The following is a guest post from Nick Shockey of SPARC.

Last Wednesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a Request for Information on the issue of Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research. Executive action stemming from this RFI could potentially open all federally funded science research to the public for free online access.

This has the exciting potential to greatly advance the goals of your Open Education Campaign. Not only could the more than $60 billion in research the US government funds annually be made available to all, but the government would also be endorsing openness as an academic ideal, sending a strong signal to publishers, universities, and various other stakeholders that this is the new standard.

With all the work Students for Free Culture has done on the issue of expanding access to educational materials, you are in a unique position to appreciate the tremendous impact executive action could have. Opening up all federally funded research to every student in the country (and world) would break down strong barriers to access that currently force students to settle for the materials their library can afford rather than what they truly need. A student’s education should be limited only by curiosity rather than the rapidly escalating journal prices that put the complete scholarly record out of reach for students at all but the most well funded institutions.

So what can you do to make public access a reality? The answer is that you can do a lot.

• First, you can take the time to respond to the questions in the RFI (the full text can be found at here) by submitting a comment to the Federal Register by January 7th (email comments to publicaccess-at-ostp-dot-gov).
• Second, there is a rotating set of questions on the Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog which changes every ten days – you can respond thoughtfully to the questions as well as other people’s comments right in the comment section of the blog (the first round ends December 20th, so don’t wait!).
• Finally, you can encourage other students and advocates to comment as well.

A strong student response in favor of a mandatory public access policy will truly help ensure that such a policy becomes a reality and that it follows SFC’s ideals of openness as closely as possible. I can’t wait to see the impact students make on this groundbreaking process and look forward to your responses!

Nick Shockey
Director of Student Advocacy, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition

A little over a month ago, we called for widespread participation in our current campaign based on the Wheeler Declaration. In that time, we have made substantial progress to create a series of surveys to gather data on university openness with regard to open educational resources, open access, network management, FOSS, and patent policy.

Surveys

In the coming weeks, we hope to contact a number of universities to solicit their responses to the surveys that have been created to gather data about university openness. Today, the surveys for open access publishing and open educational resources are largely completed. I encourage you to check out the previous links and add your thoughts, either on the wiki or by emailing board-at-freeculture-dot-org. Even more, feel free to add to the other surveys which need elaboration.

We also need to identify the administrators at each university who should receive the surveys. If you attend a school that you believe should be surveyed, please add administrators names to the wiki or contact board-at-freeculture-dot-org. Recipients should include librarians, learning technologists, academic coordinators (such as provosts) and potentially faculty leadership.

Branding

Secondly, after speaking with a number of people, we believe that it would be best to slightly re-brand the campaign. As you know, up until now, this effort has been known as the Open University Campaign. However, the term ‘open university’ has proven to be slightly problematic due to its reference to an older concept of distance-learning. Not only is this a trademarked term, it has proven to be confusing to a number of people – something we definitely don’t want. Obviously, it’s not ideal to change and lose any reputation (and googlejuice) that the name has, but to avoid having this problem even later in the game, we think the name Open Education Campaign would be for the best (especially because it doesn’t limit the work strictly to universities). Anyone with thoughts (or interest in doing design for this brand), should definitely get in touch.

We’re excited about this project and hope you’ll join us.

As you undoubtedly know, college campuses are, in many ways, ground zero for the battles being waged for the future of intellectual property. The thousands of Americans that have been sued by the entertainment industry in the past few years include countless students who were accused of illegally downloading music.

Although the lawsuits may have stopped, the entertainment industry lobbyists are still set on using any means necessary to stop music “piracy” – oftentimes regardless of the unintended consequences. One of those efforts was included in a 2008 law entitled the Higher Education Opportunity Act which requires institutions of higher learning to take a number of steps to protect the business models of the entertainment industry.

Earlier this week, EDUCAUSE hosted a very informative webcast about how to comply with these P2P provisions. What follows is a summary and some thoughts on what students can do at their school.

The P2P Provisions

Gregory Jackson of EDUCAUSE outlined the requirements of the law. Essentially there are:

1. An annual disclosure to students that copyright infringement subjects them to civil and criminal liabilities, a summary of the Federal penalties for copyright infringement, and a description of the school’s policies for copyright infringement.
2. The development of plans to effectively combat unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, including educating the community, procedures for handling transgressions, and employing at least one technological deterrents (such as bandwidth shaping, traffic monitoring, vigorously responding to DMCA notices, and 3rd party commercial products).
3. Offer, to the extent practical, legal alternatives to P2P downloading, as determined by the institution.

