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

Quality Assurance in the Japanese Universities

The higher education system represents a vital means for a country to nurture its economic development and social cohesion. All over the world there has been an increasing interest in quality assurance (QA) in higher education, reflecting both the growing importance of higher education services and their valuable contribution to societies. As higher education services moves beyond national borders, the need for international cooperation in QA have increased in the last decades. Moreover, there is an internationalization of QA in higher education and the Asia-Pacific region is a good example. The paper examines the current academic literature surrounding QA in higher education in Asia-Pacific region, emphasizing the case of Japan. Based both on literature review and the experience of a Japanese visiting professor the paper deals with the emergence and development of QA systems in higher education in Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the case of the Japanese higher education system (JHES). The paper shows that the need for international arrangements and approaches to QA in higher education is clearly demonstrated by the case of Asia-Pacific region. It also shows that, facing the challenges of a highly competitive knowledge driven global economy, the region has begun to establish and implement an agreed set of QA principles in higher education. Commitment to quality by all higher education providers from the region has proved to be essential. The importance of quality provision in cross-border higher education made the JHES to implement a new approach in QA.quality assurance, higher education, Asia-Pacific region, Japanese higher education system, Japan

The Limitations and Possibilities of Co-Creation in the Public Domain of Rotterdam

A group of undergraduate bachelor students engaged in a project that focused on finding new co-creation methods for the public domain in Rotterdam. This paper describes the context in which the students worked, the findings they\ud made and the solutions they proposed. Their working process is compared with the work of the Freehouse foundation, a professional artist-run organization that focuses on empowering locals, socially and economically, by enlarging their involvement in the public domain. Subsequently the specifics of the discussed public domain, Rotterdam South, are pointed out. This is required because a very specific context is created by the combination of working class pride, lack of involved citizenship and severe social issues in the area. To conclude, the effect of the co-creative methods employed by the students and Freehouse on the\ud redistribution of power is compared with more traditional forms of citizen participation

Girls and the Media: Girlhood Studies Agenda and Prospects in Italy

Within the Italian context, girlhood studies can hardly be considered a specific field: adolescence and gender construction in Italy have historically been investigated by sociology and psychology, although, in recent years, media studies have also focused on youth media consumption as a cultural process in the broader sense, investigating the relevance of the media in the identity-building process. Actually, the lack of a definition of girlhood studies as such did not prevent Italian research from providing theoretical contributions and significant research on girlhood, mostly in the fields of reception studies, audience studies and textual analysis. On these premises, the article aims at discussing the relationships between girlhood and the media nowadays, keeping in mind firstly the recent transformations in media consumption within the networked society; secondly the coexistence of contradictory representations of girlhood in both the local and the global and the way it is assembled in the young audience discourse; and thirdly the phenomenon of identity co-creation in creative fandom practices.Within the Italian context, girlhood studies can hardly be considered a specific field: adolescence and gender construction in Italy have historically been investigated by sociology and psychology, although, in recent years, media studies have also focused on youth media consumption as a cultural process in the broader sense, investigating the relevance of the media in the identity-building process. Actually, the lack of a definition of girlhood studies as such did not prevent Italian research from providing theoretical contributions and significant research on girlhood, mostly in the fields of reception studies, audience studies and textual analysis. On these premises, the article aims at discussing the relationships between girlhood and the media nowadays, keeping in mind firstly the recent transformations in media consumption within the networked society; secondly the coexistence of contradictory representations of girlhood in both the local and the global and the way it is assembled in the young audience discourse; and thirdly the phenomenon of identity co-creation in creative fandom practices

A shared agenda for the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace, South Korea, 2013

This briefing is ASPI’s distillation of the thoughts of a group of prominent members of the Australian cybersecurity community. We held a workshop in Canberra on the key panel sessions that will take place at the Seoul Conference on Cyberspace, South Korea, in October 2013. Workshop participants included the Australian Government departments with a stake in cyber issues and members of the private sector, including the banking and IT sectors, defence and security industries and representatives from the wider business community. The aim of the workshop was to provide creative Australian perspectives to take to the Seoul conference

