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I have found some interesting research publications on this site, in particular to MOOCs. Leading Social Science Research Delivered Daily Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. Each of SSRN's networks encourages the early distribution of research results by distributing Submitted abstracts and by soliciting abstracts of top quality research papers around the world. We now have hundreds of journals, publishers, and institutions in Partners in Publishing that provide working papers for distribution through SSRN's eLibrary and abstracts for publication in SSRN's electronic journals. The SSRN eLibrary consists of two parts: an Abstract Database containing abstracts on over 563,000 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection currently containing over 465,300 downloadable full text documents in Adobe Acrobat pdf format. The eLibrary also includes the research papers of a number of Fee Based Partner Publications. The Networks encourage readers to communicate directly with authors and other subscribers concerning their own and others' research. To facilitate this we publish detailed author contact information including email addresses for authors of each paper.

I chose the Open Educational Resources Research Hub (OER Research Hub) for a focus for research, designed to give answers to the overall question 'What is the impact of OER on learning and teaching practices?' and identify the particular influence of openness. As open education now reaches a stage of maturity we need evidence about what works, what doesn't and why in order that lessons learned can be shared. Filling the gap in the evidence base and sharing data and methods widely is the intention of OER Research Hub. The project combines: A targeted collaboration program with existing OER projects An international fellowship program Networking to make connections A hub for research data and OER excellence in practice

The Open Educational Resources Research Hub (OER Research Hub) provides a focus for research, designed to give answers to the overall question 'What is the impact of OER on learning and teaching practices?' and identify the particular influence of openness.

This year, the fifth annual Publishers for Development (PfD) conference explored current developments in scholarly communication including their impact on publishers, researchers and information professionals in the global South. The rapid growth in open access, the potential for social media to increase communication of research and also new measures for the way research is used were all topics viewed from a Southern perspective. The one-day conference was held in London on 15 October and titled 'Forward Thinking: Developing a global research cycle which fully engages South and North'. It brought together publishers from 16 publishing houses, librarians and researchers from universities in Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Also present were representatives of organisations involved in research access, production and use such as the World Bank, African Journals Online, Research4Life, Development Research Uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa (DRUSSA), Talloires Network and Partnerships in Health Information.

From June 2014, lecture at the Open Data Institute, UK. Professor Carr explains how the open web we know is just one of many attempts over the last century to build a planet-wide network of information. Why was this one successful? And will it continue to be so? Professor Leslie Carr is a Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton where he researches the impact of network technologies on our lives and economy, and in particular on the research and knowledge industries. Slides for this talk can be found here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/230569908/Friday-lunchtime-lecture-Open-data-open-web-Just-a-passing-fad-with-Professor-Leslie-Carr (recommended) From the slides, I thought this was interesting: "......The loss of ignorance, by all agreeing to share information The loss of privacy , by all agreeing to share a public space " also: "......The development of society as a whole (nuanced and structured and refined) is inextricably related to the technology of information provision, consumption and dissemination (e.g. writing, reading, printing, education). Different parts of society have different objectives and hence incompatible Web requirements, e.g. openness, security, transparency, privacy."

Emotional expression and linguistic style in online collaboration differ substantially depending on the contributors' gender and status, and on the communication network. This should be taken into account when analyzing collaborative success, and may prove insightful to communities facing gender gap and stagnation in contributor acquisition and participation levels.

lubajong and taylor_cole thank you for your comments. From my part I will add a critical evaluation of this resource as well. The talk pages of Wikipedia provide a rich source for researchers to study communication patterns. On Wikipedia talk pages they have found signals for status differences between groups of participants, notably between admins and ordinary contributors. Those findings support in general the theories of the researchers about status differences and communication style differences between managers and employees in firms. They have also found differences in communication style bases on gender, which also support their general theories about gender (which is a social construct). What I - as a Wikipedian insider - finds missing in the article is the selection bias. Wikipedia admins aren't appointed by Jimmy Wales or some other body. Admins are community selected. The exact process differs per language version. On the English Wikipedia admin selection is by a community consensus process. Future admins are selected who show the preferred communication style of admins by other contributors including existing admins. For me, the patterns in communication style do not explain the gender gap on Wikipedia. There is a gender gap in many language versions of Wikipedia, but not in all. The Armenian language version of Wikipedia is a notable exception, showing a gender balance in the conbtributor base. An explanation of that exemption requires further research. What taylor_cole notes about neutrality and bias is a valid point. People volunteer to write for Wikipedia, and volunteer in topic choice. My guess is that in general people will opt to write about something they like, care about, know about. A lack of diversity in contributors will naturally reflect in lack of diversity of topics. For example nerdy males will write about things male nerds like. In general females tend to be interested in other topics than nerdy males. A lack of topics covered in Wikipe

Levels of participation influences emotional expression and phrasing? has the function of sex and status of the taxpayer. 4 strands to study and find a result! Interesting!

