Group items tagged

"Although the official press release highlights that "Open Access publishing has no negative effect on book sales, and increases online usage and discovery considerably" (which is, in my opinion, only a snapshot which will sooner or later lose validity in the course of the ongoing digitalization of the academic book market), the most interesting and valuable outcomes of the pilot arise from the attempt to quantify and itemize the costs of an OA monograph."

Many interesting charts and data of the global internet use, access, and contributions

Atlas, publications, charts and tables of global information and internet geographies and impacts on information access, information production and information distribution, done over a four year period by Oxford Information Institute. Findings, data, and publication will be published in Open Access formats and platforms. The website is simple but contains lots of information relevant to the topics in Stanford. There are links to external related publications about information geography, access, distribution and production. Very good website. Some limitations include: bias from the two developers and producers as well as institution itself, unknown (not identified) contributors and sponsors.

A very valuable collection demonstrating how economic, political, cultural and linguistic ties impact the flow of knowledge is and information. Of course, such charts do little to explain, why this happens and where a more even distribution of knowledge is desirable. Also, the data that lies behind the visualisations is not always open. Especially vauable are the links to the data collections that are accessible.

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.

Compares the cost of articles from society and non-profit publishers to those of the major commercial publishers.

Its crazy. The numbers (of profit and control) for the publishing companies is astronomical!

Universities have received a poor deal from the system of private, subscription-based access to knowledge production since the port WW2 commercialization of the scientific publishing industry. It is absurd that the university or research funder supplies the content (the research), pays for the authoring (the time of the researcher writing the article), and provides and pays for the time of peer reviewers and academic editors. In addition, it often pays page charges or formatting charges to publishers. It then cedes copyright and finally buys back its own research at prices that have escalated at four times the rate of inflation in the past decade and a half! Considering most of this research is conducted using public funds, it becomes a moral argument when public resources are used once again to purchase access to the outputs of this research. The commercial model of disseminating research does not obey the rules of supply and demand. A relatively small number of 'core' journals occupy monopoly positions, in that university libraries have to subscribe to access their content, whatever the cost, because these journals have been established as 'must-have' resources. While the practice of 'bundling' offers the advantage of bulk pricing, it reduces room for choice, as bundles consume large chunks of library budgets, making it difficult to subscribe to smaller, individual titles. In addition, the inflexibility of indexing systems makes it difficult for new journals to establish themselves; thus compromising the potential for smaller niche subjects and newer interdisciplinary areas. Thankfully the global inequalities engendered by the commercialization of scholarly publishing are being challenged by open access.

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

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.

The recent proliferation of social networks has led to a societal shift - from a tribal mentality to that of Facebook - and has served to connect people from around the world with common cultural, religious, political and economic characteristics in an unprecedented manner and with astonishing speed.

The mission of the Arab Open Academy in Denmark (AOA) is to develop scientific research, enrich human knowledge and accelerate the comprehensive, social and economic transformations of our society through the academic studies offered and the training of highly specialized personnel in basic and applied fields, who can implement the comprehensive development plans in the Arab World.

نحن بحاجة ماسة الى هذه الجامعات في كل العالم العربي

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

Beware of impostors: Research has shown that 'citizen journalism' is no replacement for the real thing. Photo: Michael Fitzjames "Citizen journalism is an oxymoron," says Rakhal Ebeli, managing director of Melbourne-based news bureau Newsmodo. "I mean, how can someone who is not a journalist be a journalist?" I am adding this not that I am in agreement but its an example of negativity towards this area.

I think that this article does a good job of discussing some of the "darker" aspects of citizen journalism. It distinguishes how citizen journalism often deals with trying to change public opinion, whereas traditional journalism, in theory at least, aims to be objective and truth-based. While it is a large stretch to call traditional journalism "truth-based," there are typically certain measures in place to promote accuracy, such as fact checking, review, etc. I like how this article supports the professional integrity and need for trained, educated journalist, comparing "citizen journalism" to "citizen-pharmacy and crowd-sourced obstetrics." While there is certainly value in IndyMedia and citizen journalism, the flip side is that information distributed in this manner is not by any means guaranteed to be accurate or fair.

I am a professional journalist (Bachelor and master degree in Journalism) and I can tell you that a journalist that works for a media is not truth-based, accurated or with professional integrity. A professional journalist is an employee in a company with economical, policital and social interests supported by the content that is being published. I have the content of my articles changed from my managers in order to "match" the diary interests. And what was finally published was far from being truth (then I denied to put my name in the article, but it was still published). So citizen journalism might include emotions, prejudices and non contrasted impressions from citizens, but are still free and natural. I am totally towards citizen journalism.

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.

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.

"Although the Directory of Open Access Journals reports that nearly two-thirds of OA journals listed there do not charge authors, a recent study indicates that 50% of OA articles have been published after the author paid a fee." That still leaves at least 50% of OA journals that DO NOT charge author fees. This is often forgotten.

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

Today, on the one hand we have the Internet that allows access to information worldwide and at any time on the other hand librarians are facing tremendous pressure with the exorbitant price rise of the subscriptions to academic journals and unable to meet their responsibility of providing information. Simultaneously. This has called for the development of new models of information provision to meet user demands. Open Access is one of the models under discussion that has implications for educational, research, legal and economic policy. This handbook is designed to contribute to this debate and provides an interested public with information on Open Access, a subject which, despite its great social importance, has hitherto been mainly discussed by experts. The handbook is the outcome of a workshop that brought together 25 experts coming from German Federal Ministries, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Commission, the academic community,major academic organisations, the publishing sector, and the Open Access community This handbook presents the various views of major stakeholders and covers a wide range of issues relevant to open access.

I found this is quite useful for open access! It kinda of introducing open access in depth. Thanks for sharing!