Category Archives: oa.case.books

Open Access Monographs: Digital Scholarship as Catalyst – Digital Science

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“In an effort to take stock of the wide range of innovative practices and system-changing interventions that characterize a growing body of digital scholarly publications, Brown University and Emory University co-hosted a summit in spring 2021. The intention from the start was to call attention to the faculty-led experimentation that was taking place across a number of libraries and humanities centers, some of which already involved university presses. Shifting the focus away from tools and technology, as important as those discussions remain to the larger scholarly communications ecosystem, the summit emphasized author and audience needs and opportunities. As such, it highlighted the importance of investing in a people-centric, content-driven infrastructure.

Case studies of eight recently published or in-development OA works provided the basis for in-depth, evidence-based discussions among scholars, academic staff experts, and representatives from university presses: What models for publishing enhanced and interactive scholarly projects are emerging? What are the common challenges that remain and how do we address them? How can we encourage a shared vocabulary for these reimagined forms of humanities scholarship among the wider scholarly communications community? …”

“LEGAL EDUCATION—OPEN YOUR CASEBOOKS PLEASE: IDENTIFYING OPEN ACCESS AL” by Emma M. Wood and Misty N. Peltz-Steele

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Abstract:  Nonprofits, academic institutions, and educators have collaborated, at all academic levels, to create quality Open Educational Resources (OER) since that term was defined by UNESCO in 2002. These opensource educational materials are in the public domain and published under an open license, meaning that they can be freely copied, used, adapted, and re-shared with the public. They include not only textbooks but supplemental educational materials in various media formats. Their value is such that even federal and state legislatures are taking note and passing laws to incentivize the creation and use of OER in both secondary and higher education. Despite the momentum in academics toward the adoption of open textbooks and supplemental materials, legal academia has been slower to embrace open casebooks. By design, OER offers a great deal of flexibility for educators and the promise of cost savings for academic institutions and students. This paper examines the modern history of casebooks and the OER movement, as well as the various OER platforms ideally suited to create open content for law courses. The authors posit that a greater understanding of OER will give law professors and students a wider range of choice and ownership in course materials.

 

 

 

An inclusionary open access textbook for Portuguese

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Abstract:  This case study describes the development of an e-textbook for first-year Portuguese classes. This pedagogical initiative strives to provide an inclusionary and open textbook for Portuguese, including the collaboration and feedback from Portuguese speakers of several economic and cultural backgrounds. In this context, ‘openness’ means listening to the language of a given community and the commitment to reproduce it in a textbook format. Inclusion of minority groups in the textbook is perceived not as ‘curiosities’, but as an integral part of the cultures being represented so that a wider range of communities and language registers (from formal to informal) is portrayed. In addition, openness applies to the articulation of gender narratives in an inclusionary format. For instance, the masculine gender is supplemented with female and other non-binary genders. Above all, this textbook is adaptive and open to all, regardless of economic background. By promoting language teaching and quality free education to all, it is our intention to contribute to a better understanding of each other and to the reduction of the divisions among communities. In this project, the authors decided to create materials in an open platform (Creative Commons CC BY), available to any student with access to the Internet. In order to be inclusive, the authors worked in partnership with language professionals and students from several institutions in the US and in Brazil. Through a collaborative effort, the authors produced an inclusive e-textbook created from the bottom up.

An inclusionary open access textbook for Portuguese

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Abstract:  This case study describes the development of an e-textbook for first-year Portuguese classes. This pedagogical initiative strives to provide an inclusionary and open textbook for Portuguese, including the collaboration and feedback from Portuguese speakers of several economic and cultural backgrounds. In this context, ‘openness’ means listening to the language of a given community and the commitment to reproduce it in a textbook format. Inclusion of minority groups in the textbook is perceived not as ‘curiosities’, but as an integral part of the cultures being represented so that a wider range of communities and language registers (from formal to informal) is portrayed. In addition, openness applies to the articulation of gender narratives in an inclusionary format. For instance, the masculine gender is supplemented with female and other non-binary genders. Above all, this textbook is adaptive and open to all, regardless of economic background. By promoting language teaching and quality free education to all, it is our intention to contribute to a better understanding of each other and to the reduction of the divisions among communities. In this project, the authors decided to create materials in an open platform (Creative Commons CC BY), available to any student with access to the Internet. In order to be inclusive, the authors worked in partnership with language professionals and students from several institutions in the US and in Brazil. Through a collaborative effort, the authors produced an inclusive e-textbook created from the bottom up.

Open access books events in New York and Boston | Open research page title | Springer Nature

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“Springer Nature is holding two free multidisciplinary events for researchers and scholarly book authors in September 2019, exploring how open access can help make the most out of research.

Topics included:

Why should academics publish an open access book?
What funding is available for open access books?
Author case studies showcasing OA book authors’ experiences …”

Guest Post: Plan S and Humanities Publishing – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Today’s post is by Jasmin Lange. Jasmin holds a PhD in book history and master’s degree in business management. Before joining Brill, she worked for Ernst Klett in Germany, Blackwell’s in the UK and for an international academic network based at the University of Edinburgh. After moving to Brill in 2011, she specialized in mergers & acquisitions, new business models, licensing, and open access. In January 2018, she was appointed Chief Publishing Officer and a member of Brill’s Executive Committee….”

Publishing Your Philosophy Book with Open Access – Daily Nous

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“I recently published an open access book with OUP, using grant money to pay for the substantial open access fee. This isn’t something OUP has done much in philosophy, and it’s certainly an experiment for me, so I want to make up my mind about whether it’s a good use of funds….”

Publishing Your Philosophy Book with Open Access – Daily Nous

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“I recently published an open access book with OUP, using grant money to pay for the substantial open access fee. This isn’t something OUP has done much in philosophy, and it’s certainly an experiment for me, so I want to make up my mind about whether it’s a good use of funds….”

Open Access for Impact: How Michael Nielsen Reached 3.5M Readers – SPARC

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“Michael Nielsen recognizes that Open Access is often argued about in the abstract.  To help the discussion move from the conceptual to the concrete, he recently decided to openly share his experience of writing an open-access book, “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html  to illustrate the positive impact and far reach of online publishing….”

michael_nielsen on Twitter: “Open access is often argued about in the abstract. I want to talk about a specific case study where I have detailed data – usage patterns for my (open access) online book/monograph “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” https://t.co/Kwy23b9E11″

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“Open access is often argued about in the abstract. I want to talk about a specific case study where I have detailed data – usage patterns for my (open access) online book/monograph “Neural Networks and Deep Learning” http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html …

Would any of this have been possible closed access? Of course some of it would have. I might have made more money. But on nearly every other metric, I suspect being open access was a 100x or more multiplier on the impact….

To sum up: open access makes material freely available to people who would otherwise never even hear about it. This amplifying effect is not small, it is enormous.  And it applies in parts of the world woefully underserved by the existing publication system….

Some additional calibration data: an editor at a major academic press tells me great sales figures for a similar technical textbook in a “hot” field are typically about 5,000-10,000 a year.  So open access has a factor 200x or more here….”

A living open book

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“This is a case study of my short book, Open Access (Suber 2012a). The book is not “enhanced” in the way that a growing number of digital academic books are enhanced. It has no graphics, no multimedia, and no interactivity beyond links, and does not offer different layers or pathways for readers at different levels. From that point of the view the book is conventional and text-oriented. But it has two other enhancements worth highlighting. First, the full text is open access, which benefits authors and readers, and sometimes also publishers. Second, the book has a companion web site of open-access updates and supplements, which benefits all three groups….”