Category: Articles

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Public Screening of “Paywall: the Business of Scholarship” – Open Access Week 2018

Join us at the UVic Libraries Digital Scholarship Commons for a public screening of the documentary, “Paywall”. Everyone is welcome. There will be popcorn provided!

A public screening of the movie will be held on:

Date: Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Time: 2-3:30pm. Panel discussion to follow the movie until 4:30pm

Where: UVic Libraries, Digital Scholarly Commons

Please register at https://paywall.eventbrite.ca   paywall movie poster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the film: Paywall: The Business of Scholarship is a documentary which:

  • focuses on the need for open access to research and science
  • questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion a year that flows into for-profit academic publishers
  • examines the 35-40% profit margin associated with the top academic publisher Elsevier, and
  • looks at how that profit margin is often greater than some of the most profitable tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google.

Produced and directed by Jason Schmitt, Clarkson University, NY

The film is also available to stream for free here: https://paywallthemovie.com/

*re-post of UVic Scholarly Communication blog October 5, 2018*

 

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UK copyright reforms include an exception that allows for text and data mining

John Kelly | Jisc | February 9, 2016

In 2014, the UK government introduced copyright reform which includes an exception which “permits any published and unpublished in-copyright works to be copied for the purpose of text mining for non-commercial research. This includes sound, film/video, artistic works, tables and databases, as well as data and text, as long as the researcher has lawful access”.

UK researchers must still have legal access to the material, such as a database license through their institution. A key point is that the exception includes a provision which negates contracts/license agreements that attempt to override the law and deny text and data mining. This means no more checking each institution’s database license agreements before embarking on noncommercial text and data mining research. However, DRM protection, to “maintain their network security or stability,” is still allowable, and researchers are not permitted to circumvent these measures.

For more, see: “The text and data mining copyright exception: benefits and implications for UK higher education”

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The Video Book

Jeff Jarvis | BuzzMachine

HarperCollins, my publisher for What Would Google Do?, just released a video version of the book, a 23-minute synopsis delivered by me, sans script, on camera…

The point of this is that the publisher is trying to find new ways to release books and the ideas in them. This is their first video book; if it works, they say in the Journal they &ll make another half-dozen. The definition of works? Who knows?

Here a link to Youtube snippet?