Report from the Knowledge Exchange Event: Pathways to Open Scholarship

The report on the ‘Pathways to Open Scholarship’ conference, organised by Knowledge Exchange to celebrate its 10th anniversary, contains an overview of the views that invited speakers and experts in the audience expressed on Open Scholarship developments. Open Scholarship is not yet a reality of everyday research and education. The event reported on, addressed the concept of "open scholarship" by debating issues and key challenges with the aim to identify pathways forward. Four central themes which represent crucial dimensions of open scholarship have been explored: Benefits, risks and limitations of Open Scholarship; Success as a researcher; Technology; and Publishing and publication services. The report contains views, expectations, wishes and frustrations that experts have on open scholarship, as well as new and promising initiatives and approaches. The report is a starting point for future planning of KE activity and input for a range of consultation talks with respected experts and leaders in the research community in KE countries and beyond.

Open access and soft power: Chinese voices in international scholarship

Networked digital technologies and Open Access (OA) are transforming the processes and institutions of research, knowledge creation and dissemination globally: enabling new forms of collaboration, allowing researchers to be seen and heard in new ways and reshaping relationships between stakeholders across the global academic publishing system. This article draws on Joseph Nye’s concept of ‘Soft Power’ to explore the role that OA is playing in helping to reshape academic publishing in China. It focusses on two important areas of OA development: OA journals and national-level repositories. OA is being supported at the highest levels, and there is potential for it to play an important role in increasing the status and impact of Chinese scholarship. Investments in OA also have the potential to help China to re-position itself within international copyright discourses: moving beyond criticism for failure to enforce the rights of foreign copyright owners and progressing an agenda that places greater emphasis on equality of access to the resources needed to foster innovation. However, the potential for OA to help China to build and project its soft power is being limited by the legacies of the print era, as well as the challenges of efficiently governing the national research and innovation systems.

Scholarship, Libraries, and Open Access Archiving Initiative

The resolution passed by the BU University Council approving an initiative to establish an archive of the research and scholarship produced by the faculty of the University.

Knowledge unlatched : towards an open and networked future for academic publishing

Specialist book length publications in the humanities and social sciences (including but not exclusively monographs) are experiencing a crisis. It is clear that the current publishing system is failing both the producers and users of scholarship and neglects many of the opportunities associated with networked culture.

Open access and scholarly books : Australian perspectives

This three-hour workshop tackles the crucial question of whether globally coordinated, market based approaches to funding open access monographs can support the unique needs of Australian research communities. The workshop takes place in the context of the release in August 2013 of the Book Industry Collaborative Council (BICC) report and especially the recommendations included in the chapter on scholarly book publishing in the humanities and social sciences. This workshop, with expert speakers from the BICC Committee and from across the scholarly publishing industry, will discuss the policy issues most likely to ensure that Australian scholarly communities and audiences are best served in an era of digital technology and globalisation. Australia must think globally and support developments that enhance the accessibility of publicly-funded research. Speakers will outline recent developments in scholarly monograph publishing including new Open Access initiatives and developments. Knowledge Unlatched, is one example of an attempt to create an internationally coordinated, market-based route to open access for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) monographs. Knowledge Unlatched, a not-for-profit London-based company is piloting a global library consortium approach to funding open access monographs and released its pilot program in early October with 28 titles from 13 publishers. The workshop invites discussion and debate from librarians, publishers, researchers and research funders on the role of international coordination and markets in securing a more open future for Australian HASS scholarship.

The politics of open-access publishing : M/C Journal, Public Intellectualism, and Academic Discourses of Legitimacy

This article investigates the discourses of academic legitimacy that surround the production, consumption, and accreditation of online scholarship. Using the web-based media and cultural studies journal (http://journal.media-culture.org.au) as a case study, it examines how online scholarly journals often position themselves as occupying a space between the academic and the popular and as having a functional advantage over print-based media in promoting a spirit of public intellectualism. The current research agenda of both government and academe prioritises academic research that is efficient, self-promoting, and relevant to the public. Yet, although the cost-effectiveness and public-intellectual focus of online scholarship speak to these research priorities, online journals such as M/C Journal have occupied, and continue to occupy, an unstable position in relation to the perceived academic legitimacy of their content. Although some online scholarly journals have achieved a limited form of recognition within a system of accreditation that still privileges print-based scholarship, I argue that this, nevertheless, points to the fact that traditional textual notions of legitimate academic work continue to pervade the research agenda of an academe that increasingly promotes flexible delivery of teaching and online research initiatives.

Open access to infinite content (or "in praise of law reviews")

This Article is about legal scholarly publication in a time of plenitude. It is an attempt to explain why the most pressing questions in legal scholarly publishing are about how we ensure access to an infinity of content. It explains why standard assumptions about resource scarcity in publication are wrong in general, and how the changes in the modality of publication affect legal scholarship. It talks about the economics of open access to legal material, and how this connects to a future where there is infinite content. And because student-edited law reviews fit this future better than their commercially-produced, peer-refereed cousins, this Article is, in part, a defense of the crazy-beautiful institution that is the American law review.

Sneak peek: Dance audience relationships during open rehearsals

Over the past decade there has been a surge of interest in behind-the-scenes events from mainstream dance companies and audiences alike. Online videos, open classes, open rehearsals, and backstage tours all provide insights for audiences about daily life in a dance company and how dance work is made. This article focuses on the use of open rehearsals in studio sites and investigates audience experience and relationship with dancers during these events. Applying Clare Dyson’s (2010) scales of audience engagement, I analyse two open rehearsal models that I observed as an audience participant in 2013: Friends Open Days with English National Ballet (London), and Inner Workings with Chunky Move (Melbourne). Through this analysis, open rehearsals emerge as an experience with elements reminiscent of both the traditional presentation paradigm and non-traditional presentation models. Elements such as close audience-dancer proximity, authenticity, and experiences in liminal sites, such as staircases and green rooms, present the possibility of new audience-dancer relationship within the mainstream dance company context.

