Creative Commons Licenses and Open Access (OA) Publishing

Recent class discussions on the subject of ‘Creative Commons Licenses’ brings nicely into focus the increasingly contentious issue of  ‘Open Access’ (OA) publishing. OA means free, immediate and global online access to scientific and scholarly research. Currently it does not exist in its purest form but two methods of attaining this Holy Grail are being pursued vigorously, namely, Gold OA (called the ‘Gold Road’) and Green OA (called the ‘Green Road’).

The former involves authors’ paying to publish in specific OA journals and the latter involves authors, themselves, self-archiving on so called ‘Institutional Repositories’ (IRs) using free software available online. Publishers fear unrestrained access to either model but have managed to avoid the worst excesses of a wholesale changeover.

OA supporters plead that taxpayers should not have to pay millions of dollars to make government funded health research results free online after paying tax contributions already. They have campaigned successfully to allow governments mandate publicly funded researchers to upload documents to freely accessible online archives. The legislation, though, is confined currently to the USA and some universities who have mandated their own academics to go down the ‘Green Road’.

Patients who want insights into their condition currently have to pay over $35 to download a single article. OA threatens that subscriptions base. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2005 compromise to publish results online within six months resulted in less than four pc of authors taking up that offer.

The Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) supported by Democrat Joseph L. Lieberman (Connecticutt) and Republican John Cornyn (Texas) hoped to tilt the balance towards OA. The US Government currently gives $55m per annum towards ‘Research and Development’ (R&D).

The Act envisages that Federal Departments and Agencies (Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Environment Protection Agency, National Science Foundation and NASA) that invest greater than $100m (£54m) on R&D should insist that the research is published online within six months of it appearing in a traditional subscription journal.

The Research Councils UK (RCUK) is the research body that oversees eight research councils in the UK. In a watered down measure to placate the OA campaign the RCUK has backed the placing of taxpayer funded research on the web for free. Self-archiving is supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The Commission of the EU has allocated $85m (£111m) to promote OA over two years and financially supports the infrastructure needed for archiving, digital storage and the promotion of online accessibility. In 2006 the EU published an independent report showing that the price of academic journals had risen by 200-300 pc in the period 1975-1995 or $11 bn (£5.6bn).

The Bundesrat-Germany’s second parliamentary chamber- responded to the EU Commission’s declaration on ‘scientific information in the digital age’ by agreeing that OA increases knowledge dissemination.

Canada also has a new science and technology strategy and is increasing tax incentives for ‘Research and Development’ and OA initiatives. The Canadian government will also back OA financially.  The government will further identify raw research data suitable for archiving and will liberalise licensing laws. The tax payer will get free access to the research it has funded, for example, topographical data maps and so on.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) give annual grants of $1 bn to assist OA and the council insists that researchers explain to them why they do not self-archive. All in all some impressive work is being done to promote OA and with it the increasing use of ‘Creative Commons Licenses’.

The Great Copyright Debate

In the world of international publishing content is king. Search engine giant Google is on a corporate mission to organise the world’s books and make them universally accessible. It is a utopian vision with countervailing public interests which include the right to privacy, security and ownership of property. Those who are against this development ask if one organisation should control the entire world’s information.

‘Google Book Search’ also involves deals for this content with major academic institutions. Millions of books, many still under copyright, are being digitally scanned for access by search engines generating huge potential revenue from advertising. Some are challenging Google’s copyright policies (established by in the courts in order to protect writers, photographers, composers). Google makes over $90bn profits per annum and is the only company that could attempt such an ambitious scheme.

The great library at Alexandria (built in 300 BC) was once designed to hold the entire world’s knowledge written on half a million scrolls. This represented 30-70 pc of the books then in existence. Google’s high tech scanning booths are creating a similar ‘Universal library’ one page at a time. Begun in December 2004 Google is scanning the contents of the world’s major research libraries. Existing technology makes this possible and is, in theory, a truly democratic idea. The goal is to have the entire work of humankind from the beginning of recorded history in all languages available to all people all the time.

