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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.

This article is interesting in that it introduces (although repurposes an existing term) the concept of participatory surveillance in the digital age as something a little less sinister than what Manzerolle argues against in his paper for the OK MOOC's 3rd module. Instead of seeing the user as a victim of the commodification of social media as Manzerolle suggests, Albrechtslund instead focuses on the fact that people are offering this information freely. Although this was written in 2008, a couple years before Manzerolle, I think these articles really balance each other. Albrechtslund focuses on the complexities of having a digital identity in a physical world and light-heartedly refers to surveillance as something users are aware of as they participate. Are users also aware of the commodification of their participation? I think many are, and for now users are ok with it. I appreciated Manzerolle's mention of options like Diaspora, which I think as a concept could play an important part of negotiating the tension between data ownership and digital social participation.

I think these types of discussion of the implications of privacy and surveillance need a full module--in each module i keep thinking its something we need to consider. here is a more light hearted take from the humorous news website the Onion: http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/

This reminds me of a point made in Yevgeny Morozov's illustration video -- that dictatorial governments don't necessarily have to torture people to get information; they can simply follow Tweets and Facebook status updates. In the case of Rwanda, American religious social media is painting a picture of the Paul Kagame government that is at odds with what many dissidents in that country report. I agree with koobredaer -- a module on privacy and surveillance would be valuable.

About MathTV Our History The current version of MathTV.com was started in 2008. That summer, Mr. McKeague hired six of his students to help him proofread and error check a college algebra book he was working on. Because of the extremely positive attitude of his students toward improving the book they were proofreading, Mr. McKeague decided to see how the students would do in the studio. With a little coaching they actually did very well. In 2009, we started adding online versions of three of Mr. McKeague's textbooks to the website, and experimenting with building an online homework system. In 2010 we published the first print versions of those textbooks with our new publishing company XYZ Textbooks, and we officially launched our online homework and gradebook software with XYZ Homework. As of now over 80 schools use our books.

It's great idea to start MathTV.com. I will show to my kids too

"The paper explains the effect of biased technological change (BTC) on total factor productivity (TFP) from the new perspective of appropriate technology. We have certified that the assumption of neutral technology progress of Solow is ostensible and also to get the general technological progress which can be divided into three parts: effect of knowledge progress, effect of capital intensity improvement and scale effect."

VERY interesting angle - thank you for sharing.

"This study examined the impact of three dimensions of digital literacy on privacy-related online behaviors: (a) familiarity with technical aspects of the Internet, (b) awareness of common institutional practices, and (c) understanding of current privacy policy.However, the findings were mixed when accounting for the interaction between knowledge and Internet experiences. There were limitations on the extents of knowledge and action related to personalized information. Furthermore, those limitations divided with sociodemographic characteristics such as age, gender, income, and education."

"This study examined the impact of three dimensions of digital literacy on privacy-related online behaviors: (a) familiarity with technical aspects of the Internet, (b) awareness of common institutional practices, and (c) understanding of current privacy policy.However, the findings were mixed when accounting for the interaction between knowledge and Internet experiences. There were limitations on the extents of knowledge and action related to personalized information. Furthermore, those limitations divided with sociodemographic characteristics such as age, gender, income, and education."

Concerns about the decline in personal privacy have long troubled citizens, scholars and politicians. This is a list of recent academic research studies and reports that address issues relating to digital privacy.

This article by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is made up of 5 parts: Part 1: digital identity: a driver of growth, a consumer hazard or both Part 2: a definition of digital identity and how consumers really see it Part 3: the value of digital identity - for organizations and consumers Part 4: the megatrends of digital identity Part 5: a practitioner's guide to the future of digital identity but most striking part for me was at the beginning: when the article mentioned: data explosion is possible because of four reasons: social media boom; the internet of things; online data transactions; and digital service and media and the direction towards the economic value of the digital identity

Here's the correct link: http://www.libertyglobal.com/PDF/public-policy/The-Value-of-Our-Digital-Identity.pdf There's a "-" between public and policy :)

"This article argues for a model of university-level (graduate and undergraduate) publishing education that builds upon a vocational self-identification of incoming students, nurtures a community of practice and professional discourse, and in doing so generates and renews the very culture of publishing. In times of transition and disruption, this is a role uniquely suited to the university, where an environment of collaborative research, development, and innovation can be cultivated. "

Kevin: Muchas gracias por la referencia. Es interesante no solo el artículo que mencionas sino varios de los textos del número monográfico, http://tinyurl.com/nvoq8xq. Dear Kevin: Thank you very much for the info. Interestingly, not only the article but several of the texts of special issue.

"What kinds of knowledge are we going to expect? How we going to incentivize to scientists to share?"

