When the Data hits the Fan!

Written Artefacts: Research and Ethics Let's consider some of the contemporary challenges addressed by digital tools & methods in terms of research ethics and strategy Social role of cultural organisations Evidencing climate change Demographic shifts Staging social justice activity Combating cultural object trafficking Decolonising

A report was released this week that is the single most important piece of research conducted on the subject of copyright and cultural heritage in the UK. Conducted by Dr Andrea Wallace this work needs to signal the start of an evolution in practice for UK museums, libraries and archives with a revolution in access and re-use for the general public. As the report states, we need policy that breaks down " the barriers existing between the UK’s outstanding cultural collections, including public access to and reuse of them ".

This is a guest blog by Professor Charles Oppenheim which details some intriguing calculations from the Elsevier copyright case against Sci-Hub . Important questions are posed, will someone from Elsevier be willing to answer them?

Book of the Dead of the Priest of Horus, Imhotep (Imuthes), ca. 332–200 B.C. The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/551786 The recent final reports for the Academic Book of the Future are a revealing, well balanced account of the current and future state of scholarly monograph publishing in the UK. One feature is the close attention given to Open Access in books ( pages 175-195 in Michael Jubb's report ) . In this blog I want to unpack the consequences of Book Processing Charges in a Gold OA environment and how they would be utterly unsustainable in a future OA mandated REF environment.

Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669). The Three Trees, 1643. Etching, drypoint, and engraving on laid paper. Only state. Plate: 212 x 280 mm. Sheet: 223 x 284 mm. DAC accession number 1951.D1.1. Gift of George W. Davison (B.A. Wesleyan 1892), 1951. Open Access Image from the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University (photo: R. Lee) Guest post by Rob Lancefield , Manager of Museum Information Services, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University Does a museum have to be large to offer open content? The Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University holds some 25,000 works on paper and has three museum staff (2.5 FTE). The collection serves teaching, study, research, exhibition, and other educational purposes. In 2012, we launched the DAC Open Access Images policy .

The importance of books is clear for the Arts and Humanities in the UK as indicated by approximately ¼ of all submissions to the REF in book form and in addition book chapters remain an important factor in submission. These heatmap visualisations for the Academic Book of the Future quickly illustrates the stark differences in forms of scholarly communication across UK HE.

Source:  https://flic.kr/p/8hHczB Trying to make a change to the REF whilst not breaking it is akin to squeezing a balloon. Press or reshape too much and it bursts, but solving a problem by squeezing in one area produces bulges elsewhere. And so we come to the Stern Review - an independent review of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) - that was published this week. [ link ]

Figure 1:  img_japanese04, Bridgestone Museum of Art, 17.146 px/in, 2016. Fujishima Takeji, 1867-1943, Black Fan, 1908-1909, Oil on canvas, 63.7 x 42.4 cm, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo. This digital surrogate is © Bridgestone Museum of Art. Open GLAM: The Rewards (and Some Risks) of Digital Sharing for the Public Good by Simon Tanner The research-led exhibition experiment Display at Your Own Risk provides an exciting opportunity to ask some fundamental questions regarding the behavioral gaps between ‘what we say’ and ‘what we do’ in regard to museum practice and with art/images. Sometimes this is driven, as the exhibition organizers point out, by the gap between institutional policies and public understanding. By selecting 100 digital surrogate images of public domain works for this exhibition and printing them to the underlying artwork’s original dimensions this exhibition poses some interesting questions.

February is a month of discovery. Not just of gravitational waves but for increased evidence for Open Access, for the costs of publishing monographs and for academic journal markets. This blog focuses on the highlights of Professor Adam Tickell’s  OA report to Jo Johnson (Minister of State for Universities and Science) that has been published today, with the Minister’s response . It also mentions the Costs of Publishing Monographs report from Ithaka and the Academic journal markets report from SCONUL, RLUK, ARMA and Jisc.