortunate to have institutions where there is a relatively high rate of access to collections – I’m thinking even at the library catalogue level – the thought that guerrilla activity may be necessary to surface collection items without the intervention of institution staffers may be surprising and possibly confronting! Subhashish did stress this guerrilla activity in no way violates copyright or licencing agreements, but seeks to make cultural items in GLAMs openly available to the public, where possible by partnering with institutions. The fact that many institutions do not have the resources to digitize cultural items, he posits, leaves the door open for guerrilla activity by skilled volunteers.

One participant in the session succinctly described Guerrilla GLAM as being self-authorizing activity vs institutional authorizing activity. I understand this to mean that rather than institutions engaging their own staff or volunteers, or crowd sourcing new volunteers to digitise their content, the Guerilla GLAMers come to them. There may well be communities in NZ or small GLAMs that have no digital record of their collections. Communities and institutions in this situation may well find it helpful to engage some interested Guerrilla GLAMers to help them out.

Wednesday and Friday

The Being Open session, held on both Wednesday and Friday, comprised a number of short presentations about aspects of openness, topics included: Creative Commons basics, Data Management, OUR archive (Otago’s Institutional repository), Open Publishing, Open Educational resources (OERs), and tools for open scholarship (ORCiD, Academia and ResearchGate). The slides and accompanying notes are available here goo.gl/46imdE.

 

Otago staff to have their say on OA

Thursday, October 22nd, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

We’ve just launched an Open Acess publishing survey. There has been plenty of illuminating international research in recent times that tells us what researchers think about open access. But in many other countries governments or funders are encouraging or mandating open access to the research they fund, whereas the context in New Zealand is quite different. This survey will give us a good sense of the extent to which Otago researchers are engaging with OA, their attitudes towards it and what support they need. Our results will be shared with the University community, including the University Research Committee.
A direct email has been sent to research staff with a personalised link but if you didn’t receive one you can follow the link below. Other people are welcome to do the survey too: you can identify yourself as an ‘other’ so we can filter our results.

Take the Otago Open Access Publishing Survey

Otago Open Access Week Events

Tuesday, October 13th, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

Click on each event for more details, including remote access on Monday and Tuesday.

Monday 19 October

Open Access. What is it and why should I care? 1pm Central Library and online

Launch of Otago Open Access Publishing survey

Tuesday 20 October

OAweek tweetchat, virtual OA meetup for AU/NZ from 2pm on Twitter

How to do Guerilla GLAM 3pm Central Library and online

Wednesday 21 October

Being open – Journals, OERs, Creative Commons, and more 1pm Science Library Seminar Room (Wed/Fri sessions are basically the same, just different locations).

Thursday 22 October

Lincoln University Great Debate: “It’s on the internet, I can use it” 3:30 – 4:30 via lu.ac.nz/Great-Debate

Friday 23 October

Being open – ORCID, Figshare, Creative Commons and more 1pm Hunter Centre (Wed/Fri sessions are basically the same, just different locations).

Being open (Wed 21 & Fri 23 Oct, 1pm, #OAweek)

Tuesday, October 13th, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

Note: the two sessions will be basically the same thing offered in different locations. You don’t need to come to both, though you are welcome to do so.

open access lock

‘Open lock’ CC BY-NC-ND, JISC

The nature of scholarship is changing, as are the ways in which you can engage with your research community and beyond. As part of Otago’s Open Access Week events, these sessions will consist of a series of quick fire topics on the theme of ‘being open.’ Those who come along can chose topics they’re interested in, including but not limited to:

  • creative commons
  • open educational resources (OERs)
  • hosting your own journal
  • data management (e.g. Figshare)
  • ORCID unique researcher identifiers
  • Otago University Research Archive (OUR Archive, our institutional research repository), and
  • Academic Networking sites (e.g. ResearchGate, Academia.edu), etc.

The quick-fire topics will serve as an invitation to attendees to engage in an open discussion where they can ask questions, share experiences or even get hands-on support. You don’t know a thing about ORCID but you know you want one? Do you apply creative commons licences to your work and want to share your experiences?  These sessions will be of use to all students/academics/researchers keen to engage in conversations around open access, the pros and cons and making the most of the various tools available.

