Category Archives: oa.students

New Study by UMass Amherst Economist Examines the Misconceptions Doctoral Students Have of Scientific Publishing and Academic Labor Markets : UMass Amherst

Posted on by
Reply

Graduate students are excessively optimistic about both the state of the academic job market in their field and their likelihood to publish their research in top journals, according to a new study led by University of Massachusetts Amherst economist Ina Ganguli.

Using a survey of 1330 chemistry doctoral students and tracking the participants’ jobs and publications for more than four years, Ganguli and her co-authors found that while two-thirds of their study’s respondents rated their chance of publishing as lead author in the journals Nature, Science and Cell by the end of their doctoral studies as above 10% – and sometimes much higher – less than 1% of respondents actually managed to do so four years later.

Easing Into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Advisors | Collabra: Psychology | University of California Press

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  This article provides a roadmap to assist graduate students and their advisors to engage in open science practices. We suggest eight open science practices that novice graduate students could begin adopting today. The topics we cover include journal clubs, project workflow, preprints, reproducible code, data sharing, transparent writing, preregistration, and registered reports. To address concerns about not knowing how to engage in open science practices, we provide a difficulty rating of each behavior (easy, medium, difficult), present them in order of suggested adoption, and follow the format of what, why, how, and worries. We give graduate students ideas on how to approach conversations with their advisors/collaborators, ideas on how to integrate open science practices within the graduate school framework, and specific resources on how to engage with each behavior. We emphasize that engaging in open science behaviors need not be an all or nothing approach, but rather graduate students can engage with any number of the behaviors outlined.

 

Use of preprint peer review to educate and enculturate science undergraduates

Posted on by
Reply

“Key points•Undergraduate science education should include education in scholarly practices like peer review.•Authentic experiences in peer review increase science literacy and science identity.•Peer review of preprints provides a means for undergraduates to be involved in peer review that is independent of journal gate-keeping processes.”

What Rights Do Students Have To Access Books?

Posted on by
Reply

“Keeping books out of the hands of students is one way that people want to control minors’ access to information. Book censorship has steadily been on the rise, and challenges quadrupled in 2021. Couple this with the recent attack on teachers and attacks on school libraries, and it raises the question: what rights do students actually have to access books?

The first place children can access books if they are not available in their homes is in school. Books can be found in classrooms and the school library. School libraries are vitally important for access, especially for children who don’t have access to transportation to public libraries or the funds to purchase books at bookstores. The American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights article V states: “A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.” The bill of rights specifically states age as a reason patrons should not be denied access to books….”

 

» How College Students Are Improving Wikipedia

Posted on by
Reply

“Some of that information has been added by college students from New England, written as a class assignment. Wiki Education, a small nonprofit, runs a program called the Wikipedia Student Program, in which we support college and university faculty who want to assign their students to write Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework.

Why do instructors assign their students to edit Wikipedia as a course assignment? Research shows a Wikipedia assignment increases motivation for students, while providing them learning objectives like critical thinking, research, writing for a public audience, evaluating and synthesizing sources and peer review. Especially important in today’s climate of misinformation and disinformation is the critical digital media literacy skills students gain from writing for Wikipedia, where they’re asked to consider and evaluate the reliability of the sources they’re citing. In addition to the benefits to student learning outcomes, instructors are also glad to see Wikipedia’s coverage of their discipline get better. And it does get better; studies such as this and this and this have shown the quality of content students add to Wikipedia is high.

Since 2010, more than 5,100 courses have participated in the program and more than 102,000 student editors have added more than 85 million words to Wikipedia. That’s 292,000 printed pages or the equivalent of 62 volumes of a printed encyclopedia. To put that in context, the last print edition of Encyclopedia Britannica had only 32 volumes. That means Wikipedia Student Program participants have added nearly twice as much content as was in Britannica. …”

UGA Libraries’ Pilot Open Access Publishing Fund to Benefit Graduate Students

Posted on by
Reply

 

UGA Libraries has established a new fund that supports open access to knowledge while helping graduate student researchers fulfill their academic goals.

 

The pilot program provides funding for open access publication fees for graduate students whose research papers have been accepted by peer-reviewed academic journals. Those fees make research available freely online, but can be costly for students. The fund is a way for the Libraries to partner with other academic departments to enable that avenue of publication.

Dissertating in Public | hc:45003 | Humanities CORE

Posted on by
Reply

Abstract:  Kathleen Fitzpatrick analyses the sudden isolation graduate students find themselves in during the dissertation process. In the humanities, she observes, graduate students are regularly habituated into an anxiety of intellectual independence whereby sharing ideas, collaboration and publishing work in progress is to be considered suspect and potentially diminishing scholarly value. Digital scholarship, she argues, can eliminate or at least sideline such anxieties (and their untimeliness) by creating a participating public, testing ideas, interesting possible publishers early and creating a community of scholarship that, together with the support of PhD-granting institutions, endorses ‘new kinds of open work’.

