Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review

Within the context of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) research scope, this literature review investigates the current trends, advantages, disadvantages, problems and solutions, opportunities and barriers in Open Access Publishing (OAP), and in particular Open Access (OA) academic publishing. This study is intended to scope and evaluate current theory and practice concerning models for OAP and engage with intellectual, legal and economic perspectives on OAP. It is also aimed at mapping the field of academic publishing in the UK and abroad, drawing specifically upon the experiences of CREATe industry partners as well as other initiatives such as SSRN, open source software, and Creative Commons. As a final critical goal, this scoping study will identify any meaningful gaps in the relevant literature with a view to developing further research questions. The results of this scoping exercise will then be presented to relevant industry and academic partners at a workshop intended to assist in further developing the critical research questions pertinent to OAP

A distance learning environment architecture

This paper presents the core architecture of NURAXI, a multimedia research platform aimed at the design, generation, deployment, management and use of intelligent distance learning environments. It describes the actors and services that are involved in the production and use of intelligent distance learning environments, the structures that are at the heart of the environment, and the processes that use these structures. The competence notion is the central component around which both author's and student's interactions gravitate. An author generates the training material on the basis of competencies to be acquired by a student, and the means to get them, i.e. the related activities and contents. A student accesses the pedagogical material by first selecting his/her learning objectives. The training path is made of dynamically created pedagogical activities. Examples of implemented activities are also shown in the paper. The platform presents a number of interesting features including re-usability of didactic components; adaptability of the training material to the student model; dynamic definition of the training path; modularity, and interoperability thanks to the adoption of standard and open solutions in terms of document structures, ontologies, design and implementation techniques. All these advantages derive from the integration of technologies such as the XML paradigm, Servlets, Software Agents, and Distributed Databases

Communities at a Crossroads. Material semiotics for online sociability in the fade of cyberculture

How to conceptualize online sociability in the 21st century? To answer this question, Communities at a Crossroads looks back at the mid-2000s. With the burst of the creative-entrepreneur alliance, the territorialization of the internet and the commercialization of interpersonal ties, that period constituted a turning point for digital communitarian cultures. Many of the techno-libertarian culture\u2019s utopias underpinning the ideas for online sociability faced systematic counter evidence. This change in paradigm has still consequences today. Avoiding both empty invocations of community and swift conclusions of doom, Annalisa Pelizza investigates the theories of actions that have underpinned the development of techno-social digital assemblages after the \u2018golden age\u2019 of online communities. Communities at a Crossroads draws upon the analysis of Ars Electronica\u2019s Digital Communities archive, which is the largest of its kind worldwide, and in doing so presents a multi-faceted picture of internet sociability between the two centuries. Privileging an anti-essentialist, performative approach over sociological understandings of online communities, Communities at a Crossroads proposes a radical epistemological turn. It argues that in order to conceptualize contemporary online sociability, we need first to abandon the techno-libertarian communalist rhetoric. Then, it is necessary to move beyond the foundational distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and adopt a material semiotic approach. In the end, we might have to relinquish the effort to define online or digital communities and engage in more meaningful mapping exercises

The evolution of alliance capabilities

evolution, alliance

Emergency Response Information System Interoperability: Development of Chemical Incident Response Data Model

Emergency response requires an efficient information supply chain for the smooth operations of intra- and inter-organizational emergency management processes. However, the breakdown of this information supply chain due to the lack of consistent data standards presents a significant problem. In this paper, we adopt a theory- driven novel approach to develop an XML-based data model that prescribes a comprehensive set of data standards (semantics and internal structures) for emergency management to better address the challenges of information interoperability. Actual documents currently being used in mitigating chemical emergencies from a large number of incidents are used in the analysis stage. The data model development is guided by Activity Theory and is validated through a RFC-like process used in standards development. This paper applies the standards to the real case of a chemical incident scenario. Further, it complies with the national leading initiatives in emergency standards (National Information Exchange Model

Annual Report Of Research and Creative Productions by Faculty and Staff from January to December, 1996.

Annual Report Of Research and Creative Productions by Faculty and Staff from January to December, 1996