Group items tagged

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.

Partnership between several British medical charities to require open publishing of all funded research. 

An interesting opinion/confessional piece on one academic's experience of publishing in the developing world. The author points out cultural pressures and differences that could possible contribute to the expanding knowledge gap.

It is very fascinating articles, thank you for posting this. I myself, most of the times, focus on the publisher issues rather than the author himself. However, after read this I realise how important it is to pay attention to the authors because their contribution can really affect the quality of researches that they involved in. Regardless how successful the authors are, they are still human beings who are also affected by the national cultures.

This is an interesting piece but raises the question - why is the institution placing the pressure? It says, tacitly, a lot about the culture of the academic institutions in the country as a whole - and this culture is often shaped by funding patterns from central government, or major funders. The institution then responds to these funding patterns by pressuring staff to produce what is funded. In South Africa this is very much the pattern, with central government funding articles published in selected journals (see the readings for the module 11). However, there has been a rethink and there is proposed changes in now supporting book publication to a much greater degree. So whereas the pressure was on to produce articles, now the universities are looking at book production to a greater extent. As has been said as a truism; "Follow the money" - and in this case we see how this affects what should be, in effect, academic freedom.

"In a nutshell, Knowledge Unlatched would act as an intermediary between a global library consortium and individual academic publishers. The latter would approach Knowledge Unlatched with titles they would like to see published in Open Access. Knowledge Unlatched would then regularly send out a list of titles to libraries which would opt in to fund the unlatching, that is, the publication in Open Access, of certain titles. The titles so funded would be released with a Creative Commons licence by the publishers which retain the right to sell special editions and extra services around the titles. "

"The Norwegian Electronic Health Library - information in English The Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebiblioteket.no) is a publicly funded online knowledge service for healthcare professionals and students in Norway. 02/01/2014 | Hans Petter Fosseng Prof. Magne Nylenna MD is editor-in-chief for the Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebiblioteket.no). Photo: Hans Petter Fosseng The Norwegian Electronic Health Library is accessed online through the website www.helsebiblioteket.no. The website provides free access to point-of-care tools, guidelines, systematic reviews, scientific journals, and a wide variety of other full-text resources for health-care professionals and students."

"The Norwegian Electronic Health Library - information in English The Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebiblioteket.no) is a publicly funded online knowledge service for healthcare professionals and students in Norway. 02/01/2014 | Hans Petter Fosseng Prof. Magne Nylenna MD is editor-in-chief for the Norwegian Electronic Health Library (Helsebiblioteket.no). Photo: Hans Petter Fosseng The Norwegian Electronic Health Library is accessed online through the website www.helsebiblioteket.no. The website provides free access to point-of-care tools, guidelines, systematic reviews, scientific journals, and a wide variety of other full-text resources for health-care professionals and students."

A great news, especially for the "immediately" aspect! "A consortium of six leading UK medical research charities will support the costs of making research articles from their funded research immediately and freely openly available to scientists, patients, and donors alike, through the recently announced joint Charity Open Access Fund."

Open access is an alternative publishing and distribution model that makes scholarly research literature-most of which is already funded by taxpayers around the world-freely available to the public online, without restrictions. Harnessing the power of the internet, open access brings the results of academic research to unprecedented numbers of scientists, university professors, medical researchers, patients, inventors, students, and others.

"The Accelerating Science Award Program (ASAP) recognizes individuals who have applied scientific research - published through Open Access - to innovate in any field and benefit society". It's funded by 27 different organizations. 

"Funded by tertiary institutions rather than individual researchers, this new model seeks to provide open access not just to traditional academic publications but to all forms of scholarly output."

"The edupunks are on the march. From VC-funded startups to the ivied walls of Harvard, new experiments and business models are springing up from entrepreneurs, professors, and students alike. Want a class that's structured like a role-playing game? An accredited bachelor's degree for a few thousand dollars? A free, peer-to-peer Wiki university? These all exist today, the overture to a complete educational remix."

An investigation of the role of libraries in open access funding and support within institutions

"The results show that at present, the responsibility for funding article processing charges (APCs) is more likely to fall on the author or granting organization than the library or institution. However, 23% of r"

This article responds to reality. Librarians are at the crossroad.

"So why do we have an emerging digital divide in society where one group has easy and instant access to new research often funded out of the public purse yet others face significant costs, delays or barriers to accessing knowledge?" "In the past, one might have expected society's 'critics and consciences' to be located in universities. Now many of these voices, including some who have retired, are outside these institutions."

"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"

The home of the U.S. Government's open data Here you will find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more. This tool is very powerful for researchers that may not access to the funds and resources of researchers from well funded universities or that of the US Government. This resources breaks the data out into 21 different topics covering areas from education to the ocean. Each section has data sets to choose from and access to grant information as well as articles and updates on each topic. Even it you are someone that does not have the capacity to use these resources, I believe that it is good to know where to find this source so that you can share it with others, or perhaps one day you will have the ability to use this resource more fully.

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

I followed a trail about Wikipedia that led me to their funding model. This is an interesting rebuttal to their strategy of asking users for donations atop the page (sort of a PBS/NPR model for those in the US). Interesting to think about how advertising or marketing might play into the Wikipedia model, and how it might change the dynamic of the conversation.

Thanks for the post! I also thought it was interesting to read the arguments for and against an ad-driven business model at the link below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Funding_Wikipedia_through_advertisements A limited advertising model actually makes a lot of sense to me. I think the real obstacle to changing business models is how passionately and adamantly Jimmy Wales has rejected even the future possibility. Strong wording sound heroic, but not allowing some flexibility could greatly limited Wikipedia's positive impact.

one solution to help inequality problem?

Good crowd-funding project that tries to help solve the digital divide problem by providing infrastructure to those who lack the money to purchase a computer. In addition to providing the physical infrastructure of the computer to allow those without one to catch up to society, perhaps another solution to conquer the digital divide is to educate those who have just received computers how to use the internet to look for information, consume, produce and distribute the information.

Honestly I think public libraries need WAY more computers.