Tag Archives: Open Access Week

Celebrate International Open Access Week

Cross-posted from the Scholarly Communications Blog.

This year’s theme for International Open Access Week (Oct. 23 – Oct. 29) is Community over Commercialization. Open Access (OA) places the value of accessible information to the public above monetary interest in knowledge dissemination. OA removes restriction from research outputs such as journal articles, books, datasets, and more. Have you ever hit a paywall in your research? Perhaps you have located the abstract for an article that sounds ideal for your project, but then you click to find a request for your credit card. Interlibrary loan is a solution for the UMass Dartmouth community in those circumstances, but what about researchers who do not have library resources available?

The free and immediate availability of academic publications online means that the research will be read and built upon by a wider and more diverse audience. With this greater exposure comes more opportunity in the academic and scientific community. This publishing model is not available for all academic research at this time, but acknowledging Open Access Week is a great way to expand awareness of OA, and to learn more.

Here are some ways to deepen your understanding of OA this week:

Open-Access-Week-2023Download

Open Education Week 2023

It’s Spring Break, and this week (March 6-10) is also the observance of Open Education, an innovative and effective approach to teaching and learning. Open Education is the practice of incorporating tools and materials that are free of financial and technical barriers in the classroom. These resources can be shared and adapted in the digital environment. Examples include free, openly licensed textbooks from Openstax or OER Commons. Here are a few ways you can explore Open Education and get involved in OER this week and beyond:

  • Panel Discussion: Using Open Educational Resources – Thursday, March 9th, 3pm – 4:30pm
    MA Department of Higher Ed and MASSPIRG will partner on this virtual event to celebrate Open Education Week. Reach out to our UMD MASSPIRG Campus organizer by email for the link to join: UMass Dartmouth – MASSPIRG Students
  • Nominate a Faculty Member for the OER Olympics! – Do you know a faculty member who uses free materials in the classroom? All currently-enrolled undergraduate students, faculty, staff, and administrators at Massachusetts state colleges and universities can nominate Massachusetts public higher education employees who have had a compelling, positive impact on open educational resources (OER) either within or outside of their institution.

For questions about the hub in OER Commons or about Open Educational Resources (OER) more generally, please contact our Scholarly Communication Librarian.

Open Access Week Featured Faculty Member: David Kagan, PhD, Physics Department

International Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2022) is a time to recognize free, accessible information online and to inspire scholars to engage in this advantageous model in scholarship and research. The term Open Access refers to scholarly information that is available digitally free of charge and without other access barriers. Some teaching and learning materials, referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER), are published online under flexible licenses called Creative Commons Licenses that allow for sharing and tailoring the information. This includes textbooks – Yes, we said FREE textbooks. Each day this week we will feature a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who uses OER in their classroom or publishes scholarly work under a Creative Commons license. Today’s UMD faculty member is an instructor who has adopted an Openstax textbook, a digital book which is completely free to students.

David Kagan is a professor of physics who has taught at UMass Dartmouth for about 10 years. The foundational concepts of physics don’t change much over time – gravity and magnetism are quite reliable – but student learning styles and modes of teaching continue to evolve. So to keep students engaged, Prof. Kagan opts for dynamic teaching resources, sometimes replacing a standard reading assignment with a video or seeking interactive ways for students to do assessment and learn the material. In class, Prof. Kagan relies heavily on content that he creates himself such as slides and notes. Like many faculty members, teaching during the pandemic accelerated Prof. Kagan’s multimodal approach because one has to get creative when trying to reach students via Zoom. Prof. Kagan uses a trusted resource from Openstax that carries a Creative Commons Attribution License v4.0, and can be shared and adapted. Students need only visit the website and download the book to have access to the required reading. This OER option is comparable in content to the textbooks by Halliday and Resnick that have historically been the cornerstones of introductory physics classes.

Kudos to Prof. Kagan for seeking cost-savings for students and a dynamic classroom experience! For more information about OpenStax textbooks, check out their website https://openstax.org/.

If you are a faculty member who wants to know more about OER, please reach out to our Scholarly Communication Librarian, Emma Wood.

Open Access Week Featured Faculty Publication: Journal of Feminist Scholarship, An Open Access Journal Founded by University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Faculty Members

International Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2022) is a time to recognize Open Access (OA), and to inspire scholars to engage in this beneficial model in scholarship and research. The term Open Access refers to scholarly information that is available digitally, free of charge, and without other access barriers. Some teaching and learning materials, referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER), are published online under flexible licenses called Creative Commons Licenses that allow for sharing and remixing. This includes textbooks – Yes, we said FREE textbooks. Each day this week we will feature a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who uses OER in their classroom or publishes scholarly work under a Creative Commons license. Today we highlight an Open Access Journal that was founded by 3 UMD faculty members, Catherine Villanueva Gardner, Anna M. Klobucka, and Jeannette E. Riley,  in 2011. Anupama Arora, PhD, Professor of English & Communication, and Women’s and Gender Studies, currently serves as co-Executive Editor with Jeannette E. Riley of University of Rhode Island.

