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Open at CUNY

A group for CUNY faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in open access publishing for scholarly communication, open educational resources, and open teaching and scholarship.

Group avatar includes the Open Access Publishing logo designed by PLoS and available on Wikipedia, and was created by Monica Berger, City Tech.

Next Meeting

  • At the meeting yesterday, we thought that it might be good for the next meetings to take two forms: a brief skillshare/presentation and then a discussion. We thought that the topic for our next meeting could be to discuss our goals with OA overall and throughout CUNY. Does anyone have suggestions for a skillshare or presentation, or would anyone be willing to lead this first educational/information sharing component of the meeting?

    I was thinking perhaps it might make the most sense for the first presentation to be a quick and dirty OA 101 presentation (something like 10 things you should know about OA, or something of the like?)… but I also think that the best topic (or the real trick) might be the one for which we have a willing presenter!

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  • Hi Alycia,

    Since you suggest that the first presentation might be an “OA 101 presentation,” I suspect you are hoping that many who attend will not be as versed in the issues as those who already belong to this group? Is it likely we can get that audience for the February meeting?

    What I am thinking is that those involved already and expecting to attend the meeting do not need a session on OA 101. I missed yesterday’s meeting so I could be off the mark. Could it be useful to use the meeting to brainstorm and develop as a group the perfect “10 things you should know about OA” that we can use and re-use as the occasions arise? Or is it sort of a challenge for one of us to come up with such a session and road test it for the group at the February meeting?

    This reminds me that Jill and I developed a pamphlet for what we call the Open Access Road Show following a successful week of OA programs at two campuses in 2010. I’ve attached the pamphlet. The thought was that the great presentations we have already given are well-worth repeating.

    Beth

    Here’s a copy of the Roadshow in a format that might transfer better.

    Attachments:
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    I’m more than happy to defer to someone else if someone else offers, but I’d be happy to give an OA 101 crash course for the attendees of the next meeting. (I’d probably do a condensed version of http://tinyurl.com/oalehman.) At yesterday’s meeting, it was clear that people have arrived at an interest in OA through different routes, and each of us has pockets of greater knowledge and pockets of lesser knowledge. The talk I could give wouldn’t address all areas of OA, but it would get everyone up to speed on various central issues and topics in OA-land.

    @Beth: great brochure. @Jill: pretty effective presentation. Thanks for sharing.

    I think it would be fabulous if you could give us the OA crash course Jill!

    If others have other ideas for other topics–maybe we could start collating ideas for future meetings?

    In response to Beth and in preparation for this group in general I have a few thoughts: After yesterday’s meeting, and after thinking about placing this group in my own life and commitments, I have a few ideas that I’m hoping folks might be interested in for this group:

    I’d like to propose that we make this group a discussion, or meetup at its core. With each meeting containing the elements I mentioned above. Perhaps working groups could splinter off to create documents like Beth mentions above or specific content to share, etc. but I would like to put out the idea that this group could remain an informal, drop-in friendly, discussion/meetup where OA issues are aired and shared but not where we feel that any other work must be done as a condition of attendance (other than convincing others to come along with us!).

    I also want to continue to propose that we leave this a leaderless group, or one where anyone can take the lead. I feel somewhat silly in saying this as I’m making all kinds of proposals, but I guess what my hope would be is that this can be an enjoyable, informative, and inspiring meetup across all departments and campuses. A place to drop in, learn something new from your colleagues and share what you know.

    But these are just my thoughts from the BC library. I’m curious about what others think, and how we can invite more of our colleagues into this conversation?

    Finally, I also have a plan to design a flyer about the Feb meeting and tack them up around the Graduate Center–one old fashioned form of getting the word out (I’ll share them here too).

    OK, I’ll plan to give the OA crash course, though I can of course step aside if someone offers something that we think would be a better first presentation.

    Also, I strongly support making the group a meetup rather than a more formal committee that organizes events and takes on work. I think there are a lot of people who want to talk about OA, might want to talk about OA, or will soon be convinced they want to talk about OA — but I think those many people will reduce to almost none if there’s an expectation of participation beyond discussion.

    I’m also in favor of having a leaderless group, so that the group’s success doesn’t depend on a single person’s energies and efforts. I think leaderless can succeed provided we do two things: meet regularly, to keep the momentum going, and schedule the next meeting at the end of each meeting, so there’s never the risk of a lull that might last forever.

    PS: I forgot to say that for work we think needs to be done (promotional efforts, etc.), making working groups sounds good to me too. Entirely volunteer, of course.

    I’d like to get a series of OA @ CUNY videos going. Jill, if you’re game, we could start with you. I’d help record your presentation, display it with your slides, (maybe kinda like these from River TV http://river-valley.tv/ or more exciting format if you’ve got an idea). Not so tough to do it with imovie i don’t think. And/or we could interview Lee about why/how he deposited his dissertation OA. If you think that’d work with the next meeting, and if Jill and Lee are willing, let’s do it.

    Polly, I’d be happy to do the video you suggest on why I deposited OA.

    In general I agree with others have said, about this being a leaderless group, with working groups taking on particular tasks. Maybe in addition to the “What are our goals?” question for the next meeting, we can try to think about what some working groups might. Two things that come to mind are (1) an Open Everything working group, that tries to work linkages to open source software, open/participatory governance, open courseware, etc.; and (2) a campus crusade working group that tries to find and support OA champions on each of the CUNY campuses.

    I love the “open everything” idea (something that would be of use to me in my own research as well as in the library), and I think that finding the crusaders/advocates is something that, if it could be achieved quickly, would help move the discussion and participation in this group along.

    Sounds like we’ve already got a full meeting agenda for the 17th–looking forward to it!

    I created a flyer for the next meeting that I plan to post at the Graduate Center this week. I uploaded a copy to the “files” section as well–please feel free to use, edit, share, post as you like!

    I’m wondering about this definition:
    “‘Open Access’ (OA) refers to works that are accessible at no cost on the internet and available for all to read, download, print, copy, share, etc.”

    Could it be strengthened to include something about research and scholarship? As written now, it seems to refer to anything on the internet, whereas the open access movement is specifically concerned about scholarly communications.

    Please feel free to edit and re-share the flyer–it was just a quick stab at getting something together to post and share!

    Further, I think that definition(s) of OA are something that we might want to discuss at the meetups: there are many definitions, and many definitions leave something to be desired.

    I hope that this group could be one place where we try to tease out some of the tenets of what OA means and how OA-licensed works might differ from standard/automatically copyrighted materials that are available on the web free of charge.

    Thanks for bringing this up, Beth–I agree that definition isn’t entirely satisfying, but I personally am still looking for one that is.
    (A few definitions worth contemplating:
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read
    http://oa.mpg.de/berlin-prozess/berliner-erklarung/)

    Ack–it was just brought to my attention that our meeting on the 17th overlaps with the Debates in the Digital Humanities event (http://www.gc.cuny.edu/News-Events-Public-Programs/Calendar/Detail?id=7580). Should we try to contain ourselves to one hour, move our meeting (maybe start an hour earlier?), or just make peace with the conflict? What do you all think?

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