Group items tagged

Digital media is changing how scholars interact, collaborate, write and publish. Here, Jessie Daniels describes how to be a scholar now, when peer-reviewed articles can begin as Tweets and blog posts. In this new environment, scholars are able to create knowledge in ways that are more open, more fluid, and more easily read by wider audiences.

Michael Eisen is a researcher at UC Berkley and a co-founder of Public Library of Science. He discusses the news that the American Association for the Advancement of Science named Kent Anderson as its new Publisher, who is a critic of the open access movement. The most interesting thing for me was the mention in his blog post as well as in the comments section by another, that it is perhaps a trend for scholarly publications to produce open access journals. A peculiar motive, to perhaps "own" the open movement? It would be interesting to learn more about this trend, motivations behind it, and the implications on how that affects the OA movement.

And then a quick Google search found an announcement that Nature will be fully open access as of 20 October 2014... but still costs $5,200 USD to cover the article processing charges - perhaps Universities should (will) start to pay these costs instead of the high costs of subscriptions to scholarly journals as they continue to open up their access. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/open_access/index.html

Wow--these article publishing charges are ridiculous. I don't know if the scholars whose work gets published in these esteemed journals have budgets that would allow them to cover such fees, but I am sure that I wouldn't be able to get multiple articles covered by grants for my own work in the social sciences. And I'm 99% sure that the public universities I've worked for would not be ponying up that kind of money to cover my publication fees. This seems like yet another way to penalize scholars working in fields that don't get big grants or living in countries that don't have this kind of money to throw around. I prefer the UK's policy of requiring all nationally funded research to be published open access without any publication fees. That's the only way to even the playing field.

"Responding to rapid and steep increases in the cost of scientific journals, a growing number of scholars and librarians have advocated "open access" (OA) to the scientific literature. OA publishing models are having a significant impact on the dissemination of scientific information. Despite the success of these initiatives, their impact on researchers in the developing world is uncertain. This article analyses major OA approaches adopted in the industrialized world (so-called Green OA, Gold OA, and OA mandates, as well as non-OA information philanthropy) as they relate to the consumption and production of research in the developing world. The article concludes that while the consumption of scientific literature by developing world researchers is likely to be significantly enhanced through such programs, promoting the production of research in the developing world requires additional measures. These could include the introduction of better South-focused journal indexing systems that identify high-quality journals published in the developing world, coupled with the adjustment of academic norms to reward publication in such journals. Financial models must also be developed to decrease the reliance by institutions in the developing world on information philanthropy and to level the playing field between OA journals in industrialized and developing countries."

Medievalists are often considered, like their subject matter, a stodgy old-fashioned bunch who are the vanguard of old academia. But there are a few exceptions, like the Digital Medievalist site. Open to scholars and enthusiasts of varying skills and experience, it runs a long-standing open-access journal, a small wiki dealing mostly with aspects of the digital humanities, and a list of important news and upcoming conferences for professional scholars. Overall it's a great place for those interested in what's going on in the medieval academy. It's not perfect, though: the journal only publishes a handful of papers each year, and most of the rest of the content isn't very expansive. It feels like, and probably is, a side-project that a few scholars work on in their free time rather than the comprehensive resource it could be; and that makes it a cautionary tale. If we freely offer only the barest bones of what constitutes a journal (or any other scholarly resource), we run the risk of presenting open access as an inferior model that can only take readers so far. It's important to remember that open access takes real sustained effort to make it a viable alternative to traditional models of scholarly publishing.

This list is not to be taken at face value (many of the publishers on it do have legitimate journals), but it serves as a reminder that there are many predatory journals that ask scholars to pay a lot of money to share their work, and many that also skirt traditional peer review processes in order to get money from unwary authors.

Will show to some colleagues who sometimes are interesteed in publishing issues.

Lists by By Jeffrey Beall of predatory journals Released January 2, 2014

This list is a helpful tool for authors who are publishing their work in Open Access Journals. It is also helpful for librarians who are acting as advisors for Open Access publishing. Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers. This is a list of questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. It is recommended recommend that scholars read the available reviews, assessments and descriptions provided here, and then decide for themselves whether they want to submit articles, serve as editors or on editorial boards.

The long list of predatory publishers and journals by Beall is quite daunting. Is this another indication of how cynical a person has to be in every aspect of life - even scholary pursuit? Thankfully there's a record to alert stakeholders of potentially unscrupulous publishers and unvalidated journals.

As I was working on my final project I found myself only able to name 1 OA Journal: PLOS. I wanted to know if there were any other big players in the game, much like the top commercial journals. As a result, google came up with the above site, which works like an index or directory for OA Journals. It's good to see in light of the difficulties that closed access journals have been causing in countries that are digitally divided from affluent ones. Hopefully with the growth of open access titles we will see the digital divide and information gap close. Happy browsing! And please post any other open access titles you have come across! Lets popularize them in our network! One more: http://doaj.org/

Proposes an alternative future where author self-publish their work for peer review outside of traditional journals.

