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Our projects live within the 'Zooniverse', the home of Citizen Science on the web. Each is inspired by a science team who provide the initial ideas, the reassurance that what we're doing can make a real contribution and an audience who are willing to use the end result. You can apply to be a volunteer for science study to help science and also improve yourself

Nuestro conocimiento del mundo ha ido aumentando rápidamente con el tiempo haciéndose, cada vez,más confiable. Como nunca antes, la adaptación de las sociedades al ritmo del conocimiento se ha vuelto crucial para el desarrollo sostenido. Sin embargo, es importante destacar que el acceso al conocimiento se ha visto restringido; grandes cantidades de personas en el mundo se han quedado atrás en esta enorme y emocionante carrera de nuestros días. Es determinante superar este abismo de cualquier forma posible, especialmente porque cada segmento del mundo depende de los otros actualmente. Una forma de acercarse a un equilibrio es la aplicación de recursos de Acceso Abierto al conocimiento.

Estoy de acuerdo contigo, la tendencia debe ser buscar un equilibrio en la aplicación de los recursos que nos brinda el Acceso Abierto al Conocimiento.

A description of the future of libraries being makerspaces - centres of production as well as consumption.

Gracias por compartirlo, esta nueva tendencia de la BIblioteca como espacios de creación y producción es muy enriquecedora.

This video shows the possibilities for libraries: Encouraging users to create content in addition to absorbing it. Melanie Florencio provided excellent exemplars, spanning generations (the old and the young) and showing that all can participate.

It's unquestionable that Research4Life has had a significant impact in improving access to research information for communities in developing countries. I do have a number of criticisms about how the program is organized and delivered, however. 1. Publisher participation in the program is 'entirely voluntary', without 'a single contract (being) signed between any of the partners' (Aaronson, 2004), meaning that publishers can opt out at any point. This issue was highlighted in 2011 when Elsevier, Lipincott Williams & Wilkins, Springer and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, publisher of Science Magazine) withdrew access to over 2500 journals through the HINARI system. Following international attention, and widespread condemnation, publishers restored access, with Elsevier announcing that they were in discussions with the government in Bangladesh to transition towards a paid licensing scheme (Wise, 2011). 2. Countries that meet the eligibility criteria of the program (which are based on the World Bank's listing of Lower and Lower Middle Income Countries) are sometimes excluded. Take for example India or Pakistan- although these countries are in the lists of eligible countries, the publishers deliberately exclude participation to protect whatever business they may have in these countries. So although hundreds of institutions could benefit, they exclude access to protect the business they receive from a handful of institutions. 3. Access to content is delivered through a single username and password for each institution. This is problematic for librarians, as they are unable to ensure the security of the password (a well-meaning researcher may share the password with a colleague in another institution, violating the license agreement). Abuse of institutional accounts has severe consequences, and librarians are sent messages from Research4Life threatening to not only cut off the institution, but all institutions in their country if they

Research4life is a great program by committed government and non-government organizations dedicated to produce valuable researches that will improve the life of people. Librarians play an important role in assisting researchers find valid, current, relevant information in order to produce a reliable output or results that will help humankind's betterment of living.

BC Open Textbooks is an initiative started by the province of British Columbia in Canada. It is open textbooks adapted and created by BC faculty. It's difficult to tell which texts are complete and ready for use as Tony Bates incomplete text that I created another post about appears on the same page with complete texts (eg Chemistry, Biology Geography.) All the texts can be modified through Creative Commons licensing. This project has been creating concern for publishers who stand to loose business in BC and other provinces if the texts get adopted outside of BC. Initially, the project was focused on creating "a collection of open textbooks aligned with the top 40 highest-enrolled subject areas in the province. A second phase was announced in the spring of 2014 to add 20 textbooks targeting trades and skills training." Initially they looked for existing Creative Commons books they could adapt and they adapted 8 textbooks. From inception to fall 2014, 2244 students have used their open texts for a savings of $353,000 or $157 per student. The aim is to reach 200,000 students annually so they are at .6% and save each $900-$1500/year, still quite a way to go. Wondering how much this project is costing taxpayers, I googled and found this article http://www.ousa.ca/2013/04/24/textbooks/ which claims $600k-$1m/year. So the government has spent $1.2 - $2 million to save students $350k over the past two years. Still a long way to go to break even. In summary, 65 texts published, 45 adoptions, 2244 student users, for a savings of $353k to date. If this was a traditional textbook publishing company, they'd soon be out of business if they weren't already.