"An interactive network aiming to gather observations on whether, and under which conditions, open approaches to research and collaboration could lead to various development outcomes in the Global South." Also highlights open development, goal is to construct "....a conceptual framework and a 'Theory of Change' on how open science norms and practices could be further established in developing countries via a community-based and networked-driven approach, while building on key lessons learned from the funded case studies, and from other ongoing open initiatives"

Why it "works" Network Effect Wikipedia benefits tremendously from the network effect. The network effect is when a user of a product benefits more from a product if other people also use the product. Telephones are a textbook example. If only a few dozen consumers have telephones, then the telephones aren't very useful. But if millions of consumers have telephones, they become more useful since each telephone owner can contact many people. The large number of Wikipedia users benefits Wikipedia. First, the more editors there are, the the higher the accuracy and quality of the articles. Secondly, it gives an incentive to users to edit. Since editors know the each article will be read by thousands of users, the sheer influence of each article is a strong enough incentive to edit, even though Wikipedia is free. Openness Wikipedia is free and open for any user to edit, even anonymously. This means there is a very large number of editors. This helps Wikipedia ensure accuracy since each mistake and inaccuracy will have to get by hundreds of editors. With so many writers, the scope of Wikipedia articles is very large, minimizing the amount of missing information. Although the openness of Wikipedia provides a powerful self-correcting method, it also makes Wikipedia vulnerable to vandalism. In addition, editors are anonymous and may have a conflict of interest, or might have inadequate knowledge of the article's subject. Yet, because Wikipedia is open to any edits, it is also likely to be corrected. It operates by a system of checks and balances from many editors. However, it has some guidelines to protect it against misinformation and bias: 1. Verifiability principle. To prevent bias and to protect the encyclopedic quality of its articles, all edits on Wikipedia must in theory be a verifiable fact. Moreover, it must have a reliable source to verify each fact. 2. No Original Research. As an encyclopedia, it is mean to be a secondary source of infor

The rapid growth of scientific literature is often seen as evidence, if evidence were needed, that the pace of human discovery is accelerating. On the contrary, however, it is becoming a curse - one that requires us to radically rethink what it means to publish the results of research.

VERY good point. Relates to this article, "At sea in a deluge of data" : http://chronicle.com/article/At-Sea-in-a-Deluge-of-Data/147477/

a. Finding a balance between technology and teaching has proved challenging in the traditional classroom. Some institutions, such as University of Chicago Law School, have altogether banned internet access in the classroom, claiming that it imposes on the integrity of the education. Although the authors draw attention to research demonstrating the rampant frequency of distractions with laptop and mobile technology amongst students, they beg the question of whose fault it really is - and begs educators to reflect on their own teaching, and the educational institution as a whole. Fang describes possible solutions for the distraction dilemma for educators to apply to the modern classroom. Filtering applications can help to create a temporary filter on computer applications to ensure a singular task, or set of permitted tasks, are accessed. Network switching allows faculty and network administrators to determine which, if any, applications can use a network at a given time. Social solutions can also be effective; by educating the student on the issue of technology-related distraction in classrooms, and assessing teaching styles, class formats and institutional practices. In the modern classroom, the professor and technology should coexist peacefully; yet it will take social and technical finesse in order to find the right balance for the maximum benefit of the student.

It is great that people are connecting with each other; however, we need to think about the influence of online social network on our Youth.

I think this is a valid concern, high schools around the country are permitting cell phone use in classrooms which is opening the doors to more group chat during and after class about everything but academics.

In a world dominated by technology there is no denying the significant influence of social media on our Youth. That being said, I think there is a critical demand for social media education in the classroom. I would love to see a stronger emphasis placed on employing technology as an instrument of education in the school system. Social media should be taught as a tool for research, collaboration and activism rather than a trivial pastime.

Confederaton of Open Access Repositories (COAR) Visibility & Applicaton of research through global networks of Open Access Repositories

This research study was an eye-opener for me. Until this point, I was completely unaware of these journal practices, although I had received several emails from journals I had never heard of wanting to publish papers based on conference presentations.

