Two of Canada’s leading advocates for greater access and affordability of teaching and learning materials will be at Brock Thursday, Dec. 7 to speak during a half-day event focused on Open Educational Resources (OER). Learn more.
News
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On Display: 3D Printed Artifacts for Classics 2p32
The Department of Classics and The Library Makerspace recently collaborated on an experiential learning project and all are invited to view the results. Replicas of Alexander the Great, the Pharaoh Hetshepsut, and the Venus of Willendorf are on display this week at the Thistle entrance to the Library.
The works came about as a result of Carrie Murray, Tabitha Lewis, and Jonathan Younker’s work to create a project that would bring technology into the classroom. Students in CLAS 2P32 – Introduction to Archaeology, researched and wrote proposals to choose artifacts held in major museums for 3D printing. The chosen artifacts were printed in class this week.
Following the exhibit, the artifacts will be moved to a display case in the Cypriote Museum, Department of Classics, and they will be used in upcoming courses.
Are you interested in learning more about emerging technology? Check out the Library Makerspace in ST211 during Monday to Friday drop-in hours (10 am – 4 pm). Or, take in one of their free workshops listed on Experience BU.
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On Display: Inuit Carvings from the Pelino Collection
The sculpture of Tommy Takpanie. Pelino Collection.
The Brock Library is hosting an exhibit of exquisite Inuit sculpture on loan from the private collection of Brock alumnus Joe Pelino (BSc ’91). Learn more about Pelino, his collection and his connection to Iqlauit in the Brock News.
The display runs through to December 15.
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Celebrating Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
All are welcome to visit the Map, Data & GIS Library tomorrow (November 15th), in celebration of the “science of where” with GIS. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is one of the most versatile software programs servicing the world in urban planning, transportation, natural disasters, climate change, environmental issues, marketing and politics, to name a few. GIS Day at Brock includes presentations from students entered in the ESRI Canada Scholarship Contest, Geography Jeopardy, and a very special GIS Cake among other treats.
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On Display in the Library: Night Against Procrastination
Night Against Procrastination is a fun exciting event focused on encouraging students to get started on big term assignments early. We provide workspace, professional writing staff, tutors, relaxation sessions (e.g. “Make your own stress ball), mini workshops (e.g. “Quick Guide to APA Citation”), soup, hot chocolate, popcorn, and sweet swag! Come join more than 200 students as we all gather together to get ‘er done.
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Information for users of ResearchGate
Users of ResearchGate, the scholarly social networking site, may notice that articles they’ve posted are no longer available. This may be due to legal action taken by the Coalition for Responsible Sharing – a group of major academic publishers including the American Chemical Society, Brill, Elsevier, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer. Coalition members have recently begun issuing takedown notices to ResearchGate asking the network to stop the “illicit dissemination” of articles published in their journals, saying that the publishers hold copyright to these works.
The takedown notices are the latest development in ongoing negotiations aimed at resolving publishers’ concerns with ResearchGate’s copyright violations.
While the Coalition is targeting ResearchGate, not individual authors, you may still be interested in learning more about these issues and their implications for scholarly publishing.
You may be also interested in how to share your work legally via open access platforms such as the Brock Digital Repository.
The Brock Library provides support with these issues via Liaison Librarians and others with expertise in scholarly publishing issues including Scholarly Communication Librarian Elizabeth Yates and Brock’s Legal Advisor Research and Copyright, Jordan Snel.
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Nicola Simmons wins Brock University Award for Open Access
Nicola Simmons, Assistant Professor of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies in Education, has won the first Brock University Award for Open Access.
Simmons’ dedication to freely sharing the scholarship of teaching and learning includes publishing and reviewing for open access journals as well as scholarly blogging and creating the publicly accessible Annotated Literature Database for education research.
The adjudication committee — Collections Librarian Ian Gibson, Nicole Nolan, Associate University Librarian, Research and Elizabeth Yates, Liaison/Scholarly Communication Librarian — were impressed by the high calibre of award submissions. “The breadth of Nicola’s dedication to open access made her a standout,” Yates says in a Brock News story on the award.
“Not only is she actively publishing and reviewing for open access journals, but she is also openly engaging with the teaching and learning community via scholarly blogs and websites.”
