Category Archives: open access

Academia, academic institutions, academic publishing, news, OA, open access, openness, scholarship

The H-Bomb in Open Access to Scholarship

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As confirmed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has just adopted a groundbreaking mandate “that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.”

Some coverage elsewhere:

Peter Suber’s blog is a comprehensive source for Open Access news. Some of his posts covering the Harvard mandate:

Why are those news so important? Well, it’s the first such university mandate in the United States, so it does set a precedent in and of itself. (The UC system might be the second one.) But, of course, Harvard’s prestige is an important factor. Hence the “H-bomb” title: just mentioning “Harvard” has a very strong effect, so much so that some Harvard graduates refrain from mentioning their alma mater. As Suber assesses, Harvard’s support for Open Access makes it unlikely that publishers would refuse articles from Harvard faculty. Personally, I would even go so far as to say that the FUD spewed by “academic” publishers might become much less effective than it has previously been.

In other words, this is a big victory for scholarship. Too bad publishers see it as a defeat. Maybe like “content” lobby groups RIAA and MPAA, publishers will finally be hit by the “cluestick” and will begin to understand that it is, in fact, in their best interest to embrace openness.

Yes, call me naïve.

Academia, Canada, OA, open access, public, research, research publications

Open Access in Canada: CIHR Weighs In

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This could be big news. Canada’s major health-research agency has announced policy support for Open Access.

Open access to health research publications: CIHR unveils new policy – CIHR

“This open access policy will serve as a model for other funding agencies”

On the other hand, this policy sounds “non-binding”:

CIHR will require its researchers to ensure that their original research articles are freely available online within six months of publication.

grant recipients must make every effort to ensure that their peer-reviewed research articles are freely available as soon as possible after publication

So, it’s not as strong as some other mandates out there. But that might not be such a bad thing either. The benefits of OA are sufficiently clear that the only thing which is needed is that it becomes common practise. If some researchers fail to comply right away, punishing them might not be the most appropriate action. In fact, the way the press release is written, the policy seems to encourage a positive attitude toward OA which sounds quite convincing in the context of Canadian academia.
There have been lots of talk about OA in Canada and elsewhere, but this action by the CIHR can have important consequences.

Personally, and though colleagues surely disagree, I appreciate the fact that “the public” is included in the statement:

As a publicly-funded organization, we have a responsibility to ensure that new advances in health research are available to those who need it and can use it – researchers world-wide, the public and policy makers.

Oh, sure, this doesn’t mean that patients will suddenly be able to use all sorts of information about diseases they may have. We all know about the dangers of self-diagnosis, so that might not be a good thing. The health science literature is difficult enough to understand that chances are that broad readership by the general public may not apply. But the point is made that research (applied or basic) is done for the common good. Not just to get tenure in a university. One thing which might happen, from OA, is that careers in research get started because of access to research documents. Instead of keeping research in the Ivory Tower, research can be more easily distributed to anyone. This can even prevent the spread of disinformation!

For one thing, Open Access to research publications makes a lot of sense in a society which gives so much importance to free access to information. IMHO, the social significance of the Canadian Access to Information Act is often underestimated.

I do hope agencies such as SSHRC will adopt policies similar to the CIHR. Actually the SSHRC has been active in terms of OA, but AFAICT, doesn’t “require its researchers to ensure that their original research articles are freely available online within six months of publication.” OTOH, the SSHRC does have an initiative to support OA journals financially.

Looking forward to what well-known OA advocates will say about this. Surely, they’ll be more critical than I am, saying that this action, on the part of the CIHR, is but one step in the direction of generalised OA.

I may be overly enthusiastic here. But I do think this can be a turning point in Canadian academia.

academics, Learning, learning materials, open access, pedagogy, students, textbooks

There's a Whole World Out There

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The effect of finding out that there’s a wealth of information that is openly available:

To me, this was a little like the first human sighting of the Antarctic land mass in 1820: proof that a huge terra incognita existed just over the horizon, awaiting exploration.(Peter Suber, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 11/2/06
)

This is an important feeling (and an important issue). As the Gershwins had it:

I know how Columbus felt

Finding another world

The first time I recall feeling this way was at the end of the year, in elementary school. We had been using this math textbook with exercises for every chapter. It’s only during the last week of classes that I noticed that answers to the exercises could be found at the end of the book. Finding those answers was a revelation to me and I seek this discovery feeling. It’s one that I get from fiction (books, television shows, etc.). You find the key and everything falls into place.

What’s the connection, here?

Well, maybe I’m going on a limb. But I see a connection between Open Access, textbooks, and discovery. In fact, it runs through what I was trying to present this past week at the Spirit of Inquiry conference.

Sure, we all know about information overload and many of us would like authoritative filters for information. But the real point is about getting awestruck by the amount of work that has already been done. Sure, it’s intimidating when you take a look at the dusty shelves of a good size library. But we can also focus on doing something with all this information. Sure, the Encyclopedia of Life is bigger than any library, as many people keep reminding us, these days. But we can still start from access to published texts, can’t we?

Newton’s “shoulders of giants” and all that. The opposite of the forbidden library in Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Regardless of opposing views about what should be done with information, most people agree that there’s something empowering about anybody getting access to valuable information.

