Read your email – support DOAJ!

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Judy O'Connell

One of the resources I have always introduced to my students is the Directory of Open Access Journals. DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. Not only it is a valuable repository of information, but the Directory is also a fabulous introduction to may to the world of Open Educational Resources.

Open educational resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. It is the leading trend in distance education/open and distance learning domain as a consequence of the openness movement.

BUT – it seems that if folks don’t read their emails – then we have a problem. Well I know that some people claim email is dead – wish my email box at work knew that! Funny.

So it was a bit startling to see the media release hit my Twitter stream from DOAJ. Seriously – I read your email and support open access to information.

Copy here of the news alert included for your astonishment too!

Today DOAJ will remove approximately 3300 journals for failure to submit a valid reapplication before the communicated deadline; a deadline which was extended twice to allow more time for reapplications. This batch removal is another step in DOAJ’s two year long project to increase the value and accuracy of the information provided in it.

Here are some details about the reapplication project from its launch in January 2015 to today:

The reapplication process is a necessary step towards ensuring that all journals in DOAJ (of which there were about 10000) met the higher criteria for indexing that DOAJ launched in March 2014. The criteria were produced as a response to the maturing open access arena, the greater demands made on open access publishing by questionable journals and publishers, and to retain DOAJ’s relevancy and importance in open access publishing.
Some journals have been in DOAJ since 2003 and have never refreshed their information with us.
As of today over 5000 journals have already submitted their reapplication to us and we are busy assessing those. Many reapplications have been accepted back into DOAJ.
The contact for every journal to be removed from DOAJ was emailed at least 4 times, informing them of our intention to remove their journals if they failed to submit a reapplication by the agreed deadline.
We send email via Mailchimp and took all the necessary precautions to ensure that our emails didn’t end up in Spam, get trapped in institutional firewalls, or failed to deliver for other reasons. We used the Mailchimp authentication options to “verify” that our emails were from a genuine source.
The first email, announcing the reapplication project and inviting people to reapply, was sent out in January 2015 and went to publishers with 11 or more journals in DOAJ. The second email went out to publishers with 10 or less journals in DOAJ in June 2015.
Reminders were sent out regularly, once a month as well as announcing the deadline to our largest communities: via this blog, Twitter and Facebook.
To ensure that our emails ended up with the correct contact, we spent a considerable amount of time tidying up our contacts database: we updated at least 1000 records.

Removed journals are welcome to submit a new application to DOAJ at any time. They will be placed in the queue along with other applications. We will add a third tab to our spreadsheet ‘DOAJ: journals added and removed‘ that will list all of the journals removed.

When a journal is removed from DOAJ, any article metadata will also become unavailable. This is standard functionality. We are confident that the majority of the journals removed have never supplied article metadata to us, or have done once but haven’t sent us anything for at least 2 years.

If you use DOAJ as a data source and would like to do your own analysis of the journals indexed, download our journals CSV (https://doaj.org/csv) today before 11am BST, 12pm CEST. A copy of that spreadsheet is also available here.

Image: flickr photo shared by opensourceway under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Library Edition

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Judy O'Connell

What is on the five-year horizon for academic and research libraries? Always provocative, and worthwhile reading arrives again with the publication of the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Library Edition examines key trends, significant challenges, and important developments in technology for their impact on academic and research libraries worldwide. This publication was produced by the NMC in collaboration with University of Applied Sciences (HTW) Chur, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) Hannover, and ETH-Bibliothek Zurich. To create the report, an international body of experts from library management, education, technology, and other fields was convened as a panel. Over the course of three months, the 2015 NMC Horizon Project Library Expert Panel came to a consensus about the topics that would appear here. View the work that produced the report on the project wiki.

>Download the NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Library Edition (PDF)

Predatory journals – watch the scams

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Judy O'Connell

Part of our information literacy expertise is to engage in reading of (and contributing to) quality research. This requires that we understand exactly what ‘reputation’ is!

If you are not ‘up-to-date’ with the evil intentions of “predatory journals” you’ll get a kick out of reading this article from Science Alert and learn something along the way. From Science Alert: A study by Maggie Simpson and Edna Krabappel has been accepted by two scientific journals.

A fictional paper authored by Simpsons characters Edna Krabappel and Maggie Simpson, as well as someone called Kim Jong Fun (who we can only imagine is a slightly more approachable relative of North Korea’s leader) has just been accepted into two scientific journals.

