Tag Archives: open

Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright to journal publishers

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via theconversation.edu.au

This is good news. The dominoes are beginning to fall. Pay journals are a dying breed. Yeah!

For non-academics or for those academics at huge universities with large library budgets, this might not seem important. For guys like me on faculty at a university with very little access to international journals in my field, this is a much welcomed movement..

I would easily pay $500/yr for access to these works, but that wouldn’t even get me in the door. For an average research paper, I need access to roughly 15-30 difference journals (not just different issues). This is particularly true for me as I do research that spans the fields of Education, SLA/TESOL, and technology, not to mention other tangents that some research flows into.

As stated in the article (http://theconversation.edu.au/princeton-bans-academics-from-handing-all-copyr…, this model is built on the backs of academics doing this work for free (or as part of their university roles). Publications really could offset costs with minimal advertising on their sites. In addition, as most journals are associated with professional organizations the cost of providing journal access could go back into member services and even, perhaps, cut membership costs and increase membership. (Yes, I see the potential for those who join solely for the publication to cut and run).

Some might say that the publishers offer a platform that innovates in delivery, but this is a joke compared to what other 3rd party products could do if they were competing on service rather than content.

Flat World Knowledge – looking for some good freemium content? Great potential here.

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via flatworldknowledge.com

The choices are limited at this time, but the idea here is grand. This is not necessarily free publication, it’s freemium. A somewhat restricted online version is free, while all other versions cost. I think this model has wings.

Even with ubiquitous internet, people want a copy that can be edited, annotated, and so forth.

Open Access Does Not Equal More Citations, Study Finds (via @tonnet)

Open Access Does Not Equal More Citations, Study Finds

April 1, 2011, 4:12 pm

By Ben Wieder

A new study suggests that while open access appears to increase the readership of scholarly articles, it doesn’t increase how often they’re cited.

The study stands in contrast with earlier research that suggested open-access articles were referenced by other scholars more frequently.

Philip M. Davis, a postdoctoral associate in the department of communication at Cornell University, was given access to 36 subscription-based journals produced by seven different publishers. In 2007 and early 2008, he randomly made approximately 20 percent of their articles free.

via chronicle.com

I find this counter-intuitive, but it’s an interesting finding.

I think that one of the ways that we (academics) can push open publication is to show that it results in a greater number of citations, thus impact factor. If this is the case, authors will favor open journals; thus, open journals will have access to better articles.

If findings like this prove to be accurate, that could frustrate a move to open journals. However, I have to guess that, to a certain extent, it is going to happen regardless.

Walled Gardens are dead!

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I got a little carried away in my presentation on Saturday at the KAMALL/KSET conference. At one point, I declared, “Walled Gardens are dead!” While I really do believe this, I should know better than to say it that way. Luckily, nobody called me on it during the presentation, though someone did afterwards.

The reason that I shouldn’t have said it like that is that it’s impossible to defend and it’s not true. There will always be walled gardens. Organizations will always have some sort of closed system for the sake of security, either of the data or of the participants. It’s a wild world out there and I can see the need to keep student data in a closed system because it really can be used for nasty purposes.

However, this doesn’t mean that the concept isn’t dying. There are surely benefits for users with technologies (or services) can play nicely together. More and more, people are providing their content to the world. Whether this be videos, pictures, or ideas, users expect to be able to share this content with the world and set restrictions themselves (not the organizations/services).

I might be an idealist, but I think that ideas should be free (as in free beer AND as in freely expressed). We have both a right to benefit from the sharing of information (instructional or other) and the responsibility to share information that we possess.

Many teachers are walking the walk. They are putting their ideas in terms of lectures, activities, lesson plans, and so forth out there for public consumption. This can only benefit other teachers (and learners) who can incorporate these ideas and products in to their instruction. In this way, the sharing of ideas has moved (or is moving) from the break rooms to the ether Net. These ideas are them being collected from the ether, organized, and re-shared with others. This is where services/technologies like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and others come in. They enable anyone to collect, organize, and re-distribute these ideas (content) in any way they see fit. We then develop connections with these re-mixers of ideas, which forms our personal (learning) networks.

There will come a point when the walled gardens simply can’t compete. They will be (or already are) relegated to spaces with a minor impact on learning/working/playing and will be seen as just another place that users have to remember to go to get the occasional message or tidbit of institutional treasures (information that can’t be shared).

Call me deluded, call me a dreamer, but please call me 🙂 Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Dan

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