A radical vision of the open access and books: The Political Nature of the Book: On Artists' Books and Radical Open Access. Janneke Adema: http://tinyurl.com/kv5hg2f In this article we argue that the medium of the book can be a material and conceptual means, both of criticising capitalism's commodification of knowledge (for example, in the form of the commercial incorporation of open access by feral and predatory publishers), and of opening up a space for thinking about politics. The book, then, is a political medium. As the history of the artist's book shows, it can be used to question, intervene in and disturb existing practices and institutions, and even offer radical, counter-institutional alternatives. If the book's potential to question and disturb existing practices and institutions includes those associated with liberal democracy and the neoliberal knowledge economy (as is apparent from some of the more radical interventions occurring today under the name of open access), it also includes politics and with it the very idea of democracy. In other words, the book is a medium that can (and should) be 'rethought to serve new ends'; a medium through which politics itself can be rethought in an ongoing manner.

I read his book (Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science) and really loved it. It inspired this blog post of mine: http://www.scopeofscience.com/2014/04/the-need-for-open-science/ Highly recommend that book to anyone who enjoyed his ted talk - it is a quick read!

Publishing has transited from traditional to Electronic format making information resources available to users without much subscription. E-publishing is engendered by the introduction of information and communication technology (ICT), this development has brought about increase in the number of scholarly communication in circulation. The awareness and rate of e-publishing differs among faculties, it based on this that this study was carried out to survey the situation of e-publishing and open access of librarians in three federal universities in Southern Nigeria, five research questions were formulated to guide the study. The methodology adopted is descriptive survey, questionnaire was given to a total population of 64 librarians consisting of librarians from the institutions understudy, the data collected from the study shows that though librarians are aware of e-publishing but they have not being publishing as should have been expected in University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) out of the 95% that aware of electronic publishing only 30% have published there articles electronically, in University of Lagos (UNILAG) 100% indicated that they have published electronically while in University of Benin (UNIBEN) 45.4% percent indicated yes while 54.5% said they have not published their articles electronically. On availability of open access it was discovered that they have access as a total of 84% from UNN responded Yes, UNILAG 100% said Yes while in UNIBEN 90.9%. The following problems based on their scoring militating against e-publishing and open access in Nigeria. Inadequate power supply; inadequate computer terminals; inadequate funding for subscription payment.

"At the same time, a fair amount of resistance to OA practices still exists. Publishers object to OA on economic principles, as it undermines the revenue generated by journals. Some researchers feel that it devalues their work as well, lowering it to the level of "a database to be consulted," in Eve's words. He believes the academic community is over-reliant on scholarly publishing's status quo; as he told the crowd at Columbia, "the system reinforces itself through economies of prestige." Even as interest in altmetrics grows, the quality of research continues to be gauged by the number of citations an article gathers and the status of the journal it appears in."

This is a good overview of a project that seeks to demystify and break down resistance to open educational resources.

Perhaps a bit narrow, but relevant to me. The article touches upon some aspects of privacy and openness bothering librarians. On the one hand people themselves are sharing lots of information about their reading lists, reading habits and favorites. On the other hand, libraries are trying to preserve patrons' privacy and protect their privacy from unwanted eyes.

I enjoyed this reading very much, thanks! Not to spoil the end, but it is a good comment that in order to protect the patrons' privacy, they must do their part too. If they use machines that requires to log in to Amazon, for example (I don't own a Kindle so I don't know it that is true), well, libraries cannot protect their privacy on what they are reading. Which reinforce the idea of the role that libraries should play in educating people about online privacy. the example of combining books that were borrowed by the same person that allows to identify the patron is very powerful and shows how something that looks innocent like a list of borrowed books can be harmful.

I think this article really demonstrates how the meaning of libraries is constantly in flux, and in recent decades has been evolving quicker than it has in perhaps the past couple of centuries. But the library has always been evolving, first mostly accessible to academics and eventually democratizing its mission by bringing literacy to the masses with public libraries. Now we are evolving to decide how open and social the patron habits should be. I think there is a way that libraries can adapt to this change and incorporate ways for patron data to inform the collection and recommendations, but also give patrons the option of being completely private, perhaps similar to an "incognito" browser window. Ultimately, the library should take privacy seriously and give patrons options that do not deceive. Thanks for sharing!

An online review and ratings of the Terms of Service from different social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and more. "Terms of service are often too long to read, but it's important to understand what's in them. Your rights online depend on them. We hope that our ratings can help you get informed about your rights. "

I think people really need this online review because most of people do not have patience to read the long list of Terms of service but it does not mean they do not care about their rights online. This tool is great, I would like to use it and share to all of my friends. Hope more people could know that such a great tool exists.

This snapshot of terms of service for the various social media sites is excellent. Bookmarked!

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.

This blog is especially great because it talks about the motivation and mindset behind adopting an ope approach. Open is not simply about making or using open resources but open as a 'way of being'

"Logan Laplante is a 13 year-old boy who was taken out of the education system to be home schooled instead. Not only was he home schooled, but Logan had the ability to tailor his education to his interests and also his style of learning, something traditional education does not offer." I realise this article (and the video on which the article is based) does not fall neatly into any category we've studied yet, though I hope many of you may find it as interesting and inspiring as I have. At core, this is about "hacking" the educational system. As Logan explains, his methods can be applied in mainstream schooling (or indeed for anyone interested in lifelong/lifewide education). There's also the element of "participatory culture" embedded in the production of this video: Logan is sharing his experiences, allowing others to comment and contribute so that he might learn as others are learning from him.

