Fortnightly Mailing

MOOCs and Open Access: parallel reactions

In Your Massively Open Offline College Is Broken Clay Shirky eloquently counters Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College, a no holds barred attack on MOOCs and their proponents by journalist Maria Bustillos.

I agree with Shirky's line in the excerpt below, though I wonder if, as someone who can more or less name his price as a public speaker, Shirky is being a bit disingenuous getting down amongst the academics with his "us", "my peers", and "we".

But setting that aside (and I do not grudge Shirky his success) what is very striking about the reaction of academics to MOOCs is its similarity to some of the reactions in the UK [353 page PDF on House of Lords web site] to the pressure from Government and the funders to move scholarly publishing to an Open Access model.

The competition from upstart organizations will make things worse for many of us. (I like the experiments we’ve got going at NYU, but I don’t fantasize that we'll be unscathed.) After two decades of watching, though, I also know that that’s how these changes go. No industry has ever organized an orderly sharing of power with newcomers, no matter how interesting or valuable their ideas are, unless under mortal threat.

Instead, like every threatened profession, I see my peers arguing that we, uniquely, deserve a permanent bulwark against insurgents, that we must be left in charge of our destiny, or society will suffer the consequences. Even the record store clerks tried that argument, back in the day. In the academy, we have a lot of good ideas and a lot of practice at making people smarter, but it’s not obvious that we have the best ideas, and it is obvious that we don’t have all the ideas. For us to behave as if we have—or should have—a monopoly on educating adults is just ridiculous.

Afterthoughts

1. In the case of scholarly publishing, the O'Reilly funded PeerJ is one of the upstarts to watch.

2. In the UK it is in further education colleges (which generally do not have lecture theatres) where degree-level students are given the most individualised attention.

From the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Open Access

[16 January 2013. With thanks to Mike Taylor for a helpful comment about timings and the availability of a Windows Media Player version of the recording. I've reflected this with small revisions below.]

Here is a video of today's session (Silverlight-based, but there is also a Windows Media Player version) of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee Inquiry into Open Access with Dame Janet Finch, who gave evidence for just under an hour from 11.40. (In Silverlight the time is shown in the bottom righ of the screen; in the Windows Media Player version I believe you have to slide to 57 minutes 55 seconds in.)

According to my notes, the Chair John Krebs says in his introduction:

“We are not here to question the whole Open Access agenda. We take that as a given. We are not questioning the recommendations of the report. We are very much focused on the current plans for implementation and on the concerns that have been raised with us by various stake-holders which you allude to in your written evidence.”

During the session 4 or 5 members of the committee in addition to John Krebs questioned Janet Finch. Those whose names I noted were Martin Rees, Margaret Sharp, Alec Broers and Robert Winston. All seemed variously well informed, not least Martin Rees who looks to be aware of the concerns of Humanities and Social Sciences societies.

Janet Finch gave a confident and calm account of the work of the committee that produced the Finch Report; and the effect of cross-questioning by knowledgeable and research-experienced members of the committee served to clarify and open up the thinking behind the Finch Report pretty well.

The full session on 29 January, when Research Councils UK, the Higher Education Funding Council, and Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts will give evidence, should be interesting (if you are interested in Open Access). Whatever the Committee recommends, the transcript of today's session (due next week?), along with the written evidence that is submitted (including Janet Finch's) will be worth perusing.

Aaron Swartz RIP: links

Last updated 31 July 2013. Most recent.

Here are some links to responses to the sad and shocking news of Aaron Swartz's suicide. If your time is limited, then read those by Ann Marie Lipinski, Mike Bracken, Alex Stamos, Matt Stoller, Laurence Lessig, and Rafael Reif.

Official Statement from the family and partner of Aaron Swartz (part of a Remember Aaron Swartz web site, from which you can donate to GiveWell).

Alex Stamos - The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime”

Ann Marie Lipinski - Eugene Patterson and Aaron Swartz: Ghosts speaking across the page

ArchiveTeam - JSTOR Liberator - a tool rather than some writing (added 17 January 2013)

Brewster Kahle - Aaron Swartz, hero of the open world, dies

Cory Doctorow - RIP, Aaron Swartz

dana boyd - processing the loss of Aaron Swartz

David Amsden - The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Aaron Swartz - Rolling Stone (added 16 February 2013)

Dave Winer
- Online grieving
- Aaron Swartz was curious (15 January 2013)

David Weinberger
- Rest in peace, Aaron Swartz
- Aaron Swartz was not a hacker. He was a builder.
- Why the Net grieves Aaron (CNN 15 January 2013)

Economist - Aaron Swartz - with a very strong ring of truth (added 17 January 2013)

Elizabeth Day - Aaron Swartz: hacker, genius.... martyr? - (added 2 June 2013)

Eifl - Tribute to Aaron Swartz (added 17 January 2013)

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Farewell to Aaron Swartz, an extraordinary hacker and activist