Ammonia losses estimated by an open collector from urea applied to sugarcane straw

The quantification of ammonia (NH3) losses from sugarcane straw fertilized with urea can be performed with collectors that recover the NH3 in acid-treated absorbers. Thus, the use of an open NH3 collector with a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)-wrapped absorber is an interesting option since its cost is low, handling easy and microclimatic conditions irrelevant. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of an open collector for quantifying NH3-N volatilized from urea applied over the sugarcane straw. The experiment was carried out in a sugarcane field located near Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil. The NH3-N losses were estimated using a semi-open static collector calibrated with 15N (reference method) and an open collector with an absorber wrapped in PTFE film. Urea was applied to the soil surface in treatments corresponding to rates of 50, 100, 150 and 200 kg ha-1 N. Applying urea-N fertilizer on sugarcane straw resulted in losses NH3-N up to 24 % of the applied rate. The amount of volatile NH3-N measured in the open and the semi-open static collector did not differ. The effectiveness of the collection system varied non-linearly, with an average value of 58.4 % for the range of 100 to 200 kg ha-1 of urea-N. The open collector showed significant potential for use; however, further research is needed to verify the suitability of the proposed method.

Experimental model identification of open-frame underwater vehicles

Most of the works published on hydrodynamic parameter identification of open-frame underwater vehicles focus their attention almost exclusively on good coherence between simulated and measured responses, giving less importance to the determination of “actual values” for hydrodynamic parameters. To gain insight into hydrodynamic parameter experimental identification of open-frame underwater vehicles, an experimental identification procedure is proposed here to determine parameters of uncoupled and coupled models. The identification procedure includes: (i) a prior estimation of actual values of the forces/torques applied to the vehicle, (ii) identification of drag parameters from constant velocity tests and (iii) identification of inertia and coupling parameters from oscillatory tests; at this stage, the estimated values of drag parameter obtained in item (ii) are used. The procedure proposed here was used to identify the hydrodynamic parameters of LAURS—an unmanned underwater vehicle developed at the University of São Paulo. The thruster–thruster and thruster–hull interactions and the advance velocity of the vehicle are shown to have a strong impact on the efficiency of thrusters appended to open-frame underwater vehicles, especially for high advance velocities. Results of tests with excitation in 1-DOF and 3-DOF are reported and discussed, showing the feasibility of the developed procedure.

Open Access and Digital Repositories

Funded by the Library and the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, Digital Repository @ Iowa State University is a service for Iowa State's faculty, students and staff to manage, preserve and provide access to their scholarship. This presentation provides an overview of open access and introduces the repository to the Library Liaisons.

Significant Contribution of Large Particles to Optical Backscattering in the Open Ocean

The light scattering properties of oceanic particles have been suggested as an alternative index of phytoplankton biomass than chlorophyll-a concentration (chl-a), with the benefit of being less sensitive to physiological forcings (e.g., light and nutrients) that alter the intracellular pigment concentrations. The drawback of particulate scattering is that it is not unique to phytoplankton. Nevertheless, field studies have demonstrated that, to first order, the particulate beam-attenuation coefficient (c(p)) can track phytoplankton biomass. The relationship between c(p) and the particulate backscattering coefficient (b(bp)), a property retrievable from space, has not been fully evaluated, largely due to a lack of open-ocean field observations. Here, we present extensive data on inherent optical properties from the Equatorial Pacific surface waters and demonstrate a remarkable coherence in b(bp) and c(p). Coincident measurements of particle size distributions (PSDs) and optical properties of size-fractionated samples indicate that this covariance is due to both the conserved nature of the PSD and a greater contribution of phytoplankton-sized particles to b(bp) than theoretically predicted. These findings suggest that satellite-derived b(bp)could provide similar information on phytoplankton biomass in the open ocean as c(p).

A comparative study of open domain and opinion question answering systems for factual and opinionated queries

The development of the Web 2.0 led to the birth of new textual genres such as blogs, reviews or forum entries. The increasing number of such texts and the highly diverse topics they discuss make blogs a rich source for analysis. This paper presents a comparative study on open domain and opinion QA systems. A collection of opinion and mixed fact-opinion questions in English is defined and two Question Answering systems are employed to retrieve the answers to these queries. The first one is generic, while the second is specific for emotions. We comparatively evaluate and analyze the systems’ results, concluding that opinion Question Answering requires the use of specific resources and methods.

Financial regulation in the European Union: A research agenda. CES Papers - Open Forum #10, 2012

Over the past two decades, the European Union (EU) has become a central actor in financial regulation and developed complex institutions to fulfill its roles. Pre-financial crisis scholarship has provided key insights into the functioning of this institutional cobweb and its evolution over time. However, the financial crisis has highlighted four facets of EU financial regulation (EUFR) that deserve more scholarly attention than they have received so far: (1) the permissive pre-crisis consensus on the merits of financial liberalization and integration, (2) the embeddedness of financial regulation in the political economy of EU integration at large, (3) preference formation of public and private stakeholders in EUFR, and (4) the global economic and regulatory context of EUFR. This paper presents the key scholarly challenges across these four areas. Addressing them promises not only academic insights but also promotes the relevance of EUFR research for real-world policy dilemmas.