iFixit With the Library: Partnering for Open Pedagogy in Technical Writing

This article describes how a technical writing instructor adopted an open textbook from the Dozuki repair company and an accompanying open pedagogy project through iFixit, for which students wrote openly-licensed repair articles. His work was supported and amplified by the Linn-Benton Community College’s Textbook Affordability Steering Committee and the library. Open pedagogy provides many opportunities for instructor-librarian collaboration. In this case, the library was able to provide information literacy support on intellectual property to the class and help the instructor promote the project across campus and beyond

Helping Researchers Comply with Public Access Policies as a Means to Increase IR Deposit Rates

Poster and lightning round presentation.ScholarsArchive@OSU (SA@OSU) has been the Oregon State University institutional repository since 2004. In June 2013, OSU passed an open access rights retention policy and the Library was charged with implementation. In 2014, a cross-departmental research group at OSU found that most of the papers resulting from their NIH grant had not yet been deposited in PubMed Central (PMC). This unintentional failure occurred for two reasons. First, some, but not all, publishers deposit articles in PMC on researchers’ behalf, which led researchers to assume the articles would be automatically deposited. Second, researchers assumed that if their article had a PMID, they were compliant. They were not, because the NIH requires that articles have a PMCID. Because these deposits were essential for renewal of the grant, researchers needed help identifying all the articles that resulted from the grant and submitting them to PMC. The Library’s solution was to flag articles deposited in the IR that included a grant number and grant agency information. A staff person checks to see if any NIH-funded article is already scheduled to be deposited in PMC on the author’s behalf. If not, the article is deposited in both SA@OSU and PMC. The Library has since enhanced an article deposit form to allow faculty to indicate NIH or Department of Energy (DOE) funding so that the Library can deposit articles or metadata to the appropriate repository (PMC or PAGES). These processes reduce researcher workload and encourage deposit in [email protected]: open access, Pubmed Central, NIH, National Institutes of Health, public access, Department of Energ

Oregon State University Graduate Students’ Scholarly Landscape and Institutional Repository Needs

This study seeks to address the following questions: What are the research practices and needs of graduate students? How can new library services and features reduce the gap between graduate student needs and current IR services and features? Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with eight graduate students from different disciplines. The results were analyzed using the constant comparative method, and four themes emerged: (1) varied perspectives on data sharing, (2) confusion over intellectual property inhibits open sharing, (3) incentivizing institutional repositories through researcher profiles and (optional) social features, and (4) the need for centralized training on and access to research productivity tools. Student perspectives on these themes are presented in the results section, and some potential applications for this research are outlined in the discussion

Investigating patterns of local climate governance: How low-carbon municipalities and intentional communities intervene in social practices

The local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as a privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. However, the success of local climate governance in industrialized countries has been limited. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology-oriented ecological modernization and individual behavior change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex socioeconomic patterns. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of "low-carbon municipalities" (top-down initiatives) and those of "intentional communities" (bottom-up initiatives). We were interested to determine to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Using an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low-carbon municipalities face difficulties in transforming carbon-intensive social practices. While offering some additional low-carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon-intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organizational options to intervene in the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low-carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridization for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models

Facilitating low-carbon living? A comparison of intervention measures in different community-based initiatives

The challenge of facilitating a shift towards sustainable housing, food and mobility has been taken up by diverse community-based initiatives ranging from ‘top-down’ approaches in low-carbon municipalities to ‘bottom-up’ approaches in intentional communities. This paper compares intervention measures of these two types, focusing on their potential of re-configuring daily housing, food and mobility practices. Taking up critics on dominant intervention framings of diffusing low-carbon technical innovations and changing individual behaviour, we draw on social practice theory for the empirical analysis of four case studies. Framing interventions in relation to re-configuring daily practices, the paper reveals differences and weaknesses of current low-carbon measures of community-based initiatives in Germany and Austria. Low-carbon municipalities mainly focus on introducing technologies and offering additional infrastructure and information to promote low-carbon practices. They avoid interfering into residents’ daily lives and do not restrict carbon-intensive practices. In contrast, intentional communities base their interventions on the collective creation of shared visions, decisions and rules and thus provide social and material structures, which foster everyday low-carbon practices and discourage carbon-intensive ones. The paper discusses the relevance of organisational and governance structures for implementing different types of low-carbon measures and points to opportunities for broadening current policy strategies

