Group items tagged

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!

NLI is responsible for the websites lokalhistorie.no, lokalhistoriewiki.no and toll.lokalhistorie.no. NLI also publishes sources, handbooks, overviews of literature and sources, questioners, as well as other aids for local historians. In cooperation with the National Federation of Local History Associations (Landslaget for lokalhistorie), NLI publishes the magazine Lokalhistorisk magasin. NLI also organises seminars and conferences related to local history topics.

"If, as rumoured, google builds a platform for depositing unrefereed research papers for "peer-reviewing" via crowd-sourcing, can this create a substitute for classical peer-review or will it merely supplement classical peer review with crowd-sourcing?"

Two facts that makes me think, peer-reviewing via crowd-sourcing, at best would supplement the traditional peer-review process. Fact one, there are already open access repositories that allow "deposit first; review later", but those repositories have not taken over other journals. Fact two, Wikipedia is an example in that, though theoretically anyone can contribute and edit the articles, there is definite number of people who would do it. Therefore, I don't see crowd sourcing peer review would really substitute the traditional route.

I appreciated that this source was framed outside of dichotomous thinking by not pitting more traditional and open access peer review models directly against one another, carrying the assumption that a particular publishing process must choose one or another. Although, I think I would challenge Harnad to take this thought process further. Rather than supplementing or complementing one another, traditional and open peer review models are distinct enough to also be applicable in different types of contexts, without necessarily needing to rely on one another. That is not to disagree with Harnad that the two do not "substitute" one another, but precisely because they cannot substitute one another indicates that they serve different purposes and could thus be useful in different contexts…. Or, as Harnad suggest, supplement each other in the same context. I think this very well parallels the context of taxonomies and folksonomies.

The year I graduated high school, the media was overrun with speculation about a new technology set to shake the foundation of the world. What was it? We weren't told, exactly. All we knew was that code name "IT" was so revolutionary that we would have to rebuild our cities from scratch.

It is interesting that whenever a new innovation is introduced, the current one is declared dead before its final time arrives. Books in whatever format are appealing to different audiences for various reasons. To think that the introduction of e-books was going to lead to a declaration of war on printed books is laughable. Books will be with us for as long as we are still in this world. Does format matter? only time will tell.

Long back Lancaster wrote about paperless society but still we are heavily depending on paper only. Technology has fast evolved. First we talked about e-libraries then virtual libraries and now contemplating cloud based libraries. Many technologies have come and gone but paper is still ubiquitous.

The Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, adopted by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2000, have become an essential document related to the emergence of information literacy as a recognized learning outcome at many institutions of higher education

As one of the academic libraries in the Philippines, we are also using the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education as bases for our Information Literacy program though its more than a decade. We recognize its competencies for outcomes based education.

An alternative perspective on "openness".

The argument will be with us for a very long time. I think this is based on the side of the fence that one is sitting on. It is just like a case of what came first a chicken or an egg. The fact is Open has place to occupy in our learning space. The jury is still out there.

Thanks for sharing this well presented write up. Big question put forth is are we really getting the outcomes expected from the open society. Open vs. quality is a big issue. At times restricting access helps a great deal.

This is the digital project I created for this course. It's an animated video introducing the topic connected learning. I shared the it on Stanford Education with all the details, I just want to also share here to reach large audiences. Hope it's helpful for you guys. :) 

This video is interesting. thanks for sharing your video with us. Yes, its very helpful for connected learning .

"For the past couple of decades, scholarly publishers have been populating their websites and content stores with a wealth of valuable research material. Such efforts have resulted in vast amounts of information online but the quantity of scholarly information is far too great for researchers to simply browse, find, digest and use everything. For this reason there has been an increasing interest amongst publishers in the topic of semantic enrichment, enhancing information with intelligent structure, tagging and vocabularies to improve discoverability of related and relevant resources. "

A local group of the open knowledge foundation 1. Push for Open Science and Research practices in Indian research institutions. . 2. More involvement of citizens in the spirit of Open Knowledge Involvement of the masses in order to work towards making ourselves a better managed nation. Constitutional instruments like the Public Interest Litigation (PIL), the Right To Information (RTI), etc., lose their relevance without complete transparency in the dissemination of government as well as non-government data. Building a mass-based system of knowledge-banks can help us a lot in achieving our goal. We can assist the governments for making more information public, wherever necessary. 3. Push for education. Involving the masses can to a great extent result in a quicker transformation of the present scene (for example, we can have citizens making study material open and free and also involve them more in the dispersion of education). We aim to arrange for vocational profession-based education for the adult population.

