How has academia shared its resources openly in response to the Ebola crisis?* Have we used technology to make a difference?
Here are some examples:
- Oxford University Press opened up fifty scientific articles. These are from scholarly journals like Clinical Infectious Diseases and the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
- An Ebola MOOC appeared from Alison.
- Another scholarly publisher, Wolters Kluwer, has published an Ebola information site.
- EDITED TO ADD: Science has launched another Ebola info site.
- Faculty at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill created a site displaying information about Ebola in Liberia.
“Working with a team of 10 volunteer designers and developers, UNC assistant professor Steven Kind launched ebolainliberia.org on Monday to help Liberian officials make better-informed decisions to help contain the spread of Ebola while providing the public with view of the country’s Ebola statistics.”
What other examples of Ebola information and discussion openness are now emerging from American colleges, universities, libraries, and museums? Alternatively, how much Ebola work is being done being paywalls and learning management systems silos?
These examples offer a snapshot of where academic institutions stand in terms of openness and public scholarship in 2014. A MOOC from a commercial provider is one way forward, apparently. Scholarly publishers can selectively release content from their hoards, or elicit free content from their contributors.
Meanwhile, the Wikipedia entry is rich and rigorous. Even the New York Times noticed. And beyond that there is the sprawling world of academics using social media to share their thoughts. For example, many Ebola-related posts and discussions occur on Scienceblogs. The Crooked Timber group blog has some thoughts about politics and policy.
What else is happening in the open world with the Ebola crisis? What can we learn about higher education?
(thanks to Amber Rmt, the EDUCAUSE Leading Change list, Jamie Oberdick on Twitter, and Amanda Sturgill in a comment on this post for contributions)
*I’m not going to discuss Ebola itself in this post, nor the political, policy, and cultural dimensions of the outbreak.
Not really open access, but I thought this was a nice project from UNC: http://www.wncn.com/story/26478357/as-death-toll-grows-unc-team-launches-ebola-tracking-website
That’s pretty open, though. Thank you for the catch – just added it to the original post.