Why do we love open access? 💖
Because knowledge should be shared, not locked away. At Knowledge Commons, we support open, accessible humanities research so scholars, students, and communities can discover and build on work without barriers.

This month, we’re celebrating open knowledge and the impact it has across the humanities.

#KnowledgeCommons #OpenAccess #Humanities #HigherEducation

Academia.edu is getting more and more ludicrous all the time. Latest email from them:
"Hi Anna, the wolf recently confirmed that your paper Birth Narratives in Indo-European Mythology mentions them."
Very coherent and helpful.
I guess I need to unsubscribe from even more of their useless emails and get around to gutting my profile. I like knowing about relevant publications that people in my field post, but I much prefer Knowledge Commons for my own work.
#academia #academia.edu #KnowledgeCommons

If you missed #OpenEd2025 last week the #KnowledgeCommons lightning talk is now on KCWorks.

Publishing with Knowledge Commons and KCWorks https://works.hcommons.org/records/7wfx5-fys61

"During this session, we will demonstrate how Knowledge Commons can be utilized in the OER creation process by pointing to examples that have been published in various formats from across the platform. We will discuss how KC connects authors, audiences, and researchers, and makes knowledge available to the community. We will also discuss how our team has worked with our user community to cultivate open projects."

#openaccess #publishing #scholarlycommunications

Another great deposit in KCWorks from some folks at Punctum Books: Open or Proprietary? AI Scraping of OA Content Warrants a Collective Response

https://works.hcommons.org/records/6ftf4-5xg24

"How can these OA publishers have a better view of how their publications are used with regard to the terms of their licenses, primarily in relation to commercial reuse (even while recognizing that there could never have a complete view, and that's okay)? How can OA publishers better monitor usage by nonhuman readers (AI bots) and the corporations to which they are tethered? How can they strategize to better confront and negotiate the massive extraction of profit from the scholarly labor OA presses and their authors produce and transmit, now and in the future?"

Worth a read.

#openaccess #openaccessweek #KnowledgeCommons

One of the things I love about working on Knowledge Commons is seeing some of the deposits we get to KCWorks, our open access repository.

This essay, "Is a Hot Dog a Sandwich?," is one of my favorites of the week. The description is "An essay discussing the nature of definitions, using hotdogs as an illustrative example" and I'll be honest, it was both entertaining and educational.

Check it out.

https://works.hcommons.org/records/7sqf0-q1y18

#openaccessweek #openaccess #hotdog #sandwich #KnowledgeCommons

Part 2 | From Open Access to Open Agency

23 Oct | 16:00–17:00 CEST 👉 https://www.openaire.eu/eventdetail/1516/knowledge-commons-cafe-part-2-from-open-access-to-open-agency

Let’s rethink trust, ownership & openness together.

#OpenScience #AI #KnowledgeCommons

New Terms and Conditions of #academia.edu are simply unacceptable. I’ll try to move things to #ResearchGate and, hopefully, to #KnowledgeCommons (hcommons.org) and then very probably delete my academia account completely.

When you hear someone say that "AI is the future of search" as if it is a great thing, and a foregone conclusion, what they are actually saying is that the doors to any individual blog or website or resources are closing. The digital waypaths to finding sourced content directly are being shuttered and boarded up. That human search via multiple methods utilising various recommender systems is being removed. In favour of a single gateway to pre delivered materials all owned by private monopoly companies. And we are expected to react as if this is a good thing, the "future".

#ai #ChatGPT #GenAI #openai #extractivism #academia #archives #internet #KnowledgeEquity #knowledgecommons #search

Update. Bad news from the #NEH for #KnowledgeCommons (and the rest of us).
https://about.hcommons.org/2025/04/17/on-the-neh-and-our-path-forward/

"On April 2, 2025, we received notification that our NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant, awarded in 2020, was terminated effective immediately…On April 10, 2025, we received further…notification that our contract to provide the NEH’s Designated Public-Access #Repository was also being terminated…This loss is devastating…both for the financial impact it represents…but also for the unceremonious end to a goal we’d set for ourselves years ago…Not to mention the bigger picture here: that designated public-access repository is no longer needed, because it is assumed that the NEH will no longer be funding research, and thus there will be no results of research to make publicly accessible."

