1. Open or Closed? Changing the way we research, publish, and teach
Matt Ruen
Scholarly Communications Outreach Coordinator
University Libraries

2. Research and Scholarly Information
During your education and career, what ethical issues might you encounter, related to research and information?
As I understand it, today’s been largely about advocacy, professionalism: doing the right thing. Being good; balancing your values and your need to function effectively in the workplace. This session I’ll be zooming in on one aspect of what you’re doing here at GVSU and what many of you will be doing in future professional careers.
Many moral/ethical issues in research & information will come up in your professional lives & your education: personally identifying information, ethical research on human subjects, confidentiality of business information.
But something we rarely talk about, even in graduate programs, is the choices we make when we create and share knowledge; and the results of those choices. Who can access the knowledge we create? Who can’t? And why?

3. The Knowledge You Create and Share
What are you studying, or what will you study?
Why? Why is that topic interesting or important?
Who cares? Who might read, use, or be impacted by your research? Who might be interested?

4. Why do we do research? Graduate Students? Faculty? Universities?
Why is research a requirement?
For grad students in general? Why their faculty? Why do they have to do this?
What’s the point of it all?
The function of universities is, at its heart: to learn new information about the world, & share that with people.

5. Creating and Sharing Knowledge: 50 Years Ago
Producing and transporting knowledge—in physical, printed form—was inherently expensive and limiting. Copies were hard to make. Sharing was difficult.

6. Creating and Sharing Knowledge: Today
What’s happened to knowledge now? How do they access scholarship? How do scholars share knowledge today?
Digital revolution—scholarly information is online, shared electronically. Distribution is a button—no more printing, packaging, shipping, handling costs.

7. Information wants to be free.
Information also wants to be expensive.
Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine – too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away.

8. That tension will not go away.
How have they experienced the barriers that this represents?
Paywalls keeping you from research you need?
Textbooks draining your food & rent budget?
Professionals asking you, as students, to help them get research their institutions can’t afford?

9. .

11. How does this system work?
The scholarly publishing business model. For textbooks, authors may get some royalties, but the system is very similar.
How does this impact you? Your institutions? Other students, working professionals, and the public?

12. An Alternative:

13. OPEN means:
Digital, online Free to access Few or no restrictions on use

14. Open Research

15. Open Access Publishing

16. Graduate Theses At GVSU
- GVSU’s open access repository of faculty and student research. This slide shows the downloads, , of gvsu graduate theses. There are about 800 theses in the collection, and they’ve been downloaded and used nearly 300,000 times, by people in almost every corner of the globe.
Graduate Theses At GVSU

17. Open Education
OERs: textbooks, learning objects, lesson plans, syllabi, which are open.
For more, check out our guide to open educational resources:

18. Research, Publishing, Teaching: Choices & Consequences
In your program?
In your profession?
In your future?
Discussion: groups, then whole group
How do things work now?—why do people research; publish; teach the way they do; what other factors play into those choices?
What choices are you going to face, as you create and share knowledge during your educational and professional future? How will you be impacted by others’ choices?

19. Support from GVSU Libraries
OA Publishing Fund
OA Quality Indicators
Copyright Resources
Author’s Rights Support

20. What can you do? Think Question Act
Goes back to today’s theme—advocacy vs professionalism.
Think: Think about why you’re creating knowledge, and who you want that to benefit. What are your choices? What are the consequences, and to whom?
Question: when you run into barriers, or systems that don’t make sense—ask why. All of our academic and professional systems are the result of choices we have made (consciously or not), so question those choices. And talk to your faculty and peers about the choices they make—why publish here rather than there, why share your research in this way?
Act on your goals, when you can. The further you progress in your career, the more power you’ll have to change the systems you participate in. Remember that, as you advance.

21. Questions?
For more about open research, open data, open access publishing, and open education:
Scholarly Communications resources from the GVSU Libraries:
Ten things to know about the evolving system of scholarly communication: cholcomm/docs/ten_things_you_should_know.pdf
#GoOpen campaign from the Department of Education: