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"It is an irony of the digital age that at a time when we are used to having easy access to seemingly endless information and knowledge, so much of it is disappearing into a digital black hole. For 450 years the concept of legal deposit has helped to preserve the nation's intellectual record.| There is this aspect of disappearing data as well.

See my bookmark post 'Academic citation practices ...' for some geeky stuff on the reference / citation issues.

Jacynthe, you are welcome, and Phillip, many thanks!

At the Open Education Working Group we are interested in all aspects of open education, from Open Education Resources (OERs) and new learning and teaching practices, to open source tools and open licenses. One fairly new area that is starting to show real traction in opening up education is open education data.

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'

"A recent story in the Chronicle of Higher Education covers a phenomenon all of us have suspected, mainly because we've seen it via our editorial boards and editorial advisors - the proliferation of open access (OA) publishers with new names, unknown pedigrees, big promises, and fulsome editorial boards, which often spam our editors and advisors with offers to join the parade." This article does a good job of outlining the pitfalls of the author pay model of open access journals. With open access journals the whole idea is to make it so that information is accessible to the public, but unfortunately that access comes with a cost. The cost of predatory open access journal undermines the whole democratic and altruistic intent behind open access journals. By taking advantage of recently endowed academics these predatory publishers cause many problems for both the individuals affected as well as the Open publishing industry. I also like how there is a clear definition of what predatory open access publishing is.

"Project Information Literacy (PIL) is a large-scale, national study about early adults and their research habits, conducted in partnership with the University of Washington's iSchool." This website contains a wealth of knowledge about the literacy habits of students making the transition into university. In particular, check out the "publications" tab for some of the project's preliminary results, and both published and news articles on the topic. The site also contains links to other relevant resources on the same topic (in the "Practical PIL" tab).

I reviewed some of the videos for the PIL and was delighted by their message. Thanks for sharing. I wish I'd had known about this, or maybe that it had existed when I was making the transition.

a. Finding a balance between technology and teaching has proved challenging in the traditional classroom. Some institutions, such as University of Chicago Law School, have altogether banned internet access in the classroom, claiming that it imposes on the integrity of the education. Although the authors draw attention to research demonstrating the rampant frequency of distractions with laptop and mobile technology amongst students, they beg the question of whose fault it really is - and begs educators to reflect on their own teaching, and the educational institution as a whole. Fang describes possible solutions for the distraction dilemma for educators to apply to the modern classroom. Filtering applications can help to create a temporary filter on computer applications to ensure a singular task, or set of permitted tasks, are accessed. Network switching allows faculty and network administrators to determine which, if any, applications can use a network at a given time. Social solutions can also be effective; by educating the student on the issue of technology-related distraction in classrooms, and assessing teaching styles, class formats and institutional practices. In the modern classroom, the professor and technology should coexist peacefully; yet it will take social and technical finesse in order to find the right balance for the maximum benefit of the student.

Coming soon to MITx on edX is a new kind of MOOC-a MOOC to help high school students better prepare for college. Many students who arrive at college find themselves struggling with the courses they must take, as their high school experience has not provided them with the necessary preparation to do well at college....

Bookmarking this as I have two students at home who enjoy learning via MOOCs.

I took this coursera course in the summer - Learning How to Learn - https://www.coursera.org/course/learning It was really well put together with lots of practical ideas to implement right away. It's being offered regularly and is only 4 weeks long, very worthwhile.

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.

If you are a teacher wanting to teach about information literacy this may be for you.

thank you for sharing, it 's helpful for me

This is a very good example of a community of practice site. It is useful for those in the community, and will be ven more useful if those who use it then contribute to its growth!

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.

Practical examples that point to the value of open reviews.

"In truth, publishing is flourishing, creating massive new fortunes for entrepreneurs and more choices for consumers. It's also attracting large investments by established companies and venture capitalists. Though not everyone prospers, there has never been a better time for publishers."

Good overview with fundamental advice for publishers: innovate

Good read, Kevin! :) I agree with this article that said "As long as people want to be informed, entertained, and inspired, there will be profitable opportunities in publishing." The main key to keep the business running is everyone must adapt. Traditional publishers need to moves to digital media in order to survive and meet the modern readers' needs.

This article is a topical, start-up guide to distance education practice and delivery!!! In the .pdf you will find the info - HOW TO FIND Open Educational Resources; why to use them; also a list of resources and other important things for open knowledge access.

a huge citizen science project in the USA, formalizing the sharing of the traditional (and ancient) practice of Phenology. Phenology is an important way to be connected to the natural world around you--basically observation of seasonal changes. People have been collecting observations for all of human history--this project seeks to help standardize recording of the data so that it can be shared en mass, creating huge and flexible data sets for many different current and future scientific experiments. "Nature's Notebook is a national, online program where amateur and professional naturalists regularly record observations of plants and animals to generate long-term data sets used for scientific discovery and decision-making."

oh, and an important thing is that (unlike some cit sci projects) the resulting data is shared freely online, check out some stats and visualizations at https://www.usanpn.org/data

One place the tradition of fans recording live shows and trading the bootleg tapes (ala the Grateful Dead) is being brought to the digital world is at archive.org's Live Music Archive Bands officially agree to allow the practice, and then archive.org stores and allows access to the files for eternity... Some info about those details: http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=TradeFriendly For example, here is my friends, a ROCKING bluegrass band from Duluth Minnesota: https://archive.org/details/TrampledbyTurtles The rights statement is actually an email: On February 7, 2007 Trampled by Turtles a GO! for archive.org: "Hello, This is Dave Simonett from Trampled by Turtles. I'm writing to give permission for our music to be posted at archive. Please let me know what you need from me. Thanks for the email. Dave Simonett trampled by turtles info@trampledbyturtles.com www.trampledbyturtles.com" "Welcome to Internet Archive's Live Music library. etree.org is a community committed to providing the highest quality live concerts in a lossless, downloadable format. The Internet Archive has teamed up with etree.org to preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future..."

Cool...

Awesome resource - thanks for sharing. I have often found the conflict between quality recordings and open access to be a challenge. It seems the music that is free isn't usually high-quality, whereas the higher quality isn't usually free. :)

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

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.

List of resources from the Center for Media & Social Impact, American University (DC). Includes best practices, guidelines, teaching materials, and info graphics for reuse. Especially helpful information about creating documentaries, etc. Interesting "Question of the Month" posts

How do I evaluate the quality of websites? How can I teach students to evaluate websites? Where can I find checklists for evaluation? There's lots of good information on the Internet, but you will also find opinions, misconceptions, and inaccurate information. How do you judge the quality of Internet resources?

"Evaluating Internet Resources" has been designed for teachers, but is a good starting point for all who want to enhance their critical skills when using the internet. Three main areas are covered: Instructions on assessing the validity of websites, guidance on educating students in these skills and other website links on the topic. Examples of legitimate and fictitious websites are provided to use for teaching purposes. The website masters should have categorized the different website links into the genuine and bogus sites to facilitate their use for the teacher. Access to some of these websites has been discontinued. Measures to be used for evaluation, including authority, objectivity, authenticity, reliability, timeliness, relevance and efficiency are considered. Indicators to verify the website and exercises to practice student evaluation skills are provided. The layout of this resource is easy to use and well-organised