In the A2K3 panel on Open Access to Science and Research, Eve Gray, from the Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town, sees the Open Access movement as a real societal change. Accordingly she shows us a picture of Nelson Mandela and asks us to think about his release from prison and the amount of change that ushered in. She also asks us to consider whether or not Mandela is an international person or a local person. She sees a parallel with how South African society changed with Mandela and the change people are advocation toward open access to research knowledge. She shows a worldmapper.org map of countries distorted by the amount of (copyrighted) scientific research publications. South Africa looks small. She blames this on South Africa’s willingness to uphold colonial traditions in copyright law and norms in knowledge dissemination. She says this happens almost unquestioningly, and in South Africa to rise in the research world you are expected to publish in ‘international’ journals – the prestigious journals are not South African, she says (I am familiar with this attitude from my own experience in Canada. The top American journals and schools were considered the holy grail. When I asked about attending a top American graduate school I was laughed at by a professor and told that maybe it could happen, if perhaps I had an Olympic gold medal.) She states that for real change in this area to come about people have to recognize that they must mediate a “complex meshing” of policies: at the university level, and the various government levels, norms and the individual scientist level… just as Mandela had to mediate a large number of complex policies at a variety of different levels in order to bring about the change he did.
Archives
- July 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- September 2014
- May 2014
- September 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- December 2012
- January 2012
- November 2011
- May 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- September 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- April 2009
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- August 2006
- July 2006
- September 2005
Categories
- A2K3
- anaphylaxis
- Berkman
- Berkman Lunch Series
- Book Reviews
- Conferences
- Developing world
- Diary
- Economics
- Fascinating People
- Film
- health
- Human Rights
- Intellectual Property
- Internet and Democracy
- Law
- Law
- Machine Learning
- Media
- Middle East
- Open Data
- Open Science
- OSTP
- Peer Review
- personal
- Reproducible Research
- Scientific Method
- shameless self-promotion
- Software
- Startups
- Statistics
- Talks
- Technology
- Uncategorized
- Women's rights