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UK Open Access Implementation Group

"Today Polish Council of Ministers adopted regulation concerning the implementation of „Digital School" program for computerization of Polish schools and raising ICT competences. Pilot of the project aimed for 380 schools in Poland will equip them with hardware (tablets, computers for students, additional equipment). Also digital and free (under Creative Commons Attribution or compatible) textbooks for grades 4-6 in primary schools (K4-K6) will be created (43 millions PLN is assigned for textbooks). This is the first major government project in Poland which creates Open Educational Resources especially textbooks."

The smart funders will work with the pre-existing prejudice of researchers, probably granting copyright and IP rights to the researchers, but placing tighter constraints on the terms of forward licensing. That funders don't really need the publishers has been made clear by HHMI, Wellcome Trust, and the MPI. Publishing costs are a small proportion of their total expenditure. If necessary they have the resources and will to take that in house. The NIH has taken a similar route though technically implemented in a different way. Other funders will allow these experiments to run, but ultimately they will adopt the approaches that appear to work.

"In Year 1 we: Created an API (OERPub) for publishing OER to remixable repositories. The API is an adaptation of the popular SWORD API. Implemented the API in Connexions, a repository anyone can use to create open textbooks and share learning materials. Developed an importer for creating and publishing remixable OER to Connexions. Formed a team of designers and developers using OERPub."