OKMOOC

Descubre, Fundación Andaluza para la divulgación de la Innovación y el Conocimiento I would like to introduce the Spanish Fundación Descubre (http://fundaciondescubre.es/) and, inside it, the network called "Divulga red" (http://divulgared.es/), thought to connect people (professional and amateur researchers and citizens in general), communicate and collaborate among them. DivulgaRed let people reveal research topics and the value of the science in different fields, sharing ideas with other researchers and group of people, all with the basis of a collaborative work. I had the pleasure of giving two talks in high-schools telling about optical communications and novelties that people can have in a near future. In a very good atmosphere, students and their own teachers asked me questions and I can enjoy a very nice atmosphere making my knowledge in this topic public. Even more, teachers in the high school were later discussing with me about possibilities in Education, and both they and me built some experiments to be made by students in the high school during the semester. So, as a concluding remark, every body who wants to share a new idea, or to obtain a new point of view, or simply who wants to introduce or simply to learn about a new topic is welcome in Fundación Descubre and DivulgaRed project. Regards. Dr. Antonio Jurado-Navas

Mahara is an open source ePortfolio and social networking web application. It provides users with tools to create and maintain a digital portfolio of their learning and social networking features to allow users to interact with each other. Hola a todos. Hoy me gustaría haceros llegar una aplicación que utilizamos en la Universidad de Málaga para que los alumnos hagan los Portfolios relacionados con la asignatura que estén tratando, incluso permitiendo la relación entre contenidos de distintas asignaturas. Podéis ver la aplicación en la página web: https://mahara.org/ Mahara permite crear, controlar y desarrollar tu propio portfolio electrónico. Permite, asimismo, organizar las páginas que el alumno va creando, organizando su propio portafolio en páginas, permitiéndole crear las páginas que estime necesarias y adaptándolas al público que el alumno decida tener en cada página. En este sentido, le permite elegir qué elementos mostrar, cómo y cuando. Finalmente, y como algo muy positivo y dinámico, permite compartir con la red el contenido que hace el alumno, hacer amistades, participar en los grupos y, finalmente exportar todo el contenido en una página web que, posteriormente, puede ser compartida en Internet. Desde la Universidad de Málaga hacemos uso de esta herramienta y nos sirve como herramienta de evaluación de nuestros alumnos, donde vemos su capacidad de síntesis, comprensión y reflexión sobre las distintas materias que vamos tratando.

Veru useful indeed! I didnt know this. Thanks for sharing!

I think this will be a great add-on on my personal website. I just added it on.

InTechOpen is a leading global publisher of Journals and Books within the fields of Science, Technology and Medicine. We are the preferred choice of over 60,000 authors worldwide. Hello everybody, Editorial Intech is a good example of Creative Commons Publication Site: www.intechopen.com They are focused on the scientific world with a great variety of topics including engineering, mathematics, linguistics, software, radio mobile communications, etc. In this sense, let me one of my recent publications there: "A unifying statistical model for atmospheric optical communications", focused on the generation of a new statistical model that unifies in a single closed form expression many of other probability density functions employed in the literature to model the turbulent atmosphere as an optical channel of communications. http://cdn.intechweb.org/pdfs/20889.pdf Best regards, Dr. Antonio Jurado-Navas University of Málaga (Spain)

Thank you, Ibraghimova.

I have now only realized that this site is an Open Knowledge site, and I had used it over a year ago to cite some research for a paper on renewable energies. You might be interested in this site for sharing scientific data: http://www.researchgate.net/

The official home of the Python Programming Language

Open source is the future. Obvs, Microsoft et.al. paved the way, but moving forward, the route to privacy and access is via free software that can be adapted on the fly.

Microsoft también tiene un sitio sobre "open source" llamado Codeplex (https://www.codeplex.com/), aunque no siempre se debe fiar (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/lest-codeplex-perplex.es.html), hablan de open source, pero no de software libre.

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. LaTeX is available as free software.

LaTex is a document preparation system programmed in free software. It is also a document markup language. It is a very useful tool to create scientific documents in many fields, but especially appropriate to write mathematical expresions. Among its advantages, it has different dictionaries for many languages, it can be adapted to any style class and gives a professional look to any document you write. In addition, manage of bibliography references is quite simple and flexible. Latex comprises a collection of TeX macros and program to process TeX documents and convert them in PDF documents, but also in HTML, PS, EPS, DVI, etc. The other main advantage is that LaTex document scan be opened with any text editor since they consist of plain text and do not contain hidden formatting codes or binary instructions.

