OKMOOC

An interesting opinion/confessional piece on one academic's experience of publishing in the developing world. The author points out cultural pressures and differences that could possible contribute to the expanding knowledge gap.

It is very fascinating articles, thank you for posting this. I myself, most of the times, focus on the publisher issues rather than the author himself. However, after read this I realise how important it is to pay attention to the authors because their contribution can really affect the quality of researches that they involved in. Regardless how successful the authors are, they are still human beings who are also affected by the national cultures.

This is an interesting piece but raises the question - why is the institution placing the pressure? It says, tacitly, a lot about the culture of the academic institutions in the country as a whole - and this culture is often shaped by funding patterns from central government, or major funders. The institution then responds to these funding patterns by pressuring staff to produce what is funded. In South Africa this is very much the pattern, with central government funding articles published in selected journals (see the readings for the module 11). However, there has been a rethink and there is proposed changes in now supporting book publication to a much greater degree. So whereas the pressure was on to produce articles, now the universities are looking at book production to a greater extent. As has been said as a truism; "Follow the money" - and in this case we see how this affects what should be, in effect, academic freedom.

Sad and interesting situation here, scientist publishes his research, and in the comments, his work is called into question and it costs him a job. Brings into question the integrity of pre-publication peer review, and casts a shadow on the future of comments. Frequently, the comments are made by anonymous users, which itself should be a problem, even if the comment brings to light errors in the research. Now it seems, entire websites have sprung up with the sole purpose of debunking the hard work of others, sometimes needlessly. It's a good read.

Thank you for sharing. The situation with PubPeer actually encounters problems which are common on internet. As long as one comments anonymously, there are many off-topic and offensive comments. As soon as only registered comments are welcome, there are very few of them or not at all. Besides, one can presume that some scientific communities, even world-wide, are quite small and because of different reasons people do not want to comment under their real names... Another interesting resource to explore.

International Development and Research Capacities: Increasing Access to African Scholarly Publishing

An article by an anonymous author on the Knowledge Commons Brasil. The article attempts to show how the Global North dominates the internet. Internet users as well as content (exemplified by geo-located entities) tend to cluster in the rich industrial countries of the so called "developed" wordl. This critique resembles the lament of the so called Media Imperialism spearheaded by the McBriede Report to Unesco (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0004/000400/040066eb.pdf) "Many Voices, One World)". It should be noted that here more detailed studies suggested that news agencies reflect the interests of their audiences. So it would be interesting what the distribution of geo-tagged entities in the Igbo version of Wikipedia is like. Does it mirror a bias towards West Africa (Igbo being one of the principal languages of Nigeria)?

On October 17, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded a key fair-use ruling in a long-running case over digital course readings on college campuses. But while on the surface the decision is a legal victory for the plaintiff publishers, two major library associations say the ruling is in fact a win for libraries, and for a popular practice known as "e-reserves."

Very relevant for our academic librarians.

Exploring Digital Identity: Beyond the Private Public Paradox. A great article that explores how new media is transforming culture and how we identify ourselves online. The article uses a metaphor called digiSelves to describe how we are also creating a new identity too.

Indeed, maintaining the distance between the private self and public persona may be more difficult as we enter the virtual global village. As we continue to use the media, the proposition that we may become invested in the public persona possibly at odds with our private self seems to be a reasonable assertion. School shootings tend to support this.

People have a digital identity to surf on the Internet and get access to different kinds of information. Yes, there are a lot of good resources online for people to know and to learn. However, during the process, people's privacy also takes the risk of being viewed by others. On the other hand, everyone also has a chance to see others' privacy. So, is it good or bad to have such a digital identity. I think it is good and people acquire much more benefits than the risk they take.

