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This is about the inequitable global power and how it dynamics the confronting global knowledge production in nowadays.

Underlying this notion of global knowledge production inequities is how developed countries "The Global North" dominate modern knowledge systems. This hegemonic control of global knowledge, driven by increased globalization, places pressure on virtually all societies to adopt global values and services. While this development does have positive implications (e.g. better understanding of modern health practices, nutrition, environmental protection, governance systems, etc), on the negative side, the imposition of cultural forms from the developing world could be considered a form of political and economic domination. This leads to the increasing homogenization of cultures and a threat to local knowledge, and the exacerbation of local differences and inequalities through uneven access to such knowledge and the means for it's application. The production of knowledge implicates and is implicated in power relations, as those with superior technology cannot only generate but also store, monopolize and disseminate information to safeguard their interests. Foucault (1972) suggests that the relationship between power and knowledge has its origin in the ownership of the means of material production and technical expertise. According to Said (1978), Western powers in a colonial and post-colonial context, using agents in developing countries, have been able to develop elaborate cultural and political institutions where knowledge production exists with supporting mechanisms that dominate and suppress African communities. In a critical examination of development policies and programs in Africa, Okolie (2003) considers these to be shaped by knowledge and assumptions about knowledge production that are primarily Euro-American centered, and are consequently "exclusionary and often contemptuous of other ways of knowing" (Okolie, 2003). The establishment of the continent's universities and research centers was primarily driven by Western powers, and the African elites who h

"At the same time, a fair amount of resistance to OA practices still exists. Publishers object to OA on economic principles, as it undermines the revenue generated by journals. Some researchers feel that it devalues their work as well, lowering it to the level of "a database to be consulted," in Eve's words. He believes the academic community is over-reliant on scholarly publishing's status quo; as he told the crowd at Columbia, "the system reinforces itself through economies of prestige." Even as interest in altmetrics grows, the quality of research continues to be gauged by the number of citations an article gathers and the status of the journal it appears in."

This is a good overview of a project that seeks to demystify and break down resistance to open educational resources.

This is a thesis from a professor who occasionally teaches a Scholarly Communication course at UBC iSchool. It deals with complicated questions of economics of scholarly publishing. If you are looking for sources for research, there is a lot in here for you. Worth skimming through and reading any chapters of interest. "Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age examines distortion in the current scholarly communication system and alternatives, focusing on the potential of open access. High profits for a select few scholarly journal publishers in the area of science, technology, and medicine contrast with other portions of the scholarly publishing system such as university presses that are struggling to survive."

This report addresses four main questions: * How can sustainable cost/benefit models for OER initiatives be developed? * What are the intellectual property rights issues linked to OER initiatives? * What are the incentives and barriers for universities and faculty staff to deliver their materials to OER initiatives? * How can access and usefulness for the users of OER initiatives be improved? This is part of an OECD series of reports looking at the impact of Open Knowledge on education systems and learning

Hi Matt, Thanks for sharing this OECD report from the year 2007. The OECD is really forward looking. One sentence strikes me: "Wikipedia has two employees and well over a million articles in multiple languages." Yes, that was true, back in the year 2007.

A very interesting paper that discusses issues around OER, as well as some topics already covered in the course is, "Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources" (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). The paper highlights some of the barriers, sustainability issues, and how to improve access and usefulness of open educational resources. I found the paper very comprehensive, with many additional resources. While published in 2007, when conversations around OER were fairly new, many of the points they raise are still in discussion and relevant.

Hi there, I have just find this excelente video about the future os property rihgts and think that may be interesting for you all. "Property Rights Development: Implications for Sustainability | PRESENTER: Brian Kelly, Graduate Student Fellow, MS Candidate in Community Development and Applied Economics | 4/20/12 Modern property rights assignments and regimes are ill-equipped to adapt to increased ecological scarcity, resulting in economically-inefficient outcomes and a systemic inability to enable the development of a green economy. This presentation will discuss how property rights emerge, the viability of rights for future generations, and the how the existence of environmental externalities necessitates the inevitable emergence of common property rights regimes, grounded in the empirical example of Vermont's groundwater". Regards Julia Echeverría

"building a low cost, sustainable, Open Access future for the humanities."

The Knowledge Unlatched model depends on many libraries from around the world sharing the payment of a single Title Fee to a publisher, in return for a book being made available on a Creative Commons licence via OAPEN and HathiTrust as a fully downloadable PDF.

Great concept! This goes to show that Open Knowledge does not equate to free and giveaway. I love the blend of effectively using a crowd-funding model through libraries to ensure appropriate fees are paid to cover costs and compensate authors and publishers to enable open access under a CC license across a global library network. It would be interesting to see the follow up to this. I would think this approach would be useful for school libraries in a district or region to use this approach and effectively share the resources.

Interesting take on what will happen to the future of libraries and how information will be published and sold. It's important to realize that nothing comes free and that we should promote a business model that benefits content-producers as well as consumers.

A plan to convert traditional subscription publication formats, including society-published journals and books or monographs, to OA, based on an annual or multi-year payment made by every institution of higher education, no matter what its size or classification, and by any institution that benefits from the research that is generated by those within the academy.

Relevant article on the cost of textbooks and the rise of open education Before entering the classroom of an intro-level economics course, students get a real-life experience with the subject - the required textbook costs $290 on Amazon. And that's just one book for one class. Textbook costs have surged 1,500 percent since 1970, according to the Economist magazine.

In sharing knowledge and learning, research data must be included. I agree that there must be incentives to motivate researchers share the data and its result. we are not what we are now if we have not learned what, who, why and how we were.

thank you very much for sharing this document that effectively connect the dots on an economic ground and made me know the LARM audio research project that might be helpful for this one field of research of mine

Another resource I've learned of in this course is the Open Economics organization, and what I really appreciated is not only the accessibility to very interesting data and research, but the clear way in which they're presented