Investigating patterns of local climate governance: how low-carbon municipalities and intentional communities intervene into social practices

The local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. Yet, the success of local climate governance in industrialised countries has been limited so far. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology-oriented ecological modernisation (EM) and individual behaviour change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex patterns of practices. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of ‘low-carbon municipalities’ (top-down initiatives) and those of ‘intentional communities’ (bottom-up initiatives). We are interested to find out to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Employing an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low-carbon municipalities face tenacious difficulties in transforming carbon-intensive social practices. While offering some additional low-carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon-intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organisational options to intervene into the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low-carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridisation for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models

Finding the Silver Lining... in the Serials Budget Crisis

Most readers are familiar with (and indeed weary of) the long-running serials crisis: budgets have stagnated as the cost of serials for STEM disciplines continues to rise (Bosch & Henderson, 2016). These circumstances force libraries to cancel journals, affecting researchers’ instant access to articles. Nearly two decades ago, Mobley (1998) identified university faculty as important players in this drama and called upon librarians to galvanize and educate faculty. The stage has become even more complex in the intervening years, as the preponderance of subscriptions have become digital. Librarians have considered a variety of factors in their attempts to make journal cuts as painless and equitable as possible. Such factors include usage, cost, impact factor, discoverability, and uniqueness (Williamson, Fernandez, & Dixon, 2014)

Your Discomfort Is Valid: Big Feelings and Open Pedagogy

This article explores the affective reactions of 13 community college students engaged in an open pedagogy textbook creation project. The instructor and first author, a human development and family services faculty member and department chair at a community college in Oregon, received feedback from her students that the project impacted them differently than past learning experiences. Student engagement with research and the diverse personal experiences of their classmates fostered both personal challenges and growth. This article groups these experiences into themes and explores different theoretical lenses, including scaffolding (constructivism), transformative learning, threshold concepts and safe spaces/brave spaces. We discuss the support that students and faculty can use in similar learning situations, such as metacognition and cultural humility. Finally, we offer a visual model that open educators can use and adapt to consider how to raise or lower the stakes of an open pedagogy assignment

Indian Hedgehog release from TNF activated renal epithelia drives local and remote organ fibrosis

Progressive fibrosis is a feature of aging and chronic tissue injury in multiple organs, including the kidney and heart. Glioma-associated oncogene 1 expressing (Gli1+) cells are a major source of activated fibroblasts in multiple organs, but the links between injury, inflammation, and Gli1+ cell expansion and tissue fibrosis remain incompletely understood. We demonstrated that leukocyte-derived tumor necrosis factor (TNF) promoted Gli1+ cell proliferation and cardiorenal fibrosis through induction and release of Indian Hedgehog (IHH) from renal epithelial cells. Using single-cell–resolution transcriptomic analysis, we identified an “inflammatory” proximal tubular epithelial (iPT) population contributing to TNF- and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB)–induced IHH production in vivo. TNF-induced Ubiquitin D (Ubd) expression was observed in human proximal tubular cells in vitro and during murine and human renal disease and aging. Studies using pharmacological and conditional genetic ablation of TNF-induced IHH signaling revealed that IHH activated canonical Hedgehog signaling in Gli1+ cells, which led to their activation, proliferation, and fibrosis within the injured and aging kidney and heart. These changes were inhibited in mice by Ihh deletion in Pax8-expressing cells or by pharmacological blockade of TNF, NF-κB, or Gli1 signaling. Increased amounts of circulating IHH were associated with loss of renal function and higher rates of cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic kidney disease. Thus, IHH connects leukocyte activation to Gli1+ cell expansion and represents a potential target for therapies to inhibit inflammation-induced fibrosis