Group items tagged

Open Data debate JISC, UK

""There were a number of simply wrong statements, and I would have liked the ability to clarify this in private first," Eysenbach says. One hazard of having such debates first in the public eye is that "if there is some critique of something, and you don't respond immediately even if you respond one or two days later, it's as good as no response [at all]," he says, "because by that time the damage to your reputation may already be done.""

"The open comment period ended last month. Much of the feedback came from two camps: libraries and universities, on the one hand; and scholarly associations and the companies that publish their peer-reviewed journals, on the other. A casual survey of the letters suggests that the feedback largely breaks along familiar lines - librarians arguing for quicker and easier access to research, and publishers offering suggestions for better access while discouraging measures that might threaten their subscription revenues."

Ebook standards may lack the glamour that the technology attracts, but the arrival of ePub3 has the potential to transform how the academy creates and delivers its content to students and researchers. Just weeks into the New Year and already there is a new ebooks revelation that colleges and universities need to digest. January saw the launch of Apple's new iBooks2 software which grabbed headlines (see the BBC article here) and sparked heated debate across the academic community. Quietly underpinning the technology of the iBooks software is ePub.  ePub is the 'defacto' ebook standard, with the latest version of ePub3 supporting complex layouts and rich media and interactivity for eTextbooks and professional and scientific publications.

"On Tuesday, Virginia is joining a group of 12 institutions that plan to open their courses to the world, free of charge, through an online platform created by the start-up company Coursera."