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Show Campus News Friday, Oct. 28, 2011 Page 3 Librarians inform public of access rights Briefs Campus & Community BY AMBER MURDOCH Faculty Senate to hold annual forum staff writer The public's right to knowledge, along with the process and limitations through which people can obtain knowledge through academic journals, was discussed by a panel Wednesday. Members of the Cache community came together for International Open Access Week to discuss reasons to take action on the issue of open records access. Open access means "the removal of price barriers, specifically to end-users or consumers of the information," according to Scholarly Communications and Institutional Repository librarian Andrew Wesolek, who was a member of the panel. "USU actually really pushes for open access year round," he said. "Our digital commons pushes to make the intellectual capital of the university — the publications, great literature — available publicly when possible." The panel included ethicist Erica Holberg, physicist Charlie Torre and USU Press Director Michael Spooner. Each presented several points regarding rights to knowledge and why valuable research tools should be made available to the public. "Knowledge is essentially social," Holberg said. "The ideal that open access is getting right is that ideal of knowledge as good in itself. I think there is no such thing as private knowledge. It happens together." "As far as I understand it (open access) seems right to me," Crystal Larsen, a freshman studying English, said. "It seems kind of incongruent that there wouldn't be something inaccessible that individuals were paying for." Students are losing access to essential academic research that is necessary to complete their educations, according to a statement on the Right to Research Coalition website. Over the last two decades the price of subscriptions to academic journals has increased enormously, to the point where the publications are often out of reach for students, even at the most wellfunded institutions, according to the statement. The site reports that many journal subscriptions cost more than $10,000 per year, and libraries cannot afford to have access to them all. One example is Massachusettes Institute of Technology, which the coalition stated had to increase its journal budget by more than 360 percent over 20 years, to keep up with journal price increases. "Everything costs, but who should pay?" Torre asked. It essentially all comes down to economics, Spooner said. People want things for free, but the cost has to come from somewhere. "If the users don't want to pay for it, then the USU's Faculty Senate will hold its annual Faculty Forum, Monday, Nov. 7, from 3-4:30 p.m. in the Taggart Student Center Auditorium. The forum provides a format where faculty can discuss subjects of current interest, question and debate policies and procedures and formulate recommendations for consideration by Faculty Senate. The agenda will be e-mailed to all faculty no later than one week before the forum. All USU faculty are encourage to mark the calendar and attend this special event. Faculty Senate officers hope to see everyone there. NATIONAL OPEN ACCESS WEEK is held every year to inform the public of its right to information access, including academic journals. USU faculty try to make as much information accessible to the public as possible, despite high costs to the universty. BRANDON FONDA photo authors have to pay for it. They want tenure," he said. "In order to advance in your career you have to publish in a peer-reviewed venue." The Research Coalition reported that because of this publishers take advantage, being sole points of access for these journals. An article can only be published in one journal. Students and professors need as much access to academic records as possible in order to effectively conduct research, according to the coalition. Because of this need, libraries will subscribe to journals no matter what the price — until funds are depleted. "This is called monopoly capitalism," Spooner said, "They'll publish books and textbooks, and jack the prices up on those as well." "Is it possible to have free open access to research results?" Torre asked. "Definitely. It's already happening." Torre displayed the archives for Cornell University, which he said currently has open access to more than 710,000 electronic prints in various fields such as physics, mathematics, computer science, biology and finance. "There is constant positive pressure for this thing to grow," Torre said. He said the archives are essentially an online database to which articles are submitted prior to publication. Anyone can look at them for free, and roughly 7,000 articles per month are now submitted worldwide, he said. "It dwarfs any collection of journals you can come up with," Torre said. "More people use this than journals combined. This is what we use when we want to do science. This is how we communicate. It's no worse than a research journal." The bulk of these papers end up getting published in journals somewhere, he said. If you subscribed to all of these articles in journals, you would be paying a lot more. "The publication process is kind of a screening process for determining what is of scholarly value and what is not. Right now this is the only screening process in place," said Wesolek, "Professors have to publish in peer-reviewed journals in order to demonstrate that they are contributing to the