Tuesday, October 27, 2015

OATP primary


OATP primary

Posted: 27 Oct 2015 04:09 AM PDT
"We have a crucial new vacancy for an Open Access Adviser (0.5 FTE) for 18 months based within Goldsmiths Library's Research Support Team. Goldsmiths is fully committed to the principles and practice of Open Access across all disciplines...."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:18 AM PDT
"With the increasing costs of a higher education coupled with the growing concerns over student debt and lack of government funding for public universities, many students are wondering whether they can afford the expense of buying or renting their textbooks throughout the school year. The College Board, a private nonprofit corporation that was formed to expand access to higher education, estimated that the average student in the U.S. spends around $1,200 a year on books and supplies. In a 2013 survey, the Government Accountability Office reported that between 2002 and 2012, the price of textbooks rose 82 percent – 6 percent on average, every year – which is nearly three times the rate of inflation. Scott St. Louis, a senior at Grand Valley State University, said the issue of accessing material is a two-way street. He indicated that if professors were surprised by students forgoing the available options for acquiring a textbook, expense would most likely be the issue at hand ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:17 AM PDT
[From Google's English] "Just the Open Access Week has ended. All posts in Archivalia were published in the Open Access Category: http://archiv.twoday.net/topics/Open+Access/ Recent Posts stand up. List of posts for 2014 (14) and former OA weeks: http: //archiv.twoday.net/stories/1022221174/ Total wrote 27 entries. New were three days Round Look, the summarizing several messages, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Two important pieces longer be highlighted ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:16 AM PDT
"It was at a chance encounter at the ALPSP conference last September with Anurag Acharya (co-founder of Google Scholar and hero to millions of researchers) that I popped the question – why was it that Google Scholar did not index monographs? Anurag explained that the length of monographs and their level of treatment pose unique challenges in a search environment. Monographs usually describe mature work unlike journal articles which usually describe early stage work. Users clicking on monographs are usually looking for immediate answers to questions rather than a list of articles to read. As a result, it is hard to achieve a successful search experience for restricted access monographs. While Anurag was explaining the technical side, I had one of those light-bulb moments and realized that all those issues fell by the wayside with Open Access books. So I told Anurag about Knowledge Unlatched. Realizing that the dataset of 28 books from the Pilot was likely to be too small for Google, I told him about OAPEN's platform and its now nearly 2500 Open Access books. Now, just weeks later, OAPEN and Google Scholar have turned this dream into a reality. From here on in Google Scholar is able to index Open Access books. A huge thanks to the Google Scholar and OAPEN teams for this giant leap forward ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:14 AM PDT
[Abstract] This article explores a moment of opportunity to imagine a new humanities scholarship based on radical openness, beyond the level of access to scholarly content that the open access movement has so far championed, to a culture of transformation that can actively include the public(s) beyond the community of scholars. The possibilities for enhancing scholarly and research practices are intriguing, but even greater may be the generative opportunity to engage audiences beyond the scholarly community – particularly online, where the humanities connects to broader cultural currents.
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:12 AM PDT
[Abstract] Thanks to a vibrant community united by a few core principles, plus detailed policies and safeguards against trolls and vandalism, Wikipedia has already become a piece of the knowledge ecosystem. Like science, its aim is to propose a synthesis of existing knowledge and conflicting interpretations of reality. It also changes the way people interact with knowledge thanks to its extensive use of hyperlinks, portals, and categories. As a consequence, I suggest academics contribute to articles in their field. They could also use Wikipedia as a course assignment and make sure that the topics related to their discipline are fairly presented in this encyclopedia.
