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Open Scholarship Press Collections

From Wikibooks, open books for an open world

The Open Scholarship Press Collections began by featuring four individual, book-length annotated bibliographies with analytical overviews covering key areas of open social scholarship: Community, Connection, Policy and Training. More recently, volumes on other key topics have been added. To view any of the collections, click the Wikibooks links below; print versions are also available via PediaPress at the links below as well.

Open social scholarship is the creation and dissemination of research and research technologies to a broad, interdisciplinary audience of specialists and non-specialists, in ways that are both accessible and significant to all groups (Implementing New Knowledge Environments Partnership, https://inke.ca/).

The four initial collections are accompanied by primers, curated volumes of essential reading in each of these areas as well, following an analytical overview. For these curated volumes, please see the Open Scholarship Press Curated Volumes. For an overview of the OSP and related projects, please see the Open Scholarship Press.

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Alyssa Arbuckle (UVic), Caroline Winter (UVic), Jesse Kern (UBC), Vitor Yano (Concordia), Anna Honcharova (European Students’ Forum), Alan Colín-Arce (U Autónoma del Estado de México), Graham Jensen (UVic), and Ray Siemens (UVic), with Jon Bath (U Saskatchewan), Jon Saklofske (Acadia U), and the INKE and ETCL Research Groups. (2023)

ISBN 9798210902801

This annotated bibliography draws together recent thinking and writing on the emergence and evolution of open, digital scholarship. The scan revolves around three core themes--public/community engagement, open social scholarship, and scholarly communication--but includes selections from topics as far reaching as public humanities to open data to knowledge mobilization.

The emergence and evolution of open, digital scholarship has shone a light on the possibilities for academic work beyond the real or perceived boundaries of postsecondary institutions. Academic research can now be produced, published, and shared in a way that extends past the hallowed halls of a long-established university or the compact shelves of that university’s library. The Open Access movement has been pivotal for the largescale reconsideration of who does and who should have access to the world’s research. Community-university partnerships and concerted knowledge translation and mobilization efforts have also formalized efforts to bring various publics together around issues of shared interest. The evolution of open access to open scholarship to open social scholarship is also representative of changing notions around the purpose and possibility of academic work.

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Graham Jensen (UVic), Tyler Fontenot (Independent), Alan Colín-Arce (U Autónoma del Estado de México), Alyssa Arbuckle (UVic), Vitor Yano (Concordia), Anna Honcharova (European Students' Forum), Caroline Winter (UVic), and Ray Siemens (UVic), with the INKE and ETCL Research Groups. (2023)

ISBN 9798210903815

This annotated bibliography gathers and synthesizes scholarship on the digital spaces, tools, and technologies that have increasingly facilitated open communication among researchers, organizations, and the public in the last few decades. In particular, it examines the possibilities and problems associated with “digital knowledge commons” or “digital research commons”—that is, digital spaces for publishing, sharing, and accessing information.

Examples of digital knowledge commons include Wikipedia as well as academic social networking sites such as Academia.edu and ResearchGate, which have now enabled millions of researchers to share information and connect with others online. Indeed, this latter form of knowledge commons has helped researchers share their work within and beyond their existing academic networks using sharing features that are familiar to users of Facebook, Twitter, and other popular commercial social networking sites. Although many of the works compiled in this bibliography compellingly outline the problems associated with academic social networking sites, and with social media more generally, the cumulative and overwhelming message of this body of work is nevertheless clear: it is difficult to overstate the impact of such platforms—and the rapidly changing technologies that enable them—on the present shape and future possibilities of academic research.

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Caroline Winter (UVic), Alyssa Arbuckle (UVic), Jesse Thomas Kern (UVic), Vitor Yano (Concordia), Anna Honcharova (European Students' Forum), Tyler Fontenot (Independent), Graham Jensen (UVic), Alan Colin Arce (U Autónomo del Estado de México), and Ray Siemens (UVic), with Tanja Niemann (Érudit) and Lynne Siemens (UVic), and the INKE and ETCL Research Groups. (2023)

ISBN 9798210902702

This annotated bibliography surveys current literature about open scholarship policy, offering a snapshot of the field of policy analysis and criticism. It does so with the goal of mapping the contours of this field and identifying the major critical pathways, recognizing that, as a snapshot, it cannot capture the entirety of the field in detail. In particular, questions about open scholarship policy include: How and to what extent does policy advance open scholarship? What effect does policy have on individuals and their work? How does policy affect open scholarly practices?