Thank for sharing, I believe that the conclusions that this article leaves us are not surprising, although yes very interesting. "Recently, the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson conducted a survey of nearly 8,000 faculty members in higher education to find out more about how faculty are using social media. While we often post infographics showing trends or results from specific studies here at Edudemic, I found the results of this survey particularly interesting - perhaps because they were so different from what I expected." Julia Echeverria

You are so, so lucky. Here in South Africa, we are regressing, not even looking at online textbooks, but trying to reduce textbooks to only one per subject. The textbook crisis: http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-23-00-south-africas-hidden-textbook-crisis and the regressive "solution" http://mg.co.za/article/2014-10-10-single-textbook-option-slammed. It is very frustrating for me, knowing all the possibilities, but not having any agency to get through to the authorities here.Llibraries are also failing horribly in advocating for the solutions that ARE available.

Interesting open text book created by the Free Technology Academy that outlines the history, culture, and use of free software. "Free Software" is ambiguous in English and not the commonly used terminology. However, in Spanish and French it is possible to make a distinction between "Libre software" and "gratis" software. The authors argue that the term "open source" is too technical focused, while "libre software" better focuses on the rights of the users and community. Interesting and worth skimming for reference. Available in English, Spanish, Catalan, and Italian. Authors: Jesús M. González-Barahona, Joaquín Seoane Pascual, Gregorio Robles Coordinators: Jordi Mas Hernández, David Megías Jiménez Licenses: GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons Attribute ShareAlike License Information: 291 Pages; 3.2Mb Free software is increasing its presence in mainstream media and in debates among IT professionals, but it is still unknown for many people.

Introducción al software libre, en Español: http://ocw.uoc.edu/informatica-tecnologia-y-multimedia/introduccion-al-software-libre/materiales/view?set_language=es

Muy buenos aportes @koobreader

Breaking new ground for the open-access movement, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of global health research, plans to require that the researchers it funds publish only in immediate open-access journals. The policy doesn't kick in until January 2017; until then, grantees can publish in subscription-based journals as long as their paper is freely available within 12 months.

This serves as a significant catalyst to change the mentality of both the researcher and the funder. The Gates Foundation is a leading organization in resolving world health issues. This action demonstrates their drive and desire toward their cause; and will hopefully it will start a trend amongst authors and other research funding NGOS.

As mentioned in class discussions, this is the only reasonable response. Bill and Melinda have put their time forth into creating charities, and attempting to control content which was given from charitable grants is lunacy. It is comforting to see the Gates foundation scrapping the 6-12 month window of restriction. WIth this said that said, this draws interesting parallels with journals that receive government grants due to the fact that the privately sold resource is already being funded by the tax payers.

Writing my post about AI and summoning the demon led me to re-read a number of articles on Cathy O'Neil's excellent mathbabe blog. I highlighted a point Cathy has made consistently: if you're not careful, modelling has a nasty way of enshrining prejudice with a veneer of "science" and "math."

This is really a good initiative. One can only wish that African states finally realize that internet access is no longer a privilege but a right because without it such brilliant initiatives do not spread to all corners of the developing world.

I like the "equalization" word, even if it seems to make it too simple, but it is also making it sound possible

Open Access Week is less than a month away! Now in its eighth year, Open Access Week is an international event that celebrates the wide-ranging benefits of enabling open access to information and research-as well as the dangerous costs of keeping knowledge locked behind publisher paywalls.

Hi Kim, Thanks for sharing! Until now, I'd never heard of Open Access Week. I'd love to hear how both you and Federico have been involved in the past and what your communities (both online and off, local and nonlocal) have done to highlight open access during this week. I did a bit of searching, and it turns out that my school has a whole series of events planned for OEW, including some super interesting sounding lecture and a few documentary screenings. I'm very excited! http://oaweek.open.ubc.ca/ Amanda

Knowledge should be able to share with people, knowledge should not be trapped behind a paywall. For those who needs the information but couldn't get the information because they need to pay for it, this doesn't make any sense to me. So many paper and research by scientists are funding by government which the tax payers have contributed a lot on funding. Thus people should have access to those information.

From this article: Many organizations wanting to create educational materials find out during negotiations with authors that most of them are ultimately willing to openly license their materials. However this often requires overcoming their personal fears about OERs. Many authors are unfamiliar with the concept of an open license and open educational resources. Even if they hear about them, Saylor.org found that "chief concerns included the loss of control of materials, commercial reproduction, and loss of traffic/ad revenue" (6). And a chart : Fig. 1. What are most typical arguments you hear against Open Educational Resources? OER community experts survey.