Open@VT

Our panel of faculty and graduate students is one of the most interesting events of every Open Access Week, and the 2014 version did not disappoint. In the past we’ve hosted separate, consecutive panels, but this year we decided to combine the panels into a single, shorter event.

Faculty and Graduate Student Panel,
Open Access Week 2014 at Virginia Tech

Our faculty panelists were Iuliana Lazar (Biological Sciences), Nicolaus Tideman (Economics), and Randy Wynne (Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation). They were joined by our student panelists, Christian Matheis (Ethics & Political Philosophy, and editor-emeritus of SPECTRA), Caitlin Rivers (Computational Epidemiology, Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory), and Michelle Sutherland (Educational Media Company, and former editor of Philologia).

Dr. Tideman had several interesting comments to make about the role of copyright in scholarship, which might be summed up by saying that copyright is inappropriate for academia. Dr. Wynne shared concerns such as reproducibility, data citation, and access to research in the developing world. For Caitlin Rivers, who is working on Ebola epidemiology, the data she uses is open, so it only makes sense that the output is too, and it must be available to people in west Africa. When Michelle Sutherland graduated, she lost access to most peer-reviewed research. This is a point that should be made more often, and it is an irony that this happens after four years of instruction from faculty and librarians on finding and using peer reviewed research. Asked what they do when they encounter paywalls, panelists had a variety of responses, from using the Twitter hashtag #icanhazpdf and sharing personal subscriptions among several people, to searching Google Scholar and research networking sites. For the full discussion, see the panel video below. Thanks very much to our panelists for the insight and discussion!

Thanks to the University Libraries’ Event Capture Service for the video below.

Brian Nosek, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science, gave the keynote address for Open Access Week 2014 on Monday night, October 20. “Scientific Utopia: Improving the Openness and Reproducibility of Research” noted the gap between scholarly values and how scholarship is actually carried out, and described how the Open Science Framework can help address this issue.

Brian Nosek, Open Access Week Keynote Address at Virginia Tech

The presentation began with a slide listing the norms (idealistic values) and counternorms (what often happens) of scholarship as opposing pairs, for example communality vs. secrecy. Looking at the counternorms, it was easy to see that these behaviors are aligned with academic incentives and “getting ahead” in general. Nosek also showed the amusing, if disheartening, results of a study comparing researchers’ agreement with the norms, how well their own practices align with the norms, and how well they think the practices of others align with the norms. He then identified current problems in the published literature of positive results and low power, variability in analysis, and selective reporting.

The Center for Open Science helps enable reproducibility, registration, and openness by making them part of the research workflow. COS endeavors to provide the technology to enable change, the training to enact change, and the incentives to embrace change. The technology is the Open Science Framework, which provides versioning, documentation, and other services in addition to connecting parts of a project together (Dropbox, figshare, etc.). COS offers training in statistics, tools, and workflows both online and in-person. And it’s working on incentives such as usage statistics, badges, and registered reports. Interestingly, registered reports move peer review after the design phase rather than after writing the report, addressing the negative results/selective reporting problem. The current incentive in academia is to get published, not to get it right, but COS is helping to change that.

Brian Nosek’s keynote address was delivered to a packed room- we counted 120 attendees. Thanks to everyone who turned out!

Thanks to the University Libraries’ Event Capture Service for the video below.

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech is pleased to announce our 2014 Open Access Week schedule! This year we are offering eight events, highlighted by a keynote address from Brian Nosek, a panel discussion on open access by Virginia Tech faculty and graduate students, and a workshop on reproducible research.

Open Access Week events are open to everyone, and for the first time all events will also be available for NLI credit (look under University Libraries). Here’s more info on our highlighted events:

Brian Nosek

A Keynote Address by Brian Nosek, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and co-founder of the Center for Open Science. His talk is titled “Scientific Utopia: Improving the Openness and Reproducibility of Research” and is sponsored by the Department of Psychology, the College of Science, and the University Libraries. (Monday October 20 at 5:30 pm in Pamplin 30, full details here.)

A Panel Discussion on Open Access, featuring faculty and graduate students at Virginia Tech. This is always an engaging event and it’s interesting to hear how folks from different disciplines are involved with open access. (Tuesday October 21 at 5:30 pm in the Library Multipurpose Room, full details here.)

A Workshop on Reproducible Research Practices, led by the Center for Open Science. Bring your laptop and please RSVP for this one. (Thursday October 23 at 3:00 pm in the Library Multipurpose Room, full details here.)

And we have five additional events, including sessions on our Open Access Subvention Fund, using Creative Commons licenses, author rights, and trends in scholarly publishing. See our full schedule for details, and help us spread the word by posting the schedule flyer and keynote address flyer on your office door and/or local bulletin board. Feel free to contact me at pyoung1@vt.edu if you have any questions. See you then!

Graduate and undergraduate students at Virginia Tech are encouraged to apply for one of two available travel scholarships to OpenCon 2014, the student and early career researcher conference on Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data to be held on November 15-17, 2014 in Washington, DC.

The scholarships cover travel expenses, lodging, and some meals. One scholarship will be awarded to a graduate student, and the other will be awarded to a graduate or undergraduate student. Virginia Tech students must use the following URL to apply by Friday, September 26:

http://opencon2014.org/virginiatech

To find out more about the conference, see the conference program and the participant FAQ. This international conference offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn about the growing culture of openness in academia and how to become a participant in it. The travel scholarships are sponsored by the Graduate School and the University Libraries’ Open Access Week committee. For questions, please contact Philip Young, pyoung1@vt.edu.

Winners will be selected on the basis of their answers to the application questions, and announced on October 3. Please spread this opportunity to VT students far and wide, and good luck!

The University Libraries invites students and faculty to peruse a collection of open textbooks on display next to the reference desk on the second floor of Newman Library. Traditional textbooks tend to be very expensive, but open textbooks such as these from OpenStax College have several free online formats (the iBooks are $4.99) and are much cheaper in hardback form (the cost of printing, usually $30-$50). Students interested in reducing textbook costs can take pre-printed information from the display to give to their professors. More information is available in the OpenStax College Textbook Display FAQ. Our hard copy display should be around for a few weeks, or you can explore the books on the OpenStax website.

Open textbooks benefit faculty as well because they are offered under an open license (the Creative Commons Attribution, or CC-BY, license), allowing faculty to re-use, remix, and adapt course material to their liking. The textbooks are written and peer reviewed by subject experts (usually faculty, who are listed just inside the front cover) and are already in use at many universities, including Virginia Tech, where the Sociology textbook has been used in the SOC 1004 course. Supplemental materials are also available for faculty- for example, there are slides and a test bank for the Sociology textbook.

There are currently nine textbooks available (shown below), with four available soon (Pre-calculus, Chemistry, U.S. History, and Psychology). OpenStax College, a nonprofit publisher based at Rice University, recently announced that 21 titles will be available by 2017.

Open textbooks are just one form of open educational resources (OER), which include openly licensed online simulations, courseware, images, audio, video, tutorials, modular course components and more. Anita Walz, our OER Librarian, organized the textbook display and has created an OER Finding Guide. There will also be a library webpage on OER available soon. If you are a faculty member interested in reviewing one of these (or other) open textbooks, or are looking for other types of OER, please contact Anita at arwalz@vt.edu.

OpenStax College textbooks are available through Summon by searching for “OpenStax”, and we also offer a guide to finding specific textbooks in the library.