Si, porque también se menciona, como dice en su proposición, Harvie et al. (2014) hacen un magnífico trabajo que describe los hechos exasperantes de la actual académico panorama editorial. Todos sabemos cómo funciona el sistema y cómo se juega el juego. Lo que se quiere dar a conocer una realidad alternativa facilitada por la plataforma de revisión por pares abierto gratuito, libre y sugerir acciones concretas que ayuden al movimiento científico comunidad hacia un sistema de evaluación de conocimientos y el intercambio más abierto y eficiente que se divorcia de revisión por pares desde la publicación de revistas.

The proposed alternative future is achievable, but not without resistance of traditional publishing, I think.

"The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. "

This is core notes from a one day seminar in 2012 (http://www.stm-assoc.org/events/academic-and-professional-publishing-in-south-africa/) on academic publishing in South Africa and Africa. in South Africa it would seem that there are many barriers to prevent scholars from producing and publishing their work. Although these barriers are a huge concern, there is a wealth of information being gathered and research being completed. This article is interesting as it shortly summarizes the challenges for academic work to get published in Africa.

The wonderful blog, Hack Library School, has recently posted a piece on open access publishing. This piece is a great overview, which covers many of the basic concepts covered in Module 6. The article discusses what open access is (and what it isn't) and some of the biggest discussion points on the issue today. It's a great overview and well worth the read if you want an overview or a refresher on the topic!

This blog covers a lot of relevant concepts related to OA, but a finer point need to be clarified. Regarding Google Scholar, not everything retrieved from GS is OA. GS is a web crowler, it crows wherever it is allowed, including references and citations to articles behind paywalls. On the other hand, many librarians are working to make their paid journals subscriptions available to their faculty and students via Google Scholar. So when faculty/students are on their universities' network, they can search GS, find articles from journals. If their library subscribes to that journal, there is a good chance a link to the full text will be available.

I agree with the point that "findability" for green OA articles is a current problem. We need a PubMed or Web of Science for green OA articles!

"Scholarly communication outreach and education activities are proliferating in academic libraries. Simultaneously, digital humanists-a group that includes librarians and non-librarians based in libraries, as well as scholars and practitioners without library affiliation-have developed forms of scholarship that demand and introduce complementary innovations focused on infrastructure, modes of dissemination and evaluation, openness, and other areas with implications for scholarly communication. Digital humanities experiments in post-publication filtering, open peer review, middle-state publishing, decentering authority, and multimodal and nonlinear publication platforms are discussed in the context of broader library scholarly communication efforts."

Libraries do not have the luxury (or the mission) of selecting books solely based on their intrinsic quality. In order to do their work, the students and scholars served by the library need access ...

Good article on how to look for the best information the internet has to offer and be a discerning consumer. Also good for availability of academic publishing as an important public good.

It's a good reminder to all of us to pay close attention to where we are getting our information. The main points are take advantage of academic publishing via Google Scholar, get 2nd opinions, check multiple sources, be aware of the potential motives of the writer and their affiliated organization, and follow links/sources and fact check. Additional suggestions that I would add to the author's blog post include taking a close look at the writer's credentials, asking yourself who the intended audience might be, looking out for emotion-rousing words, and doing a link search to find out if other people have sited the article. It's also good to ask whether the web is the best place to look for that particular type of information in the first place.

First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peer-reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. Since its start in May 1996, has published 1,397 papers in 220 issues; these papers were written by 1,915 different authors.

Librarians love to get free books into the hands of scholars and students who need them. Publishers love it when their books find readers - but they also need to cover the costs of turning an idea into a finished monograph.

Although IASCP is devoted to the study of institutions for the management of environmental resources (such as forests, oceans and land) held or used collectively by communities, its WWW site provides a wealth of information for scholars of common pool resources in diverse disciplines. It also seeks to allow an exchange of scholarship between members, researchers, students and other CPR practitioners. Publishes quarterly journal called Common Property Resource Digest. WWW site includes: (a) Searchable CPR bibliographies (see entry for Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis) (b) abstracts of papers from past IASCP conferences (c) links to online articles, bibliographies and information sources on common pool resources (d) information on IASCP conferences and membership.

I think sharing is great but just throwing data in the Internet is rubbish.

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

FREE CULTURE is available for free under a Creative Commons license. You may redistribute, copy, or otherwise reuse/remix this book provided that you do so for non-commercial purposes and credit Professor Lessig. " America needs a national conversation about the way in which so-called 'intellectual property rights' have come to dominate the rights of scholars, researchers, and everyday citizens. A copyright cartel, bidding for absolute control over digital worlds, music, and movies, now has a veto over technological innovation and has halted most contributions to the public domain from which so many have benefited. The patent system has spun out of control, giving enormous power to entrenched interests, and even trademarks are being misused. Lawrence Lessig's latest book is essential reading for anyone who want to join this conversation. He explains how technology and the law are robbing us of the public domain; but for all his educated pessimism, Professor Lessig offers some solutions, too, because he recognizes that technology can be the catalyst for freedom. If you care about the future of innovation, read this book." -- Dan Gillmor, author of MAKING THE NEWS, an upcoming book on the collision of media and technology

Hi Kim, Thanks for sharing this great work by Lawrence Lessig published ten years ago.