Perhaps most troublingly, in Feburary 2014, a pair of science publishers (Springer and IEEE) retracted more than 120 papers, some of which were pure nonsense (created by the same program used for the Simpsons paper) but had made it into their published conference proceedings. Both these publishers are generally seen as reliable — showing how far the problem of substandard quality control goes.

Open Access has become a major theme of interest within the research community and those interested in dissemination of information and knowledge. In most cases, open-access publishing will occur through electronic institutional repositories – university websites where one can freely download researchers’ articles. Search engines such as Google Scholar will automatically index these articles and link them to related research. The resulting stream of freely available research will be a boon for our society and economy. But it’s not perfect, just a step in the right direction, as publishers also get ‘a say’ in what happens with published information.

Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers

The gold open-access model has given rise to a great many new online publishers. Many of these publishers are corrupt and exist only to make money off the author processing charges that are billed to authors upon acceptance of their scientific manuscripts.

Scholarly Open Access showcased the Beall List of Predatory Publishers 2014. The first includes questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. Each of these publishers has a portfolio that ranges from just a few to hundreds of individual journal titles. The second list includes individual journals that do not publish under the platform of any publisher — they are essentially independent, questionable journals.

In both cases, the recommendation is that researchers, scientists, and academics avoid doing business with these publishers and journals. Likewise, students should exercise some caution when reading and referencing these articles in their own academic learning.

Follow Scholarly Open Access for more insights into the contentious field of Open Access publishing.

For the love of ‘open’ maps

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Judy O'Connell

It’s been exactly ten years since the launch of OpenStreetMap, the largest crowd-sourced mapping project on the Internet. It took a few years for the idea of OpenStreetMap to catch on, but today, it’s among the most heavily used sources for mapping data and the project is still going strong, with new and improved data added to it every day by volunteers as well as businesses that see the value in an open project like this.

I’ve used Navfree: Free GPS Navigation on my iPhone, with free maps from over 30 countries, and it’s pretty cool.

I’ve also loved the an animation and music sources related to the first video showing edits to the open source resources that came from the original OpenStreetMap.org project during 2008. OSM 2008: A Year of Edits on vimeo not only provides a fab background video for your own mixup, but also access to some great sound tracks to support this.

OpenStreetMap started in 2004 and the rate of contributions is accelerating with four times as many people contributing to the project in 2008 compared to 2007. During the year, edits were made by some 20,000 individuals and there were bulk imports of data for many places, including the USA, India, Italy and Belarus which are clearly visible in the animation. (wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Potential_Datasources)

That original animation was produced by itoworld.com. It is licensed CC-BY-SA and can also be downloaded if you are logged-in. Various stills are available from flickr.com/groups/itomedia/pool/. The music is ‘Open Electro’ by Vincent Girès’ jamendo.com/en/artist/silence and can be downloaded from archive.org/details/silence-silence.

Here is the new animation and more information from TechCrunch For the Love of Open Mapping Data, and OSM Tenth Year Anniversary.

Wikiwand creates a little magic with Wikipedia

Posted on August 21, 2014 by Judy O'Connell

Wikipedia, a collaboratively edited, free-access Internet encyclopedia, was founded 13 years ago, yet looks almost the same today as it did when launched.I can still visualize the day I discovered Wikipedia a long time ago – back when it was new, limited, and certainly not worth using in any productive way. Now the story has changed, and wikipedia is a great place to get a quick bit of information, lead into a topic or get a definintion. I regularly hyperlink to Wikipedia in my blog posts, or in my subjects.

Here’s an example of a sentence;

This digital information ecology demands a new knowledge flow between content and digital connections.

The hyperlink leads to a simple, effective retro-styled answer!

Not a lot has changed since 2004, aesthetically at least. This is where WikiWand turns out to be a great help!

WikiWand is creating the Wikipedia of the Future. Available as an extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari, WikiWand takes seconds to install and serves up instant access to a very different ‘look and feel’ for Wikipedia each time you click a link to the site. WikiWand reels in all the elements from any Wikipedia article and presents them on its own domain with its own interface. As you can see here by comparing the entry for ‘information ecology’ from Wikipedia and Wikiwand, the latter livens the presentation. Pages also have up big, immersive cover photos, as well as more prominent thumbnails.

Here is the same page again – in Wikiwand. The The same page at wikiwand now looks like this!

