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"By leveraging technology, we can open new doors to scholarly inquiry for ourselves and our students. Through new collaborations, we can create exciting shared spaces, both virtual and physical, where that inquiry can take place. The library is a natural home for these technology-rich spaces.

This article is fantastic, and speaks to just about everything I'm passionate about as an aspiring academic librarian. I'm somewhat worried about how smaller universities-my chosen workplace-will adapt to these newer models of scholarly communication and publication, and generally with how the academic conversation is changing. These exciting developments in what the university means have the potential to widen the already extensive divide between smaller and larger schools. I know the challenges section at the end talks a little bit about convincing decision makers to fund these projects, but has anyone read anything about how these changes can be made specifically by smaller or poorly funded universities?

Scientific journals are surely important. They provide the most effective means for disseminating and archiving scientific results, and so are a key part of an enterprise on which our health, security, and prosperity ultimately depend. Publications are used by universities, funding agencies, and others as a primary measure of research productivity and impact. They play a decisive role in hiring, promotion, and salary decisions, and in the ranking of departments, institutions, even nations. With big rewards tied to publication, it is not surprising that some people engage in unethical behavior, abuse, and downright fraud.

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.

This slideshow provides a very stimulating and entertaining view of the world of open science. It deals with the key dimensions of open science such as the meaning and scope of openness , opportunities in being open, funding , problems and other related issues.

Thanks for sharing. I like the slideshare website; it was fun to just click through some nicely presented information. I am getting a bit confused with all the core reading and additional reading (!right?) and all the activities and whatnot so this was a good way to end my 1hour scheduled time today for this MOOC. I especially liked the hierarchy vs wirearchy slide. :) Peace.

ghee thanks arren7, I am seriously concerned about my" intellectual deficient contributions",...feel better now!:) peace

The Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG) has been established as a new organization led by the private sector in conjunction with, but independent of the Federal Government. As a key stakeholder and active participant in the Identity Ecosystem, the government has funded Trusted Federal Systems, Inc., through a competitive grant, to provide technical, administrative and operational support for the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group. IDESG is an open collaboration charged with realizing the goals of NSTIC: National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (http://www.nist.gov/nstic), helping individuals and organizations utilize secure, efficient, easy-to-use and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a manner that promotes confidence, privacy, choice and innovation.

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.

I say it's about time. A family member of mine studied on the East Coast USA and tuition was impossible. While I can't speak extensively for American schools, I can say that post-secondary education at established universities in Canada is expensive and the financial burden becomes a stressor, often effecting academic performance. It is accessible, yes. National and provincial student loans make it possible for almost anyone to obtain a post-secondary education. But does it make sense? Definitely not. The debt incurred by students is mortifying. What about a European model? Many schools around the globe offer free post-secondary educations. I recently visited New Mexico, where if you stay within the state after high school graduation you enter a lottery to go to university for free. Every entree into the lottery is awarded sufficient funds to make a post-secondary career in the state of New Mexico feasible. My question about this article is about how "low income" is determined. There are a lot of factors that can play into one's financial needs that sometimes aren't on paper.

A federal database publicly disclosing companies' payments to doctors went live this week, drawing a splash of attention to the $3.5 billion given to physicians over 5 months last year. Although one purpose of the site is to shine light on potential conflicts of interest in research, the site may fall short of that goal.

Aim. To determine the characteristics of megajournal authors, the nature of the manuscripts they are submitting to these journals, factors influencing their decision to publish in a megajournal, sources of funding for article processing charges (APCs) or other fees and their likelihood of submitting to a megajournal in the future.Methods.

Here's a free webinar on Thursday, Nov. 6 at 11am PST. You can register here or go to this site on that day and see it live! Open Access and Libraries: What open access is (and isn't) "Scholarly journals are increasingly becoming digital, experimenting with new publishing models such as Open Access (OA) and incorporating multimedia into their formats. In addition, the process of research continues to evolve because of mandates from funding agencies to publicly share research findings and data. For a candid discussion of what OA is (and isn't), tune in Thursday, November 6 at 2:00 p.m. (Eastern) for the next free, streaming video broadcast of American Libraries Live. Our panel of experts will give their unique perspective on what OA means now and how it will shape the future and will answer your questions."

Report from the World Wide Web Foundation (with IDRC funding) Claims to "explore the need for a more nuanced understanding of how open data can generate outputs, outcomes and impact. We offer a series of insights and provocations, moving towards different models for thinking about open data, development and social change...We need to explore practices that present the 'best fit' for particular countries and contexts, rather than advocating interventions based on externally defined best practices." (Introduction, p. 5)

The Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is a grant-funded group at Carnegie Mellon University, offering innovative online courses to anyone who wants to learn or teach. Our aim is to create high-quality courses and contribute original research to improve learning and transform higher education.

The Global Digital Citizenship Foundation provides dynamic professional learning and Digital Citizenship resources for educators worldwide and creates crowd funding opportunities for student-driven passion projects.

Socientize Project is funded by EU 7th framework program, and hosts several citizen science projects, including SavingEnergy@home (collecting global thermal data), Cell spotting (looking at images of treated cancer cells), Collective Music Experiment (creating music from audio samples), Urban Bees and others. The page also includes links to useful citizen science resources (e.g. Pybossa, EpiCollect, BOINC), policy pecommendations & news regarding citizen science.

A Video Community for Why Open Education Matters

This video was created in 2012, where the OER was already promoted, and I just learned about it in 2014. I guess there are still a lot of people who does not know about it. Now I wonder, what is going to change in the teacher's role? If there are more MOOC courses, does that mean the need of teachers will decline? When he mentioned that they use public funds to develop these Open Educational courses, does that mean the rise of taxes? Although I do support the OER, it is still developing, adjustments need to be made for the balance of these courses and the public sector.

I like this article. I think students are limited to get access to knowledge, resulting from distance, poverty, politics. Open education resources can reduce the distance, making people all around world join a same class. Free makes poverty students get chance to take courses which he couldn't afford before.

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.

Open data initiatives may hold much promise and value, but more attention is needed on how these projects are developing as complex socio-technical systems. Rob Kitchin elaborates on four specific areas that have yet to be fully interrogated.