Dear all,
two documents come to mind that address these issues to some extent (bias alert: I was involved in drafting both): (1) the Wikimedia Foundation recently released its Open Access policy (cf. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/18/wikimedia-open-access-policy/ ), and there is no reason why chapters or thematic orgs or other Wikimedia partners should not take inspiration from that and issue a policy on the same or similar terms. (2) the Bouchout Declaration (cf. http://bouchoutdeclaration.org/ ) is an attempt to move an entire research community towards increased openness, and it was in large part driven by museums (18 of 91 signatory organizations so far, as per http://www.bouchoutdeclaration.org/signatories/organizations/ ). While focused on biodiversity research, I think this model might be a good starting point for other research communities to address openness in a more systematic fashion. What about proposing a session on that for https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Wikipedia_Science_Conference ?
Thanks and cheers, d.
On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 9:38 PM, Pat Hadley pat@pathadley.net wrote:
Hi all,
There's been a recent bit of coverage in the UK over the issue of museums charging researchers for collection access.
The strongest arguments for free and open access have come from the Prehistoric Society and can be seen on the Museum's Association Website.
At York Museums Trust (hosts of my project) they do not charge researchers and have recently begun insisting that visiting researchers openly licence any photographs they take of collections items and encouraging them to pursue open access publishing of the research output (not always possible).
I was wondering whether the GLAMwiki movement might like to speak on the issue and encourage GLAMs with which we are working to consider this part of their openness strategy.
Research is one of the key ways in which collections are enriched. I for one am fed up with finding obscure notes on collection databases implying the existence of research done in the last decade which is now invisible online and/or has no paper-trail at the museum.
What do people think?
Cheers,
Pat
-- Pat Hadley Yorkshire's open culture brain-for-hire pathadley.net @pathadley
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