van Gerven Oei, V. W. J., & Joy, E. A. F. (2023). Book Bans Attack the LGBTQ+ Community, Open Access Is Part of Our Defense. Punctum Books. https://doi.org/10.21428/ae6a44a6.8634dbb0
“OSC-NL is a network of coordinators of Dutch Open Science Communities (OSC). We stimulate collaboration amongst Dutch OSCs and provide input to research policy, infrastructure and services.
By the same token, OSC-NL is the Dutch national chapter of the International Network of Open Science Communities (INOSC)….”
“The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) is proud to announce the release of a comprehensive document, A National Advocacy Framework for Open Educational Resources in Canada, aimed at advancing the adoption and support of open educational resources (OER) across the country.
This framework is the result of collaborative efforts involving diverse stakeholders, including national student groups, provincial open education organizations, scholars, advocates in open education, and representatives from higher education institutions. Its purpose is to help advance and inform advocacy efforts directed at the Federal government. The ultimate goal is to provide guidance to stakeholders in advocating for federal involvement in OER.
An outcome of the work of the Open Educational Resources (OER) National Strategy – Stratégie nationale en matière de ressources éducatives libres (REL) group, a dedicated consortium of stakeholders facilitated by CARL, the Framework was written and reviewed by practitioners and experts from various backgrounds within Canada’s post-secondary system. Divided into six sections and accompanied by five appendices, the document provides a detailed examination of OER in Canadian higher education and its connection with already existing federal programs. It proposes principles to underpin federal involvement and priorities for a national approach to open education….”
“The project will:
Engage business actors including SMEs, in the OER ecosystem by demonstrating the innovation potential of open content for Human Resources development in companies.
Nurture the uptake of OER in Europe by stimulating the integration of organisational strategies for OER in business and academia, encouraging both sectors to co-learn from successful implementation practice.
Contribute to the development of a sustained and well-mapped European OER innovation area by connecting and fostering knowledge exchange across HE and business.
Organise and open cultures and communities to facilitate stakeholder collaboration and catalyse the spread of innovative practices built on OER across the European area.
Realise a new vision for technological infrastructure which develops collaboration and connection among OER repositories into a European OER Ecosystem.
Establish open, distributed and highly trusted community-based quality review strategies for the future European OER Ecosystem and involve businesses and higher education institutions in dialogues on quality and innovation through OER.”
“For Higher Education Institutions
Publish a Knowledge Equity Statement for your institution by 2025, incorporating tangible commitments aligned with the principles and objectives below.
Commit to institutional action(s) to support a sustained increase of published educational material being open and freely accessible for all to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research.
Commit to institutional action(s) to support a sustained increase of new research outputs being transparent, open and freely accessible for all, and which meet the expectations of funders.
Use openness as an explicit criteria in reaching hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. Reward and recognise open practices across both research and research-led education. This should include the importance of interdisciplinary and/or collaborative activities, and the contribution of all individuals to activities.
Define Equity, Diversity and Inclusion targets that will contribute towards open and inclusive Higher Education practices, and report annually on progress against these targets.
To create new mechanisms in and between Higher Education Institutions that allow for further widening participation and increased diversity of staff and student populations.
Review the support infrastructure for open Higher Education, and invest in the human, technical, and digital infrastructure that is needed to make open Higher Education a success.
Promote the use of open interoperability principles for any research or education software/system that you procure or develop, explicitly highlighting the option of making all or parts of content open for public consumption.
Ensure that all research data conforms to the FAIR Data Principles: ‘findable’, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable.
For Funding Agencies
Publish a statement that open dissemination of research findings is a critical component in evaluating the productivity and integrity of research.
Incorporate open research practices into assessment of funding proposals.
Incentivise the adoption of Open Research through policies, frameworks and mandates that require open access for publications, data, and other outputs, with as liberal a licence as possible for maximum reuse.
Actively manage funding schemes to support open infrastructures and open dissemination of research findings, educational resources, and underpinning data.
Explicitly define reward and recognition mechanisms for globally co-produced and co-delivered open educational resources that benefit society….”
”
Imagine a world in which human knowledge is shared more equitably. Imagine what we can achieve if we work together.
We are a collaborative community of engaged institutions, organisations and individuals across the world. We need to act intentionally to change the way we share knowledge to make the most meaningful impact, for the benefit of all.
Our goal is to tackle global challenges through opening access to ground-breaking research and research-led, challenge-focused education.
We live in a time of climate crisis, economic instability, inequity, poverty and forced population displacements. These are challenges that threaten the health and wellbeing of people all over the world.
The global Higher Education sector can tackle these challenges, but only when knowledge is shared, unhindered by barriers of cost, time or national borders.
The Knowledge Equity Network encourages collaboration over competition in a culture of equity, diversity, inclusion and openness. We believe transformational change is possible.
Working in a global partnership and by sharing the power of knowledge, we will create a fairer and better world.”
“The Fully OA blog was born out of the OASPA Interest Group of Fully OA journal organizations. The purpose of the group is to provide a platform for exchange of ideas and, where appropriate, collaboration amongst publishers that only publish Open Access. The aim of the group – and now of this blog – is to provide unity, not by creating a single voice, but by bringing together a diversity of different voices and perspectives that share one commitment: full Open Access.
Whilst we share, in essence, a single aim – a transition to fully open scientific communication – we are a broad church, with differing paths and approaches to achieving that aim.
The intention of the Fully OA blog is to shine a light on projects, people and organizations that are dedicated to Open Access and work towards removing barriers to a fully OA future. We welcome proposals for posts from anyone fully committed to OA….