When: 1 – 2pm Wednesday 21 October 2015
Where: Science Library Seminar Room (far-right corner from the entrance, see floorplan)

When: 1 – 2pm Friday 23 October 2015
Where: Hunter Centre G30a (ground floor, to the right inside the main entrance)

Open Access. What is it and why should I care? – plus OA baking! (1pm, Mon 19 October, #OAweek)

Tuesday, October 13th, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

Open-Access-logo

Image CC BY, openaccessweek.org

Why are governments, funders and institutions around the world mandating or encouraging Open Access? What does it mean for my discipline? My department? Me, as an individual researcher or teacher?

Our opening event for OA Week offers an introduction to OA, its demonstrable benefits to the scholarly pursuit and the challenges it presents. This session will provide a broad overview of current developments in OA and examine what the future might hold.

We’ll also be launching a survey of Otago staff, which asks about practices in and attitudes towards OA publishing.

Come along and share your experiences or bring your questions.

As an added bonus there will be open access baking. You’ll have to come find out what that is!

When: 1 – 2pm Monday 19 October 2015
Where: Central Library Conference Room 3 (1st floor East end, see floorplan)
Online: join virtually via Connect

How to do Guerilla GLAM

Tuesday, October 6th, 2015 | Sarah G | No Comments

Open Access Week (19-25 October) is fast approaching and we have a number of events in store – one I’m keen to tell you about now is a webinar we have planned entitled, “How to do Guerilla GLAM”.

Subhashish PanigrahiOur speaker, Subhashish Panigrahi @subhapa, from the  Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge programme will be tuning in via the interwebs from India to share his vision, case studies of Guerilla GLAM initiatives in India, as well as touching on the creation of documentaries, learning resources and promotional material from acquired content.

  • GLAM = Galleries Libraries Archives and Museums
  • Guerilla Glam = “getting the most out from cultural institutions where collaboration and long term engagement has high cost and time implications.”

Subha believes “this presentation will be useful for those who can mobilize a small team of volunteers equipped with digital camera, access to local cultural institutions and some level of expertise of curating data.” Read more about Subha and the abstract for his talk below.

Details of the event

How to do Guerilla GLAM / Subhashish Panigrahi @subhapa
Tuesday 20 October, 3.00pm NZDT
Conference Room 3, 1st floor University of Otago Central Library, 65 Albany Street, Dunedin
Or join us via Adobe Connect. [Please ensure you are logged in before 3pm and have read the participant notes on screen]

We will be recording this session and Subha has given permission for us to make the recording and his slides available here on the blog. We encourage participants to ask questions via the chat facility in Adobe Connect, or to tweet questions using #OAWeek #AOASG.

 

Abstract

Building partnership with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (collectively known as GLAM institutions) is a great way of funneling the cultural content acquisition and bringing open access to such valuable data. But it is not that easy given the complications each country has in terms of formal agreement, organizational framework, etc. This presentation will detail about the learning curve of institutional partnership building, leveraging personal contacts in small scale GLAM projects and bringing in several indie-projects to cut implication cost, and execute low-cost models.

During this presentation I will present two case studies of contrasting nature: India’s first GLAM project at the National Crafts Museum, New Delhi, and various small-scale collaborative projects. Where the first one would have learning from the six months long project, the second one will draw inspirations from many initiatives that have really no cost or low cost implication and less implementation time involved.

At times, institutional collaborations become liabilities and labor intensive with low Return on Investment. Training staff and implementing GLAM projects are not always easy and retaining contributors is a challenge. Alternatively Guerrilla GLAM could be thought of when having a Wikimedian-in-Residence is not feasible. This presentation will be useful for those who can mobilize a small team of volunteers equipped with digital camera, access to local cultural institutions and some level of expertise of curating data.

Making documentaries and building narratives based on acquired content to creating learning resources and promotional materials will be another aspect of this presentation. Building partnerships with many federal or private institutions also needs sustained long-term engagement and volunteer time is not always enough to devote for a long term GLAM project. This presentation will detail about going the guerrilla way to acquire data from GLAM institutions. This will involve low cost models, leveraging various factors, and getting the most out from cultural institutions where collaboration and long term engagement has high cost and time implications.