PS: All the agencies covered by the #OSTP #NelsonMemo must designate #OpenAccess repositories for their OA content. NEH was the only agency to designate a repo not hosted by the govt. All the other agency repos will be hosted by the govt, where they will be subject to political censorship or takedowns.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #GreenOA #Takedowns #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

Watching with interest. US-based #KnowledgeCommons plans to co-locate in Europe and South Africa in order to preserve academic research beyond the control of the US govt. Good luck, @kfitz.info. about.hcommons.org/2025/03/19/d... #Preservation

Digital Preservation in a Time...

Update. From @kfitz: "Digital Preservation in a Time of Disorder"
https://about.hcommons.org/2025/03/19/digital-preservation-in-a-time-of-disorder/

"#KnowledgeCommons has applied for a significant grant from Lever for Change to build, implement, and sustain a digital preservation network that will be free from the US government’s, and any other single government’s, interference…KC is a #nonprofit, community-governed, #OpenAccess platform for creating and sharing knowledge world-wide…But, in the present moment, our US-centeredness is a significant threat to that mission. We propose to establish three linked but independent nonprofit public-benefit companies incorporated in the US, Europe, and South Africa, all dedicated to the social and technological processes of gathering, preserving, and ensuring the public accessibility of academic research."

#Censorship #DefendResearch #Preservation #Takedowns #USPol #USPolitics

A theme that many now discuss: the quality of information on the knowledge web. I first wrote about this on my blog back in June 2023. (I discuss it as part of 2 subsequent academic papers.) #genai #fakenews #misinformation #knowledgecommons https://penworks.net/blog/the-knowledge-web-problem

The Knowledge Web Problem | pe...

I made a small gift to Wikipedia and you should too. Every little counts.

#wikipedia #donate #donations #knowledgecommons

We all want an open web, open knowledge, data, science and content (and AI). But when society makes power so unequal, so imbalanced economically, how can we continue like this?

#openweb #knowledgecommons #OpenAccess #ai #GenAI #academia #academicchatter

My Website with homepage https://japanned.hcommons.org/ is at Knowledge Commons, formerly Humanities Commons. They have recently introduced a more detailed KC Works system of metadata and information on research repository deposits. The template of our profile pages allows for self-introductory and networking information as well as our deposits in the KC [Knowledge Commons] Works repository of academic and creative works. I have 85 deposits in a wide range of 25 genres or categories.

The new KC Works system also allows for editing and adding information, so I have gone through the 85 deposits, updating some of them especially to make the content more immediately accessible. Visitors to the deposit pages can usually see a PDF file of the content or download it, but if not, click on the Details tab and then the URL.

My Profile Page including the KCWorks deposits is at https://hcommons.org/members/stevemccartyinjapan

#KnowledgeCommons #Education #OER #humanities #mastodon

@edutooters @academicchatter @hello @japan

Under the 2022 #OSTP #NelsonMemo, US federal funding agencies must make agency-funded research #OpenAccess in "agency-designated" #repositories. The same was true under the 2013 #HoldrenMemo. This is the first time that any federal agency has designated a repository neither built nor hosted by government agencies — an important milestone for #GreenOA. Kudos to #KnowledgeCommons (@hello).

✊🏾💡 Common(s) Causes is an effort by @okfn @creativecommons @openfuture #WikimediaEurope to create a shared advocacy agenda for the #KnowledgeCommons.

📃 Our new report outlines opportunities and threats facing the open movement: https://blog.okfn.org/2024/11/18/report-open-movements-commons-causes/

@chrisneedham In (at least) the second mode, we'd need at least one governance body (kinda like a certificate authority, maybe) to help everyone decide whether to trust the signing keys.
#KnowledgeCommons...

Im writing a paper for an upcoming conference, probably titled 'The Knowledge Commons in the Age of AI". It will be a follow up to my paper from 2018 that discussed related topics (https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-018-0056-z ).

Though I will reflect on some positive issues, focus will be on risks and challenges, so it will be a critique, not in praise of, AI. Any thoughts you have, or resources youd want to recommend, feel free.

#ai #GenAI #AIEd #llm #knowledgecommons #academicchatter

Last month we participated in @wikimania 2024 organized under the theme "Collaboration of the Open." Learn more about the sessions our team led or took part in 👉 https://openfuture.eu/event/open-future-at-wikimania-2024/ #DigitalCommons #KnowledgeCommons #Wikimania