The world’s biggest publishers create and sell such content for profit. As such Google’s project poses a threat to their ability to retain copyright and sell that content on. It was Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd who introduced the first Copyright Bill in 1837 and it has hardly changed since. Google Book search is not, however, seeking permission from copyright holders to ‘sample’ copyrighted works but it fully intends to sell advertising on the back of that content.

Currently there are 25,000 journals worldwide each of which publishes 40 articles per annum and one million new articles are produced each year with a rejection rate of nearly 50 pc. The numbers of scientists have increased by nearly three per cent per annum over the last 300 years and journal numbers by 3.5 per cent.

Web spiders are continually trawling the web searching for access to valuable metadata held online. Metadata on ownership and accessibility is embedded in new types of copyright devices called ‘Creative Commons Licenses’. Closely associated with these new licenses are so called ‘Addendum Engines’ which increase the rights of the author to reuse their work.

Self-publishing has expanded exponentially to 200,000 titles in 2005, an increase of over 25 pc on 2004. We now live in an age where agents and marketing specialists are no longer needed to sell the product of one’s talent. Anyone can publish online. There is no cost to upload a book and specialised websites can print pages and sell them to their   customers on demand. In comparison traditional models of publishing are cumbersome and involve expensive literary agents. Digital technology has transformed the way we read books and is threatening our traditional views of copyright protection.

It’s The ‘Tongue’ That Guides Education!

An interesting addition to the vaults of ‘Cognitive’ learning theory is research currently being undertaken into how we humans start to learn. Amazingly, it appears that the ‘tongue’ and not the brain is the key.

For babies the ‘tongue’ is a singular   means of orally exploring the world around them. Until the middle of the first year of life the   ‘tongue’   more than   ‘vision’   is the chief vehicle by which we learn. While previous research has seen a dichotomy between the roles of ‘imitation’ and ‘exploration’ in infant tongue and mouth movement recent research has found that   these processes are in fact one and the same.  

According to Indiana University researcher Susan Jones writing in the journal ‘Infant Behaviour and Development’ ‘mouthing’ and ‘tongue protrusion’ are basically comparable strategies of ‘information gathering’.

Babies are born knowing nothing about the world which they have entered but they do have a mental model which   helps them to learn. ‘Imitation’ is used to create pathways in our brains that help us remember how to do the   repetitious   things that make up so much of our lives. These pathways are laced with intricate neural connections (so called ‘Mirror Neurons’) that help us execute imitated actions in the pursuit of our goals.

‘Imitation’ is, therefore, vital as a means of ‘Cognitive’, ‘Perceptual’ and ‘Social’ development. A baby will try and mouth and imitate auditory sounds just as it does with any interesting visual stimuli such as adult tongue movements and facial expressions.

This process according to Jones is ‘bidirectional’ in that   infants explore the objects of the external world while also learning about their own behavioural abilities and relations to them. Imitation and exploration produce information that the infant retains until the emergence of a more sophisticated ‘Behavioural System’ (which is independent of ‘oral exploration’) at approximately five to six months old.

The infant’s   tongue is a mass of muscle fibres covered by a mucous membrane and laced with taste buds called ‘filiform papillae’. Neonates imitate the facial expressions presented by adults or study the outlines of unfamiliar objects by   mouthing, thrusting the tongue against the cheeks and gums and creating   tongue protrusions via open lips.

Although one week old   chimps are behaviourally identical, at birth human babies are unique in their ability to continually develop this gift of   imitation. In this process the tongue   acts like a  tool activating our sensory system and causing the ‘Proprioceptive brain cells’ that control movement in the joints, tissue and muscles of the Central Nervous System (CNS) to grow and develop.

The response, however, is not   ‘learned’ it is innate and species specific.  The human tongue is not just a means of   ‘imitation’ but rather a device for establishing dialogue between one’s own behaviour and that of another person.

Better Grades Do Not Make For Better Lives

In reference to my previous post about ‘performance anxiety’ are we getting overly anxious about the need to find jobs through education?

Shouldn’t education really be about experimenting and absorbing the creative ambience of college rather than merely getting grades? So much of our time is taken up with studying the best way to learn (Behaviouralism, Cognitivism, Constructivism) rather than why we choose to learn at all.

In this I am reminded of research published in the journal ‘Intelligence’ which explains why wealth and success at college may well be incompatible.

