[Open-access] Open Access resources

Sun May 25 00:53:18 UTC 2014

There are a number of Open Access resources related to Wikimedia
projects that tend (or at least attempt) to be engaging for
non-experts. That includes the Open Access File of the Day (cf.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Open_Access_File_of_the_Day )
as well as the monthly Open Access reports as part of the GLAM Newsletters (cf.
https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:This_Month_in_GLAM_Open_Access_reports
).

Some rough measure of engagement is available through tools like
http://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama2/#gid=97&month=201404 ,
which calculates the number of page views across Wikimedia pages that
contain images from a given category on Wikimedia Commons. By that
measure, materials from Open Access sources receive on the order of
one million page views per day across Wikimedia sites.

Furthermore, we are working on a system that would signal to Wikipedia
users that a reference cited on Wikipedia is openly licensed, and
whether any of the associated materials are available on Wikimedia
projects (e.g. full text on Wikisource, media on Wikimedia Commons,
and metadata on Wikidata):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Open_Access/Signalling_OA-ness
.

In all that, humanities and social sciences are not very visible, even
though we have tried to bring more such content onto Wikimedia
platforms. If anyone reading this has ideas how to improve that
situation, please share them.

One aspect that probably contributes is that, overall, HSS
publications tend to have fewer illustrations than similar
publications in more sciency fields, and in formats that are less
reuse-friendly. Those fields that explicitly deal with visual or
auditory or similar topics (e.g. art history, musicology, performing
arts) are hampered by copyright, since the scholar discussing a
painting or comic or piece of music does not normally own the
respective copyright, so they cannot easily publish any of these
materials under open licenses.

Nonetheless, here are a few examples of materials that may be of
interest to HSS scholars and that receive wide exposure across several
Wikimedia sites (and in several languages) due to their open
licensing:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chalcolithic_leather_shoe_from_Areni-1_cave.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ceramic_vessels_from_Chiapa_de_Corzo.png
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_rock_art_of_Zaglossus_-_ZooKeys-255-103-g002.jpeg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washing_Utensils_And_Vegetables.png
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Journal.pone.0028239.g011_Dhofar_Mountains_Oman.png
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mlabri.png

It may also be instructive to look at the kinds of reuses that occur
with such openly licensed materials. For Wikimedia projects, a brief
though a bit dated overview sits at
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Committee/Areas_of_interest/Open-access_policy/Request_for_Information_on_Public_Access_to_Peer-Reviewed_Scholarly_Publications_Resulting_From_Federally_Funded_Research#Additional_comments
.
Some of these reuses may well be interesting or relevant in HSS contexts.

So when looking for examples of Open Access in those fields, it may be
worthwhile to start in areas that are media- or data-intensive but not
hampered that much by copyright. One of these is the study of ancient
scripts - epigraphy - and a good overview of Open Access activities
related to that is available in the presentation by Brett Bobley from
about 31:30 till 37:00 min in the video at
http://live.worldbank.org/open-access-week-2013 (see also
http://www.digitalepigraphy.org/ ).

Other suitable areas may be field work in ethnology or linguistics,
where scholars often hold the copyright to the media and data they
analyze, or economics, much of which is based on the analysis of
publicly available data.

Cheers,

Daniel
--
http://www.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/en/institution/mitarbeiter/mietchen-daniel/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mietchen/Publications
http://okfn.org
http://wikimedia.org

On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Douglas Carnall
<dougie.carnall at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Michelle,
>
> You (and everyone else) are very welcome to help themselves to my tagged
> public bookmarks collection on open access:
>
> https://pinboard.in/u:juliusbeezer/t:openaccess
>
> Naturally it's a somewhat idiosyncratically personal collection but feel
> free to plunder. I've written a short blogpost introducing the collection
> here:
>
> http://juliusbeezer.blogspot.fr/2014/05/why-i-keep-public-bookmarks-and-where.html
>
> Regards to all,
>
> D.
>
>
>
> 2014-05-22 10:07 GMT+02:00 Michelle Brook <michelle.brook at okfn.org>:
>>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> Summary - I'm looking for engaging open access resources for non experts,
>> especially those aimed at humanities and social sciences. Can you help?
>>
>> I'm looking for open access resources which are engaging, and can help
>> convince a sceptical academic audience about why they should support open
>> access and care about academic publishing. These will go up on a couple of
>> websites, including the Open Access Working Group, and a upcoming site
>> targeted at engaging those who don't spend their life thinking about
>> scholarly publication.
>>
>> I've been looking but I keep getting stuck. Much of what I find is rather
>> dense, contains confusing language etc. I was hoping members of the working
>> group might know of further examples/ideas.
>>
>> We are looking for materials that target humanities and social scientists,
>> as well as scientists. These might be videos, flyers, posters, or slidedecks
>> for talks that have been given (with appropriate licenses). I've been
>> starting to collect these here:
>> https://docs.google.com/a/okfn.org/document/d/12aPoB2VKoF7vkWN4gEm1hDzGnYaEU-bOYak4zrazEOA/edit#
>>
>> Any ideas *really* gratefully received. I'm sure lots of people on this
>> mailing list know of resources they use when talking to academics about this
>> issue.
>>
>> I'm also looking to understand what resources haven't been created, and
>> what other gaps there are. What do people think they really could use for
>> advocacy work? Again there is space for this on the spreadsheet - or feel
>> free to ping me an email separately.
>>
>> For the time being, I'm mainly looking for resources in English. If you
>> know of any interesting non-English resources, feel free to add them, but
>> there will be a specific call for these in a few months time.
>>
>> If anyone has a problem with using Google Docs, let me know and I'll ping
>> you across a .odt version of the document.
>>
>> Best,
>> Michelle
>>
>> --
>>
>> Michelle Brook
>>
>> Science and Open Access
>>
>>  | @MLBrook
>>
>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>>
>> Empowering through Open Knowledge
>>
>> http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn  |  OKF on Facebook  |  Blog  |  Newsletter
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Douglas Carnall
> dougie.carnall at gmail.com
> http://cabinetbeezer.info
> Traduction vers l'anglais
> Rédaction de textes en anglais
> Coaching pour présentations en anglais
>
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