Although it is important to put those predatory journals under the spotlight so researchers don't fall in their trap, I always wince when I read one of those articles because too few take the time to talk about the good sides of open access journals and many readers will leave the article thinking that open access publishing is bad and not trustworthy. Of course, as mentioned in the Nature Mag article linked in the Guardian article, PLOS are excellent and have very high levels of evaluation, but they are not alone. And I have yet to find a paper that would make the same exercise with both open access journals and subscription-based journals so we could see how bad it is in the publishing world in general. That said, we must do everything within our power to stop those malpractices by predatory journals. (by the way, I have also received spam to publish in journals that were not even in my field of practice by BioMed Central. They are good, they are trustworthy. I wrote to them to say that it looks like baits to send spam calling me a Dr and inviting me to publish in fields that I know nothing about. They removed me from their mailing list but I don't know if they changed this practice)

A blog, Scholarly Open Access. Critical analysis of scholarly open-access publishing, http://scholarlyoa.com/, systematically lists fake academic journals and predatory publishers, who are taking advantage of a some open access naiveté.

Peter Suber is Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). He is widely considered the de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement.

Algunos datos recientes sobre academia y acceso abierto/some recent figures about academy and open access (http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4370) "Today, there are more than 9,000 fully open access, scholarly peer-reviewed journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the DOAJ's net growth is a fairly consistent three-four titles per day. There are over 2,000 open access repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). A cross-search of open access repositories using the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine encompasses over 40 million documents, a number that is growing by the millions every quarter (Morrison, 2005-). The producers of academic journal are the same that consume such journals: "Returning to the topic of academic library budgets as the primary support for scholarly journals, Michael Mabe (2011), CEO of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), recently affirmed that about 80-90 percent of the US$8 billion in revenue that goes to producers of the world's peer-reviewed scholarly journals comes from library subscriptions, as reported by Ware and Mabe [4]. Ware and Mabe's analysis is based in part on research by the Research Information Network (2008), which found that journals publishing revenues are generated primarily from academic library subscriptions (68-75 percent of the total revenue), followed by corporate subscriptions (15-17 percent), advertising (four percent), membership fees and personal subscriptions (three percent), and various author-side payments (three percent)."

Thank you very much for sharing.

Descubre, Fundación Andaluza para la divulgación de la Innovación y el Conocimiento I would like to introduce the Spanish Fundación Descubre (http://fundaciondescubre.es/) and, inside it, the network called "Divulga red" (http://divulgared.es/), thought to connect people (professional and amateur researchers and citizens in general), communicate and collaborate among them. DivulgaRed let people reveal research topics and the value of the science in different fields, sharing ideas with other researchers and group of people, all with the basis of a collaborative work. I had the pleasure of giving two talks in high-schools telling about optical communications and novelties that people can have in a near future. In a very good atmosphere, students and their own teachers asked me questions and I can enjoy a very nice atmosphere making my knowledge in this topic public. Even more, teachers in the high school were later discussing with me about possibilities in Education, and both they and me built some experiments to be made by students in the high school during the semester. So, as a concluding remark, every body who wants to share a new idea, or to obtain a new point of view, or simply who wants to introduce or simply to learn about a new topic is welcome in Fundación Descubre and DivulgaRed project. Regards. Dr. Antonio Jurado-Navas

A personal view of Open Access Science. It's part of a weekly series on Open Access from Open Access Button, so I will be posting them as they become available ... "We caught up with Graham Steel, a tireless advocate for Open Access who believes in sharing information as widely and as easily as possible. A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Graham works as a property claims adjuster/recovery specialist. After losing his sibling to a rare condition known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), Graham became involved in patient advocacy work, and more recently, in lobbying for open access to published scientific research. He acts in advisory capacities to the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Digital Science".

This piece was published as part of the GIZ compendium "10 trends in open innovation" and talks about self-organized and connected peer-to-peer learning for sustainable human development worldwide. Might be of interest as additional resource for Module 11: Global Perspectives on Equity, Development, and Open Knowledge

Dear Pris, dear Jurado, thanks a lot for your comments. I like the ideas and I would particularly like to know more about the thought, that "freedom has its own process tht could eventually produce a network ...". Thanks and cheers, Your Balthas

Thanks for sharing this great article! These topics are where I would like discussions about open access to start. We may be able to use that base of peer learning communities to think about all the other issues of open access in a new light.