The OER Knowledge Cloud makes use of cookies. By continuing, you consent to this use. More information.
Open access, megajournals, and MOOCs: On the political economy of academic unbundling
Wellen, R.

PublishedOctober 2013
JournalSAGE Open
Volume 3, Issue 4, Pages 1-16

ABSTRACT
The development of “open” academic content has been strongly embraced and promoted by many advocates, analysts, stakeholders, and reformers in the sector of higher education and academic publishing. The two most well-known developments are open access scholarly publishing and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), each of which are connected to disruptive innovations enabled by new technologies. Support for these new modes of exchanging knowledge is linked to the expectation that they will promote a number of public interest benefits, including widening the impact, productivity, and format of academic work; reforming higher education and scholarly publishing markets; and relieving some of the cost pressures in academia. This article examines the rapid emergence of policy initiatives in the United Kingdom and the United States to promote open content and to bring about a new relationship between the market and the academic commons. In doing so, I examine controversial forms of academic unbundling such as open access megajournals and MOOCs and place each in the context of the heightened emphasis on productivity and impact in new regulatory regimes in the area of higher education.

Keywords academic productivity · megajournals ·  · open access · scholarly publishing

RefereedYes
Rightsby/3.0/deed.en_GB
DOI10.1177/2158244013507271
URLhttp://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013507271.article-info
Other informationSAGE Open
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar



AVAILABLE FILES
2158244013507271.full_.pdf · 364.8KB142 downloads



Viewed by 257 distinct readers




CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.

Click a star to be the first to rate this document


POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS

Open Access in Higher Education–Strategies for engaging diverse student cohorts
Signor, Luisa; Moore, Catherine; Gil-Jaurena, Inés
With growth in online education, students gain tertiary qualifications through a mode more suited to their demographics such as work and life balance, learning styles and geographical accessibility. Inevitably this has ...
Match: open access

Publishing in discipline-specific open access journals: Opportunities and outreach for librarians
Tomaszewski, Robert; Poulin, Sonia; MacDonald, Karen I.; Kaspar, Wendi Arant; vanDuinkerken, Wyoma
Open access (OA) journals promote the opportunity for peer-reviewed journal articles to be freely accessible. In recent years, the number of OA journals has exploded in all disciplines. Previous studies have identified ...
Match: open access

Comparative analysis of public policies in open access models in Latin America. Brazil and Argentina cases
Cabrera, Karen Isabel
This article presents public policies for open access models in Argentina and Brazil, two countries that have pioneered the subject in Latin America. The methodology used is comparative documentation, whereby the legal ...
Match: open access

Applying open access to library technologies
Little, Geoffrey; Kaspar, Wendi Arant; vanDuinkerken, Wyoma
Match: open access

Finding free and open access resources: A value-added service for patrons
Martin, Rebecca A.
Academic libraries are eager to orient patrons to free and open access materials in their databases, digital repositories, and Web sites. These materials include journal literature, textbooks, and open educational ...
Match: open access

Open educational resources
Daksha, Patel; Parsley, Sally
Historically, ‘open education’ has involved making education more accessible, whether by lowering cost or by enabling delivery at a distance. In our technological age, open education has become a global sharing of ...
Match: open access

The changing textbook industry
Band, Jonathan
Match: open access

Fifty shades of open
Pomerantz, Jeffrey; Peek, Robin
Open source. Open access. Open society. Open knowledge. Open government. Even open food. The word “open” has been applied to a wide variety of words to create new terms, some of which make sense, and some not so ...
Match: open access

Mediated Deposit for IRs 
Sterman, Leila
Institutional Repositories hold valuable research, data, learning objects, theses, and dissertations. However, convincing authors to add their works, especially published works, has been an ongoing challenge for ...
Match: open access

Cost-savings achieved in two semesters through the adoption of open educational resources
Hilton, John; Robinson, T.; Wiley, David A.; Ackerman, J.
Textbooks represent a significant portion of the overall cost of higher education in the United States. The burden of these costs is typically shouldered by students, those who support them, and the taxpayers who fund ...
Match: open access