# Open Access Week 2012: Looking back at five years of OA talks [![](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/OpenAccessWeek.jpg)](http://reganmian.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/OpenAccessWeek.jpg)This week is not only the last debate of the US Presidential election, but it's the international [Open Access Week](http://www.openaccessweek.org/), now in its sixth year (initially I think it was only a day). I've usually been quite an active participant, but this year I'm not giving any major presentations (I'll probably participate in a panel next week though). There are a number of events both at [University of Toronto](http://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/oaweek), [York University](http://yfile.news.yorku.ca/2012/10/18/york-libraries-organize-an-eclectic-series-of-events-for-open-access-week/) and [Ryerson University](http://library.ryerson.ca/blog/2012/10/open-access-week-ryerson/) (OCAD University needs to up its game next year!). I won't be able to participate in either, but two events caught my attention: [Talks on open data](http://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/oaweek#Monday) from the Map & Data Library at the University of Toronto, and ["The Great Debate: Should the blog replace the book?"](http://yfile.news.yorku.ca/2012/10/18/york-libraries-organize-an-eclectic-series-of-events-for-open-access-week/) at York University. I hope this latter event is recorded, I always enjoy a good debate, and too often, Open Access Week events tend to be fairly "one-sided". (The only challenge with that event is that academics already confuse Open Access with blogging and writing for Wikipedia, which, while very valuable activities, are not strictly what we mean when asking authors to support Open Access). **I thought I'd go through and link to some of my past presentations on Open Access, many of them done during past Open Access Weeks, since they are mostly quite relevant still. All have slides, many have embedded audio, and some have notes as well.** I gave my very first presentation about openness at the University Al Azhar in Indonesia as part of the Linux Week there in 2006. [The slides](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/presentasi-free-and-open-culture-al-azhar) are in Indonesian, but are included for historical value. I gave [a presentation about open learning and the future of universities](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/open-learning-and-global-education) for a class I was TAing in 2007, but the first real public presentation I gave about these topics was for a group of high-level bureaucrats at the Indian Institute of Public Administration in Delhi, in 2008. The talk **["Open Research, Open Educational Resources, and Open Learning – Experiments and Ideas"](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/open-research-open-educational-resources-and-open-learning-presentation-at-iipa-delhi-554807)** was my first chance to begin to organize my ideas about open licenses, different kinds of OER and open learning, and it's also the first presentation that I have the audio for as well. It's also a presentation that I've often referred to in subsequent presentations about the value of posting presentations online. Since it was a major presentation that I was giving for the first time, it might have taken me 10-15 hours to prepare the lecture, and about 20 people were in the room when I gave it. However, before starting the presentation, I simply clicked "record" in [Audacity](http://audacity.sourceforge.net/), an open-source cross-platform audio application, on my MacBook, and recorded the whole lecture. After the presentation, I uploaded the slides to [Slideshare](http://slideshare.net/), and spent a bit of time syncing the slides to the audio. In the four years that the presentation has been available, it has been viewed by more than 6,400 people, favorited by 11 people, and downloaded 130 times.
Open Research, Open Educational Resources and Open Learning - presentation at IIPA Delhi from Stian Håklev
I spent the summer in India, and in fall, I began studying my MA at [OISE](http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/oise/Home/index.html). I there collaborated with my future doctoral supervisor [Jim Slotta](http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/ctl/Faculty_Staff/Faculty_Profiles/541/Jim_Slotta.html) to develop a two hour presentation on ***Open Educational Resources Around the World***. Here I introduced the concept of accidental and intentional OER, and a number of other dimensions, including the typology of three purposes of OER (direct use, reuse and transparency) which I would later expand in my [MA thesis](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses). This lecture was [video recorded](http://142.150.98.64/OISE/20090312-100421-1/rnh.htm) (might not work on all machines), and also has [audio](http://www.archive.org/download/OpenEducationAroundTheWorld/Slotta.mp3) and [links](http://reganmian.net/blog/2009/03/12/links-from-the-talk-open-education-around-the-world/).