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:06 AM PDT
"Across the internet, scientists are swapping academic papers in secret - most of the time illegally – using a Twitter hashtag '#ICanHazPDF'. We ask the scientist who came up with the idea why thousands of people are using it, and how they justify their actions. And, this week, Salman Rushdie dubbed the internet trolls who back the Indian Prime Minister 'Modi Toadies'. But who are they? Are they a sign of growing intolerance in India? We hear from a leading liberal journalist, and a spokesman from Modi's BJP party in an attempt to find out."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:04 AM PDT
"The National Institutes of Health has partnered with London-based Wellcome Trust to launch a global science competition for new products or services to advance 'open science,' a movement to make scientific research data broadly accessible to the public. Up to six teams of technology experts and researchers stand to win $80,000 each to develop their ideas into a prototype or to advance an existing early stage prototype. The prototype judged to have the greatest potential to further open science will receive $230,000 ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:02 AM PDT
"Earlier this month, a group of legislators introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act to the U.S. Senate and the House. The bill, introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin, Al Franken and Angus King and Reps. Rubén Hinojosa and Jared Polis, aims to lower textbook prices by creating a grant program that encourages the growth of the 'open textbook.' Open textbooks are available to students, teachers and anyone else who would like to use them online and in print, for little to no money, because they fall under an open copyright license. Many educators consider them to be the best approach to combat high textbook prices ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 02:01 AM PDT
" ... Among alternative models, as I noted, is author-originated sharing of work, often in pre-print forms, via the open web. Many authors already share work in this way, whether posting drafts on their blogs for comment or depositing manuscripts in their institutional repositories. And recently, many scholars have also taken to sharing their work via Academia.edu, a social network that allows scholars to build connections, get their work into circulation, and discover the work of others. I'm glad to see the interest among scholars in that kind of socially-oriented dissemination and sharing, but I'm very concerned about this particular point of distribution and what it might mean for the future of the work involved ... The first thing to note is that, despite its misleading top level domain (which was registered by a subsidiary prior to the 2001 restrictions), Academia.edu is not an educationally-affiliated organization, but a dot-com, which has raised millions in multiple rounds of venture capital funding. This does not imply anything necessarily negative about the network's model or intent, but it does make clear that there are a limited number of options for the network's future: at some point, it will be required to turn a profit, or it will be sold for parts, or it will shut down.  And if the network is to turn a profit, that profit has a limited number of means through which it can be generated: either academics who are currently contributing their work to this space will have to pay to continue to access it, or the work that they have contributed will somehow be mined for sale, whether to advertisers or other interested parties. In fact, Academia.edu's CEO has said that 'the goal is to provide trending research data to R&D institutions that can improve the quality of their decisions by 10-20%.' Statements like this underwrite Gary Hall's assessment of the damage that the network can do to genuine open access: 'Academia.edu has a parasitical relationship to the public education system, in that these academics are labouring for it for free to help build its privately-owned for-profit platform by providing the aggregated input, data and attention value.' The network, in other words, does not have as its primary goal helping academics communicate with one another, but is rather working to monetize that communication ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:55 AM PDT
"Academics at South Africa's universities increased their research output by 250% between 2000 and 2013. Taxpayers funded a great deal of that research. For instance, R24 billion was spent on research and development in the 2012-13 financial year - more than half of it from the public purse. That's a wealth of research and knowledge. The problem is that it may not be accessible to the broader public, even though it was they who footed the bill. It may also be hard for policymakers and the private sector to access this information and apply it when developing initiatives that can help develop the country. Why is South Africans' access to important knowledge and research so limited? And, in the age of Open Access, what is being done to improve the situation? ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:54 AM PDT
"The day before the main FORCE2016 meetings, Sunday, 17 Apr 2016, is available for groups who want to meet in conjunction with the FORCE2016 conference, whether for workshops, informal or formal collaborations, or business meetings.  Meetings should be related to the goals and mission of FORCE11 (www.force11.org/about).  If you are interested in meeting this day in the FORCE2016 venue, please submit this form so the preconference committee can review proposals.   For the best opportunity for consideration, proposals must be submitted by November 13.  Submissions after this date may be considered, depending on topic and availability of space.   Session organizers will be notified by December 1 if the submission has been selected ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:52 AM PDT
"The choice of a single textbook for one section of a course at one university might seem like a decidedly local issue. But a dispute over whether an academic department may impose such a selection on all faculty members in a multisection course has set off a large debate over how textbook choices should be evaluated, who should select textbooks, whether price should be a factor, and academic freedom. These issues came to a head Friday when Alain Bourget, an associate professor of mathematics at California State University at Fullerton, appeared before a faculty grievance committee to challenge a reprimand he received for refusing to use a $180 textbook his department had determined was the only appropriate text for an introductory linear algebra and differential equations course. Instead, he used two textbooks, one of which cost about $75 and other of which consists of free online materials. Bourget maintains that his choices are just as effective educationally and much less expensive -- so he should have the right to use them. But the university says that it makes sense for courses that have multiple sections to all use the same textbooks. Both Bourget and the university say their positions are based on principles of academic freedom. The case is being closely watched by advocates of open educational resources (free online materials, commonly called OER) who see the dispute as a sign that they need to challenge not only traditional textbooks but traditional methods of selecting textbooks ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:50 AM PDT
