Monthly Archives: April 2009

Open Access Trust for Book Settlement Proposed

Posted on April 28, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Peter Suber at Open Access News is reporting on a proposed Open Access Trust for the Google Book Settlement. The idea behind the trust is that it would act as guardians for the orphaned works in Google’s settlement to ensure that they are being made available for common good. The proposal was suggested by Charles Nessman at Harvard Law School. From Suber’s commentary:

This is an excellent idea. It needn’t rest solely on the argument that orphaned works are part of the public domain. It could rest, instead or in addition, on the argument that the Google book settlement will shrink the scope of fair use and shrink the odds that competition will lower the price or improve the terms under which the public will have access to digitized orphan works.

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OpenCourseWare Lectures in China

Posted on April 28, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Stian Haklev has a new blog post on his OpenCourseWare research in China. The blog post includes links to presentation slides and video. From the post:

…I think there is an unprecedented opportunity for the educational research community in China to make a contribution both nationally, and internationally, when it comes to open education research. I have in the past called for the use of more theory when researching OER, and part of the reason why that doesn’t happen, is that many who are attending open education conferences in North America are not from schools of education, or have backgrounds in relevant fields. They are doing incredibly important work, and creating great innovations, but I keep wishing that more people within the field of education would begin studying this area…

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Steps to Integrating Open Textbooks

Posted on April 28, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Karen Fasimpaur has a new blog post on integrating open textbooks in the classroom. In particular, she advocates detailed planning and phased adoption. From the article:

Any major change like this requires a great deal of planning, professional development, and support. This is likely to be a multi-year project and will only be successful if a long-term commitment is made. (Schools are notorious for their inability to stick with projects like this, resulting in millions of wasted dollars and classically low morale.)

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JISC Responds to Criticism of Houghton Report

Posted on April 28, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Earlier this month OEN reported that JISC was planning to respond to criticisms of the Houghton Report. According to Peter Suber at Open Access News, that response is now available. The Houghton Report suggested that the UK could save millions by subscribing to open access journals, and was criticized by publishers. From Open Access News:

On sustainability: The report takes a system-wide view. It asks what is cost-effective for the UK and for UK research, not for any one particular actor within that domain. Sustainability needs to be looked at from that perspective, as well as from the perspective of universities, libraries, publishers, etc, all of whom need sustainable models. The report clearly states on Page 3 that it allows for commercial management, investment and operating margins to ensure that all three models compared would be commercially sustainable.

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Sociological Implications of Open Access

Posted on April 28, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Ulrich Herb has published an article on the sociological implications of Open Access. The article is only available in German, only the abstract is in English. Hopefully it will be translated in the future. From the abstract:

The paper focusses on the sociological implications of these arguments by tackling their inherent sociological terminology and social values. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the scientific field and the circulation of capital allows for the well-grounded estimation of the effectiveness of OA for scientific communication and the impact of its proposed openness.

Thanks to Gavin Baker at Open Access News for the link.

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Economics of Open Access

Posted on April 27, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The RePEc Blog is reporting that the journal Economic Analysis and Policy has released a special issue on open access. Topics include sustainability and effects of open access on research.

We the advent of the Web, accessing research through the Internet has become commonplace. Slowly, this is eroding the use of physical copies of journals and thus reducing considerably the cost of disseminating research. Yet, the cost of subscriptions to academics serials keeps rising much faster than inflation. Facing this ‘serials crisis,’ libraries around the world have tried to find ways to circumvent these costs, most prominently by pushing Open Access (OA).

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SEO for Open Access Repositories

Posted on April 27, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Nick Sheppard has a recent blog post on search engine optimization (SEO) for open access repositories. In particular, he outlines issues regarding sitemaps. From the blog post:

It is crucial that both the Open Access full text research content of the repository and metadata records of citation material are fully indexed by Google (and other search engines); in the future it is also likely to be required for other Open Educational Resources (learning objects).

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The Open University at 40

Posted on April 24, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Today the Open University celebrated its 40th anniversary. According to Response Source, OU teaches 200,000 students a year and has helped over 2 million in its 40 years. A interview with Vice Chancellor Brenda Gourley is available at The Times Higher Education. From the interview:

I’ve always been interested in education as a means of changing people’s lives and pursuing social justice. There are so many who don’t have access to decent libraries and textbooks. To them, being able to access good material on the web must be like manna from heaven.

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New Open Book about Mobile Learning

Posted on April 24, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Terry Anderson has announced Mobile Learning Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training, a new book about mobile learning from Athabasca University Press. The book covers a wide range of topics such as designing mobile learning objects and using mobile learning in international distance education programs. According to Terry Anderson, it is licensed BY-NC-ND and is available free as an ebook on the Athabasca University Press site.

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OER Usage Modest in Developing Nations

Posted on April 24, 2009 by | Leave a comment

A recent article in the The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries suggests that OER usage in developing nations has been slow. The countries research in particular wre Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Some of the factors cited in the article include “Not invented here” mentality, textbook dependency and cultural barriers. From the article:

If open content should work as a “catalyst for the production of new, local OER” (Albright 2005) solutions to the inhibiting factors need to be addressed. The term “build it and they will come” does not fully relate to open content, development of more content and content of higher quality is needed but just “building it” will only address a small portion of the inhibiting factors that content developers experience with reuse of open content.

Thanks to Peter Suber at Open Access News for the link.

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