WikiWand brings articles to life by featuring immersive cover photos, larger thumbnails and an advanced photo gallery. Navigation within articles has also been improved via WikiWand’s top menu bar and a fixed table of contents that allow users to easily find their way around an article, no matter where they are on the page. The personalized search bar shows results in preferred languages, featuring icons for people, companies, locations, etc. Additionally, WikiWand showcases audio, providing users with easy access to Wikipedia article narration and audio clips. By popular demand, WikiWand also includes a convenient preview when hovering over links. If you wish to use WikiWand’s interface by default, you can install the Chrome, Firefox or Safari extensions.

Wikiwand has gained some funding – let’s see how it develops. It looks pretty good to me! In the meantime, I highly recommend you give it a try. The more you use WikiWand, the more you notice little design touches that add to the overall experience.

Check it out at http://www.wikiwand.com/ Easier to view. Easier to navigate. What’s not to like?

From: Wikiwand makes Wikidpedia beautiful http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/08/19/wikiwand-makes-wikipedia-beautiful/

Image: creative commons licensed (BY-NC-SA) flickr photo by kassemmounhem: http://flickr.com/photos/122638947@N08/13889171653

J3T – Judy and Tara talk tech

Posted on November 3, 2013 by Judy O'Connell

What happens when two friends get together, and pretty much impromptu, create 10 videos in a few hours on 10 tech topics?

Tara Brabazon, Professor of Education and Head of the School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst invited me (Courses Director, School of Information Studies in the Faculty of Education, Charles Sturt University , Wagga Wagga) to test this question.

The result was the J3T Judy and Tara Talk Tech series of 10. Here we now have ten pebbles in a big digital pond – let the ripples begin….. We introduce the J3T series here for you.

You will find the full series under the following topics:

J3T1 Email and the digital glut
Judy and Tara reveal strategies to manage the information glut. How do we control email? How do we stop email controlling us?

J3T2 Information Organization
Judy and Tara talk about how to manage information. How do students avoid plagiarism? How can software help to organize our ideas and sources?

J3T3 Managing Digital Lives
Judy and Tara explore how to differentiate our digital lives. How do we separate private and professional roles, on and offline? How is our understanding of privacy transforming?

J3T4 Creating rich learning management systems
Judy and Tara probe the problems and strengths of learning management systems. They explore how to create rich, imaginative and powerful environments to enable student learning.

J3T5 Open Access Resources
Judy and Tara explore the changing nature of publishing, research and the resources available for teaching and learning. They probe open access journals and the open access ‘movement.’

J3T6 Fast Media
Judy and Tara explore the challenges of fast media, like Twitter and other microblogging services. While valuable, how do we control the speed of such applications to enable interpretation, analysis and reflection?

J3T7 Sound and Vision
Judy and Tara explore the nature of sonic and visual media. When are sound-only resources best deployed? How do we create reflection and interpretation on visual sources?

J3T8 The Google Effect
Judy and Tara probe the impact of the read-write web and the ‘flattening’ of expertise and the discrediting of experts such as teachers and librarians. Judy also demonstrates the great value of meta-tagging.

J3T9 Are books dead
Judy and Tara asks the provocative question: Are books dead? They explore the role of platforms – analogue and digital – in carrying information to specific audiences.

J3T10 The future? Mobility
Judy and Tara discuss the future of educational technology. Particularly, they focus on mobility, through mobile phones and m-learning.

PS I did not get my mowing man to text me at the right moment in ‘Managing Digital Lives’ – what a hoot!

Image: Blue Water cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Louise Docker

23 Mobile Things everyone should know

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Judy O'Connell

Holiday time or not, the time is right for you all to go and investigate 23 Mobile Things – a wonderful professionally delivered opportunity to learn a few important life-skills for working and living in online environments!

The background

I’m sure most of you have heard about 23 Things for Professional Development – an open-source program for librarians. There are many variants of this course which was first developed in 2006 by Helene Blowers and the team at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County, and now the newish kid on the block is 23 Mobile Things, a course revolving around digital and mobile technologies.

Who created this course?

“The first version of 23 mobile things was developed in Danish by Jan Holmquist. This version of the course is an international collaboration, Jan Holmquist from Guldborgsund-bibliotekerne (Denmark) and Mylee Joseph and Kathryn Barwick from the State Library of New South Wales (Australia) are working together to build the English language version of the course. You’ll learn more about this excellent initiative and how you can learn more about the potential of mobile tools at 23mobilethings http://23mobilethings.net/wpress/

In Australia we have had a few derivatives of the original 23Things program, some of which charge hard cash to participate, which is not in the spirit at all of the 23Things model that was openly shared with the global community.

