Open Access in scholarly communication

Open Access (OA) has come along way since the idea was formalised in 2002 as the Budapest Open Access Initiative.  It has since become the catch call for scholarly communication, providing an ideal tool in the dissemination of research results and publications far and wide.

Since it's inception, there are many models of implementing OA - gold, hybrid, delayed and green.  Green OA is the preferred, at least from this Repository Manager's point of view, however I fully appreciate that some researchers do not want a less than perfect version of their work out on display to the world.  This is where the Gold/Hybrid/Delayed route comes into play - still all very legitimate OA options.

No matter which OA method is chosen, the most important thing is that research results are made available to anyone that is interested, regardless of access to subscription library databases, and that universities and other research institutions recognise the importance in providing the infrastructure and the means to make this research accessible.

(Based on the article by Mohammad Reza Ghane (2014) Open Access Policy. International Journal of Information Science and Management)

Impact of research on society

As I experiment in the sketch noting world, I use as my test topic an excellent article from academics at Charles Stuart University.

Societal impact has come under intense discussion lately in Australia as the Government prepares to trial an Assessment and Impact Framework from 2018, with a pilot to be run in 2017.  This will be the first time that institutions nationwide will be involved in an assessment of this nature, which is touted to be along the lines of the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF).

But what is societal impact?  According to the Australian Research Council (ARC), impact is

"the demonstrable contribution that research makes to the economy, society, culture, national security, public policy or service, health, the environment, or quality of life, beyond contributions to academia" (ARC Research Impact Principles and Framework).

This has started many conversations by worried university administrators as to how such impact can be measured.

This is where this article, and my naive efforts at sketch noting, helps us to understand.  Bracing for Impact: The role of information science in supporting societal impact, by Lisa Given, Wade Kelly and Rebekah Willson, was presented at the ASIST 2015 Annual Meeting held in the United States.