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 · 364.8KB141 downloads



Viewed by 254 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

The role of Open Access and Open Educational Resources: A distance learning perspective
Hatzipanagos, Stylianos; Gregson, Jon
The paper explores the role of Open Access (in licensing, publishing and sharing research data) and Open Educational Resources within Distance Education, with a focus on the context of the University of London ...
Match: open access

The changing textbook industry
Band, Jonathan
Match: open access

Open access research via collaborative educational blogging: A case study from Library & Information Science
Rebmann, Kristen; Clark, Camden
This article charts the development of activities for online graduate students in library and information science. Project goals include helping students develop competencies in understanding open access publishing, ...
Match: open access

The role of "open" in strategic library planning
Petrides, Lisa; Goger, Letha; Jimes, Cynthia; Petrides, Lisa; Jimes, Cynthia
Academic libraries are undergoing evolutionary change as emerging technologies and new philosophies about how information is created, distributed, and shared have disrupted traditional operations and services. ...
Match: open access

OpenER, a Dutch initiative in Open Educational Resources
Schuwer, Robert; Mulder, Fred
Over the period 2006–2008, the Dutch Open Universiteit Nederland conducted an experiment in which Open Educational Resources (OER) were offered in an effort to bridge the gap between informal and formal learning and ...
Match: open access

Open Access in Education: Unlocking Quality Learning for All to Achieve SDG 4
Chugh, Mitali; Keoy Alan, K. H.
Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and Lifelong Learning is one of the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals 4 (SDG 4). However, in higher education, a lack of equity in resource ...
Match: open access

Conversations from south of the equator: Challenges and opportunities in OER across Broader Oceania
James, Rosalind; Bossu, Carina
Recent decades have witnessed a number of fundamental structural shifts, both internally within the higher education academy and external to it, that have transformed the character of universities. A universal, ...
Match: open access

Guidelines on Open Access to scientific publications and research data in Horizon 2020
The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation
The European Commission recently announced the guidelines on open access to scientific publications and research data. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide context and explanation for the rules on open access ...
Match: open access

The evolution of open access to research and data in Australian higher education
Picasso, Vicki; Phelan, Liam
Open access (OA) in the Australian tertiary education sector is evolving rapidly and, in this article, we review developments in two related areas: OA to scholarly research publications and open data. OA can support ...
Match: open access

Free learning: Essays on open educational resources and copyright
Downes, Stephen
There is a story to be told about open source, open content, and open learning from the point of view of the person desiring access to these things, rather than from the point of view of the provider. This book is a ...
Match: open access