This resource builds upon the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, a hub for information and resources related to all aspects of open scholarship that includes a collection of policy documents as well as policy analysis. It follows and reflects policy developments related to open scholarship in Canada and beyond, analyzing policy changes and their relevance to researchers, information professionals, librarians, faculty, and policymakers. Its roots in the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory lend this bibliography a Canadian focus and an interest in the humanities and social sciences (HSS), but it takes a broad view, considering open scholarship as an international and interdisciplinary movement. The term policy is already broad, and it is applied here broadly as well to encompass not only formal international, national, and institutional policy statements but also formal and informal policies about the issues and topics that constitute open scholarship and adjacent issues.

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Randa El Khatib (UTSC), Alan Colín-Arce (U Autónoma del Estado de México), Vitor Yano (Concordia), Anna Honcharova (European Students’ Forum), and Ray Siemens (UVic), with the INKE and ETCL Research Groups. (2023)

ISBN 9798210902603

This annotated bibliography provides a snapshot of topics pertaining to training and pedagogy within the context of open social scholarship. More specifically, it frames the intersections between digital humanities pedagogy, public humanities, and open resources.

Embracing new media and digital technologies in higher education has caused a profound shift in training and pedagogy. The unprecedented access to education facilitated by the Internet has extended skills training and knowledge exchange beyond the confines of the university and lowered barriers for accessing education. At the same time, today’s digital economy requires additional training and skills to improve digital literacy, including the use of digital technologies for information-seeking and research purposes, as well as knowledge production and dissemination. These shifts pose several challenges for higher education, ranging from how digital training and pedagogy can be adopted in the classroom, curricula, and universities, to thinking about best practices for engaging and training active publics.

Editors: Alyssa Arbuckle, Ray Siemens, Tanja Niemann, and Lynne Siemens (2025)
Authors: Sarah Milligan, Alyssa Arbuckle, Kim Silk, Caroline Winter

Foundational Observations: Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, 2017-2020 is a book-length compendium of reflections on issues pertinent to the open scholarship movement.

As momentum behind the Open Scholarship movement has increased over the past several years, policy has emerged as a key issue. In particular, questions about open scholarship policy include: How and to what extent does policy advance open scholarship? What effect does policy have on individuals and their work? How does policy affect open scholarly practices?

This volume reflects the first years, 2017-2020, of the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory (OSPO).

Editors: Lynne Siemens, Tanja Niemann, Alyssa Arbuckle, Ray Siemens (2025)
Authors: Caroline Winter, Talya Jesperson, JT Kern, Maggie Sardino, and Brittany Amell

Extensions: Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, 2021-2024 is a book-length compendium of reflections on issues pertinent to the open scholarship movement.

The contents of this volume build on Foundational Observations: Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, 2017-2020. They reflect the last several years (2021-2024) of work on the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory (OSPO) – a hub for information and resources related to all aspects of open scholarship which also includes a collection of policy documents as well as policy analysis.

While policy is part of a complex of interrelated fields, disciplines, and stakeholder groups, the focus of our work is on the role of policy in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

Editors: Alyssa Arbuckle, Ray Siemens, Tanja Niemann, and Lynne Siemens (2025)
Authors: Sarah Milligan, Alyssa Arbuckle, Kim Silk, Caroline Winter

Observations préliminaires : Observatoire des politiques d'Érudition ouverte, 2017-2020 est un recueil de réflexions, sous forme de livre, sur des questions pertinentes au mouvement de la science ouverte. Ce tome vise à faciliter la compréhension de la science sociale ouverte à travers le Canada et à l'international, afin de contribuer à influencer et à mettre en œuvre des politiques liées à la mobilisation des connaissances. Ce faisant, il reflète les politiques pertinentes et leur impact sur les communautés de recherche, tout en signalant les tendances et les recherches actuelles; et offre une base large et approfondie pour l'élaboration de recommandations politiques sur des questions importantes, notamment la gestion de l'identité, l'accès ouvert, la gestion des données, la science citoyenne et d'autres domaines connexes.