Some academics are “immunized” to the awe-inspiration from seeing the amount of information available. Some of them simply focus on a tiny parcel of knowledge-land they can call their own. Others insist that most information is completely relevant. Yet others think about knowledge in less of an information-processing model.

That’s why I think that making resources openly and publicly available is more important for students than for tenured professors.

Yes, I do care about students.

academic publishing, Anthropology, Concordia, Concordia University, open access, Sociology

Concordia Repository

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In the Concordia Journal, an enthusiastic write-up about Harnad’s recent talk on Open Access self-archiving.

Increasing the impact of the academy

William Curran, head of Concordia’s Library, said in an email that “the whole philosophy and pedagogical role of the library ‘business’ is to provide access, i.e., open access to the compendium of the world’s knowledge.” He anticipates that Concordia will have an institutional repository within the year for, at minimum, completed theses and research papers, “which represent the intellectual output of the university.”

As Harnad himself noted in an email, this write-up doesn’t mention that he was invited by our department (Sociology and Anthropology) nor does it describe the mixed reception to several of Harnad’s points. It does, however, address the fact that some academics are wary of Open Access, often because they associate it with potential revenue loss for journal publishers.

My own take is that Open Access is not only a necessity but mostly a step in the overall process of reevaluating academic publishing.

Academia, academic publishing, cluefulness, open access

Road to Scholarship

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Been consistently pleased by the positions linguistics professors over at Language Log are taking.

This time, quoting from a conference on digital repositories.

By 2015, all publicly-funded research products and primary resources will be readily available, accessible, and usable via common infrastructure and tools through space, time, and across disciplines, stages of research, and modes of human expression. Language Log: The future of research?

The original is well put and the support is well conceived.

Academia, academic publishing, ivory tower, journalism, open access, science

Rethinking Peer-Review and Journalism

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Can’t find more information just now but on the latest episode of ScienceTalk (SciAm‘s weekly podcast)

Scientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie discusse[d] peer review of scientific literature, the subject of a panel he recently served on at the World Conference of Science Journalists

I hope there will be more openly available information about this panel and other discussions of the peer-review process.

Though I do consider the peer-review process extremely important for academia in general, I personally think that it could serve us more if it were rethought.  Learning that such a panel was held and hearing about some of the comments made there is providing me with some satisfaction. In fact, I’m quite glad that the discussion is, apparently, thoughtful and respectful instead of causing the kind of knee-jerk reaction which makes many a discussion inefficient (including in academic contexts).

books, Google, information management, open access, social bookmarking

Post-Book Culture

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Interesting post about Google’s history-tracking Web History service. In my mind, this service has a lot of potential if it can do some of what Spurl.net, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, ma.gnolia.com, Google Reader’s star and share features, and other “social bookmarking” systems can do. The ideal blogging tool, for me, is one which has enough access to my history that I can quickly insert full links in my blog posts.

Anyhoo… The blog post:

Official Google Blog: Your slice of the web

Printed and bound together, the web pages you’ll visit in just one day are probably bigger than the book sitting on your night table.

Not a new idea. But it takes on a new meaning in the context. Pushes Google’s mission in our faces. To an academic, the prospect of having a way to trace back all of our readings (especially in the context of Open Access)…? Dream come true.

Academia, academic publishing, activism, collaborative learning, Concordia University, enthusiasm, idealism, open access, personal, Teaching

Concordia and Open Access Self-Archiving

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Fascinating talk:

News@Concordia: Stevan Harnad, Maximizing Concordia University’s Research Impact, April 25

Reactions were varied but some of us were able to have a very good chat after the talk. For one thing, it helped me understand the whole “Green OA” issue in a new light. As an idealist non-tenured faculty, I tend to get dreamy about the possibilities for the next step in the Open Access movement. Including in terms of pedagogy and community outreach. But Harnad’s talk really put the focus on the “knowledge ecology” involved in this world of unlimited resources.

To me, Concordia is an interesting case. So far, the university’s online visibility has been quite low, self-archiving is quite rare among Concordia researchers, and people tend to focus on the logistics. But Concordia seems to be on a mission to redefine itself in the broader frame of “forward-looking institutions of higher learning.” Contrary to McGill (Concordia’s “neighbour”), Concordia focuses on such things as flexibility, diversity, community outreach and, yes, even rebranding (which some people dislike). Sure, much of it might be “corporate-speak” to increase enrollment. But the point is, Concordia seems to truly cherish the diversity of its enrolled students. In fact, it’s not positioning itself as the “so elite, just being admitted is enough to get a job” model typical of certain prestigious institutions in the United States. Some people at Concordia are making sure that the message of “going forward to meet new challenges” is heard.

It’s no secret that I like Concordia. As my second semester there comes to an end and as I reflect on my time there, I tend to see this university as a place where true learning can occur. I may only teach one more semester there before I move to Austin so I will enjoy it to the last drop. And, who knows, I might find as many things to like in Texas once I’m settled there.

If Concordia can increase its visibility by engaging itself on the OA route, I’m all for it.

Google, librarians, open access, public domain

Siva on Open Access

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SABREOCRACY.NET (formerly SIVACRACY.NET): An Important Message for the Folks at Google

All I’m asking for is full access for the public to government documents on Google BookSearch. These documents are in the public domain and therefore should not be limited by claims of copyright, by Google or by the Library Partners.

IMHO, these issues will eventually be solved, regardless of the source.