“Fully” OA is defined as publishers who publish 100% of their journal content OA and are not mixed model [not hybrid] nor in any kind of transition to OA….”
“This session is presented in two parts. The first three speakers will provide evidence of serious and even criminal problems in scholarly publishing. The next three speakers will propose actions researchers, universities and funders are taking to move away from the old model and create a better system.”
“A related issue: Academic publishing thrives on the unlimited growth model. Scientists publishing more papers are a source of revenue. Type’ academic publishing racket’ into a search engine. I got 3,990,000 links. You only need to read a few to see that publishers are making big profits, are double dipping, and are not overly concerned about the damage done to the open exchange of ideas. You will see that vanity journals (e.g., Nature, Science, Cell), and the perceived need to publish within them, have changed the behavior of the science community in detrimental ways.
Who keeps for-profit journals in business? Who does free work for them as an author or referee? Who maintains the idea that if you don’t publish in vanity journals, you haven’t done quality science? People like me. There are alternative dissemination outlets that are more open, less profit-driven, and less vanity based. So why do I not use them? Maybe I justify choices by saying, ‘That’s the nature of the science game.’ Maybe in doing ‘my job,’ I lose attention to the reality that affects what I do, even if it isn’t listed on my job-to-do lists. Maybe I need to remind myself that resistance is in my control. I can stop supporting organizations that limit access to public resources for monetary gains….”
“Following the political declaration adopted at the occasion of the United Nations’ 75th anniversary in September 2020, the Secretary-General in September 2021 released his report Our Common Agenda. The Common Agenda proposes a Global Digital Compact to be agreed at the Summit of the Future in September 2024 through a technology track involving all stakeholders: governments, the United Nations system, the private sector (including tech companies), civil society, grass-roots organizations, academia, and individuals, including youth.”
How-to-Advocacy
An Open Chat Series by the OPERAS Special Interest Group (SIG) “Advocacy”
Do the humanities and social sciences need (more) advocacy?
Why is advocacy crucial for forging open scholarly communication?
What can you do for more openness in the humanities and social sciences?
OPERAS Advocacy Special Interest Group opens up Open Chat Series. With experts in advocacy and communications, researchers, publishers and other members of the social sciences and humanities community we will:
discuss current trends in open scholarly communication,
look for innovative solutions and tools for publishers, researchers and scholarly institutions,
share best practices in open digital scholarly publications.
On 29 March 2023 from 11:30-12:30 CEST we will continue our Open Chat Series “How-to-Advocacy” and start a chat with Lucy Barnes from the Open Access Books Network. Together with our guest speaker and the audience, we will discuss the advocacy goals and challenges for the social sciences and humanities community – and how to advocate for innovative Open Access book publishing. The discussion will be moderated by the OPERAS Special Interest Group “Advocacy”.
“LIBER is Europe’s largest research library network. We help our university, national, and special libraries to support world-class research. Founded in 1971 and based in The Hague, LIBER is a partner in many European projects that address barriers on the path towards Open Science. LIBER is seeking an Executive Director to coordinate and implement our strategic actions, manage the LIBER Office, and advocate for our research library members at the European level….”
“The Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation (IPLC) Digital Scholarship Affinity Group assembled the Text Data Mining Education for Advocacy (TEA) Task Force to develop shared, open, and accessible educational materials to improve researchers’ literacy on the current influx of third party vendor Text Data Mining (TDM) platforms. This task force was specifically entrusted to examine use and limitations related to the “closedness” of each platform and the direct and collateral effects of the monetization of data on these systems for transparency, collaboration, cross-platforming, and publishing. This report offers constructive criticism of the opaque box, all-or-nothing approach that vendors are taking in order to offer information to support researchers, openness, and equity. Over the course of six months, this task force produced a literature review to examine the current discourse on these emerging platforms, as well as prototype user profiles to clarify researcher needs and evaluate whether the platforms actually meet those needs. This report reflects the results of those efforts to identify exciting new opportunities for assessing emerging TDM platforms….”
“The Association for African Universities (AAU), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) are pleased to share the results of the first two of four regional policy workshops that we are hosting with Presidents, Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Deputy Vice Chancellors, Directors of Research and Libraries in African Higher Education Institutions.
The workshops aimed to increase education and awareness on the benefits of Open Science, to support development and implementation of Open Science policies, and adoption of Open Science and Open Access practices and publishing in African Higher Education Institutions
Workshop programmes included both global and local perspectives on Open Science and its adoption and implementation in institutions, including support and speakers from UNESCO, DORA, University of Leiden, NRF and the African Open Science Platform….”
“Are you new to preprints and want to learn more about their use? Have you been wondering what the buzz is about preprint review? Have you been using preprints for a while and now want to engage others? Then our Fellows program is for you!
The use of preprints in the life sciences has grown over recent years, and an important driver has been community support for preprints. At ASAPbio we recognize that outreach by community members is invaluable in driving awareness about preprints, and we want to empower existing and new community members in driving these conversations, particularly with colleagues in regions or disciplines where preprints are still not common.
To support the members of our community who want to deepen their engagement with preprints, we have since 2020 hosted the ASAPbio Fellows program. We are now thrilled to open applications for the fourth cohort of the program.
The ASAPbio Fellows program provides participants with a comprehensive overview of the preprint and preprint review landscape. The program provides opportunities to explore trends, tools and the outlook for preprints in the life sciences while connecting with others interested in preprints and science communication. The program also allows Fellows to help shape and develop ASAPbio strategic initiatives, or to take forward a project of their choice. Our 2023 Fellows program will run from April to November, and is now open for applications until 24 March 2023….”