Interesting and heartening article reporting that Harvard faculty and students are being strongly encouraged by their Faculty Advisory Council to submit articles to open-access journals, “or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs,” in the interest of “[moving] prestige to open access”. 

Athabasca University has a strong policy of openness and great support for open publication in the form of AU Press and journals such as IRRODL. It would be nice for us to adopt this next logical step as part of our institutional policy.

The full set of recommendations, that include other actions such as withdrawal from editorial boards of closed publishers and to proactively campaign against things like bundled publication packages and other prohibitive pricing models, may be found at http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k77982&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup143448

Address of the bookmark: http://io9.com/5904601/the-wealthiest-university-on-earth-cant-afford-its-academic-journal-subscriptions

An opportunity to join over 10,000 academics (so far) protesting against publisher exploitation of a lucky advantage that puts them in a position of abusable power. This particular petition is aimed at Elsevier, whose abuses are worse than most.

Address of the bookmark: http://thecostofknowledge.com/index.php

Another decent article about the absurdity of the academic publishing model.

What surprises me is that the billionaire publishers of stuff we provide for free, review for free, edit for free and then sign away copyright (which is sometimes not even ours to give) so that we can buy back our publicly funded work at ludicrous prices, do not seem to have any defense worth making. You’d think they try harder, given they can afford to buy the best marketers and spinners in the business. Maybe the argument is impossible to make.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-publishing-monopoly-challenged

Brilliant comments on browsing vs search:

“Browsing is a method of humanistic education. It gathers not information but impressions, and refines them by brief (but longer than 29 seconds!) immersions in sound or language. Browsing is to Amazon what flaneurie is to Google Earth. It is an immediate encounter with the actual object of curiosity. The browser (no, not that one) is the flaneur in a room. Browsing is not idleness; or rather, it is active idleness—an exploring capacity, a kind of questing non-instrumental behavior. Browsing is the opposite of “search.” Search is precise, browsing is imprecise. When you search, you find what you were looking for; when you browse, you find what you were not looking for. Search corrects your knowledge, browsing corrects your ignorance. Search narrows, browsing enlarges. It does so by means of accidents, of unexpected adjacencies and improbable associations.”

Address of the bookmark: http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/99526/melody-records-amazon-flaneur

The spread of memes in Twitter may have nothing much, if anything, to do with the meme itself. The results in this paper suggest that the dynamics of the network inevitably lead to emergent patterns of meme distribution. Pretty much anything can go viral and, more significantly, it can be completely random. In real life, this seems counter intuitive, inasmuch as there must be some relevance to the content: if one tweeted a random assortment of words, or a bland statement like ‘I like popcorn’ it is hard to believe that it would go viral as rapidly as, say, the announcement of a major natural disaster or the impeachment of a president. However, it could (and does) happen, with no further explanation needed apart from ‘it is random’. That’s quite interesting.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120329/srep00335/full/srep00335.html

A nicely succinct explanation of why all learning style theories are wrong and some good thoughts on both the damage they cause and the reasons so many people believe in them. There are many much more compelling and rigorous critiques than this one, but this is an elegant summary of the central issues. 

Address of the bookmark: http://www.changemag.org/Archives/Back Issues/September-October 2010/the-myth-of-learning-full.html

Canada currently tops the list as the best place to be if you are seeking an academic career, at least in terms of salary. Good to hear, especially in these times of economic uncertainty, hiring freezes, dropping salaries (in real terms) and unseemly government interventions in research funding.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/22/new-study-analyzes-how-faculty-pay-compares-worldwide#ixzz1pr0IyRqT

Brilliant student post-human essay looking, ostensively, at rhizomatic learning and Connectivism but that is, in reality, a self referential deconstruction of academic essays and connected knowledge in which every singleword is hyperlinked. Delightful. The links  are very interestingly selected.

Address of the bookmark: http://deferralanddifference.atwebpages.com/

Useful list of TEL and distance/open learning journals from the good folk at OUNL

Handy for those researching e-learning who are seeking good places to publish their work, or simply for finding things that are worth reading in the field. 

Address of the bookmark: http://celstec.org/content/advanced-learning-technologies-journal-list

This story has been building for a while. Incredible that there might be universities and colleges with so little respect for their own students.   It is lucky that this is bad for Facebook business otherwise, in the absence of US laws that prevent such abuse, there might be nothing standing in the way of such behaviour except for common decency.

Address of the bookmark: http://mashable.com/2012/03/23/facebook-responds-employers-passwords/?utm_source=pulsenews&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29