Open Education Around The World from Stian Håklev
I spent some time in China, and gave a number of presentations there (all listed in [my central page](http://reganmian.net/blog/publications-and-presentations/)), but my first Open Access Week talk was in 2009, about ***Innovative Projects in the Publishing of Open Educational Resources***. In this presentation, I looked at different funding and organizational models for OER projects, emphasizing an international perspective. Again [the video was captured](http://connect.oise.utoronto.ca/p98085499/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal), and you can also download [the audio](http://www.archive.org/details/InnovativeProjectsInThePublishingOfOpenEducationalResources), or see the slides below.
Innovative Projects in the Publishing of Open Educational Resources from Stian Håklev
That year I had a chance to return to the Indian Institute of Public Administration, and I gave a talk about the importance of openness in administration: **Openness: For your research and for India**, where I tried to explain the transformative potential of openness through some stories around Wikipedia, how I began an article on [podsol](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsol), a topic I was not an expert at, which later grew to become an impressive article, and also how the fact that Wikipedia is openly licensed, and downloadable, enables unintended usage, for example [using interwiki links to create impressive dictionaries](http://reganmian.net/blog/2009/02/16/release-early-release-often-english-chinese-dictionary-based-on-wikipedia/). You can download [the audio](http://reganmian.net/file/Talk%20IIPA%20Jan%204%202010.mp3), and the slides are below.
Openness: for your research and for India from Stian Håklev
The next year's Open Access Week was very busy. I did a workshop for teacher candidates with Clare Brett on ***What can Open Access offer me as a teacher?: A guide to Open Access and to education resources you can use for teaching and professional development **[(slides)](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/what-can-open-access-offer-me-as-a-teacher-a-guide-to-open-access-and-to-education-resources-you-can-use-for-teaching-and-professional-development)**, and gave two substantial presentations. In **What It Means to be an Open Scholar, and the Future of Scholarly Publishing**, I tried to go beyond the traditional "green and gold OA, put your publications on the institutional repository, etc", and look at expanding the definition - publishing in many different formats and channels, and sharing data and notes during the research process. I was inspired by a quote by Gideon Burton about [the **open scholar**](http://www.academicevolution.com/2009/08/the-open-scholar.html): > The Open Scholar, as I'm defining this person, is not simply someone > who agrees to allow free access and reuse of his or her traditional > scholarly articles and books; no, the Open Scholar is someone > who makes their intellectual projects and processes digitally > visible and who invites and encourages ongoing criticism of their work > and secondary uses of any or all parts of it--at any stage of its > development. I began by talking about my own experiments with publishing and disseminating [my BA](http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/09/20/mencerdaskan-bangsa-an-inquiry-into-the-phenomenon-of-taman-bacaan-in-indonesia/) and [MA thesis in a variety of formats](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/02/08/results-of-a-1-5-year-academic-publishing-experiment/), and then discussed [the open notebook science movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_notebook_science), [PhD wikis](http://reganmian.net/wiki/Individual%20Academic%20Wikis), and ended with some ideas on the future of semantic publishing, inspired by ia. [Anita de Waard](http://www.slideshare.net/anitawaard). There is [a video](http://142.150.98.64/OISE/20101021-120919-1/rnh.htm), [a detailed blog post](http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/10/24/how-to-be-an-open-scholar-oa-week-2010/), and slides below.
What it Means to be an Open Scholar and the Future of Scholarly Publishing from Stian Håklev
I also developed a presentation about another topic near to my heart, multicultural and multilingual resources for the international student body at the University of Toronto, which I gave at both UTSC and UTM, with the title **Global Open Educational Resources and the University of Toronto as a Multicultural Institution**, talking about multilingual students both as consumers and as creators of multilingual open resources. A bit later, I had a chance to return to my international high school in Italy, [the United World College of the Adriatic](http://www.uwcad.it/), and give a version of the presentation to the incredibly international (and passionate) student body there, called ***Multilingual Open Educational Resources for a Multilingual and Multicultural UWC. **Unfortunately I never got a recording, but the slides are below, and I have [a very detailed write-up in a blog post](http://reganmian.net/blog/2010/12/07/oer-for-a-multicultural-classroom-student-as-user-and-producer/).**
Multilingual Open Educational Resources for a Multilingual and Multicultural UWC from Stian Håklev
Later that year gave an impassioned three minute speech about why OISE should adopt an open access mandate at a town-hall (the mandate was watered-down to a policy, [which was eventually adopted](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/04/24/oiseuniversity-of-toronto-gets-an-open-access-policy/)). I have given a number of smaller presentations on OA, mostly mirroring the content in the presentations above. There are two final presentations worth mentioning, relevant to OA, although on quite different topics. The first is a presentation I gave to [CIDER](http://cider.athabascau.ca/partners/cde) on the Top Level Courses Project in China, the topic of my [MA thesis](http://reganmian.net/top-level-courses), available as an [Elluminate recording](http://reganmian.net/files/CIDER-top-level-courses.jar), and [a PDF link to the slides](http://reganmian.net/files/CIDER-top-level-courses.pdf). I was also generously invited by [George Siemens](http://www.elearnspace.org/about.htm) to give a lecture in a MOOC, and I choose this opportunity to explore ideas around visualization and interaction with ideas individually, in small groups, and in large networks. The final presentation was probably quite scattered, but I think had a lot of interesting ideas. I wrote up [very detailed notes](http://reganmian.net/wiki/Grappling%20with%20ideas), and later also wrote [a paper based on some of these ideas](http://reganmian.net/wiki/grappling_with_ideas-the_paper). Also [see the slides on Slideshare.](http://www.slideshare.net/houshuang/visual-discourse-cck11)

Grappling with ideas: divergence and convergence from Stian Haklev on Vimeo.