Professor Anupama Arora, PhD

The Journal of Feminist Scholarship is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes twice yearly on topics that encourage a discussion of feminist thought for the twenty-first century. In addition to its regular issues, it publishes a unique interview series with important national and international feminist artists, practitioners, or scholars of color who have reshaped their fields, such as the Chicana historian Vicki Ruiz who was awarded a 2014 National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama; and the Afro-French filmmaker Amandine Gay whose documentary, Ouvrir la Voix (Speak Up; 2016), on Black women in France, is the first of its kind. JFS has also published special issues on relevant contemporary topics such as “Education, Intersectionality, and Social Change,” “Feminist Disability Studies,” and the “Queer Archive.” Since 2011, JFS has emerged as a highly regarded platform with frequent submissions, downloads, and citations in national and international fora. The journal is an excellent resource for researching feminist scholarship across the disciplines. The Journal of Feminist Scholarship is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License which means that researchers are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles.

“From its inception, JFS has been committed to a mission to disseminate peer reviewed feminist interdisciplinary scholarship across the social sciences and humanities at no cost to authors or readers. The journal has always maintained a commitment to open-access publication, academic rigor, and political relevance, as well as privileging transnational, intersectional, and interdisciplinary orientations.” – Prof. Anupama Arora

Open Access Week Featured Faculty Member: Marilyn Ardito, Full Time Lecturer, Management & Marketing

International Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2022) is a time to recognize free, accessible information online and to inspire scholars to engage in this advantageous model in scholarship and research. The term Open Access refers to scholarly information that is available digitally free of charge and without other access barriers. Some teaching and learning materials, referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER), are published online under flexible licenses called Creative Commons Licenses that allow for sharing and tailoring the information. This includes textbooks – Yes, we said FREE textbooks. Each day this week we will feature a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who uses OER in their classroom or publishes scholarly work under a Creative Commons license. Today’s UMD faculty member is an educator who uses Open Education Resources in all of her Management and Marketing classes.

Marilyn Ardito is a professor in the Charlton College of Business, and she has been with the university for about three years. Prof. Ardito does not require a traditional textbook for any of the classes she teaches. Rather she opts for free, openly licensed textbooks available through OpenStax which saves her students money and ensures that everyone has the course material on day one. Openstax is a publisher who’s mission is “to improve educational access and learning for everyone.” They accomplish this by producing material for high school and higher education that is accessible online without paywall or special credentials required for access. Prof. Ardito made the move toward adopting Open Education Resources in place of expensive textbooks in her previous teaching position at Providence College. She recognized the ethical dilemma that traditional textbook publishing creates with frequent publication of costly new editions. Further, Prof. Ardito adopted OER textbooks to disengage with textbook bias.

Open Access Week Featured Faculty Member: Elisabeth Buck, PhD, Associate Professor / Director, Writing & Multiliteracy Center, English & Communication

International Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2022) is a time to recognize Open Access (OA), and to inspire scholars to engage in this advantageous model in scholarship and research. The term Open Access refers to scholarly information that is available digitally, free of charge, and without other access barriers. Some teaching and learning materials, referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER), are published online under flexible licenses called Creative Commons Licenses that allow for sharing and remixing. This includes textbooks – Yes, we said FREE textbooks. Each day this week we will feature a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who uses OER in their classroom or publishes scholarly work under a Creative Commons license. Prof. Elisabeth Buck has experience with OER in the classroom as well as Open Access publishing.

Elisabeth Buck is a professor in the English & Communication Department, and she directs the Writing & Multiliteracy Center where UMD students receive free tutoring services. Something that students will not find in any of Prof. Buck’s courses such as ENL 352 Public Relations Writing is an expensive required textbook. Prof. Buck has made the leap to Open Educational Materials (OER), and saves students money on their bookstore bills by assigning free, openly licensed materials in her classes. In addition, she is author of a book called Open-Access, Multimodality, and Writing Center Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) which was nominated for the 2018 International Writing Centers Association Outstanding Book Award. Chapter Five of the text is available open-access. We commend Prof. Buck for her OER efforts in the classroom and in academic publishing.

UMass Dartmouth staff, faculty, and students can access the complete e-book of Open-Access, Multimodality, and Writing Center Studies using this library link. The library also retains a non-circulating print copy of this book and other faculty publications in the Archives & Special Collections – UMass Dartmouth | Claire T. Carney Library.

Open Access Week Featured Faculty Member: Shouhong Wang, Commonwealth Professor of the Charlton College of Business

International Open Access Week (October 24-30, 2022) is a time to recognize Open Access (OA), and to inspire scholars to engage in this advantageous model in scholarship and research. The term Open Access refers to scholarly information that is available digitally free of charge and without other access barriers. Some teaching and learning materials, referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER), are available for free online under flexible licenses called Creative Commons Licenses that allow for sharing and remixing. This includes textbooks – Yes, we said FREE textbooks. Each day this week we will feature a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who uses OER in their classroom or publishes scholarly work under a Creative Commons license. Today’s faculty member is a person who does both.

Shouhong Wang is a Commonwealth Professor of Decision & Information Sciences who has co-authored an open education textbook, and adopted it in his classroom for the past seven years. He has also published extensively on the challenges, strategies, and benefits of open education resources in higher education. We commend Prof. Shouhoung Wang for his contributions to the scholarly literature in open education and for the innovation that he has brought to the classroom. Take a look at some of Prof. Wang’s publications below, and if ever you need help accessing an article or traversing a paywall, please reach out to the library for assistance.