"With the introduction of Waymaker, its personalized learning courseware, the open education company Lumen Learning is setting a new standard for educational technology solutions that enhance the most human elements of the learning process. Noted for its work helping colleges and universities improve student success through the effective adoption of open educational resources (OER), Lumen is now combining OER with learning science insights to deliver a personalized learning experience with a deep commitment to both affordability and quality ... Waymaker offers four primary interventions that are well-grounded in research and represent a significant shift compared to what students experience in a typical college course. First, by using OER-based content, Waymaker gives every student automatic day one access to the course materials they need to succeed. Textbook affordability becomes a non-issue. Second, Waymaker applies a Mastery Learning-inspired approach, using quizzes and other assessments as learning activities, and not just measurement activities. Students get more than one chance to complete each assessment, along with feedback about where to focus to improve performance. Third, Waymaker uses learning data to provide students with personalized recommendations about where to focus their attention to improve learning. Fourth, Waymaker helps faculty identify and connect with students individually when and where they need help and encouragement. Research suggests these personal relationships can significantly impact student learning ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:48 AM PDT
"A new Congress legislation is advancing to seek the cost-effective reduction of university textbooks through appropriate grant programs that aim to promote the utilization of Open Education Resources (OER).  The said legislation would encourage colleges and universities to apply for government grants and acquire funding sources in the creation of textbooks and all other kinds of education resources that could be shared virtually. Such resources would be accessible to all students without no charges while the same printed materials will be made available at relatively lower costs.  The United States Senators - Senator Dick Durbin (Illinois), Senator Al Franken (Minnesota), and Senator Angus King (Maine) introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act to Congress last week ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:45 AM PDT
"Overview of open education in the context of Open Access."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:43 AM PDT
"Instead of requiring students to buy a book for $180, a math professor at Cal State Fullerton assigned one that goes for $76 and another that's free. But the expensive text was written by two senior department officials, and the professor's in trouble. We preview a faculty hearing set for tomorrow ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:39 AM PDT
[In Brief] Both Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA) are becoming more central to many librarians' work and the core mission of librarianship, in part because of the perceived relationship between openness and social justice. However, in our excitement about the new opportunities afforded by open movements, we might overlook structural inequalities present within these movements. In this article, I utilize some of the useful critiques OA has generated to inform the discussion of OER creation and practice. I then hone in on the conversation around OER specifically to suggest starting points for how librarians and other LIS professionals can construct more thoughtful OER practices.
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:38 AM PDT
"We had a rousing conversation about the merits of open access (#OA) during Open Access Week at Trinity College. My presentation focused on how I came into OA and the key resources that make a busy faculty member or graduate student's entrée into sharing their research publicly as part of the open education movement. See jgieseking.org for the complementary handout. After an introduction from our digital librarian Amy Harrell, I was joined by my colleagues Jack Doughtery in Urban Education Studies, and Charles Lebel in Language and Culture Studies in brief individual presentations followed by a conversation with our faculty."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:37 AM PDT
"Earlier this year, in a comment stream on a blog post about open access and fees, one commenter (from the commercial journal field) asked whether there were any actual numbers on how many articles were published in gold OA journals that don't charge APCs or other author-side fees. At the time, another commenter responded with my figures from the partial study of gold OA journals, the one that didn't include journals without English-language interfaces. The total from 2012 through 2014 was around 470,000 articles. The Gold OA Landscape 2011-2014 includes graphs showing free and paid article counts overall and for each segment and subject, and shows overall article counts and the percentage of free articles, making it easy to calculate approximate counts, but I didn't actually include the figures that create the graphs; that would have been redundant and I was trying to keep the book as short as possible. And the excerpted version in Cites & Insights didn't include graphs at all. So, for what it's worth, here are some key figures for articles published in serious gold OA journals (those listed in DOAJ ) and graded A or B in my study) that do not charge APCs or other author-side fees ..."
Posted: 27 Oct 2015 01:35 AM PDT
"U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley (D-Dist. 5) and Leonard Lance (R-NJ) recently held a bipartisan briefing late last week to discuss the distribution of non-confidential Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports to the public during International Open Access Week. 'It's time to allow the American people to access the same neutral, unbiased, nonpartisan information that we in Congress rely on every day,' Quigley said ..."
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