This is a truly amazing talk, I was especially pleased to discover your post since I was just about to share a talk that speaks to many of the same issues! My shared video talks about how schools simply aren't made for boys - for many reasons - and what should be done to reengage them in education. (You can check it out here, if you're interested - https://groups.diigo.com/group/okmooc/content/gaming-could-the-ultimate-tools-to-re-engage-boys-in-education-12782090) The part about "writing about butterflies and rainbows" quite literally made me chuckle, here's why: (from my video) "Boy comes home from school, and he says, "I hate writing." "Why do you hate writing, son? What's wrong with writing?" "Now I have to write what she tells me to write." "Okay, what is she telling you to write?" "Poems. I have to write poems. And little moments in my life. I don't want to write that stuff." :) The boy then goes on to saying "I want to write about video games. I want to write about leveling-up. I want to write about this really interesting world. I want to write about a tornado that comes into our house and blows all the windows out and ruins all the furniture and kills everybody." ...which is one of the main points of "hackschooling" -writing through experiences & interests. Also, speaking from personal experience as someone who also left a diploma behind, I can confirm that leaving a rigid non-functional study environment for an open world of possibility can be the best thing you can ever do. All in all - thumbs up for sharing the talk!

Thanks for sharing - what an inspiring talk. Many of his lessons are just as valuable for adults, who often seem to lose any sense of creativity after settling in to their lives, careers, and relationships. FYI - my wife and I have done some limited homeschooling with one of our kids who really doesn't thrive in traditional school settings. I wish we could have done more, but at the very least I encourage each of our kids to explore other ways to learn to either supplement (or question) what they are learning in school. Traditional education just isn't supportive of creative thinking and creative thinkers.

Kay, R., Lauriclla, S. (2011). Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of Using Laptop Computers in Higher Education Classrooms: A Formative Analysis. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology. 37:1

a. Laptops and mobile devices are ubiquitous in todays classrooms as students are digital natives. Because of decreasing prices of technology over the past few decades, an overwhelming majority of the university students surveyed own a laptop (87%). Because of this quick onset of technological adoption, culture has lagged, in terms of re-defining the social institutions that such mobile and computer technologies affect. According to this analysis, students feel that the use of a laptop helps in aiding studies, is useful for gathering course and supplementary materials and engaging in peer collaboration. Several challenges have been noted: communication based challenges, relating to social media, email and messaging services; and entertainment based challenges, relating to media consumption. These challenges serve as potential sources of distraction for the student using the technology and others. In their findings, 16% of students reported being distracted by pornography during class, on their own or others' computer screens, which ranked higher than computer games, at 1%. The authors conclude that the benefits of laptop use in class outweigh the challenges 2:1. Possibly, if the functionality of student laptops are integrated into course curriculum further, students can benefit from further peer collaboration, increased academic benefit and decreased distractions.

Peter Suber is Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). He is widely considered the de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement.

Algunos datos recientes sobre academia y acceso abierto/some recent figures about academy and open access (http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4370) "Today, there are more than 9,000 fully open access, scholarly peer-reviewed journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the DOAJ's net growth is a fairly consistent three-four titles per day. There are over 2,000 open access repositories listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR). A cross-search of open access repositories using the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine encompasses over 40 million documents, a number that is growing by the millions every quarter (Morrison, 2005-). The producers of academic journal are the same that consume such journals: "Returning to the topic of academic library budgets as the primary support for scholarly journals, Michael Mabe (2011), CEO of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), recently affirmed that about 80-90 percent of the US$8 billion in revenue that goes to producers of the world's peer-reviewed scholarly journals comes from library subscriptions, as reported by Ware and Mabe [4]. Ware and Mabe's analysis is based in part on research by the Research Information Network (2008), which found that journals publishing revenues are generated primarily from academic library subscriptions (68-75 percent of the total revenue), followed by corporate subscriptions (15-17 percent), advertising (four percent), membership fees and personal subscriptions (three percent), and various author-side payments (three percent)."

Thank you very much for sharing.

"MELIBEA is a Spanish database that uses a composite formula with eight weighted conditions to estimate the effectiveness of Open Access mandates (registered in ROARMAP). We analyzed 68 mandated institutions for publication years 2011-2013 to determine how well the MELIBEA score and its individual conditions predict what percentage of published articles indexed by Web of Knowledge is deposited in each institution's OA repository, and when. We found a small but significant positive correlation (0.18) between MELIBEA score and deposit percentage. We also found that for three of the eight MELIBEA conditions (deposit timing, internal use, and opt-outs), one value of each was strongly associated with deposit percentage or deposit latency (immediate deposit required, deposit required for performance evaluation, unconditional opt-out allowed for the OA requirement but no opt-out for deposit requirement). When we updated the initial values and weights of the MELIBEA formula for mandate effectiveness to reflect the empirical association we had found, the score's predictive power doubled (.36). There are not yet enough OA mandates to test further mandate conditions that might contribute to mandate effectiveness, but these findings already suggest that it would be useful for future mandates to adopt these three conditions so as to maximize their effectiveness, and thereby the growth of OA. "

Strings attached: I needed an id!