Exploring open access in higher education

From the use of social media to engage students to tools designed to facilitate record keeping in HE, it would seem the academic revolution will be digitised.

But arguably no other aspect of digital holds the promise of the open access (OA) philosophy and open educational resources (OER). The Public Library of Science sums up the appeal of the open agenda rather neatly, saying: "Open access stands for unrestricted access and unrestricted reuse. Paying for access to content makes sense in the world of print publishing, where providing content to each new reader requires the production of an additional copy, but online it makes much less sense to charge for content when it is possible to provide access to all readers anywhere in the world."

With OER, similar tenets apply: academics create, share and allow their teaching resources not only to be used but to be amended, improved, transformed. It is the principles of OER and the way in which the internet has radically changed access to information that has led to the development and success of projects such as MIT's Open Courseware, which makes virtually all MIT courses materials available online for free and iTunes U, which distributes educational content.

It also looks as though the benefits of open access in HE could go beyond teaching and research. Earlier this month, JISC published a report that showed that the private sector also benefited from open access in higher education. The report suggests that "for at least two-thirds of these businesses, OA has the great benefit of saving organisations time in searching for published material through non-OA sources.

So far, so good. But what are the costs? Who gains and who loses from OA? And beyond the nuts and bolts of intellectual property rights or effective repositories, what impact can OA have more widely on HE?

Following a talk point and a poll, we finally give the subject of open access the consideration it deserves. To coincide with Open Access Week, on Friday 28 October, from 12-2pm BST, our live chat will consider the various ways in which higher education can become - and is becoming - more open. We will consider what the challenges ahead might be and what policy shifts, as well as cultural shifts are needed.

Join us then and feel free to post any questions or comments below now. Comments made during the chat will be shared on Twitter. Follow the hashtag #HElivechat

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Panel

Steve Carson, external relations director, MIT OpenCourseWare

Steve's responsibilities include sustainability initiatives, strategic partnerships and the support of opencourseware projects at other institutions. Steve also served as the first president of the OpenCourseWare Consortium from 2008 to 2011 and he currently serves on the organization's board of directors. @scarsonmit

Amber Thomas, programme manager, JISC

Amber is one of JISC's programme managers who manages work on open educational resources and she is responsible for Jorum, the repository of learning and teaching materials. She previously steered the Repositories Support Project, supporting open access. @ambrouk

Richard Sands, managing editor, BMJ Open, BMJ Group

Richard is managing editor of BMJ Open, an open access journal for medical research and a sister title to the BMJ. He runs the peer review process and manages the journal's development. @BMJ_Open

David Kernohan, programme manager, UKOER

David has extensive experience in UK higher education policy and issues around supporting student learning, having previously worked for HEFCE and the Universities of Glamorgan and Leicester. His personal blog, Followers of the Apocalypse, covers issues surrounding public education policy, open academic practice and learning online. @dkernohan

Matthew Cockerill, managing director, BioMed Central

Matt Cockerill is co-founder of BioMed Central, the world's leading open access scientific technical and medical publisher. Prior to BioMed Central, he helped to create BioMedNet, a pioneering web site for biologists and medical researchers. Matt has a long-standing interest in the use of technology to manage biological and medical knowledge. @bmcmatt

Ernesto Priego, digital culture scholar, The Comics Grid

Ernesto Priego is an advocate for the adoption and official recognition of open access policies, social media and blogging in academic teaching and research. He's a co-founder and managing editor of The Comics Grid, an online journal of comics scholarship, and participates in various online collaborative projects, including the University of Venus and Global Voices Online. @ernestopriego

Martin Weller, professor of educational technology, Open University (OU)

Martin chaired the OU's first major elearning course in 1999 with over 15,000 students. His interests are in the impact of new technologies, learning environments and open education. His recent book The Digital Scholar was published by Bloomsbury and is available under an open access Creative Commons license. Martin blogs at edtechie.net @Mweller

Ulrich Tiedau, lecturer, University College London

Ulrich has worked on and across the borders of humanities and information technologies for most of his professional life and published widely on Belgian, Dutch and German history as well as on distance education and digital scholarship. He is an associate director at the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities and has been involved with the UK Open Educational Resources programme of JISC and the HE Academy since 2009. @ucldh

Gareth Johnson, chair, UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR)

Gareth is the current Chair of UKCoRR, the professional association for UK based open access repository managers and workers. He currently works at the University of Leicester, managing their research repository, document supply and copyright services. @llordllama

Martin Paul Eve, doctoral researcher and associate tutor, School of English, University of Sussex

Until recently Martin was chief editor of the postgraduate journal Excursions and he has just launched a gold-standard, libre OA journal, Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon. He is speaking as the opening plenary at the UK Scholarly Group next year on auto-subversive practices in academic publishing and has a forthcoming book chapter on Open Access in the edited collection, Zombies in the Academy. @martin_eve

Josh Brown, programme manager, JISC

Josh oversees projects on scholarly communications and research information management. He started work at the University of Sussex Library but since then, has worked on projects linked to research evaluation, institutional repositories, electronic theses and open access. His current work includes campus-based publishing, the benefits of open access to sectors outside HE and working alongside publishers to make OA material easier to identify.