scholarly communication

Open Access Week: The Right to Research for Students

OA Week Right to Research CoalitionThe Right to Research Coalition asserts that access to research is a student right. They’re working to redefine the current system of scholarly communication — in which access to published research is limited to those at institutions that can afford to subscribe to expensive journals and databases. The huge expense of traditional subscription-based information is another issue driving the open access movement — why should that information be limited to those who can afford it? And it’s not cheap, either — check out the introductory animation on RRC’s homepage. You might be surprised that a subscription to ONE journal can be equal to or greater than a year’s worth of tuition at Northeastern! (See Sticker Shock: The Price of Library Resources for some price comparisons between journal subscriptions and big-ticket consumer items.) To celebrate Open Access Week, the Right to Research Coalition is presenting a webcast tonight (Thursday, 10/21) at 7:00 pm Eastern time, in conjunction with UC Berkeley. You can find out more about it here: http://www.righttoresearch.org/blog/open-access-week-2010.shtml.

Open Access Week: Video Wednesday!

OA Week There are a lot of creative people out there making videos for OA Week about why open access to information is important. Here’s one that’s short and sweet at just over a minute long: And another one, appropriately titled “Open Access 101”: But they’re not all animations… there are lots of interviews out there with faculty about why they feel open access is important. Try this one, with Professor Christoph Bartneck of the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands: There are many more videos available to enlighten and inform at http://www.openaccessweek.org/video.

Open Access Week: Data Management and Sharing

OA Week Today I’m blogging from UMass Amherst, where I came to attend three events being held as part of Open Access Week. I just came from the second event, which was a focus group with grad students on their data management needs. Data management is of increasing interest on university campuses — researchers are generating more data than ever before, and while we’re able to store more information in smaller physical spaces, it still seems like a challenge to keep up with the demand for more space. What I learned from the students at this session is that different disciplines have their own ways of managing data, and methods for doing so might differ between grad students and their advisors within a single lab or research group. They want their data to be accessible from anywhere in the world, and many find their current arrangements for managing and sharing data to be unsatisfactory. (E-mailing data to themselves or each other or transferring data on USB sticks is common.) And yes — they want more! space! One grad student estimated that his lab produces multiple terabytes of data on a weekly basis. Students are also concerned about the NSF’s new requirement that a data management plan be included in grant applications. And they would love someone to come and consult with their departments on data management. Many of them would be happy to share their raw data with other researchers. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you have other, different concerns about your data? At Snell, we are very interested in talking with you and your research colleagues, whether you are students or faculty. Attending this focus group really emphasized to me that we need to begin reaching out to researchers on campus to learn what your needs are. Feel free to get in touch with me about your data management concerns!

Welcome to Open Access Week!

"OA Open Access Week is a global event that highlights the movement to provide worldwide access to scholarly literature without the need for expensive journal subscriptions. You’ve probably heard of “think globally, act locally” in regard to environmentalism, but this way of thinking can also be applied to open access. By promoting a worldwide event like OA Week, we hope to inspire members of the Northeastern community to adopt an open access mindset where possible in their research, teaching, and campus activities. I’ll be writing a new blog post each day this week highlighting some of the work we’re doing here at Northeastern to support open access as well as the amazing things that are going on at other colleges and universities. I hope you’ll get inspired to learn more about how open access can dramatically improve the availability of information to everyone. IRis First, you probably know about IRis, our digital archive of scholarship, publishing, and preservation. (And if you don’t know about it, now’s the time to find out!) But did you know that IRis contains over 1,700 items, from doctoral dissertations to undergraduate capstone projects to Faculty Senate meeting minutes? It’s like a time capsule for the university that keeps getting more and more comprehensive each week. And all the materials in IRis are intended to be openly accessible to the entire world — so it’s not like one of those databases that asks you to sign in with your myNEU username and password from off-campus. That means we — well, you, since it’s your material in IRis — get visitors to IRis from all over the world. It’s a fantastic way to showcase your research to a global audience, and anyone at Northeastern can participate. Visitors to IRis in 2010 In a previous blog post, I highlighted the impact IRis can have — an article on Wired.com cited an undergraduate engineering capstone project, bringing the student group 300 downloads of their project in a single month!

Parents Weekend Author Talk Coming Up

To some, Parents’ Weekend is a drag… back to that restricted “my-parents-are-watching” mentality. To others, it’s a relief to have some quality family time again, to take away some of the homesickness. Regardless of if you’re happy about it or not, parents are coming in force this weekend and Northeastern has set up some awesome events, like Howie Mandel, to keep you entertained. If your folks can’t make it, you are in luck because you can still enjoy everything Northeastern has to offer this weekend! Snell Library will continue a Parents’ Weekend tradition on Saturday at 11am with another talk from our Meet The Author series. Northeastern Professor Roger Abrams talks about his book Sports Justice and how the law interacts with the business of professional sports. I for sure will not be missing this one, it should be a pretty active discussion. Check out the Facebook page for more info. You can check the full schedule of Parents’ Weekend events in PDF format here.