Dr. Jay L. Zagorsky, from Ohio State University, was cited in the learned journal on the subject of IQ and wealth accumulation.

Even though previous research had linked IQ and income positively Dr. Zagorsky stunned readers with the news that, in the USA at least, the relationship between the ownership of wealth and the level of IQ may well be inverse

The study used a sample of 7403 respondents, so-called ‘baby boomers’ (those born 1957-1964)  who were interviewed  over a number of years starting in  1979. Although income had been seen, in previous studies, to rise  between $234 - $616 per annum for each extra point of IQ scored   those with higher IQs were in fact more inclined to end up in financial difficulty.

Dr. Zagorsky explained his motivation for undertaking the research;   “Most of my grandparents grew up very poor.  As a result I have spent years trying to figure out what makes people rich or poor and how these financial states can be changed.”

 The study found that income correlated positively with IQ (100 being an average score with 130 confined to the top 2 percent) however wealth (which is the difference between assets and liabilities) did not. Indeed, a higher proportion of those on high IQs have bills they have not paid, credit cards that are defunct and little or no financial security.

What does this say about education generally? Going to college improves IQ alright but those with higher IQs also tend to be poor wealth accumulators. Where does this leave wealthy socialites like  Paris Hilton?

Performance Anxiety May Be Impacting On Learning

Speaking of differences between learners have you ever wondered why some people no matter how talented fail to attain their own educational expectations? A joint research team from Texas and New York believe that it is down to fears we all have about stereotypes.

It seems that the more conscious we become of our own failings the less  likely we are to do well   in tests and this can  hold us back in life. The report’s author Dr Matthew McClone said: “There is clear, consistent evidence that has piled up over the years indicating that measures of intelligence and scholastic aptitude - which are ostensibly designed to measure enduring traits and dispositions - can be dramatically influenced by situational factors”. 

The researchers, Matthew McGlone and Joshua Aronson, cleverly primed the test subjects with cues that triggered latent fears. Women for example were made aware of supposed male superiority in mathematics, African Americans and Latinos were tested on verbal skills. Caucasian males were pitted against the supposed analytical superiority of Asian Maths students. The primal fears aroused were enough to lower their ability to perform and thence their IQ.

Oddly enough those same fears could just as easily be turned around to enable the same groups to perform above their potential. Women could be reminded that they were graduates of elite private colleges, Asian women were told of innate superiority in mathematics and men were well, just reminded that they were men, and that was enough, it seems to raise their IQ considerably.

“The   results suggest that the positive performance expectations associated with certain social identities (e.g., private college students are smart) can mitigate the threat caused by negative performance expectations associated with other identities (e.g., women aren't good at math)” explained Dr McClone. 

What this research clearly shows is that a positive outlook about learning can take us a long way towards achieving our goals!

Are Females More Computer Orientated?

I have noticed in my MA in E-Learning class that female students have different perceptions about the new technologies. In my view they are attracted largely to the communications value of them whereas male students tend to view computer technologies like shovels (that is tools for doing things with). Is this heresy?

Here is one possible explanation and you can tell me if you agree. A study by Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock (Vanderbilt University) claims that a woman’s brain processes, manipulates and displays information far faster than a male’s. The study may shock feminists but will come as no surprise to educationists who increasingly see, that in learning capacity at least, women clearly hold a mental edge.

Some scientists believe that hormones like oestrogen and testosterone play a huge part in deciding how our brains are structured. Males and females therefore think in decidedly different ways. Processing of information is governed by an area of the brain called the ‘Hippocampus’ while language comprehension takes place in the ‘Parietal lobes’. Further research may be   needed to see if there is any increased thickening or myelinisation in these sectors of the female brain. Geneticists   are convinced though that   men and women differ in their mental outlook   particularly in relation to learning.

Other possible explanations include an evolutionary based need by females to process information quickly in order to take on more responsibility at an earlier age. Males with greater physical bulk could possibly get by on broad knowledge alone while using their superior verbal skills to attract a mate (a phenomenon known as a Lek).

Although the research points to overall equality between the sexes, in terms of general intelligence, feminists  may be perplexed to learn that in a number of key elements at least  women are in fact   superior!