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Open Access Week 2012 schedule

Network enabled research: The challenge for institutions

Keynote presentation

Monday, October 15, 2012
5:30pm - 6:30pm
Presenter: Cameron Neylon, Distinguished Innovator in Residence
Graduate Life Center Auditorium
(Unable to make Cameron Neylon's talk? Watch it live online.)

The web, like all network technologies before it from the mobile phone to writing itself, has the potential to enable a qualitative change in our capacity as people, organisations and societies. We are starting to see the first glimmerings of how our research capacity might change with projects like Galaxy Zoo and Polymath but these remain isolated examples. What will it take to exploit the network capacity that the web brings us to enable a step change in the efficiency and effectiveness of our research? There are no complete answers, but a growing understanding of networks makes it clear that effective scalable networks have certain characteristics - scale and connectivity, frictionless resource transfer, effective user side filtering tools - that are completely at odds with today's scholarly communications frameworks. Today, we limit the scale and connectivity of networks by concentrating access, we create friction by perpetuating business models built for physical distribution of paper, and we use monolithic and non-transparent filters that are hideously expensive and largely ineffective. An effective global research network will be built on open content and charged services. Service providers will compete to offer authors the greatest reduction in friction and ability to share their research outputs. Many of these services are not dissimilar to activities carried out in traditional publishing houses today, but getting there from here will not be straightforward. The risk (or opportunity, depending on your perspective) is that if this transition is not managed properly, we run this risk of losing the existing human and technical infrastructure as business models that are no longer fit for purpose fail.

Positioning Virginia Tech in the open access landscape

Monday, October 15, 2012
6:45pm - 7:45pm
Presenters: Scott Farmer and Kevin Concannon
Graduate Life Center Auditorium

Introduction to VTechWorks

Monday, October 15, 2012
3:00pm - 4:45pm
Presenter: Nathan Hall
Torgersen 3080

VTechWorks is Virginia Tech's online digital repository for providing free global access to the intellectual output of the university. This workshop will introduce VTechWorks and guide participants through creating an account, depositing materials, and managing a collection. Participants are encouraged, though not required, to bring pre-prints, technical reports, learning objects, or other documents for submission.

Introduction to open access

Tuesday, October 16, 2012
10:00am - 11:45am
Presenters: Gail McMillan and Philip Young
Torgersen 3060

Gain a better understanding of open access—unrestricted access to scholarship, increase your mastery of your copyrights, and learn how to take advantage of the Libraries' Subvention Fund and increase access to your work.

Opening Keynote, Open Education Conference, Vancouver, British Colombia

Tuesday, October 16, 2012
12:30pm-1:30pm
Presenter: Gardner Campbell
Live Stream in Library Boardroom (6th Floor Newman)
(more info)

Open access: Opening the doors to scholarship for all - faculty panel session

Wednesday, October 17, 2012
5:30pm - 6:30pm
Panelists: 

Dr. Kathleen A. Alexander (Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation): Dr. Alexander specializes in Disease Ecology with special focus on disease transmission at the human-wildlife interface and emerging zoonotic disease, public health, ecosystem health, and sustainable community development. Her work evaluates coupled human and ecological drivers influencing water quality and the health of human and animal populations in the Chobe River Region of Botswana.

Dr. Mark Sanders (Founding Editor of the Journal of Technology Education): Since 1980, I have served as faculty member and program leader in the Technology Education and Integrative STEM Education programs at Virginia Tech. From 1980-2005, I taught graphic communication courses that introduced students to emerging digital communication tools and technologies including: electronic publishing (1981); multimedia (1983); interactive video (1984; digital video (1992); and Webworking 1995). Much of my research in that era ran parallel to my teaching, focusing on investigations of new communication technologies in instructional settings. In the early 1990s, my research shifted to investigations of “integrative STEM education”—the notion of situating math and science teaching and learning in the context of engineering design challenges. That work led me to envision, and later co-found (2005) the Integrative STEM Education Graduate program. But it was Al Gore, my interest and technical background with emerging communication technologies and support from the VT Libraries that allowed me to “go electronic” with the Journal of Technology Education in early 1992—a year before the Web emerged.

Dr. David Radcliffe (Department of English): I am a literary historian who came to Virginia Tech in 1987 and became involved with computing back in the days before the World Wide Web. My research looks at literature in terms of complexity theory, studying the rational if unpredictable back-and-forth between groups of readers and writers. Computers have the potential to transform how we think about the history reading and writing, and I have spent much of the last quarter-century building research tools to enable scholars to unite microscopic and macroscopic views of historical change. Working with the Center for Applied Technologies at Virginia Tech has enabled me to publish my own projects and those of others—open access, of course—and to introduce students to programming and markup languages, textual editing, and the construction of textual archives. Open-access publishing seems to me at once a logical extension of the World Wide Web, a scholarly imperative, and an unpredictable if retrospectively rational turn in literary history.

Moderator: Kyrille Goldbeck DeBose
Torgersen 3080

Panelists will discuss their experiences with and perspectives on open access. Join us for a lively discussion.

Open access: Opening the doors to scholarship for all - graduate student panel session

Wednesday, October 17, 2012
6:45pm - 7:45pm
Panelists: 

Katherine Read: serves as Editor-in-Chief of Public Knowledge Journal, an open-access, graduate student-run, peer-reviewed journal hosted by the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech.  Public Knowledge Journal was founded on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Katie is a Ph.D. student in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Virginia Tech and examines issues related to access, affordability, accountability, and quality in the context of higher education. She holds an M.Ed. from the College of William and Mary and a B.A. from Hollins University. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of higher education

Ingrid Baker: is a first-year graduate student seeking a Master's degree in English.  She completed her Bachelor's degree at Radford University in 2012.  Her academic interests include British Modernism (specifically Woolf and Joyce), which led her to present at the Annual International Virginia Woolf Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2011. She also studies censorship and helps organize events associated with Banned Books Week.

Justin Shanks: Interested in interdisciplinary approaches to humanistic questions, Justin holds a BA in Environmental Studies, Master of Urban and Regional Planning, and a MA in English. Currently a PhD student in Science and Technology Studies, Justin's dissertation reconsiders the relationship between technology and pedagogy. In addition to his research endeavors, Justin has a variety of teaching experience both domestically and abroad. Serving as Global Perspectives Fellow since fall 2011, Justin works on numerous projects to internationalize graduate education at Virginia Tech.

Katelin Shugart-Schmidt: is a master's candidate in Fish and Wildlife Conservation, who's research focuses on better understanding the uncertainty associated with managing our nation's fisheries. She received her undergraduate degree summa cum laude, with honors in Environmental Science, from Randolph-Macon Woman's College. At Virginia Tech, Katelin has served as the Chief Justice of the Graduate Honor System and as President of Queer Grads and Allies. Her interest in Open Access stems from concerns over the cost of institutional access as well as the burden closed-publishing places on the scientific community.

Moderator: Purdom Lindblad
Torgersen 3080

Panelists will discuss their experiences with and perspectives on open access. Join us for a lively discussion.

Open access knowledge drive

Monday-Friday, October 15-19, 2012
11:00am - 1:00pm
Lobbies in Fralin Life Sciences Institute, Graduate Life Center, and Port: Research Commons in Newman Library

Meet one-on-one with Libraries representatives to discuss why and how to set up an individual account with VTechWorks and share your research. Bring your questions and be ready to discuss what our institutional repository can do for you. No appointments are necessary; simply visit a knowledge drive location and we’ll talk about open access.

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