StigmergicWeb

Open Thinking - a new site/community for anyone who is interested in open content, open source software, open publishing practices or open content formats - is now open. Here’s our current definition of open thinking:

Open thinking is the tendency of an individual, group or institution to give preference to the adoption of open technologies or formats in regards to software, publishing, content and practice. Open thinkers critique, question and seek to reject technologies or formats that compromise the power of adopters, especially in the freedom to use, reuse, edit and share creative works and tools. Open thinkers value group-based problem solving and give preference to tools that enable social collaboration and sharing. Open thinkers actively strive to replace adopted technologies and formats with open alternatives. Open thinkers advocate for the adoption of open technologies and practice.

If you are interested, why don’t you head on over and join in the discussion.

David Wiley quotes from and links to a paper entitled “Open Access: Why should we have it?” As someone who promotes open access, open source software, open data formats and other forms of open thinking, it is rewarding to see that there is tangible evidence of the value of these practices. The cases studied in the paper focus on open access journals/articles in the physical sciences but I think that it is safe to generalize the results to all areas of academic research.

By the way, the open thinking concept is one that a lot of people have been exploring. Alec Couros, Heather Ross and I have been discussing ways to advocate open thinking and initiate some open discussions on the topic. Watch here for further details.

Just saw this via Brian Lamb:

Stewart Mader has published a book Using Wiki in Education, which has some interesting sounding (I haven’t actually read the book yet, so this is one of those Read The Fine Article reviews) case studies of wikis being integrated into a variety of settings. Stewart’s publishing model is an interesting mix of traditional publishing and open content. Intially, two chapters (of ten) are free then every month a new chapter is made free. For $19, you get access to the entire book, the ability to download chapters as PDFs and access to edit the tenth chapter. If you just want the content online, it’ll be free in 8 months. If you want the whole book now, you want access to the PDFs or you want to be able to participate in the content of the book, you fork up the $19 (which is not a bad price for a good book). I’ll probably pay the $19 just to support a great publishing model.

Watch for my book Turning Random Streams of Consciousness into Content soon.