[Oer-community] Global Open Access Map - lessons for OER?

[Alma Swan]

Dear colleagues,

Thank you, Susan, for introducing Leslie and myself. We are happy to tell
you a bit about our Open Access Map and how we conceived the project. The
map is at www.openaccessmap.org

We wanted to create a visual representation of how Open Access is
progressing globally. A geographical map seemed the most appropriate way to
represent OA (though we will be adding a timeline when we get a bit more
funding). Our aim was to crowdsource the venture, so individuals can submit
the details of their own project, journal, repository, service, etc. We have
an editorial step, where Leslie or myself approves the submission: often
these need a bit of correction, checking or chasing up, so it is not
labour-free. I¹m just saying that in case you envisage doing something
similar. The most common thing that needs completing is the georeference of
the submission: despite the submission page having boxes for latitude and
longitude, and a link to a service that provides these things for each
city/town in the world, many submitters leave this step out ­ and this
service they want to be represented on is a map! Ah well...

As well as the public submissions, we draw data (daily) from a number of
registries, such as the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), the
Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), ROARMAP ( list of OA
policies) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

The data in the Map can be re-used by anyone to do research or build new
services. We think we¹ve achieved a fairly complete representation of the
infrastructural elements that support progress on OA. We know, though, that
projects are not well-represented on the Map. This means that the record is
missing many of the temporary or transient initiatives that have been
important in forging progress.  This is a shame in the sense that the Map is
not able to provide a really complete picture of effort towards OA, but that
is an aspiration that is rather unrealistic anyway.

Hope this is helpful in providing a snapshot of our little venture.

Alma

------------------------------------
Alma Swan, BSc, PhD, MBA
Director of European Advocacy Programmes, SPARC: www.arl.org/sparc
Director, Key Perspectives Ltd: www.keyperspectives.co.uk
Convenor, Enabling Open Scholarship: www.openscholarship.org
+44 (0)1392 879702
Skype: almaswan
http://bit.ly/aQXNEy







On 21/11/2012 02:23, "Susan D'Antoni" <susandantoni at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
> 
> One of the issues we need to consider is whether an OER map could be developed
> collaboratively and what might be an appropriate organization. Seth has just
> noted that building a comprehensive list of OER  initiatives might be rather
> ambitious.
> 
> During the time I spent with the super people at the UK Open University, we
> reviewedt a range of examples of maps and then Teresa Connolly used the Open
> CourseWare Consortium data to create the sample OER map for this discussion.
>  One of the maps we looked at was the Global Open Access Map. There is a
> similarity to some of the things we have discussed
> http://www.openaccessmap.org/about/ .  There might be some lessons for us.
> 
> The creators of the map, Alma Swan and Leslie Chan, have agreed to share their
> experience with us and give us some information about how they have organized
> the project. 
> 
> Alma Swan is a consultant working in the field of scholarly communication. She
> is a director of Key Perspectives Ltd <http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/>  and
> Director of European Advocacy Programmes for SPARC<http://www.arl.org/sparc>
>  and Convenor for Enabling Open Scholarship<http://www.openscholarship.org/> ,
> the organisation of universities promoting the principles of open scholarship
> in the academic community. 
>  
> Leslie Chan is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at the
> University of Toronto Scarborough, where he serves as the Program Supervisor
> for the International Development Studies program.
>  
> Alma and Leslie co-founded the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook
> (OASIS) <http://www.openoasis.org/>  and the Global Open Access
> Map <http://www.openaccessmap.org/> .  
> 
> Best,
> 
> Susan
> 
> 
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