Time to reflect …topic 5

http://www.openaccessweek.org/page/englishhigh-resolution-1

Open Access Week 2014

This weeks’ topic was a really good topic to round off a very interesting module. If I am being honest, I had never even heard of or considered the Open Access debate, so it was great to learn more about it and in fact, to understand just how important it is not only for university students like myself, but everyone.After researching around this topic through watching instrumental videos and reading resources on OA, I collated my research on whether ‘Open Access should be available for all’ using Prezi which was new to me.

After  finally getting to grips with prezi, I set about constructing my presentation to feature and focus on the advantages and disadvantages of granting OA to everyone – I was particularly interested to read about just how expansive the advantages of OA were, such as distributing research materials to developing countries. I concluded my presentation with my own thoughts on OA, principally that it has the potential to educate and therefore empower others and it should consequently be accessible to all.

On the whole, my post received some really great comments and I enjoyed responding to the questions. I found that this week reading other students responses to OA was very  interesting and I learnt a lot from their differing angles on the topic. Anna’s PowToon for instance, educated me about the affects of Spotify ( a form of OA in the music industry), and how it had reduced piracy, and this enabled me to respond to a question posed by a student from #MANG2049 on how OA affects creative industries.

A comment from another #MANG2049 student, Elisha also challenged my views on what I had written this week as I had initially mentioned in my disadvantages of OA, that it is not economically viable. However, she rightly pointed out that publishers like Springer, fund authors in aid of OA, which obviously results in OA being much more economically viable.

The comment I received from Nam was also interesting this week, as he pointed out that I had focused on the aesthetics of my blog rather than considering the benefits and disadvantages of OA for content producers. I do agree with him, as I was intent on making an aesthetically pleasing post as it was my final blog and therefore experimented with prezi, however, I still feel that I answered the question well – whilst I did heavily focus on the benefits of OA for everyone rather than the content producer specifically. Nevertheless, I received some very positive comments from fellow students and was pleased with the debates we entered into on the topic as they furthered my knowledge on the subject.

Here are my comments this week on Pippa’s and Catherine’s blogs’.

Pippa’s blog:

http://pippaedavies.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/open-access/#comments

Catherine’s blog:

https://catherinehunt94.wordpress.com/2014/12/04/generation-open-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-open-access/comment-page-1/#comment-23


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