The award, announced during International Open Access Week, includes a grant of $2,500, which Simmons has donated to support the open access peer-reviewed Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
OA Week, Open Access
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Open access: let’s talk about costs
Most researchers support the principle of open access: that knowledge is a public good and should be freely shared. However, sharing freely does not always mean there are no costs involved. Publishing is expensive: funds are needed to pay for staff who produce and edit academic books and journals and for technology and infrastructure such as websites, publishing software and servers.
So if a journal is free to read, who pays for its publishing costs?
There are many business models for open access journals, including advertising sales, subsidies from disciplinary societies or institutions, institutional publisher memberships and collaborative journal purchasing. The model which attracts the most attention, however, is the use of article processing charges: journals charge authors a fee for each article they publish. These fees vary widely, ranging from a couple of hundred to several thousand dollars. About one-third of open access journals charge APCs, including journals published by major commercial firms including Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, and SpringerNature.
Article processing charges (APCs) are seen as a major barrier to open access. Researchers, particularly those who do not receive grant funding, may struggle to pay these fees. Some institutions offer grant programs to assist with APCs, but find it impossible to meet the full costs of APCs for all of their researchers.
Brock’s Library Open Access Publishing Fund was established in 2011 as an educational initiative, aimed at raising awareness of open access and helping Brock researchers who choose to publish in journals which charge APCs. Since then, the fund has distributed 27 grants of up to $2,500 each to cover APCs for Brock researchers. The Library recently collected metrics, including citations, which demonstrate the impressive reach of these open access articles.
While publishing in an open access journal is one route to open access, it’s important to note that researchers can freely share their work – for free – via online archives, such as the Brock Digital Repository. These archives are free to use and their contents are indexed n Google Scholar, making Brock scholars’ work available to everyone around the globe.
OA Week, Open Access
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Open in order to … increase access to knowledge
The idea that society is enriched by the free sharing of knowledge and that the public has the right to access taxpayer-funded research is a major motivation for open scholarship. The concept of knowledge as a public good was a main driver for researchers who drafted the original Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002:
“Removing access barriers to … (scholarly) literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.”
During this celebration of International Open Access Week, we can acknowledge that many barriers remain before those lofty goals are achieved. But the rapid growth in open access literature – now occupying at least 20% of the scholarly publishing sphere – demonstrates that researchers are increasingly embracing the principles of open access. Here at Brock, for example, a majority of faculty surveyed in 2014 agreed that their research should be freely available to all readers.
Free access is particularly important in less wealthy nations, where researchers as well as the public may not be able to afford costly subscription journals. For example, Brock University Professor Ana Sanchez prioritizes freely sharing her research on tropical diseases affecting poor residents of developing countries.
Health Sciences professor Ana Sanchez
“Because it was open, my article reflects the very same principles of my research work: knowledge should serve the people who need it the most,” Sanchez says of Soil-transmitted helminth infections and nutritional status in school-age children from rural communities in Honduras. Published in 2013 in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases – with funding support from the Library Open Access Publishing Fund – this article has attracted more than 8,300 views and 1,300 downloads.
Learn more about open access – and win a sweet prize! – on Thursday at the Open Access Fact or Fiction Prize Wheel in the Learning Commons, 11 am-12 pm.
OA Week, Open Access
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Open Access in order to … Collaborate
Research is becoming increasingly transdisciplinary and collaborative: it’s common for people located at several different institutions to partner on the same study. But varying levels of access to subscription journal literature can make it tough for everyone on the same research team to access the same articles they all need.
Open access removes those barriers so that scholarly literature is free for anyone, anywhere – thus making it easier for researchers to collaborate, wherever they are. Open access can also spark entirely new partnerships: let’s say someone just happens to find your study freely available online, realizes you share the same research interests and gets in touch to talk about working together.
Kinesiology professor Bareket Falk
Even when open access may not directly influence a research project, it continues to advance the scholarly conversation. An article that’s open is thus open for commentary – as experienced by Brock Kinesiology professor Bareket Falk, who received a grant from the Library Open Access Publishing Fund to help publish an article in the open access journal Scoliosis.
“Because it was open, it may have attracted more attention. It is difficult to tell,” said Falk. “Nevertheless, a commentary (letter to the editor) was published on the topic and we were invited to comment.”
Open Access week events continue. Don’t miss today’s live stream presentation by Canada Research Chair and copyright scholar Michael Geist @ 12:40 in ST1126.
OA Week, Open Access
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