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I love the idea that progress and science being based on communication. Often the idea that I have in my mind is a scientist working alone, and that is never truly how the great break-throughs come, but rather from building on the science that we have learned about previously. I still have a problem with the Author Pay part of Open Access publishing, and it seems like it is not actually "Open" if you have to pay to play. The Utopic Version is really the way that I think of "Open" publishing even with all the pit falls of finding the Utopia. I like the rebirth by giving the onus to the reader to review, and that is a model that works as seen by Wikipedia, because people are willing to aid progress with out conventional compensation. I understand all of the problems with this, but I love the possibility.

You've arrived at the most complete and current source of information about the WebQuest Model. Whether you're an education student new to the topic or an experienced teacher educator looking for materials, you'll find something here to meet your needs.

Due to rising prices of printed textbooks, majority of higher universities are working with publishing companies to come up with a plan. Check out the program they have come with.

This model of education would be very difficult to establish but it will save a huge amount of trees all over the world. I PADs as full text books for students is on of my favorite.

"The debate on open access is a debate about the future of academia. We discuss the problems of for-profit academic publishing, such as monopoly prices and access inequalities and point at the limits of contemporary perspectives on open access as they are frequently advanced by the publishing industry, policy makers and labour unions. "

An article that discusses the importance of infrastructure in building the case for a open model for competency based education.

In this article, author talk about the importance of building infrastructure of open education. He gives the reasons, and the solutions. I think open education is progressing day by day, so we need to fix many fundamental problems.

I agree with this post. Establishing an open framework that results in an open infrastructure will help to create a solid foundation for educators and innovators to further improve their cause to their needs and goals, thus improving the system.

Of the 255 papers that underwent the entire editing process to acceptance or rejection, about 60% of the final decisions occurred with no sign of peer review. For rejections, that's good news: It means that the journal's quality control was high enough that the editor examined the paper and declined it rather than send it out for review.

This article is certainly controversial, and I believe in some way did a service to the Open Access community by highlighting the practice of predatory journals. However, the irony of Bohannon's article, being an example of the kind of "bad science" he describes in his own article is inescapable. First, there is no randomization of his "experimental group", and there is no control group; second, there was elimination of non-responders; third, there was no application of the intention to treat principle in the analysis; and finally there were no inferential statistics and no references! Using his own standard, there is nothing that can be concluded from his study. For the criticism regarding Bohannon's targeting of OA journals exclusively, it is important to note that this experiment has been done before with 'traditional' journals as well- and many of them failed the test of peer review. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/02/27/how_nonsense_papers_ended_up_in_respected_scientific_journals.html

I think Bohannens "study" should be considered more "investigative journalism" than scientific study. While it may have some flaws if held against the standards of a scientific study, as a journalistic piece it goes a long way to justify its central accusation that there are predatory open access journals. He does not claim that there are no or evwen less predatory journals in the tradional sector (although it seems reasonable to believe that it might seem easier to predatory publishers to dupe unsuspecting scientists rather than subscription paying librarians). It demonstrates that open access is not a cure for all the problems besetting acacemic publishing. I think more deeply about it, it shows that author fees for publication may create a buisiness model just as open to abouse as the traditional subscription system. One answer might be to make the peer-review process more transparent, i.e. name the reviewers But that of course has other drawbacks.

About the book: Information Literacy and Cultural Heritage: Developing a model for lifelong learning Kim Baker, Cape Town, South Africa - covers cultural heritage in the museums, archives and... Kim is our fellow co-student from Cape Town. She already created a digital project, her blog. She also has created an analog project: a book, you know, something printed on paper :) Kim is a GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) expert. Her book covers anything digital and GLAM or cultural heritage, at least that is what the content section promises. So I'm very glad to have such an expert in her field in the class.

Thank you very much. :) And I am so happy to be here and learn from so many experts around the world!

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.

A new type of MOOC - dubbed MOOC 2.0 - could disrupt the way courses are devised, altering the top-down university designed curriculum and the professor-to-student course structure that is still part of the MOOC model.