So it’s a real pleasure to see this latest initiative! The course is open to anyone with a tablet or smart phone. It is a self-paced learning course, with the 23 things providing a framework of resources to look at and information to consider. It can be done at anytime; there are no time-limit or deadlines for the course.

So it’s time for you to consider getting started – jump on into the self assessment survey, then head on over to investigate The Things. Great for anyone working in libraries, and schools. This new 23MobileThings is a fantastic initiative. Thank you.

23 Mobile Things …. the list.

Twitter
Taking a photo with a mobile device: Instagram / Flickr app / Snapchat
eMail on the move
Maps and checking in
Photos + Maps + Apps: Historypin / What was there / Sepia Town
Video: YouTube and screencasts
Communicate: Skype / Google Hangout
Calendar
QR codes
Social reading: RSS / Flipboard / Feedly / Goodreads / Pocket
Augmented reality: Layar
Games: Angry Birds / Wordfeud
Online identity: FaceBook and LinkedIn
Curating: Pinterest / Scoop.it / Tumblr
Adobe ID
eBooks and eBook apps: Project Gutenberg / Kindle / Overdrive / Bluefire / Kobo, etc.
Evernote and Zotero
Productivity tools: Doodle / Remember the Milk / Hackpad / any.do / 30/30
File sharing: Dropbox
Music: last.fm / Spotify
Voice interaction and recording
eResources vendor apps
Digital storytelling

Image: 23 cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by erix!

23 Mobile Things for CPD (newprofessionalsnz.wordpress.com)

Open Access – the good, the bad and the ugly

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Judy O'Connell

Open Access has become a major theme of interest within the research community and those interested in dissemination of information and knowledge.

In the debate around Open Access, the sadness around the loss of Internet activist and programming star Aaron Swartz highlights that we have much to learn, and little time to learn it. Computer hacking Swartz was a vocal open-access campaigner, and died at the age of 26. Swartz was integral in creating RSS, and created a company that later merged with popular internet destination Reddit. However, more recently he was investigated for hacking JSTOR, the subscription-based journal service, and extracting its database with the intention for public release. For more on Swartz – and the impact of his work on free-data, and the world he leaves behind – read Lawrence Lessig’s piece “Prosecutor as Bully.” BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow also has a must-read tribute to Swartz, including information on the organization, DemandProgress, Swartz helped establish.

But what exactly is Open Access? In this video Nick Shockey and Jonathan Eisen take us through the world of open access publishing and explain just what it’s all about.

Historically, the two main types of obstacles to information discovery have been barriers of awareness, which encompass all the information we can’t access because we simply don’t know about its existence in the first place, and barriers of accessibility, which refer to the information we do know is out there but remains outside of our practical, infrastructural or legal reach. What the digital convergence has done is solve the latter, by bringing much previously inaccessible information into the public domain, made the former worse in the process, by increasing the net amount of information available to us and thus creating a wealth of information we can’t humanly be aware of due to our cognitive and temporal limitations, and added a third barrier — a barrier of motivation.

Open Access publishing is aiming to bridge the gap in higher education areas. Good research should have no boundaries. Here in Australia the Australian Research Council (ARC) is the largest funder of basic science and humanities research in Australia. So when the ARC talks, academics listen. The ARC has introduced a new open access policy for ARC funded research which takes effect from 1 January 2013. According to this new policy the ARC requires that any publications arising from an ARC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve (12) month period from the date of publication.

In most cases, this open-access publishing will occur through electronic institutional repositories – university websites where one can freely download researchers’ articles. Search engines such as Google Scholar will automatically index these articles and link them to related research. The resulting stream of freely available research will be a boon for our society and economy. But it’s not perfect, just a step in the right direction, as publishers also get ‘a say’ in what happens with published information.

Check the ARC Open Access Policy for more information. While the ARC policy will shift some power away from the publishers by putting institutional repositories centre stage, there is a counter-flow that is not in the same spirit of Open Access. Just because public domain content is online and indexed, doesn’t mean that it’s useful.

Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers

Scholarly Open Access showcased the Beall List of Predatory Publishers 2013. The first includes questionable, scholarly open-access publishers. Each of these publishers has a portfolio that ranges from just a few to hundreds of individual journal titles. The second list includes individual journals that do not publish under the platform of any publisher — they are essentially independent, questionable journals.

Follow Scholarly Open Access for more insights into the contentious field of Open Access publishing.