About Subhashish

Subhashish Panigrahi is an India based educator, author, blogger, Wikimedian, language activist and free knowledge evangelist. Earlier with Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program and currently at the Centre for Internet and Society‘s Access To Knowledge program, Panigrahi works on building partnership with universities, language research and GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive and Museums) organizations for bringing more scholarly and encyclopedic content under free licenses, designing outreach programs for South Asian language Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects and communities.

The other hats he wears are as the Editor for Global Voices Odia, Community Moderator of Opensource.com, and Ambassador for India in OpenGLAM Local, Juror of 2015 American Alliance of Museum Muse Awards, and member of OER 2016 Standing Committee. He has presented in various Indian and international conferences on the free knowledge, GLAM and Open Access movement. Panigrahi has authored of “Rising Voices: Indigenous language Digital Activism” in Digital Activism in Asia Reader and was winner of the 2015 Opensource.com People’s Choice Award. Subhashish is available on Twitter at @subhapa and over email at psubhashishatgmaildotcom for more discussion.

Fancy printing your own Homo Naledi bones?

Wednesday, September 30th, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

You can, thanks to the researchers behind the most-talked about fossil discovery in recent times releasing research-quality 3D scans on MorphoSource. Any student in the world (whose school or organisation has access to the right printing technology) can hold the bones in their hands.

John Hawkes, a core scientist in the Rising Star Expedition team behind the research, has hailed their work as “a triumph for open access and education”:

The open access philosophy has driven our work on Homo naledi from the beginning. Instead of keeping these discoveries veiled behind locked doors, we have tried to bring them to the public in ways that will drive greater curiosity and engagement with science…

Not only the public benefits from scientific open access; science itself benefits. Showing the process of science in action, we create better tools for educators to equip students with the scientific method.

As we train a new generation of scientists, we must give them the tools to build collaborations and work with massive data. By sharing data openly, we build a worldwide community of practice as we attempt to understand this and other future discoveries.

The ConversationRead Hawkes’ full editorial post.

How much do they pay for journal subscriptions in the UK?

Thursday, July 30th, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

Two independent British researchers have obtained and released data on the licensing fees spent on journal subscriptions in the UK higher education sector. The data, released openly on F1000Research, shows spending by over 150 UK higher education organisations on the journals from ten publishing groups, reaching a total of £430 million from 2010 – 2014. The data, being open, allowed me to do some quick calculations. Across these institutions the total spend in each year showed a steady increase over the five years: £76m, £82m, £88m, £91m and £94 respectively.

These figures are, of course, separate from anything spent on Author Processing Charges now being spent by UK insitutions to comply with goverment-mandated open access to publicly-funded research, which has become a significant cost in itself with the UK government’s support for the Gold OA model.

You can compare 2013 figures to publicly released figures for New Zealand institutions. The highest figure paid among the UK institutions that year was the £3.1 million spent by the University of Manchester. The University of Auckland was the biggest spender of New Zealand institutions in the same year at $14.8 million. The figures are not directly comparable – given that the UK’s include licensing fees for ten specific publishers and the NZ figures are for all spending on academic journal subscriptions — but do provide a broad basis for comparison. Similarly the total spends make interesting reading, with the UK’s £91 million spread across 153 institutions and NZ’s $55 million across just eight universities and eight Crown Research Institutes.

More than half of research published by top five publishers

Friday, July 24th, 2015 | Richard White | No Comments

An analysis of 45 million research documents has found that the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. The digital era precipitated a massive shift from a proliferation of research publishers to an oligopoly of a small handful. This influence is particularly evident in the social sciences (where the share is more like 70%) and less so in the humanities (20%); the Natural and Medical Sciences lie around the half-way point largely because of the independence of the major scholarly socities.

The paper concludes that this massive increase in influence has been largely responsible for the massive rises in profits of these publsihers, without a concomitant increase in added value to what has been described as ‘the most profitiable obsolete technology in history.’

It also concludes that only the academic community – having sold off its intellectual capital at an amazing rate (see image at the bottom of this post) – has the ability to reverse this the ‘acaedmic spring’ of the open access / open science movements.

Read The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era in full (and open access) at PLoS ONE.

journal.pone.0127502.g002Number of journals changing from small to big publishers, and big to small publishers per year of change in the Natural and Medical Sciences and Social Sciences & Humanities | CC BY Larivière et al (2015) | doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502.g002