Everything open

I’ve been keeping out of the debate around the OpenEd conference panel (Rajiv has an excellent analysis of it, if you want to catch up), partly because it seemed a very N. American discussion, but also partly because I found it, well, boring. But then I thought about why it bored me, and that was, well, interesting (perhaps).

After being kicked out of a hotel conference room where they had participated in a three-day open-science workshop and hackathon, a group of computer scientists simply moved to an adjacent hallway. There, Heather Piwowar, Jason Priem and Cristhian Parra worked all night on software to help academics to illustrate how much of their work was freely available on the Internet. They realized how much time had passed only when they noticed hotel staff starting to prepare for breakfast.

Open access (OA) means making research publications freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using research.

Setting: the parlor of a London flat, dimly but warmly lit by flickering candles and a coal fire. Famed detective Sherlock Holmes sits in a wingback chair, wearing a smoking jacket and puffing on a briarwood pipe. He is reading a book.

Holmes’ colleague, Dr. John Watson, bursts into the room, red-faced and muttering to himself.

Holmes: Dr. Watson, you seem quite agitated this evening. Whatever is the matter?

Watson: Confound it, Holmes! Some of my colleagues and I have completed a clinical study of the effects of cocaine use on violinists, and now we wish to publish our findings. But the agency that funded our study is part of a consortium of public funders called cOAlition S, and they have imposed restrictions on how and where we may publish.

Predatory publishing has been on our radar for quite a while now, but mainstream media coverage and awareness is rapidly intensifying. We have perhaps finally reached a point where the damage being done to the credibility of research may be enough to move the stakeholders involved — universities, funders, and publishers, to finally take some action. Just what that action will be is unclear — like most of our lingering problems, if there was an easy solution, it would have happened long ago. In light of the increasing debate, I thought it worth revisiting some of our coverage of predatory publishing over the years.

Research data and publications, learning and teaching materials and software are all increasingly 'open', but what does this really mean, and where could it lead?

This report looks at the opportunities that working in the open creates, summarises support from Jisc in this area, and suggests three big ideas for what we could do the future.

In the report we look at the areas of research and education that are being transformed by open practices, and explain key concepts around licensing of publications, educational resources, data and software. We also look at some examples of where open approaches have been particularly successful, and consider the implications for institutions of moving to a culture where open practices are the default mode of operation.

Open access (OA) means making research publications freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using research.

Open access can be more than making research available to read, but also allowing others to re-use that research. For example, allowing the content to be analysed using text mining1 or reused for commercial purposes. Research data is also increasingly made available openly.

Today marks the start of another chapter on the UK’s road to open access (OA). This is the date when the UK education funding councils’ post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) OA policy comes into effect.