My own work on Open Access during the last one and a half year has been focused on developing an academic workflow for PhD students that enables sharing of notes, and through this work, I've thought a lot about the need for a more open infrastructure for scholarly publishing, which I hope to blog more about later. I began writing [a long document](http://reganmian.net/wiki/Ideas%20For%20Scrobblr) about a possible social portal for sharing publication notes, which I never finished. However, you can visit [my PhD wiki](http://reganmian.net/wiki), read about [the Researchr system](http://reganmian.net/wiki/researchr:start), and you can also check out the blog posts, and screencasts about the system below: **Blog posts** - [tag-extract: A tool to automatically restructure text/outline using tags](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/06/13/tag-extract-a-tool-to-automatically-restructure-textoutline-using-tags/ "http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/06/13/tag-extract-a-tool-to-automatically-restructure-textoutline-using-tags/") - [Search 40+ edutech wikis](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/06/08/search-40-edutech-wikis/ "http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/06/08/search-40-edutech-wikis/") - [Using web clipping and sidewiki to gather and synthesize information](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/05/10/using-web-clipping-and-sidewiki-to-gather-and-synthesize-information/ "http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/05/10/using-web-clipping-and-sidewiki-to-gather-and-synthesize-information/") - [API to check if a publication is “Open Access”](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/04/17/api-to-check-if-a-publication-is-open-access/ "http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/04/17/api-to-check-if-a-publication-is-open-access/") - [“Semantic” Researchr/DokuWiki search](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/04/11/semantic-researchrdokuwiki-search/ "http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/04/11/semantic-researchrdokuwiki-search/") Screencast demos - [Information extraction and synthesis using clip, clip-again and side-by-side editing](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr2GH1efSHU "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr2GH1efSHU") - [tag-extract quick demo, sorting interview transcript or literature review](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEfdPDptD5U "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEfdPDptD5U") - [Using researchr and tag-extract to create a literature review](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OevO1hXPoU "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OevO1hXPoU") - [Automatic import of citations from Scrobblr and Researchr](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5LgG_K3y8A "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5LgG_K3y8A") - [Automatically importing publications to BibDesk based on DOI and anystyle-parser](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFPM1S27InU "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFPM1S27InU") - [Proof of concept automatic metadata retrieval based on file fingerprinting](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9FqaqgAlG8 "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9FqaqgAlG8") - [The original researchr demo](https://vimeo.com/25295002 "https://vimeo.com/25295002") And I will end this (massive) blog post with the top screencast above (***[Information extraction and synthesis using clip, clip-again and side-by-side editing](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr2GH1efSHU "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr2GH1efSHU")***), which showcases much of the functionality of the Researchr system (also read [the relevant blog post](http://reganmian.net/blog/2012/06/13/tag-extract-a-tool-to-automatically-restructure-textoutline-using-tags/)). I show how I work on a literature review of research on open learning, and you can see both [my very early draft of the finished article](http://reganmian.net/wiki/Draft%20Literature%20Review%20Open%20Courses), as well as [my raw notes](http://reganmian.net/wiki/litreview_raw_sorted). Have a great Open Access Week! Stian