Elsevier withdrew their support of the Research Works Act!
Next up, consider supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act.
Opposing the Research Works Act
There is a new bill that was introduced in Congress and referred to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform called the Research Works Act. I strongly oppose this bill and welcome others to form opinions and take action (e.g. contact your representative in Congress).
Currently, all research in the U.S. funded through public dollars is required to be made available to the public – open access with no paywall to read research publications. The Research Works Act would like to introduce a paywall for the public to read all research that was publicly and privately funded. Essentially, the public would end up paying for publicly funded research twice.
To learn more about this bill, read ProPublica’s story and check out Harvard’s Open Access Project Notes on the Research Works Act (thanks, Peter Suber for the G+ share).
Social media for social scientists
Through the ABCT Couples SIG listserv, I recently learned about the LSE’s Impact of Social Sciences Project. The purpose of the project is to measure and evaluate the impact of social science research on the public. An essential part of the project is helping social scientists disseminate their work through the use of social media — check out their resource guide, which covers topics like how to leverage Twitter and podcasts for your research. Their Handbook on maximizing the impact of research on the public is also available online.
Open Classroom
Stanford is offering a number of free online classes. The Model Thinking course offered in January 2012 looks fantastic, however I registered for the Game Theory class which will begin in late February 2012.
What online classes look interesting to you? What do you think about open classrooms?
Lessig lecture
Is closed copyright necessary in the digital age? Larry Lessig takes on this topic in his CERN lecture, “Copyright isn’t just hurting creativity, it’s killing science.” What do you think?
Futurity.org
Futurity.org is a scholarly research aggregate that provides accessible summaries of research news from universities in the US, Canada, and UK. Current news is presented by topic, tags, and readers can browse by school. While scholarly articles are not always easily understood by most readers, Futurity’s editors provide clear explanations and links to the articles (which not necessarily open access). In the movement to connect interested readers with reliable science, Futurity is an essential piece of the open access movement.
Futurity www.futurity.org
Dissemination 2.0
The Research Information Network, a policy research group in the UK, has focused their attention on research dissemination in the digital age. Of interest:
- If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0 — the executive report of their findings is available at the bottom of the page in PDF.
- Social media: A guide for researchers — includes guides for using social media in research and case studies of researchers from diverse disciplines
Ciber (Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research) recently published a report on the use of social media in research, Social media and research workflow.
In a recent conversation with colleagues in psychology, we discussed the role of the web — blogs, researcher websites, web-based portfolios — in research dissemination. Some colleagues expressed concerns that websites for individual researchers, research groups, and online research dissemination communicates an undesired entrepreneurial message. The Research Information Network’s Social Media guide summarized criticisms of scholars using the web and social media as a concern for the decline of academic discussion and debate, that social media and the web are peripheral to scholarly work, and privacy concerns. Others expressed interest in leveraging the web for research dissemination, national and international professional networking, and outreach.
The intersection of research scholarship and the web, the role of the web in dissemination, and its impact on academic careers has been addressed in many forums. One example: the Chronicle of Higher Education has many entries on the pros and cons of scholarly blogging, including pieces such as Social Media Lures Academics, Scholars Who Blog, The Trouble With Blogs: Can Blogging Derail Your Career, and Academic Blogs [note: not entirely open access, subscription required for many articles]. Other examples can be found in science blogs such as Scientopia or blog aggregates such as Research Blogging or Science Blogging, which aggregates blogs from multiple languages.
My questions to researchers and non-researchers: What do you think of the intersection of research scholarship and the web? What do you think of the dissemination of research via social media? I’m curious to hear your thoughts!
An opening
The UC Berkeley Library offers a concise and compelling argument for the consideration of Open Access Publishing. Their brief cost analysis and review of the burden of the traditional publication process on universities brings into focus the state of scholarly publishing and the need for significant change. I agree with the description of this situation as a “crisis in scholarly communication” and it is exciting to see the advocacy efforts of SPARC and others in this Open Access movement.
As a student of the University of Oregon, I am delighted that the Provost has made funding support available to scholars pursuing Open Access publication.
If you are a part of an academic community, does your school provide a similar program? What are other sources of Open Access publishing support for journals that require author payments? I am interested to hear from readers who have thoughts on Open Access publishing – those who have published Open Access articles, those who read Open Access articles, and others.
new to GNU, open to Open Access
Drupal Gardens has captured my attention lately. If you want to follow along in the development, feel free to stop by. While many academics seem to rally around Joomla!, my pocket web developer recommended Drupal Gardens. I’ve been having a great time with it! The themes have social media features built in, the WYSIWYG editor is user friendly, simple views are, well, simple. So far, so good.
The project, ACCESS Resources, was an enthusiastic solution to a page limitation crunch for a book chapter my colleagues and I are writing. It is also a first step towards making my work more available, such as having a creative commons copyright and accessibility.
I’m interested in accessibility for a few reasons. Increasing access to research and information is one part of the translational research process. It is also an extension of social justice efforts toward negotiating the privilege hierarchy between those who are active members of higher education and those who are not. Accessibility in the form of Open Access publishing provides a connection between research funded with public resources with the public. It may even help promote academic freedom while maintaining the integrity of the peer-review process. I’m very curious to watch and be a part of the trajectory of the Open Access movement.
As I continue to learn more about Open Access publishing, I’ll share my thoughts. If you are new to to OA publications, here are a few of my new favorite sources: PLoS | Public Library of Science, PKP | Public Knowledge Project, and the DOAJ | Directory of Open Access Journals.