"Impact Factors have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years for their lack of transparency and for misleading attempts at research assessment. Last year the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) took a groundbreaking stance by explicitly disavowing the use of impact factors in assessment. This document has since drawn support worldwide and across the academic community. But what exactly are Journal Impact Factors and why are they cause for so much concern? Here is a reading list that highlights some helpful pieces we've been able to feature on the Impact blog over the last few years."

"This raises the interesting and important question of whether publication in an OA journal represents the end of a process or the beginning of a different one. The difference is marketing, a term that is often misunderstood in scholarly circles. Marketing means creating demand for something. Traditional publishers do this with their brands and (for books) their authors. For OA publishers the challenge is to continue to keep pushing a particular paper after it has appeared online. There are many ways to do this, of which simply making the content openly available is one (allowing an article to get indexed by search engines and pointed to by bloggers and others). But to continue to keep the article in the eyes of its prospective readers, new means of attracting attention have to be developed. "

Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget--it's all welcome. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.

Very good and will be helpful to all

Welcome to Open Library! Looking for accessible books in the DAISY format? View our accessible book subject page, or search for accessible books.

"When you're reading for information, you should ALWAYS jump ahead, skip around, and use every available strategy to discover, then to understand, and finally to remember what the writer has to say. This is how you'll get the most out of a book in the smallest amount of time." This has been a very useful article for me. After reading this the first time I found that every thing that I did when I was reading was the opposite of what I "should" be doing according to this article. I treated all the definitions, table, and sections that were highlighted as if they were advertisements and just ignored them. This was a very useful article in helping me get back on track when it came to learning how to study in an academic environment, and I was very happy to get new and better skills from it as well.

Muy útil para todos, gracias.

Thanks for sharing! Great refresher and reminder on how to read (esp. for a communications student where reading and writing is essential!)

Adding a few high quality photos is a great way to improve a website, article or presentation - but be careful. A search engine like Google Images will quickly locate just about any shot you could ever want, but using them will almost certainly violate someone's copyright.

Very useful. Thank you.

thank you

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 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."

3D printers can cheaply construct homes and could soon be deployed to help victims of catastrophe rebuild their lives. [The future of the printing press for books has morphed into the the printing press for houses.]

3D printers can cheaply construct homes and could soon be deployed to help victims of catastrophe rebuild their lives. [The future of the printing press for books has morphed into the the printing press for houses.]

Community Colleges for Open Education Resources I chose this resource since I work at a community college and The mission is expanding access to education by promoting awareness and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Over 250 colleges have joined the consortium and many more participate in our activities and use resources posted here. The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER)is a joint effort by individual community colleges, regional and statewide consortia, the Open Courseware Consortium, the American Association for Community Colleges, the League for Innovation in the Community Colleges, and many other educational partners to develop and use open educational resources, open textbooks, and open courseware to expand access to higher education and improve teaching and learning.

Open education information and group resources

Open education information and group resources

Christopher Kelty has written a book on the cultural importance of open source software and made it freely available under a CC license. It looks at free software from both a technical and social perspective, allowing for greater insights into its significance for today and for tomorrow.

This is a very interesting and thought provoking ebook. Not only does it provide a helpful historical view of how free software came to be, but it posits the impact of such a phenomenon on industry and culture. I particularity liked the view that the pervasiveness of free software - thanks to the Internet - is such that free software itself is instigating much change beyond its original perceived sphere of influence, being software applications. A good read if open source software, free software and impacts on culture interests you.