Open@VT

A New Issue of Virginia Libraries on “Exploring Openness”

by Philip Young, posted on July 2, 2015

Virginia Libraries, the journal of the Virginia Library Association, has recently undergone some significant changes. Formerly a non-peer reviewed quarterly, it’s now an annual peer-reviewed volume, with a first issue on the theme “Exploring Openness” (full disclosure: I was a peer reviewer for two articles submitted for this issue, and fellow blogger Anita Walz authored an article on OER). A broad range of open-related topics is addressed, but for the sake of brevity I’d like to highlight two standout articles (please do check out the full table of contents).

The hype over MOOCs may be past, but I think dismissing them completely is premature. In Just How Open? Evaluating the “Openness” of Course Materials in Massive Open Online Courses (PDF), Gene R. Springs (The Ohio State University) examines the status of texts assigned in 95 courses offered by Coursera or edX. Of 49 courses listing a textbook, 20 of these were freely available; of 44 courses listing or linking to non-textbook readings, 31 linked to or embedded only freely available resources. It’s great to have this quantitative data on MOOC openness. There’s much more data in the article, which is a welcome contribution to the MOOC literature.

The second standout article in this issue is Contextualizing Copyright: Fostering Students’ Understanding of Their Rights and Responsibilities as Content Creators (PDF) by Molly Keener (Wake Forest University). It’s important that students know about the bundle of rights known as copyright both as consumers and creators in the knowledge ecosystem. Keener’s information literacy instruction employs scenarios relevant to students (included as an appendix) and incorporates copyright-related aspects of popular culture. Clearly such instruction is needed:

Most students are unaware that they own copyrights, or that simply because a photograph is free to access online does not mean that it is free to be reused.

Every university should have this kind of instruction to help students understand the environment in which information is created and used. Keener’s article is highly recommended.

While there’s almost everything to like about the new direction Virginia Libraries is taking, one oversight by the editorial board should be pointed out. At the bottom of the table of contents (PDF) the journal states the following:

The Virginia Library Association firmly espouses open access principles and believes that authors should retain full copyrights of their work. The agreement between Virginia Libraries and the author is license to publish. The author retains copyright and thus is free to post the article on an institutional or personal web page subsequent to publication in Virginia Libraries. All material in the journal may be photocopied for the noncommercial purpose of educational advancement.

It’s great that authors can retain copyright, but a journal cannot “firmly espouse open access principles” without openly licensing the content. Peter Suber succinctly defined OA as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” This means content should not just be available but also openly licensed (many get the first part but not the second). Leading OA journals have published thousands of articles under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which gives re-use permissions in advance. It’s also the license for this blog. Librarians should be more aware than most about copyright restrictions for sharing research, and Anita’s article in this issue gives a full list of Creative Commons licenses. Hopefully the editorial board will make Virginia Libraries fully OA by licensing future issues CC BY.

The co-editors of this special issue, Candice Benjes Small and Rebecca K. Miller, deserve praise for its quality and for helping the journal begin a new direction. Virginia Libraries is now seeking a volunteer to be the new editor (see the position description). Interested applicants should send a cover letter and résumé to Suzy Szasz Palmer at palmerss@longwood.edu by July 24, 2015.