Veletsianos & Kimmons (2012 p. 167) locate open access and open publishing as one of the “emergent scholarly practices that espouse openness and sharing”. However, if educators do not understand the nuances of open publishing, how can they confidently use open access articles in open access educational resources (OERs)? Researchers and educators now have at their fingertips the ability to promote and share their work and access others’ work in a way that previous generations can scarcely have imagined. The discussion around OERs tends to be concerned with open learning objects, courseware, and textbooks, but “articles published in scholarly journals are often a major component of the course content in formal education” (Anderson, 2013, p. 81). Even for the committed open practitioners, the sheer range of open access publishing terms can be off-putting. Terms such as article processing charges (APCs), copyright, ownership, Green & Gold Access, user rights exist in a milieu that can at times baffle and confound all but the most adroit (Solomon & Björk, 2012). Categorisation and typologies should (in theory at least) help simplify and guide educators in making informed decisions. However, drawing on our experience as editors of a Platinum OA journal, combined with desk research, we would suggest there is still a considerable degree of confusion among scholars and researchers with regard to open access publishing, even for those who would prefer to make their outputs accessible.
Informed by the ‘Back to Basics’ theme, this interactive workshop will provide a forum which aims to inform and explore issues with regard to open publishing practices. A greater understanding of the open access publishing world will help educators make informed choices about using such resources in OERs. Moreover, it will inform them of the type of issues they will likely encounter in developing and publishing their own OERs. The principal output of the workshop will be a checklist to help educators and researchers make informed choices about using OA publishing as part of their open education practice. All materials employed by facilitators in addition to the crowd sourced outputs derived during the workshop will be made available as OERs.
The workshop will employ streaming and remote presentation & polling software in order to facilitate remote participation as well as interactive participation by f2f attendees. The use of polls serves three main purposes: (1) to ascertain attendee’s knowledge with regard to the topic (2) provide a vehicle for interactivity and involvement and (3) to provide a means of stimulating discussion.
The workshop is planned in four stages:
1. Poll/quiz aimed at ascertaining levels of knowledge with regard to OA classifications e.g. Green, Gold; copyright and licencing etc. [5 Minutes]
2. Presentation on OA classifications; copyright, licence and user right – opportunity for clarification and illustration and sharing of examples from attendees as well as facilitators. [20 Minutes]
4. Scenario based exercise (combining OA and copyright and licence issues) where attendees (individually or in groups) will reflect on and provide feedback. Additionally, the workshop will provide a portal that will allow attendees to help with the design of additional scenarios that could be used for future exercises. [15 Minutes]
5. The final stage is to produce a checklist that aims to help researchers identify the main issues with regard to OA and Licences in order to help guide their decision making. The guide will be produced in combination between the facilitators’ suggestions and the attendee’s feedback. While there is a time limit; attendees will be afforded the opportunity to feed into the process remotely until the end of OER19. [20 Minutes].
Anderson, T (2013) ‘Open access scholarly publications as OER’, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(2), pp. 81-95. Available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1531[Accessed: 17/01/2019].
Farrelly, T., Costello, E. and Murphy, T. Open access journals, who pays and what do you get? Conference Paper, ALT Conference, Manchester, 12th September, 2018. Available from: https://www.slideshare.net/tomfarrelly37/open-access-journals-who-pays-and-what-do-you-get?qid=45b76f8f-6d99-45aa-9858-b966f0239e7e&v=&b=&from_search=1 [Accessed 29/11/2018].
Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B. (2012) ‘A study of open access journals using article processing charges’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(8), pp. 1485–1495. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eoah&AN=27951114&site=pfi-live&authtype=sso&custid=s9597593[Accessed: 11/10/2018].
Veletsianos, G., & Kimmons, R. (2012). Assumptions and challenges of open scholarship. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(4), 166–189. Available at: http://dx.doi. org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i4.1313 [Accessed 12/10/2018].
Tom Farrelly posted an update in the session Gold doesn’t always glitter – An interactive workshop on Open Publishing Practices [O-09 1 year, 1 month ago
Come along and see 🙂