There are some good pieces: the law is explicit in the individual autonomy and authority of schools in deciding the particularities of their plan (though it is obviously mandatory to comply); furthermore, none of these requirements should “unduly interfere” with the educational and research use of the network.

The Role of Students

Although this law, which in many ways turns our schools into private copyright cops for the entertainment industry, was largely crafted without the input of one of the largest constituencies – students – there is still room for us to be involved.

Schools have until July of next year to finalize their plans for compliance. There is a wide latitude for many of the provisions, oftentimes ranging from minimally objective to overtly troublesome. Administrators who may feel pressure to over-comply need to be reminded of the interest of their students in maintaining an open and enabling network.

Oftentimes, school policy-makers are happy to hear from students. At the University of Michigan, their innovative BAYU system (which alerts students they are uploading) was crafted with support of the student government and is very popular. This is a promising procedural and product model for other schools to examine.

Obviously, there are many worrisome parts of this law – privacy concerns due to network monitoring, stiffing of speech through the overuse of DMCA take-downs, and the high costs of compliance, to name three. Therefore, it is especially important that student voices are heard on this topic.

Reach out to the administrators and technologists on campus – they’re only an email away – offering your help and reminding them how important it is to get these questions correct.

[If you are especially interested in university network policy, be sure to get involved with the Open University Campaign's effort to promote open networks at schools around the world.]

As many of you know, following the Free Culture 2008 Conference, Students for Free Culture began the Open University Campaign – an initiative to increase collaboration, sharing, and openness at the level of higher education. With the academic year about to begin, we want to invite all interested parties to assist the with project; after all, we wouldn’t be very genuine if we didn’t do this in an open manner ourselves!

About the Open University Campaign

In October 2008, Students for Free Culture drafted and adopted the Wheeler Declaration which declared that:

“An open university is one in which:

1. The research produced is open access;
2. The course materials are open educational resources;
3. The university embraces free software and open standards;
4. The university’s patents are readily licensed for free software, essential medicine, and the public good;
5. The university’s network reflects the open nature of the Internet,

where “university” includes all parts of the community: students, faculty and administration.”

Out of this agreement has grown the Open University Campaign, of which a major goal is to produce objective, reliable indicators of individual universities’ levels of openness. A primary method through which this will be accomplished is through “report card” style profiles of leading institution of higher learning, similar to College Sustainability Report Cards. Students for Free Culture has already begun this work by defining principles of measurement, researching available resources, and developing surveys to be distributed to universities.

What Will the Open University Report Cards Entail?

Mirroring the Wheeler Declaration, the Open University Report Cards, as currently envisioned, will evaluate schools on five topics:

1. Open Access: Are faculty required to make their scholarship open access? Is the university press publish open access materials?
2. Open Educational Resources: Does the university create OERs? Does the university use OERs?
3. Free and Open Source Software and Standards: Does university computing use FOSS? Are students and faculty required to use proprietary software?
4. Intellectual Property: Is IP revenue transparent? Is IP used to promote innovation, or restrict knowledge?
5. Network Management: Is the network neutral? Is user privacy respected?

Establishing credible criteria under which schools will be assessed will be essential to creating a respected resource. For example, Which schools’ open access policies are currently lacking important criteria? Or, To what extent should a school actively support FOSS? The volunteers currently involved with the project are working through these questions on the wiki page, and we encourage you to join the conversation.

What the Open University Campaign Needs

In order to make this a successful endeavor, Students for Free Culture needs your involvement!

• Are you a student who can research official university open access policies?
• Are you passionate about FOSS and can develop a questionnaire for IT administrators about FOSS policy?
• Are you statistically-inclined and can handle data on universities?
• Are you a web developer who could create a public website for the Open University Report Cards?
• Are you a graphic designer who could create posters to raise awareness on campuses?

In Closing…

The Open University Campaign recognizes that scholastic advancement occurs most readily in an environment of sharing, openness and collaboration. By providing a cross-index of leading universities, the project will add important comparative measurements to encourage increased academic openness. Our hope is that these resources will provide a platform from which openness activists can endeavor to improve the scholastic environment.

Join us by jumping into the wiki, signing up for the Open University mailing list, or emailing board (at) freeculture (dot) org with suggestions or questions!