Digital or Diligent? Web 2.0's challenge to formal schooling

This paper explores the tensions that arise for young people as both 'digital kids' and 'diligent students'. It does so by drawing on a study conducted in an elite private school, where the tensions between 'going digital' and 'being diligent' are exacerbated by the high value the school places on academic achievement, and on learning through digital innovation. At the school under study, high levels of intellectual and technological resourcing bring with them an equally high level of expectation to excel in traditional academic tasks and high-stakes assessment. The students, under constant pressure to perform well in standardised tests, need to make decisions about the extent to which they take up school-sanctioned digitally enhanced learning opportunities that do not explicitly address academic performance. The paper examines this conundrum by investigating student preparedness to engage with a new learning innovation – a student-led media centre – in the context of the traditional pedagogical culture that is relatively untouched by such digital innovation. The paper presents an analysis of findings from a survey of 481 students in the school. The survey results were subjected to quantitative regression tree modelling to flesh out how different student learning dispositions, social and technological factors influence the extent to which students engage with a specific digital learning opportunity in the form of the Web 2.0 Student Media Centre (SMC) designed to engage the senior school community in flexible digital-networked learning. What emerges from the study is that peer support, perceived ease of use and usefulness, learning goals and cognitive playfulness are significant predictors of the choices that students make to negotiate the fundamental tensions of being digital and/or diligent. In scrutinising the tensions around a digital or a diligent student identity in this way, the paper contributes new empirical evidence to understanding the problematic relationship between student-led learning using new digital media tools and formal schooling

From audiences to publics : convergence culture and the Harry Potter phenomenon

In the mid-nineties, changing business and communication models influenced the way in which cultural industries operated. The spheres of public and private, production and distribution, ownership and access had to be reconsidered and were characterised by convergence culture, a commercial and creative environment based on active participation that offers support for creating and sharing interpretations and original works. Convergence culture has relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic participation and fosters a sense of community growing around people’s common interests and ideologies. It is also a product of the relationship between communication technologies, the cultural communities that grow around them, and the activities they support.peer-reviewe

When Church Teachings and Policy Commitments Collide: Perspectives on Catholics in the U.S. House of Representatives

This article investigates the influence of religious values on domestic social policy-making, with a particular focus on Catholics. We analyze roll call votes in the 109th Congress and find that Catholic identification is associated with support for Catholic Social Teaching, but both younger Catholics and Republican Catholics are found less supportive. In followup interviews with a small sample of Catholic Republicans, we find that they justify voting contrary to Church teaching by seeing its application to domestic social issues as less authoritative than Church moral teachings on issues like abortion

Social Media: the Wild West of CSR Communications

Purpose - The central argument that this paper posits is that traditional media of old presented a clear, ordered world of communication management for organisations to extol their CSR credentials. In contrast to this, new Web 2.0 social media is increasingly being used by activists and hactivists to challenge corporate communication CSR messages and does so by highlighting instances and examples of Corporate Social Irresponsibility (CSI) (Jones, Bowd and Tench, 2009; Tench, Sun and Jones, 2012). Design/methodology/approach - The paper reports on research data from the European Communication Monitor 2010, 2011 and 2012 (http://www.communicationmonitor.eu/) and draws on work already published in this area (Tench, Verhoeven and Zerfass, 2009; Verhoeven et al, 2012; and Zerfass et al, 2010, 2011) to illustrate the unruly unregulated Web 2.0 social media communication landscape in Europe. A range of literature is drawn on to provide the theoretical context for an exploration of issues that surround social media. Findings - In late modernity (Giddens, 1990) communication comes in many guises. Social media is one guise and it has re-shaped as well as transformed the nature of communications and the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders. Originality/value - Communicating CSR in the Wild West of social media requires diplomatic and political nous, as well as awareness and knowledge of the dangers and pitfalls of CSI. The data reported on in this paper illustrates well the above points and sets out scenarios for future development of corporate communication of CSR through, and with social media

Japanese Management Strategies

During the detailed researching work of the Kaizen based management practices of the most advanced Japanese companies, that is the best representatives of the Japanese industry, at certain phases occures the need to have a look of a wider perspective embracing some aspects of the strategies and the external connections of these firms, especially the lean enterprises.The goal of this paper is giving a framework for the detailed researches investigating the Kaizen based activities within the companies with the help of general pictures on the ‘Japanese way’ and on the behaviour of the Japanese companies in the glorious fast growth period and then in the times of the serious crises and stagnation as an adaptation to the globalization process.Japanese company culture, Kaizen management philosophy, lean enterprise, corporate strategy,confrontation strategy, avoiding strategy, organizational learning