Open Scholarship

Openness as scholarly practice has many branches to explore.  

From Here

“We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back.” ~ Malala Yousafzai

Scholarship is Human

“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.” ~ Mary Shelley

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What does it mean to be an a open scholar?   Open publishing, open data, open communities, open research are all facets of open scholarship.

On this day of International Women’s Day we will pay special attention in highlighting the efforts of women in open scholarship.

Why Open Scholarship?

Our goal for this topic is to have you begin to reflect on the ‘why’ of open scholarship.  We will introduce you to people, projects, and movements towards open scholarship. Click the plus symbols to find out more. 

Open scholarship encompasses the practices involved in open access and open data and can profoundly influence how knowledge is created and shared.

Open scholarship has a global footprint, and there are many organizations an initiatives happening around the world.  Being familiar with this bigger picture of open is helpful to expand our thinking about what is possible with our own students, classes and programs. 

Special Guest

Paul Stacey

Paul Stacey is the Executive Director of the Open Education Consortium, a global network of educational institutions, individuals, and organizations that support an approach to education based on openness, including collaboration, innovation and collective ...

OER World Map

Activity – Explore the OER World Map

1. In your teams go to the OER World Map
2. Explore a project and an organization. What is the project or organization about? Is there anything that the organization or project is doing that could be applied to UdG? (15 minutes). 
3. Join another team and exchange what you discovered. Discuss which projet has the most potential application to your context.  (15 minutes)

Open Access

At it’s most fundamental Open Access is when publications are freely available online to all at no cost and with limited restrictions with regards to reuse. The unrestricted distribution of research can have profound impact for authors (as their work gets seen by more people), readers (as they can access and build on the most recent work in the field) and funders (as the work they fund has broader impact by being able to reach a wider audience).

Open Data

Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share.

The full Open Definition gives precise details as to what this means. To summarize the most important:

• Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
• Re-use and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit re-use and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
• Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, re-use and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.

Open Scholarship Tree

It is one thing to consider your own role in open scholarship, but importantly open scholarship at a more global level has impacts that extend beyond an individual.  We would like to highlight the effect of open at a larger scale.

More about Open Scholarship

• The State of OA: A large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles
• Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship
• Video: What Is Open Access? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBC
• http://whyopenresearch.org/
• OABot
  • OAbot is a tool to easily edit articles to make academic citations link open access publications. Wikipedia links to hundreds of thousands of paywalled sources. Wikipedia does not prohibit or even discourage citing paywalled sources, but at the same time there is absolutely no prohibition on surfacing open access (OA) versions right alongside those citations. Indeed, a good citation will have as much information as possible to let the reader find (and use) it in the way that is easiest for them.
• https://openaccessclinic.github.io/OA_clinic/
  • A guide to make your science 100% open access
• How Open Is It? (Spanish) https://www.plos.org/files/HowOpenIsIt_Spanish.pdf
  • (English) https://www.plos.org/files/HowOpenIsIt_English.pdf
• https://www.openlibhums.org/site/about/open-access-and-academic-publishing/
  • The Open Library of Humanities aims to build a sustainable, open access future for the humanities.
• http://thecostofknowledge.com/
  • “What all the signatories do agree on is that Elsevier is an exemplar of everything that is wrong withthe current system of commercial publication of mathematics journals, and we will no longer acquiesce toElsevier’s harvesting of the value of our and our colleagues’ work.”
• https://www.dimensions.ai/
  • “Whereas previous tools and datasets have focused mostly on publications and citations, Dimensions takes a different approach: by integrating funded grants, publications and citations, altmetric data, clinical trials and patents, a complete picture of the research landscape emerges; from resources entering the system, research outputs, recognition, patents reflecting the commercial trajectory and the translation of medical research into treatments.”
• https://openresearchcentral.org/
  • “Researchers who wish to publish their research outputs without restrictions and engage in scholarly debate through a formal peer-review process can submit for publication via Open Research Central.”
• http://journals.plos.org/plosone/browse/mexico
  • PLOS One open access publications from Mexico
• The Benefits of Open Access Journals
  • “PLOS was founded in 2001 as a nonprofit Open Access publisher, innovator and advocacy organization with a mission to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication.”
• Open Access in Mexico: Reforms and additions to the law
• Open Science
  • “Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods.”
• Making Your Data Open: A Guide
  • Open Data Commons exists to provide legal solutions for open data.
• The Open Data Handbook
  • This handbook discusses the legal, social and technical aspects of open data. It can be used by anyone but is especially designed for those seeking to open up data. It discusses the why, what and how of open data – why to go open, what open is, and the how to ‘open’ data.
• The Data Journalism Handbook
  • “Downloaded over 150,000 times, the Data Journalism Handbook is one of the world’s leading journalism resources, used by students, researchers and practitioners learning about the state of the ever-evolving field of data journalism.”

Open Publishing Activities

Open Access Activism

"In our push for open access, we must recognize that those pushing for institutional policies are exhibiting one form of activism. There are many other open access activists who are exposing kindred faults in the system, and we must recognize and fix those too." Open Access Isn't Just About Open Access

Exploring Open Data Visualization

Most open data repositories publish their data sets in large, downloadable files for analysis. Data visualization approaches can offer insights into complex data sets not readily apparent using other data analysis methods.

Open Scholarship

After completing the activities for this topic, in your workgroup, develop an idea that you propose for UDG to advance and expand the concepts involved in open scholarship. Add these to the Accumalador

Add Your Idea