Hi All,

After this year’s Open Access Week and the CUNY IT conference, I’m finding more and more folks who are interested to both learn more about OA and have more conversations across CUNY. Are there people on this list who would like to start meeting in person and brainstorming about further actions (CUNY mandates, workshops, Open Access Week, etc.)?

Hi All,

After this year’s Open Access Week and the CUNY IT conference, I’m finding more and more folks who are interested to both learn more about OA and have more conversations across CUNY. Are there people on this list who would like to start meeting in person and brainstorming about further actions (CUNY mandates, workshops, Open Access Week, etc.)?

[Matthew K. Gold (he/him)]

Sure, I’d be interested.

[Jill Cirasella (she/her)]

Me too, needless to say! (Maura and I have an idea brewing…)

[Lee Hachadoorian]

I’m down. Academic Commons is great, but one of the things CUNY IT drove home is how much energy and knowledge transfer comes out of meeting in person. So definitely let’s get together!

[Maura A. Smale (she/her)]

+1

[Alycia Sellie (she/her/they)]

How does intersession look for all of you? Maybe we could pick a date and meet somewhere central (GC?) and make some flyers for folks who aren’t (yet) on the commons, etc.?

[Stephen Francoeur (he/him)]

I’m interested. I’m free during intersession.

[Madeline Cohen]

I am interested in meeting during intersession. Perhaps a Doodle poll with dates could be sent to those who replied?

[Madeline Cohen]

Hi Alycia, Somehow the link does’nt open to show the dates. Thanks for checking on it.

[Alycia Sellie (she/her/they)]

Oops, here’s the correct link with a few dates/suggestions: http://www.doodle.com/ytpkywm7vcyug7yz

[Marcos Wasem]

So, meeting tomorrow (Monday 9)? Seemingly it is the date that will do fro most people.

[Alycia Sellie (she/her/they)]

I would prefer if we could we postpone until the 18th–It seems that would still work for many of us?

[Lee Hachadoorian]

I am here today, also available Wed 1/18 at 3pm. Someone (Alycia?) needs to call it. Also, I don’t see a room/meeting place mentioned.

[Alycia Sellie (she/her/they)]

I think we should go ahead with 1/18 at 3pm. Sorry about the scheduling snafus–intersession is getting away from me already.

Polly has graciously reserved a space on in the GC library for our meeting (the room is located at the back of the computer lab on the lower level of the library–folks should remember to bring CUNY ID and enter on the 1st floor, then go down a level and back into the corner of the floor).

Please feel free to spread the word to other CUNY folks–I would love to have this be an open discussion where we could talk a bit of nuts and bolts about OA, free culture, etc. but also about what has (or hasn’t) been happening surrounding OA on our campuses, and actions we might take in the future to educate and mobilize.

See you all on the 18th!

[Maura A. Smale (she/her)]

Hi everyone,

We had a great meeting yesterday — check out the notes in the Docs section of the group (click the Docs link on the left navbar here).

We’re going to try and meet monthly to keep the energy and ideas moving! Our next meeting will be:

Friday February 17th, 3-5pm
@ the Mina Rees Library at the CUNY Graduate CenterRoom C196.05 on the concourse level

(the room is located at the back of the computer lab on the lower level of the library–folks should remember to bring CUNY ID and enter on the 1st floor, then go down a level and back into the corner of the floor)

Hope to see you there!
Best,
Maura

[Stephen Francoeur (he/him)]

I’m really sorry that I wasn’t able to make it yesterday. Thanks to the person who took such careful notes about the discussion. That resolution from the faculty senate at Virginia Community University that urges tenure and promotion committees to take special note of efforts to publish in OA venues is priceless. I haven’t read the resolutions and mandates that have come out from other schools. Is this a common request in those resolutions and mandates?

[Marcos Wasem]

I foresee a more heated debate on which platform to choose in order to build our digital OA repositories, whether the Academic Commons (written on top of BuddyPress), Omeka or Open Journal Systems (to name a few of the platforms currently used at the GC that we’ve discussed yesterday). The good thing is that we can have them all, and as long as they are F/LOSS we are free to install and modify them for our own purposes. I don’t agree with the criticism raised by @sklein against OJS at the meeting. In fact, since I started using it five years ago, the number of journals has multiplied and there have been installations of the platform in other CUNY campuses as well. From my point of view as a user, one of the main advantages of OJS has to do with the built-in capabilities for meta-data embedding and indexing. In the case of LLJournal, published in Spanish, Portuguese and English, its multilingual support is also critical, although this can be very specific to our Program needs. Both Omeka and OJS have an implementation of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (http://dublincore.org/metadata-basics/ ; http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/wiki/index.php/Taxonomies_and_Metadata) built in, a feature critical in an academic environment; in the case of BuddyPress, however, there still work to be done (this goes to our fellow coders). For instance, not every page at the Commons provides COinS metadata, only individual blogs can do it by enabling the proper WordPress plug-in. To expose metadata everywhere shouldn’t be big deal, but my point is that each platform is good for what it has been geared towards: OJS for peer-reviewed scholarly publishing, BuddyPress as a social network and blogging platform, Omeka seems to me that has been created with the model of a museum in mind. In my view, instead of trying to make a catch-all platform to all our academic needs, we should better integrate what already exists and is being used at CUNY.

[Jill Cirasella (she/her)]

Stephen, Virginia Commonwealth’s resolution to factor in the added value of OA is the only one I know of. There may well be other resolutions along those lines, but I don’t think it’s common. So far, most resolutions and mandates just address making materials OA, not the promotion and tenure aspects of going OA.

[Stephen Klein]

To clarify: i did not criticize OJS. I was merely re-iterating Steve brier’s comment about OJS’s need for funding and the impression of a group that I am working with of OJS’s clunkiness. Also, I am a big fan of Omeka.