Ethan Zuckerman - Remebering Aaron: activism and the effective citizen - blog post 8/11/2013

Eugene Eric Kim - Aaron Swartz (personal reflection based on meeting Swartz in 2001 at the International Semantic Web Working Symposium  - 12 January 2013)

James Grimmelmann - Aaron Swartz, Was 26

John Naughton
- Remembering Aaron Swartz
- Aaron Swartz: cannon fodder in the war against internet freedom (added 20 January 2013)

Larissa MacFarquhar - Requiem for a dream - 11 March 2013 New Yorker article (added 5 March 2013)

Lawrence Lessig - Prosecutor as bully

Matt Stoller - Aaron Swartz's Politics

Micah Sifry - Democratic Promise: Aaron Swartz, 1986-2013

Mike Bracken - Standing on the shoulders of giants - on the UK Government Digital Service web site, and referring rightly to Chris Lightfoot - 17 January 2013

Mike Masnick in Techdirt - Some Thoughts on Aaron Swartz

Quinn Norton - My Aaron Swartz, whom I loved.

Rafael Reif - 13 January 2013 email from the President of MIT announcing that he has asked Hal Abelson to "lead a thorough analysis of MIT's involvement" [PDF]; and the 26 July 2013 report itself MIT and the Prosecution of Aaron Swartz [180p PDF], by Hal Abelson, Peter Diamond, and Andrew Gross.

Tim Wu (in the New Yorker) - Everyone interesting is a felon (from the file name this looks to be the original title of the piece, which is now "How the Legal System Failed Aaron Swartz — And Us")

Will Knight - MIT Technology Review: Why Aaron Swartz's Ideas Matter - 14 January 2013

(Echoes of the similarly gifted and motivated Chris Lightfoot, who killed himself on 11 February 2007.)

With thanks to John Naughton and Andrew Adams for some of these. Stephen Downes published a longer, overlapping set of links on 14 January.

From the horses' mouths - Janet Finch and Mark Thorley speaking to research librarians about developments in UK Open Access

Last week I picked up on Stephen Curry's 15 November talk to the 2012 Research Librarians UK Conference. Below I've embedded the recordings of Janet Finch and Mark Thorley's talks a the same event. You may also be interested in Curry's own reflections on the event.

Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence - How to expand access to published research findings - 15 November 2012 talk by Janet Finch at the 2012 Research Libraries UK Conference

Going for Gold? The RCUK Policy on Access to Research Outputs - 15 November 2012 talk by Mark Thorley at the 2012 Research Libraries UK Conference

"Openness without career suicide" a plain English overview of Open Access

Slideshare of the presentation, which is also embedded below

[Updated 25/11/2012]

I enjoyed this candid witty almost samizdat^* 15 November talk by Stephen Curry at the 2012 Research Libraries UK conference. I think plenty of readers would do likewise, as much as anything else because Curry's perspectives are those of a highly visible life scientist who "came to Open Access late", mainly as a reaction to the (subsequently failed) US Research Works Act [slide 3]. Curry is mercifully unzealous, and also clear about how complicated OA issues actually are.

To my mind he gets the balance right between Gold and Green; and he understands the reasons for the differences between disciplines in their views about OA. He also talks persuasively but realistically about impact factor and the need for alternative ways of judging the quality of an article than by the prestige of the journal in which it appears. Curry's "Why we are not there yet?" points [on slide 11], and list of "Residual challenges" (slide 14) are spot-on, not least his calls for a unification of "the broad church of OA", and for openness on the profits and taxes of the publishers.

[25/11/2012 update - Janet Finch's Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence - How to expand access to published research findings and Mark Thorley's Going for Gold? The RCUK Policy on Access to Research Outputs are available here.]

^* it's the camera angle

Worth spreading - short narrated animation explaining Open Access

Within only a few days this impressive and incisive 8 minute explanatory animation about Open Access had had about 20,000 views. This is good going for an explanation concerning something that deserves mass attention but rarely gets dealt with in a broad enough way to get it.

The video is narrated by microbiologist Jonathan Eisen (brother of Michael Eisen, who co-founded Public Library of Science) and SPARC's Nick Shockey, and it has been elegantly animated by Panamanian Jorg Cham.

A humanities and social sciences oriented equivalent of this animation is sorely needed.

Why Open Access matters - an illuminating discussion between Peter Suber and David Weinberger

Next week is the sixth Open Access Week, the aim of which is to "help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research".

Philosopher Peter Suber has had an enormous and critical "founding" influence on the Open Access movement. Above is an 80 minute recording of the recent launch of Peter Suber's outstanding MIT Press book "Open Access", chaired/mediated by David Weinberger, also a philosopher.

If you want a steady, convincing, personal and "discussive" account of why Open Access matters, and what motivates people to push for it, your time will be well spent. (Someone mentioned that Suber has past "form" as a comedian; and did I read that Weinberger has been a joke-writer? This somehow comes through in the discussion.)