SPARC Announces Knowledge Equity Seminar for LIS Students – SPARC

Posted on by
Reply

“In cooperation with the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, SPARC is sponsoring the Knowledge Equity and Justice Spring Seminar (KEJSS), an intensive learning opportunity open to graduate students in Information Studies programs that will focus on critical issues in epistemic justice relevant to Library and Information Studies.

Convened by Dr. Stacy Allison-Cassin, the seminar will take place online over three weeks from May 9-26, 2022 and will cover topics including scholarly communication, language and marginalization, Indigenous knowledge, and issues related to knowledge, citation and the Global South. The seminar will invite participants to recognize knowledge as a site for justice and consider how to put knowledge justice into practice as future information professionals. 

Seminar guest speakers will include Leslie Chan (University of Toronto Scarborough); Priyank Chandra (Faculty of Information, University of Toronto); Alan Corbiere (York University); Stefanie Haustein (uOttawa); and, Anasuya Sengupta & Adele Vrana (Whose Knowledge?). These guest lectures will be open to the community, and SPARC will provide additional information about joining each in the next month….”

Welcome to the Student Initiative for Open Science

Posted on by
Reply

“Thank you for being interested in our initiative. We are a group students that saw the need to further spread the message and practices of Open Science (OS) within the student community. In that we aim to promote information about Open Science within the student community, emphasize the relevance of OS for students and finally, try to inspire students to become as excited as we are about Open Science.

If you are new to Open Science, please see Open Science to get an introduction to open science, why it is relevant to all students and recommendations for very interesting readings, blogs, and podcasts.
Please see About Us if you want to learn more about our goals, Blogs to read about our activities and if you have any questions or would like to get involved, please send us an email. Finally, as we are organizing very exciting events such as talks, trips and debates, make sure to not miss an amazing event, by checking our agenda.”

Encouraging impacts of an Open Education Resource Degree Initiative on college students’ progress to degree | SpringerLink

Posted on by
Reply

Textbooks are traditional and useful learning resources for college students, but commercial texts books have been widely criticized for their high costs, restricted access, limited flexibility, and uninspiring learning experiences. Open Education Resources (OER) are an alternative to commercial textbooks that have the potential to increase college affordability, access, and instructional quality. The current study examined how an OER degree—or pathway of OER courses that meet the requirements for a degree program—impacted students’ progress to degree at 11 US community colleges. We conducted quasi-experimental impact studies and meta-analysis examining whether OER course enrollment was associated with differences in credit accumulation and cumulative GPA over multiple terms. Overall, we found a positive effect of OER degrees on credit accumulation and no significant difference on cumulative GPA. Taken together, these results suggest students are maintaining their GPAs despite taking more courses, on average. This suggests that students taking OER courses were making faster progress towards degrees than their peers who took no OER courses.

Open medical textbook series offers curriculum flexibility for faculty and cost savings for students | VTx | Virginia Tech

Posted on by
Reply

“Renée LeClair, Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine associate professor, remembered her frustration when she designed an integrated course for first-year medical students and couldn’t find a single textbook or resource to support the classroom experience she envisioned. Thanks to a VIVA Open Course Grant, University Libraries Open Education Initiative, LibreTexts, and Virginia Tech Publishing, she and her colleague Andrew Binks teamed up to author their own.

Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Virginia Tech Publishing, through Virginia Tech’s Open Education Initiative housed in the University Libraries, are publishing a five-volume textbook series for pre-clinical medical students that is adaptable and freely downloadable through Pressbooks and LibreTexts. This series aligns with the United States Medical Licensing Examination and is based on faculty experience and peer review….”

New student-led diamond OA journal: Rangahau Aranga: AUT Graduate Review

Posted on by
Reply

Rangahau Aranga: AUT Graduate Review is a forthcoming open access, peer-reviewed journal set up and run by and for postgraduate students at Auckland University of Technology, showcasing their research. Rangahau Aranga is being established as an initiative in coordination with AUTSA and AUT Library’s Tuwhera. 

The journal welcomes submissions from students engaged in postgraduate level study at AUT, across a range of disciplines and study areas and in multiple forms, including research articles and short form research summaries, case studies, abstracts, commentary, book reviews and creative works.  

The M?ori words Rangahou (from the verb to seek or search and the noun research) Aranga (from the verb to emerge, ensue or arise) speak to the emerging and arising voices in our academic community. The naming of this journal was agreed through a consensual process of k?rero (or conversation and consultation) with the AUT Library M?ori Engagement Group and the Office of M?ori Advancement.

In honouring the words, Rangahau Aranga seeks to centre hitherto marginalised, less visible postgraduate researchers. Submissions from M?ori and Pacific postgraduate academics are particularly welcomed. The journal will enable those at the beginning of their publication journey a unique, supportive opportunity to develop new skills, hone their academic writing skills and add to their profiles with citable, quality publication credits.  

The journal will be fully open access with content shared under Creative Commons licences, and where appropriate utilising the Local Contexts labels for indigenous research. Each item published on Aranga will be given a DOI, be indexed by CrossRef and preserved through CLOCKSS. 

Rangahau Aranga will not charge fees for submission or publication.