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What excites me about the web, and I’m sure many others is its openness and ease of access. Something that I’ve mentioned a number of times in my posts, is how the internet is an instrument for freedom of expression and overcome the hindrance of time and space. But what happens when this ‘free’ and ‘open’ side of the Internet isn’t so free and open? As a student, I think that free online content stipulates many advantages. Continue reading →

A key theme that I’ve discussed throughout my blog posts has been the ease of accessibility and communication that the internet provides. The reality of the open access of material published online, however, does come with many pros and cons and undeniably causes a stir of debate. Continue reading →

This week I’m using PowToon and ScoopIt to present my thoughts, backed up with some old-fashioned text. http://www.scoop.it/t/open-access-and-new-business-models The Open Access ethos equates to making material publicly available, so that it can be freely read and used. As highlighted last semester by Lucy Hewson, in the case of academic papers this enables academia and industry to use and build on such publications. Continue reading →

What exactly is “open access”? The video below will explain this all in a nutshell. As mentioned in the video above, open access has aims to allow anyone access to the information they need whether or not they are associated with a university/college. The breaking of these barriers are efficient in encouraging innovation and helps immensely with education. I, being a university student for instance can benefit from the free expense of open access materials. Continue reading →

One of the key points I have learned from this topic is the structure that governs the production and distribution of academic journal articles. Thanks to Bartosz’s diagram (as shown below), I finally realised how the structure loosely resembles the music industry’s methods of distributing music. Whilst journal companies take the largest cut, the author takes a small fee at the expense of having his/her article reviewed and placed within a reputable journal firm. Continue reading →

Imagine you are a content producer: an academic who wrote a research paper. You did your job, now you want to share it with the World. Below, I am going to argue for one thing: make it available on the Internet for free. The free arXiv Physics archive (1991) begun a small revolution in the scientific world. Traditionally, a scientist would submit his paper to a peer-reviewed journal. Continue reading →

Have you ever just went on Google Images, searched for an image of your choice and used it, not caring who made it, how or even when? Well I guess we are all in the same boat. There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to a content producer of making their materials freely available online. The focus of this blog post is to discuss and chew over the aforementioned issue. Below is a picture collage that I made to delineate what is been discussed [1]. Continue reading →