Difícil para personas no versadas en informática, pero seguro muy útil cuando te haces con él :) Gracias por compartirlo. Saludos.

Thank you very much for your link. In the specific case of my university (University of Málaga, in Spain) we have the Jabega platform, (http://jabega.uma.es) where all the members of the university community (students and professor) have free access to the different journals whose license was paid by our university. It is a very similar project, offering not only the name of the journals and resources but also a summary describing their topic.

HINARI Access to Research in Health Programme provides free or very low cost online access to the major journals in biomedical and related social sciences to local, not-for-profit institutions in developing countries.

Does anyone know about Global eJournals Library? It seems to be a subscription-based discovery service that indexes all of the open access or post-embargo journal articles it can find. The two private companies that operate this service, from the UK and India, are not very clear. It claims to have indexed many more articles (7 million) and journals than DOAJ (almost 2 million). I'm curious about the whole thing!

Colleges and universities aren't just teaching businesses about the value of technology, they're leading by example. At the core of their lesson is an essential technology: the video content management system. With it, universities are able to use low-cost computers and anything from high-end cameras to consumer webcams to record every lecture in every classroom across campus. Some go beyond recording, broadcasting live courses to remote learners around the world.

Our mission is to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journal and book publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines. This mission will be carried out through exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, education, and the promotion of innovation. Through a shared interest in developing appropriate business models, tools and standards...

Our mission is to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journal and book publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines. This mission will be carried out through exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, education, and the promotion of innovation. Through a shared interest in developing appropriate business models, tools and standards... Read full article >

Our mission is to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journal and book publishers globally in all scientific, technical and scholarly disciplines. This mission will be carried out through exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, education, and the promotion of innovation.

Open Access Scholarship is a new project that aims to create a network of people interested in open access in the humanities and social sciences.

GAPMIL is an international cooperation to ensure that all citizens have access to media and information competencies. This pioneering initiative was launched during the Global Forum for Partnerships on Media and Information Literacy (MIL) which took place from 26 to 28 June 2013.The forum was held under the theme "Promoting Media and Information Literacy as a Means to Cultural Diversity".

Free vs. Privacy - Open Access comes with pros and  cons

Thanks for posting.

Opening knowledge is great. Sharing knowledge is vital. In the past, publishers were the sole mediators for the dissemination of knowledge in printed form. In our, digital age, sharing has become easier thanks to the internet. Yet, although all areas of society have embraced the internet as THE sharing medium, scientific publishing has lagged far behind.

This post is part of our Open Access Week blog series to highlight great work in Open Access communities around the world. To coincide with Open Access Week, Open Knowledge is launching a new initiative focusing on the future of open access in the humanities and social sciences.

"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. "

Good article on how to look for the best information the internet has to offer and be a discerning consumer. Also good for availability of academic publishing as an important public good.

It's a good reminder to all of us to pay close attention to where we are getting our information. The main points are take advantage of academic publishing via Google Scholar, get 2nd opinions, check multiple sources, be aware of the potential motives of the writer and their affiliated organization, and follow links/sources and fact check. Additional suggestions that I would add to the author's blog post include taking a close look at the writer's credentials, asking yourself who the intended audience might be, looking out for emotion-rousing words, and doing a link search to find out if other people have sited the article. It's also good to ask whether the web is the best place to look for that particular type of information in the first place.

"The Scholarly Communication in Africa Programme (SCAP) was a three-year research and implementation initiative that took place between March 2010 and August 2013. Hosted by the University of Cape Town, the programme engaged the Universities of Botswana, Namibia and Mauritius in a process aimed at better understanding the dynamics around scholarly communication in the Southern African higher education environment and advancing the open access agenda for the purpose of increasing the visibility of African research. This work was made possible by a grant from the Canadian International Development Research Center (IDRC). This report synthesizes research and findings from the four institutional case studies conducted at the Universities of Botswana, Cape Town, Mauritius and Namibia. It provides an overview the scholarly communication activity systems at work in these four Southern African universities."

Thanks for this article. I think it gives a great overview of the current landscape of scholarly publishing in Africa, and concisely states the problems of visibilities (or the lack thereof).

"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.