scholarly community and contributing to the advancement of knowledge." Torre said the idea is to use the power of the archives to completely redesign the process of disseminating knowledge. "The mission of the university is to create knowledge, that's what we're here for," Spooner said. "We create knowledge, and we disseminate knowledge. I don't know if we have a right to knowledge or a right to unrestricted access to knowledge. What I know is that we live in a finite ecosystem under competing pressures. It's something that will be to our advantage to work together to solve, but in any case, however, we're all in it together." - amber.murdoch@aggiemail.usu.edu *From Page 1 Hatch answers students' questions about national economy it's really important for you to get involved. It's fun, and you'll learn a lot. He also said he would not be dressing up for Halloween, because he is "scary enough as it is," but the Hatch family will pass out candy. "Even though Republicans, conservatives and Libertarians are the vast majority on campus, they are easily the quietest ones on campus as well," said College Republicans President Mikey Rodgerson. "We do what we can to bring as many conservative voices and as many of our leaders as we can." "I thought his perspective on the balanced budget is what we need," Spencer Knight, a freshman majoring in economics, said. "I think there's just a lot right now with the economy and economics, and I wanted to get — kind of hear — his opinions on it, instead of just reading articles on stuff — kind of a firsthand opinion from someone who has knowledge and experience on it." Erika Norton, a senior major- ing in anthropology and this year's College of Humanities and Social Sciences senator, said she attended the event because she wants to be more aware and more involved in politics. Norton said she felt the session was "tailored toward our age group and getting us involved." It was the consensus of some students, however, Hatch should've answered more questions in the time he was there. One student said as much could be expected from politicians. Hatch was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 and has served for 35 years, giving him the most seniority of all Republicans in the Senate. He has served on the Senate Judiciary Committee; the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and the Senate Finance Committee. The College Republicans will host another event Nov. 17 featuring Utah Gov. Gary Herbert as the keynote speaker. - piperblotter@gmail.com Trick-or-treating for a cause Nominations open for grad mentors USU's School of Graduate Studies is now accepting nominations for the 2012 Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award. The award will be presented at the Graduate Hooding and Commencement Ceremony, May 2012. The award recognizes faculty excellence in the complex process of mentoring graduate students to prepare them for productive careers. Those nominated should be effective advisors who facilitate degree completion, model sound scholarship and ethical behavior, help students understand and benefit from departmental and university resources, provide emotional support, offer constructive criticism and involve students in publishing and other professional activities. "Graduate students are an important part of the research continuum," said Shelley Lindauer, associate dean of the School of Graduate Studies and associate vice president for research. "Excellent faculty mentoring is a vital part of the graduate student experience. As our faculty members help graduate students develop into professionals, they are preparing individuals who will be responsible for the next generation of discovery, innovation and development that will change the world." Nominations may be submitted by USU faculty, students, alumni or a department or program and are due to the School of Graduate Studies Office (Old Main 164) by Nov. 28. Online teaching fellows honored Three exemplary faculty members who are fully engaged in teaching online courses are recognized at USU as Online Teaching Fellows. The designation recognizes and fosters outstanding online course development and instruction. The inaugural honorees were announced by Robert W. Wagner, associate vice provost and executive director of Distance Education at USU. They include Anne Diekema from the Logan campus, Camille Fairbourn of the Brigham City campus and Heather Jensen, Logan campus. USU's Senior Vice Provost for Regional Campuses and Distance Education Ronda Menlove congratulated the first three Online Teaching Fellows. "We are pleased to recognize outstanding teaching in the online environment," Menlove said. "This is yet another example of Utah State University's commitment to delivering high-quality education and increasing access to our worldrenowned programs." Diekma, Fairbourne and Jensen will devote at least 12 to 15 hours per semester sharing their expertise with other USU faculty. ClarifyCorrect The policy of The Utah Statesman is to correct any error made as soon as possible. If you find something you would like clarified or find in error, please contact the editor at 797-1742, statesman@aggiemail.usu.edu or come in to TSC 105. SOCIOLOGY HONORS SOCIETY OFFICERS Tyra Simmons and Mikey Guertz stack canned food collected by sociology students from Thursday night's trick-or-treating for canned food event. All food will benefit the Cache Community Food Pantry. DAN SMITH photo lCompiled from staff and media reports |