Recent News & Faculty Highlights

The launch of a new open access platform ushers in a new era of accessibility for the Institution

New ACM open publishing model promises to accelerate ACM's transition to full open access

After first lauding the UNESCO OER Recommendations, agreed upon by the 40th Congress, David Wiley explores the deeper and more disappointing meaning of the message. Somewhere between the release of the public version of the OER Recommendation and the version voted upon by the Congress wording was changed which muddied the waters of meaning.

A bipartisan budget agreement reached in the U.S. Congress will renew and strengthen the federal Open Textbook Pilot Grant Program with $7 million in funding for Fiscal Year 2020—a $2 million increase over previous years. Supported by advocates of higher education affordability, the renewal of this program for a third year is a resounding endorsement of the positive benefits that open textbooks can achieve for students. The funding is included in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020, part of a $1.37 trillion budget package that Congress is expected to approve this week.

The National Association of College Stores (NACS) has come out in opposition to the proposed merger of Cengage and McGraw-Hill. The story in Inside Higher Ed explains their position.

At the 40th session of the 2019 UNESCO General Conference An important step forward: Intergovernmental Expert Meeting adopts revised Draft Recommendation on Open Educational Resources by consensus – submission to UNESCO’s General Conference in November 2019. Full Article

Relating to U.S Federal Agency compliance with the current U.S. requirements for Public Access to Federally Funded Research Outputs The Report describes the current state of 19 agencies and recommendations for improved compliance

The Open Publishing Awards were announced on 16 October 2019. The awards are given in four categories; Open Content, Open Source Software, Open Publishing Models, and Open Publishing Lifetime Contribution. Information for recipients is available at https://openpublishingawards.org.

In an effort to improve access to course materials, the University of Texas at Arlington academic administration has approved the allocation of $500,000 to support the creation of OER. The UTA library will manage the projects using this funding. See the full story at https://www.uta.edu/news/news-releases/2019/10/01/library-oer.

On September 10, the Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic, UBC Vancouver announced the Open Educational Resources (OER) Fund. In alignment with UBC’s Strategic Plan, Shaping UBC's Next Century, the Office of the Provost has committed $250,000 in annual funding for the next four years to support OER resources, course enhancements and events.

"Everything we have gained by opening content and data will be under threat if we allow the enclosure of scholarly infrastructures. We propose a set of principles by which Open Infrastructures to support the research community could be run and sustained." - Geoffrey Bilder, Jennifer Lin, Cameron Neylon

Worldwide organizations are vying for open access research papers. Academics need to take action.