Editors: Lynne Siemens, Tanja Niemann, Alyssa Arbuckle, Ray Siemens (2025)
Authors: Caroline Winter, Talya Jesperson, JT Kern, Maggie Sardino, and Brittany Amell

L'Extension : Observatoire des politiques d'Érudition ouverte, 2021-2024 est un recueil de réflexions, sous forme de livre, sur des questions pertinentes au mouvement de la science ouverte. Ce tome, actuellement en cours, vise à faciliter la compréhension de la science sociale ouverte à travers le Canada et à l'international, afin de contribuer à influencer et à mettre en œuvre des politiques liées à la mobilisation des connaissances. Ce faisant, il reflète les politiques pertinentes et leur impact sur les communautés de recherche, tout en signalant les tendances et les recherches actuelles; et offre une base large et approfondie pour l'élaboration de recommandations politiques sur des questions importantes, notamment la gestion de l'identité, l'accès ouvert, la gestion des données, la science citoyenne et d'autres domaines connexes.

Caroline Winter, Alan Colín-Arce, JT Kern, Randa El Khatib, Alyssa Arbuckle, Vitor Yano, Anna Honcharova, Graham Jensen, Maggie Sardino, Britt Amell, Ray Siemens, with the ETCL and INKE Research Groups

Knowledge mobilization (KMb) is a broad, complex concept with many overlapping and sometimes conflicting definitions, but it can be understood as the process of putting knowledge to use, within and across the borders of academia and the broader community. Many terms are used to refer to the same essential activity of circulating research beyond academia: in the sciences, it is often called “knowledge translation,” which suggests a one-way movement of knowledge from academia to the public in terms that laypeople can understand. It is also often called “knowledge exchange,” which suggests a two-way, reciprocal sharing of knowledge across the academic–public divide. “Knowledge brokers” are intermediaries between researchers and knowledge users.

“Knowledge mobilization” is the most common term in the social sciences and humanities, and it suggests an active, non-hierarchical engagement with knowledge: to mobilize something is to put it in motion, or to put it into action in pursuit of a goal.

Alan Colin-Arce, Maggie Sardino, Eduardo Muñoz Francisco, Graham Jensen, Caroline Winter, Alyssa Arbuckle, and Ray Siemens (2025)

In recent debates around open scholarship, there is an increasing focus not only in making research outputs more openly accessible but also in ensuring that there is a more diverse and equitable participation in knowledge production in terms of geography, language, and scholars’ positionality. This perspective seeks to increase and encourage knowledge diversity, an epistemological stance which recognizes the legitimacy and value of a wide range of ways of knowing while also challenging power dynamics that cause some ways of knowing to be considered more legitimate or valuable than others.

This challenge to Western notions of knowledge production has been addressed for decades by scholars in the Global South and in some areas of the humanities, such as Indigenous studies, oral history, and cultural materialism in literary studies. This collection has been crafted to not only cover core concepts related to knowledge diversity but to also reflect the values and principles embedded in it.

Brittany Amell, Graham Jensen, Alan Colin-Arce, Randa El Khatib, Caroline Winter, Alyssa Arbuckle, Faraz Forghan Parast, and Ray Siemens (2025)

This environmental scan examines the concept of platforms—broadly understood as digital systems that connect users, facilitate content exchange, and enable various forms of interaction—through an analytical introduction and comprehensive annotated bibliography. While the term carries multiple meanings across disciplines, this work adopts a core understanding of platforms as tools, techniques, and technologies that connect different user groups, host user-generated content, enable social networking and communication, facilitate various forms of exchange, and support code execution.