Open Scholarship Press Curated Volumes

The Open Scholarship Press Curated Volumes feature four individual primers, book-length curated volumes of essential readings, following an analytical introduction, covering key areas of open social scholarship: Community, Connection, Policy and Training. To view any of the curated volumes, click the Wikibooks links below; the texts are also available on PubPub 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/).

These curated volumes are accompanied by book-length annotated bibliographies in each of these areas as well, following an analytical overview. For these collections, please see the Open Scholarship Press Collections. For an overview of the OSP and related projects, please see the Open Scholarship Press.

Community

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Introduction by Alyssa Arbuckle (University of Victoria)

This curated volume showcases key reprinted interventions on the subject of community-based and community-engaged open scholarship.

Over the past several decades, academic work has evolved alongside substantial and far-reaching changes in communication and collaboration. One example of this evolution is the rise of open, digital scholarship: a movement that prioritizes access to information, social knowledge creation, and cross-community engagement. Now, in the 2020s, academics and other knowledge workers can produce, publish, and share their research findings much more openly and more publicly than previously possible. Increased open access to research, community-university partnerships, and knowledge mobilization are all evidence of shifting attitudes and practices in academia.

Openness is a mechanism through which to broaden scholarly work into activities that are much more community-based and community-engaged. Centring community-based and community-engaged open scholarship, while considering both efficacious and creative ways to find, share, and publicize academic research, is at the heart of open social scholarship. Such a vision for the transformative potential of scholarly communication speaks to an ardent desire to leave behind the metaphorical ivory tower and to instead refigure postsecondary institutions as verdant sites of collaborative, collective knowledge creation.

Connection

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Introduction by Graham Jensen (University of Victoria)

This curated volume includes reprinted critical interventions on the subject of digital knowledge commons or academic social networking sites and the forms of connection and open scholarship that they enable.

The enormous growth of digital knowledge commons and academic social networking sites in the last fifteen years or so has enabled millions of researchers to connect and share their work with others online. But during this same period, the remarkable transformation of digital infrastructure has also raised many questions about the nature and trajectory of scholarly communication and practice. The history of the tension between participation and publication, like the history of the internet itself, can be understood partially in terms of a shift from open to closed and commercialized forms of knowledge exchange. Against the currents of commercialization and weaponization, many individuals and collectives are interested in exploring how platforms can support both participation and publication—all while also remaining open.

As digital knowledge commons continue to proliferate, they will continue to transform scholarly participation and publication, inspiring and embodying novel forms of each. But the evolution of digital knowledge commons—and digital tools and technology more generally—must also be accompanied by continued critical consideration of what creating and maintaining these complex and diverse systems will involve, and mean, for future communities of researchers or creators and consumers of knowledge. This responsibility is and necessarily will be a shared one.

Policy

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Introduction by Caroline Winter (University of Victoria)

This curated volume provides a broad snapshot of the open scholarship policy landscape. Most are foundational policies and principles, but examples of theoretical overviews, research studies, and critical analysis are also included.

The open scholarship landscape is complex and always changing, but tracing relevant policy developments helps to define its boundaries, highlight emerging pathways, and bring key features into focus. For instance, more and more national governments, funding organizations, and institutions are developing policies related to open access to research data and publications, which intersect and sometimes conflict in complicated ways. Other forms and types of policies that make up the wider research ecosystem also affect open scholarship policy, such as publishers’ policies about rights retention, international digital infrastructure standards, and institutions’ review, tenure, and promotion guidelines. Given the role policy plays in influencing how researchers work and whether and how they share that work, an understanding of the policy landscape—both its foundations and its emerging trends—is key to advancing open scholarship.

The open scholarship policy landscape is now dotted with many institutional, national, and international open access (OA) policies, with more springing up every year. Implementing policy successfully can be challenging, especially when the context is complex and multifaceted.

Training

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Introduction by Randa El Khatib (University of Toronto Scarborough)

This curated volume follows the transformation of digital pedagogy to embrace more open and collaborative practices.

With online, digital environments occupying a more central place in higher education, pedagogy has been shifting as well to both take advantage of the unprecedented access to knowledge and prepare students to participate in the digital economy. This transformation is twofold: on the one hand, the world is shifting to more fully embrace open pedagogy that encompasses Open Educational Resources (OERs) such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), open textbooks, syllabi, classroom activities, and other practices and materials to lower barriers for accessing education. At the same time, there is a push in higher education to incorporate digital literacy training so that students are prepared to join the workforce and possess interoperable digital skills upon graduation.

As the world more fully embraces digital environments, this collection is also concerned with the role of universities and training sites to prepare students and engaged publics to meet the needs of the digital world in their own research and work.