Open Access | Frances Bell

Ground Zero Approaches to Open #YearofOpen

Whilst I was at the OER17 Conference, via Twitter I became aware of a minor controversy around a post by David Wiley, How Is Open Pedagogy Different? published on April 4, just before OER17. Jim Groom’s response I don’t need permission to be open attracted a lot of comments (30 at time of writing). I…

Still time to register for OER17

I am a newbie to OER conferences, and #OER16 was the first I attended. It was fun, informative and helped me move forward my ideas about Open Education. I loved it, and live blogged and blogged quite a few keynotes and sessions. If Open Education is something you do or plan to do, why not…

The Digital Library of the Unaffiliated: Workaround practices

The practical bit of this post is about my workarounds to get articles online that are behind paywalls. Scroll down a bit if you want to cut to the chase. For about 30 years off and on I was affiliated to a university, and appreciated the access to books, journals and other resources that accompanied…

Open Access and Social Media: Networking around a scholarly article

(The short version is in the last paragraph if you want to skip to there). Heterotopic communication In writing about heterotopic communication (see Foucault’s Heterotopia ), the prescient Leah Lievrouw showed that public and private can relate to strategies for engagement behaviours rather than being properties of spaces (Lievrouw 1998 ). As we communicate apparently…

Open Access is a piece for cake for Research in Learning Technology

Research in Learning Technology , the journal for the Association for Learning Technology, is going Open Access from January 2012 (with Rhona Sharpe, I am co-editor of the journal). ALT’s plans for Open Access publishing have developed over several years, and we are very keen that this move can extend the impact of the journal…

Be careful what you wish for

Peer Review Monster Gideon Burton Some say peer review of research articles is broken and needs to be changed, others that peer review needs a killer app that allows readers within a social network to vote a paper up or down. Cameron Neylon says Don’t (peer review) – the risks outweigh the…

The Paradox of Openness: The High Costs of Giving Online

The following abstract is for a Symposium that will be presented at ALT-C 2011 by Frances Bell, Cristina da Costa, Josie Fraser, Richard Hall and Helen Keegan It is considered, eclectic and interesting and we hope it will attract rich discussion before during and after ALT-C 2011. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it,…