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During Open Access week, I stopped by the Fenwick Info desk. I was able to get some informational packets and forms on open access week. There were many packets and brochures describing the history of open access and how students and professors could become more involved in the open access movement. I found one packet to be very informative on how I could learn to use open access to my advantage when conducting research.

Thanks, Lauren -- I'll give you 5 extra points on your Exam 2 grade when I grade them.

This is a list of open access journals which do not meet the standards to which scholarly journals must be held, including, but not limited to, undergoing peer review. This list also contains a link to criteria scholarly journals must meet.

This is an article about the PostgreSQL development team has announced the release of PostgreSQL 9.3, the latest version of the world's leading open source relational database system.

The idea of open access to scholarly journals seems to be a big debate and this article talks about how publishers make millions of dollars off of research and peer reviews that are done for free. It also talks about Aaron Swartz who led the movement for allowing access to journals by basically "stealing" them and sharing them.

Good article on federally funded research to be freely accessible over the internet. It's the second article on the page.

I attended one of the events during Open Access Week about the future of libraries and Wikipedia. Jake Orlowitz, recipient of a Wikimedia Foundation Individual Engagement Grant, spoke about "The Wikipedia Library." The Wikipedia Library was a new project he founded in 2012 for the goal of connecting Wikipedia editors with the reliable information sources they need. In the first part of his presentation, he discussed much of what wikipedia is and how it is run. He basically summed up much of what most people don't know about wikipedia and a lot of assumptions that people make about how unreliable information on wikipedia is. Then he went on to discuss more about the wikipedia library and how it would benefit wikipedia editors with vital current reliable sources that they need to do their work. I thought the presentation given by the presenter was very informative and interesting. I learned more about wikipedia and how its more useful than I thought. The most interesting point he raised during his presentation were the benefits of the Wikipedia Library. The thought of connecting university libraries with the wikipedia library will present students and many others information that is reliable and easy to access. Many scholarly articles and information from databases we usually have to pay for will be available for universities to provide students at a much lower cost.

Thanks, Rebecca. I'll add 5 points to your Exam 2 grade.

If you want to know about the highlighting moments in the history of Open Source, here it is.

Open access ( OA) is the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly research. It is most commonly applied to scholarly journal articles, but it is also increasingly being provided to theses, book chapters, and scholarly monographs.

The Russian Open Source software, Nginx by Igor Sysoev, that runs not only Wordpress but also sites like Netflix, now runs 15 percent of all websites.

Which is better, OSS or Proprietary Software? This article poses both sides of the arguments, mainly that OSS is lauded for it's "community" support, while Proprietary Software is backed by professional, tried and true support. The main conclusions were that OSS and Proprietary Software essentially match in content quality until the codes become longer. In that case, Proprietary Software comes out on top.

Good article, Casey, thanks!

This Wikipedia page shows all the available online resources open to the public.

Interesting, Taylor. Notice that that page is part of a project called "The Resource Exchange" and/or "The Wikipedia Library." I was just talking to a frequent Wikipedia editor named Jake Orlowitz the other day who's volunteering with the Wikipedia Library; we're going to try to bring him to campus to give a talk. If we do, I'll let y'all know. Thanks for the link!

A couple of people wanted to do research on Aaron Swartz, who was arrested under the Computer Fraud Act for unauthorized use of MIT's network to download "all of JSTOR," presumably for rerelease onto the open web. Here's an article about a forthcoming documentary on him.

The fundamental principles by which Wikipedia operates can be summarized in five " pillars"

I attended one of the Open Access Week events in which a contributor from Wikipedia came and spoke about Wikipedia. I found the presentation to be really interesting. He spoke about the five pillars of Wikipedia (which we've already learned about) among other things.

Thanks, Paola. I'll add 5 points to your Exam 2 grade when I grade it.

I'm pretty sure GMU subscribes to Office 365, which means that you can get Microsoft Office products for free while you're enrolled here. Quite a deal. Or you could use OpenOffice, the open source alternative.

I just checked up on this. The FAQ for GMU's Office 365 says the subscription only includes free access to the new Outlook and Calendar. I use OpenOffice on my computer, and apart from some formatting inconsistencies when working with people using Microsoft Office, it works great.

Harvard University has been advising its professors to publish their work to open access journals since many large journal publishers are charging higher fees.

It's a list composing of free accessible, open source software for different categories such as finance and even computer simulation.

Can't resist sharing this -- found it from Stephanie's "Oldest website on the Internet" link. Great short history of the web. "http://first-website.web.cern.ch" Note that it links to the "first" website at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html , which is not the same as the "oldest" one that Stephanie linked to -- I think the one Stephanie posted was a demonstration site, but not a "real" site, so I agree that it's older. :)

This book, Digital History, exists in print form as well, but it is entirely available for free on the open web. It is written for historians who want to "go digital," so you as undergrads (and not necessarily History majors!) aren't exactly its audience, but the book is nevertheless excellent as an introduction to the underpinnings of the internet and the web.

This gives a list (and short description) for 20 popular OSS platforms. This article includes examples given in class such as, WordPress (#1 on the list) and Mozilla Firefox (#3 on the list).