[Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog food?

Tim Cook timothywayne.cook at gmail.com
Tue Oct 12 08:48:29 MDT 2010


On Tue, 2010-10-12 at 10:08 +0100, Theo Lynn wrote:
> How do we overcome some of the problems Sudhakar mentions:
> 

Great points Theo. 
Note that I am not a lawyer.  I don't even play one on the Internet.
But I can read and understand the information at various free licensing
sites and I trust the the organizations and lawyers that represent them.
Such as:

Free Software Foundation[1]
Creative Commons[2]
Open Source Initiative[3]


> - fear of loss of copyright 
The original author(s) cannot 'lose' copyright.  They can only assign it
away.  Which is what I understand happens in some cases with
universities, journals and even some book publishers. 

The CC and other licenses are specifically written to protect the
authors copyright while still allowing open use. 

> - fear of loss of income

I suppose if a person is making a lot of money from book sales this
could be a concern.  See below.

> - fear of copyright infringement

The likelihood of copyright infringement actually goes down. Consider
that the open distribution of a particular work is in play.  Now,
everyone can see and recognize the original author.  The work is
available to anyone, what is the motivation for 'infringing' copyright?
If a CC-SA-NC license is used then anyone can produce derivative works,
cannot do it commercially and must distribute their work using the same
license.  Therefore the open knowledge pool is increased with each
contribution. 

> - fear of error
> - fear of perceived poor quality

I guess these two are closely related.  Let us compare how a textbook is
written in an open vs. a closed process.

In the closed process an author or group of authors develop a draft.
They distribute it to a close set of colleagues for comment, proofing
etc.  The editors do their thing and the book is published.  So, in this
case a few number of people have reviewed the work.  Readers may provide
feedback and at some point an errata may be issued and/or a new edition
is published.

In an open process an author or group of authors develop a draft.  They
open it up for the world of interested individuals to examine.  They get
feedback and improve the text.  Once they are satisfied, they produce a
published version.  This version is openly published and feedback is
collected.  The draft of the next version can be updated and corrected
and be continuously  reviewed by the world of interested people. 

You can decide for yourself, in which case will the maximum number of
errors be caught and corrected in the shortest time?  Which method
produces better quality?

> 
> 
> Many academics I have spoken to in relation to open courseware, and in
> particular those who have never contributed OER, cite fear of
> infringing copyright and also negative perceptions of quality and even
> errors in materials. This fear of judgement is a major barrier.

If certain academics are afraid of openly being judged based on their
work then they probably are not writing books for pubic distribution. 
Peer review is part of journal articles and books.  It is just that in
this case, the pool of peers is much larger.

> 
> If we know why people don't open up resources, then we can address.
> 
> 
> Are there other barriers/solutions?

The number one barrier is probably lack of knowledge regarding the
alternatives.  The solution to this is guidance in encouraging authors
to read for themselves instead of trusting organizations that have a
profit motive.  

Cheers,
Tim 

[1] http://www.fsf.org
[2] http://creativecommons.org
[3] http://www.opensource.org/



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/private/oer-community/attachments/20101012/ee90ca0b/attachment.bin 


More information about the Oer-community mailing list