I wanted to share a OK resource: Cory Doctorow... yes a whole author as resource. He writes about open access on a number of different platforms and enacts open access in his published works. He is a YA novelist with many good books that explore many of the complex issues of society and technology that we are considering in this class. He sells his books through major publishers in print--but does not allow them to have DRM. But he also provides ebook copies for free on this website. Basically you can read it and remix it, but if you like it and want to support him--buy the book. This model seems to work for him. You can find him ranting about DRM and other open access issues all over the net, such as BoingBoing. Interesting guy, interesting topics--and some interesting free fiction books that are relevant to this class.

for a specific book suggestion, check out Little Brother http://craphound.com/littlebrother/ exciting SciFi all about online surveillance state, but also supposed to be filled with actual advice about how to hack your way around it and be a subversive, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Brother_%28Doctorow_novel%29

Thanks. I like this. I haven't read his stuff, but now I will.

eLife is a unique collaboration between funders and practitioners of research to communicate influential discoveries in the life and biomedical sciences in the most effective way. eLife began following a workshop at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2010, where attending scientists concluded that there was a need for a model of academic publishing that better suited the needs of their community. In eLife a team of highly regarded, experienced and actively practicing scientists ensures fair, swift and transparent editorial decisions followed by rapid online publication. The editorial team are editorially independent of the funders. They rely on their scientific expertise and active research experience to identify the best papers, make scientifically based judgements and exercise leadership in steering these papers through peer review. The entire content of the journal is freely available for all to read and reproduce for unrestricted use.

Very interesting project. I spent some time exploring some of the papers. They do seem to be opening up the peer review process slightly be publishing a "decision letter" and "author response" with each paper. I also appreciate the seeming attempt to include data publication in the publication of the paper. Though it does seem to me that some of the papers don't have enough data accompanying them, so I wonder what their data publication policy is.

"With the emergence of new publishing tools, public libraries are able to be publishers for themselves. In essence, we can build a Maker culture for local publishing. "

Thanks! I did not know about Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Quite useful!

Two competing views on the future of publishing, and how shifts in consumer behavior to purchasing or consuming electronic content is causing such a shift in the literary world. I found it interesting to read that a number of open source software platforms were identified as the harbingers of today's self-publishing model online. I never knew Wattpad existed - watt an awesome site (pun intended). I agree with the articles viewpoint about the role that public libraries can play in this shifting landscape. A good read.

Open education is the purpose of MOOC. Obviously, open education is a correct trend of education system. MOOC always is a debatable issue, a new area where no rule to control it. In that case, there are some chaos in Open knowledge including intellectual property, and business model of MOOC and so on. But now, the US government decide to promote it, may will bring a bloom to open education and benefit people around the world

We embed exciting STEM professionals and cutting-edge research into award-winning, standards-aligned in and out-of-school curricula. Live webcasts connect students with inspirational STEM role models. Student materials include reading selections with read-to-me functionality, inquiry-based labs, videos, and online games.

Mediante un tratamiento trans e interdisciplinar, los estudiantes aprenden ciencias experimentales, matemáticas, ciencias sociales y lenguaje en proyectos conjuntos de experimentacción e investigación, Sería deseable que en el futuro pueda abrirse en código abierto para que pueda trabajarse en todo tipo de tabletas y dispositivos digitales. De todas formas, es un proyecto muy otente para facilitar el aprendizaje más significativo, atractivo y relevante.

"The science journal Nature will make its archive of papers, dating back to 1869, free by way of read-only links available to subscribers and major news outlets. Under the new system, planned as a one-year trial, subscribers such as universities and researchers will be able to share a link to a read-only version of a Nature paper with anyone."

This is a great idea - hope to see more follow this model. Ideally, it would be nice to see it open a bit further (to lay persons), but this is a positive move.

This article discusses the importance of the MOOC may have to spread open and quality content in variety of contexts. At the same time are showing the different models of organization and design that can present, depending on the objectives and strategies proposed from different perspectives, with s...

"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?

Open Access Publishing is the free distribution of research, whether it is as a pre-print (working paper) or a peer-reviewed article. Since the creation of the web, more and more journal are choosing open access as their business model. One of them was recently Economic Analysis and Policy, published by the Economic Society of Australia...