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Category: open access

On “A Case Study of Scholars’ Open and Sharing Practices,” by George Veletsianos

On “A Case Study of Scholars’ Open and Sharing Practices,” by George Veletsianos

In “A Case Study of Scholars’ Open and Sharing Practices,” George Veletsianos examines faculty openness and sharing practices at a university that does not have any sort of open access or open scholarship policy. He concludes, unsurprisingly, that although many faculty members happen to be sharing their work and resources with others, these practices are limited without the incentive of an institutional policy. Notably, Veletsianos draws on David Wiley’s differentiation between openness and sharing: “open practices have to do with…

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On “Open Science: A Revolution in Sight?” by Bernard Rentier

On “Open Science: A Revolution in Sight?” by Bernard Rentier

In “Open Science: A Revolution in Sight?,” Bernard Rentier provides an overview of the Open Access (OA) movement. He acknowledges the affordances of the digital realm and points out where the academy is still holding fast to traditional practices like closed peer review and prestige-based publishing, even in the face of better options. Rentier also discusses the OA policy at his institution, the Université de Liège, which requires all faculty to deposit publications in their institutional repository. Decisions regarding promotion,…

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On “Dissemination as Cultivation: Scholarly Communications in a Digital Age,” by James O’Sullivan, Christopher P. Long, and Mark A. Mattson

On “Dissemination as Cultivation: Scholarly Communications in a Digital Age,” by James O’Sullivan, Christopher P. Long, and Mark A. Mattson

In “Dissemination as Cultivation: Scholarly Communications in a Digital Age,” James O’Sullivan, Christopher P. Long, and Mark A. Mattson link form to content in the context of publishing. That is, they argue that the digital realm allows for scholarly content to be presented in more representative forms than print publication can offer. Although this may not ring true for all fields, it can for the digital humanities, which is often characterized by its openness and collegiality (as Elika Ortéga and…

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On “Measuring Altruistic Impact: A Model for Understanding the Social Justice of Open Access,” by Margaret Heller and Franny Gaede

On “Measuring Altruistic Impact: A Model for Understanding the Social Justice of Open Access,” by Margaret Heller and Franny Gaede

In “Measuring Altruistic Impact: A Model for Understanding the Social Justice of Open Access,” Margaret Heller and Franny Gaede consider open access repositories in the context of social justice. This is not, perhaps, what it might seem at first glance: Heller and Gaede move beyond the standard argument that open access is a public good, and de facto social issue (although they do use this argument as a theoretical foundation). Rather, Heller and Gaede run an experiment to determine the…

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On “North American Campus-Based Open Access Funds: A Five-Year Progress Report,” by Greg Tananbaum

On “North American Campus-Based Open Access Funds: A Five-Year Progress Report,” by Greg Tananbaum

In “North American Campus-Based Open Access Funds: A Five-Year Progress Report,” Greg Tananbaum reviews and provides a status update on the SPARC Campus-based Open Access Funds initiative. This initiative provides seed funding to libraries that authors can access as need be in order to publish open access. Tananbaum provides impressive statistics on the relative uptake of the initiative, including papers (3863) and unique authors (3121) funded to date. But he also outlines challenges that have arisen: namely, enticing and sustaining…

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On “Will Open Access Change the Game?” by Sven Fund

On “Will Open Access Change the Game?” by Sven Fund

In “Will Open Access Change the Game?: Hypotheses on the Future Cooperation of Libraries, Researchers, and Publishers,” Sven Fund considers open access publishing as analogous to the disruptive technologies that have become trademarks of digital technology. He argues that open access will “most likely lead to wanted and unwanted developments and consequences for different actors” (206). Fund rightly suggests that the long term impacts of open access have not been sufficiently considered; he does not, however, answer such a need…

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On “Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Values,” by Dan Cohen

On “Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Values,” by Dan Cohen

In the blog post “Open Access Publishing and Scholarly Values,” Dan Cohen identifies four emotions or values (impartiality, passion, shame, and narcissism), and relates them to the current scholarly communication system that often prioritizes toll-access publishing over open access options. His post is aimed at changing scholars’ minds, in particular. Cohen suggests that impartiality should reign over venue choice; that is, if scholarship is of good quality that should raise it in status rather than whether or not it was…

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On “Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies, and the Future,” by Martin Paul Eve

On “Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies, and the Future,” by Martin Paul Eve

In this thorough volume, Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies, and the Future, Martin Paul Eve introduces readers to open access as a concept and practice. Where Eve’s study differs from other major open access books, like Peter Suber’s Open Access, is in his specific focus on the humanities. Open access is often discussed in relation to the sciences only. This is for a few reasons, including that the earliest, largest-scale open access publishing movement started in physics; open…

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On “In Defense of Open Access: Or, Why I Stopped Worrying and Started an OA Journal,” by Megan Lowe

On “In Defense of Open Access: Or, Why I Stopped Worrying and Started an OA Journal,” by Megan Lowe

In the article “In Defense of Open Access: Or, Why I Stopped Worrying and Started an OA Journal,” Megan Lowe describes Codex, an open access (OA) journal that she edits. Lowe frames the Codex summary within a larger framework of the critique of OA publishing as not being rigorous enough (especially in a 2013 study done by John Bohannon where he criticizes peer review in OA publications). By contrast, Lowe argues that peer review issues are not endemic only to…

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On “The Future of The Monograph in the Digital Era: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,” by Michael A. Elliott

On “The Future of The Monograph in the Digital Era: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,” by Michael A. Elliott

The majority of conversations around open access scholarly communication centre on the academic article as the research output in question. This is the case for a variety of reasons:  there are many more academic articles published annually than monographs or other research output; articles are the units of the serial crisis; the transition from toll access to OA seems most feasible with articles because of relatively low production costs, etc. In “The Future of The Monograph in the Digital Era:…

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