{"id":64224,"date":"2014-05-08T11:29:26","date_gmt":"2014-05-08T11:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/samanthaeslinger.wordpress.com\/?p=298"},"modified":"2014-05-08T11:29:26","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T11:29:26","slug":"uosm2008-topic-5-online-availability-of-materials-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/2014\/topic-5-2014\/2014\/05\/uosm2008-topic-5-online-availability-of-materials-77\/","title":{"rendered":"UOSM2008 Topic 5 -Online Availability of Materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:left;\"><strong>Explain the advantages and disadvantages to a content producer of making their materials freely available online<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like myself, many who will read this post will also be students themselves and so will\u00a0know the familiar frustration of reading the abstract of an academic article, deciding it would be beneficial to include in your work and then\u00a0coming up against\u00a0the payment barrier to access\u00a0the full article.\u00a0This clip brilliantly explains the systems behind the barriers to open access (OA) of materials:<\/p>\n<p><span class='embed-youtube' style='text-align:center; display: block;'><iframe class='youtube-player' type='text\/html' width='600' height='368' src='https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L5rVH1KGBCY?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;%23038;fs=1&#038;%23038;showsearch=0&#038;%23038;showinfo=1&#038;%23038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;%23038;wmode=transparent' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen='true'><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It goes on to explain the collective benefits of open access to content producers and education in order to build knowledge and catalyse progress. I agree with this somewhat humanitarian idea of reciprocity in open access, I would also argue that as well as aiding production of ideas\u00a0more available research also\u00a0leads to additional benefits such as reduced costs to researchers; as ideas\u00a0can be formulated with\u00a0greater background knowledge, less highly speculative, fruitless ideas are taken forward and funds can be used elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Some projects, such as<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jisc.ac.uk\/open-access\" >\u00a0JISC<\/a>, encouraging open access of publically funded research, though arguably privately funded research doesn&#8217;t have the same &#8216;moral&#8217; funding\u00a0obligation to make material accessible.\u00a0According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oecd.org\/gov\/budgeting\/43494478.pdf\" >a study <\/a>by\u00a0the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) two thirds of research and development carried out in\u00a0scientific and technical fields\u00a0is carried out by private industries -only 10% originates from government.<\/p>\n<p>Alexander Brown argues in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/higher-education-network\/blog\/2012\/nov\/22\/open-access-research-publishing-academics?fb=optOut\" >his article<\/a> publishers are not necessarily raking in profits as the previous clip suggests. There are new costs associated with managing the mass of digital media which is growing around 3% a year.\u00a0For example,\u00a0the increasing need for editors,\u00a0educating customers\u00a0in finding what they need and sourcing good quality content; he states outsourcing the marketing and accessibility logistics further aids scientists as it allows them to focus on research more. So,\u00a0a disadvantage of OA to a content producer would be that in order to achieve the same level of visibility that a publisher could provide they would have to sacrifice their time and resources\u00a0to do so.<\/p>\n<div data-shortcode=\"caption\" id=\"attachment_300\" style=\"width: 205px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/samanthaeslinger.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/drop-in-the-ocean.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-300 \" src=\"https:\/\/samanthaeslinger.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/05\/drop-in-the-ocean.png?w=195&#038;h=141\" alt=\"Just a drop in  the ocean?\" width=\"195\" height=\"141\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Just a drop in the ocean?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Another\u00a0possible disadvantage to the individual content producer:\u00a0does adding your work to the ever growing pool of freely available knowledge can cause content producers to feel their efforts have been curtailed?<\/p>\n<p>Literally anyone can put information online, to have work published in a distinguished journal may give the work a certain precedence as a &#8216;reliable source&#8217; (journals frequently referred to as reliable sources <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/des\/consumers\/research\/understanding_deciding.html\" >[1]<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/libguides.sou.edu\/content.php?pid=54757&amp;sid=845605\" >[2]<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/spcollege.libguides.com\/whyjournals\" >[3]<\/a>). Also, as the previous point mentions, researchers may not be able to market their work as successfully as a publisher -which will inevitably charge for access.<\/p>\n<p>So, in summary, content producers making their materials freely available online:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Advantages:<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Collective benefit in progressing knowledge<br \/>\n-aids production of new ideas from combining past research<\/li>\n<li>Collective benefit in reducing research costs -research to back up an idea as worth pursuing more easily available<\/li>\n<li>Fairness of equal access, especially with government funded research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Disadvantages:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The researchers time and resources taken to make materials OA could be better allocated to research itself<\/li>\n<li>Prestigious journal adds precedence to work which isn&#8217;t as easily achieved in OA, e.g. reliable source and well marketed<\/li>\n<li>Content producers are likely to be funded privately so may not be allowed to make the content OA, financially disadvantaged if they do so<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>  <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/gocomments\/samanthaeslinger.wordpress.com\/298\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.wordpress.com\/1.0\/comments\/samanthaeslinger.wordpress.com\/298\/\" \/><\/a> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/pixel.wp.com\/b.gif?host=samanthaeslinger.wordpress.com&#038;blog=63669756&#038;%23038;post=298&#038;%23038;subd=samanthaeslinger&#038;%23038;ref=&#038;%23038;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Explain the advantages and disadvantages to a content producer of making their materials freely available online Like myself, many who will read this post will also be students themselves and so will&nbsp;know the familiar frustration of reading the abstract of an academic article, deciding it would be beneficial to include in your work and then&nbsp;coming &hellip;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/pixel.wp.com\/b.gif?host=samanthaeslinger.wordpress.com&amp;blog=63669756&amp;post=298&amp;subd=samanthaeslinger&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\"><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1032745],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-topic-5-2014","column","threecol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64225,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64224\/revisions\/64225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2008\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}