I presented this paper to a conference in South Africa in 2005, and it was described as "too radical" by the top leaders in libraries in South Africa who attended. :) So am rather happy that my vague perceptions and musings about the emerging trends have been vindicated today. "This paper will focus on another aspect that is integrally linked to the ability to access literature and information - that of cost and economics. Both the broader macroeconomic context and the more focused microeconomic (South African) environment will be referred to. We will examine the assumption that the economic development of a nation is linked to the ability to access information and test whether this is a valid assumption. From there, we will take a brief look at the issue of the cost of books, specifically in South Africa. The advent of the electronic revolution and the many paradigm shifts that the Internet and electronic media have initiated and the effects on the publishing industry, will be outlined. We will explore the "information as commodity" paradigm and briefly look at the related Copyright and Intellectual Property developments before weaving these seemingly disparate threads together to form a picture of innovative solutions that have arisen in response to the information access crisis in South Africa. These solutions have arisen from the popular notion that information should be freely available for societal good, rather than commodified. Finally, we will ponder the effect that these solutions may have on the traditional book publishing industry in South Africa."

Thank you all, very much, it is quite a new experience for me to have the paper well received. :)

Thank you for sharing this. I really appreciated the non-North American context. I grew up in the States, and am working on my Master's degree in Canada, so it's really easy to get caught up in always looking at these issues from the North American point of view. Seeing papers like this really help to confirm how global these issues are, and cement their importance in my mind.

In this TED talk, John Wilbanks advances the idea that opening up medical data could leave to a new wave of innovation. With a corpus of open data, semantic search technologies can be employed to determine patterns in data that would take years for scientists to make. Another argument in support of open dada and its potential to accelerate and advance science and innovation

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

What if Africa is slow to tell her stories.

Access to education is a birth right

Being an Assistant Editorial Board Member with Stance as an undergraduate was one of my first experiences with the publishing process and is, in part, why I became so interested in the topic of publishing. When this unit came up, I immediately thought of the journal, but I wasn't sure if they were open access.... Glad to realize they are!

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.

This book present public access to the products of human culture and learning - access. to knowledge. The ultimate objective of the movement is to create a world in which educational and cultural works are accessible to all!

This is great. i think people should read it to know how to get the knowledge and how to create more useful information.

This is a great platform to share and publish research. Graduate and undergraduate students, independent researchers, faculty members, alumni, etc. can create their own account, publish their papers, exchange ideas and news, ask for an advice, track own and others papers and posts, and more. It provides open access to all published materials. It is a very useful website. I am a member and I recommend to check it out.

This is a inspiring resource for all the students. They acquire a chance to show their ability and work.

A slideshow and brief descriptions of 12 OER's & a great list of further readings.

Great resource. I acquire knowledge from it and all the reading is meaningful

Here's a good primer about citizen journalism.

Thank you for sharing this resource. It is useful to understand citizen journalism.

Citizen journalism refers to a wide range of activities in which everyday people contribute information or commentary about news events. People behind the citizen journalism can range from News Company to a normal citizen writing about anything they wish to share with the world. How they wish share it is up to them. They may use blogs, videos, among other social medias. The significance of citizen journalism is that they may share things that people may not know about or may share things that other "professional" sources are not willing to talk about. However, there are downsides to citizen journalism, such as reliability and validity. This site has everything you need to know about Citizen Journalism.

The resource is good. Citizen journalism is a resource that everyone can join and contribute to. However, not everyone can and is willing to join it. This is a pity of citizen journalism. on the other hand, like what is above, there are problems about reliability and validity

Indigenous knowledge is unique to a culture or society. It shows us how to connect and to sustain through the environment. This kind of knowledge is passed down to generation to generation. Back then our ancestors did not have Internet or computers to store or to share their ideas. Our ancestral knowledge is very fragile and can easily be lost. Knowledge is history and our roots, which are passed down from our ancestors to us and these knowledge should be kept and be preserved. New information is also valuable, but so is our past. Here is a site that helps us to learn about what Indigenous knowledge is and activities to help us how to preserve Indigenous knowledge.

It is a good idea. We should remember our indigenous knowledge and pass it down to following generations. People without past can not value the present. We shouldn't let these knowledge be destroyed by fast information on the internet.

good resource. Students ought to have a chance to publish their own research journals. It is a encouragement for them to continue their work and to create better result. Students can also have different ways of publishing in order to get more audience with help of social media.