Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

Chronicle Article:


Public access to research is "inevitable," but it will be a slog to get to it. That was the takeaway message of a panel on the role libraries can play in supporting current and future public-access moves. The panel was part of the program at the membership meeting of the Association of Research Libraries, held here yesterday and today.

"I now believe that having public access to most scholarly communications is inevitable," said David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. "Faculty are coming to understand, finally, that this has to happen if they're going to have the most scholarly opportunities to get things done."

New Journals, Free Online, Let Scholars Speak Out

Chronicle Article

He seems genial, but John Willinsky is a dangerous man.

As a leader in the development and spread of "open access" scholarly journals, which are published online and offered free, the Stanford University education professor is not just helping to transform academic publishing. He is also equipping scholars around the world with a tool to foment revolution.

"This is a strong vehicle for academic freedom," says Mr. Willinsky, whose Public Knowledge Project offers free journal-publishing software to academics. In a world where subscriptions to some medical journals can cost more than $10,000 a year, and many colleges in developing countries cannot afford more than a handful of scholarly publications, publishing enabled by this kind of tool is plugging many academics into research and discourse as never before.

Students' Push for Open Education Meets Faculty Ambivalence

Chronicle Article.

In the end, I'm not sure "ambivalence" matters in any digital, networked market. Some players may choose to ignore or pay little attention to disruptive technologies, services and models of sharing ... but that won't stop the innovators from leveraging those same ideas and creating something new that is useful to a small, but passionate (and growing) part of the market - see Clayton Christensen.

I think we're moving toward a consumer (read: student) driven higher education space in which students will decide what courses and textbooks they want, in what format, at what price, available 24/7, and they will vote with their feet. Either we provide and share affordable, quality, contextually appropriate educational materials... or students will find someone who will.

The CSU's Affordable Learning Solutions Campaign

Campus Technology:

The California State University is launching a major campaign to drive down the cost of learning resources for students while offering greater access to no- or low-cost academic content for faculty. The campaign, Affordable Learning Solutions, builds on the rapid emergence of high-quality, digitally delivered content, and on the CSU’s long history as a national leader and innovator in this area.

Open Educational Resources Center for California

From the Chronicle:

http://grou.ps/oercenter   The OER Center for California provides support for community college educators to find, create, remix, use, and share openly licensed learning content. Together, as knowledge workers, we can learn to share...and share to learn.

Free Online Courses Don't Hurt Paid Enrollment, Study Suggests

Chronicle Article:

New research takes a close look at what happened when one institution, Brigham Young University, experimented with granting free access to the content of some of its distance-education courses. The study examined the cost of opening up those materials and the impact their publication had on paid enrollments, a concern for institutions worried that giving away free courses could cannibalize their ranks of paying students.

David Wiley, a Brigham Young associate professor and open-education leader, praises Mr. Johansen's research as "the first piece of empirical work I am aware of that demonstrates clearly that a distance-learning program can simultaneously (1) provide a significant public good by publishing open courseware and (2) be revenue positive while doing it."