Panel on Copyright, Technology and Culture

SCRIPT: Law and TransformationUniversity of Edinburgh

8 June 2012

Robin Rice, r.rice@ed.ac.ukData Librarian

EDINA

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Overview

• Intro: my base at EDINA and Data Library

• Openness and academic culture

• Governments’ role in promoting OA

• “Software is eating the world”

• “Is this the nerd economy?”

• Tech and the future of Higher Education

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EDINA at the University of Edinburgh

EDINA staff on its 15th birthday (January, 2010)

Data Library service, Uni of Edinburgh

Helpingresearchers:

• find data• use data• manage &

share data• managing

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Images by ChartsBin and mkandlez on flickr

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Openness and academic culture (1)

• Despite enthusiasm of early adopters in open scholarship, academic culture is steeped in norms and slow to change.

• Academic rewards are not yet geared towards openness.

Openness by PSD on flickr

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Openness and academic culture (2)

• Unexamined relationship with publishers (on copyright, peer review, price).

• Adoption of ‘open scholarship’ and sharing practices are dependent on generational and disciplinary effects

Copyright Symbols by MikeBlogs on flickr

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Governments’ role in promoting OA

• Government action on open access can be traced back to principle of public access to publicly funded research.

• US government and funders (NIH, NSF) have raised the bar internationally.

• National and local govt’s are opening up their own data, setting a good example.

• David Willetts’ recent speech to the Publishers Association have raised expectations in the UK.

• The EC is demanding compliance with open access for funded research projects.

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“Software is eating the world” (1)

“Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.”

-Marc Andreessen, co-founder Netscape, in Wall Street Journal, August 2011

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“Is this the ‘Nerd Economy’?” (1)

“The future of the economy and economic recovery lies with the ‘nerds’- specifically, those nerds that code. And this is a good thing. They are smart. There has never been a better time to be a nerdpreneur.”

- Patrick Moran, New Relic blog post, April 2012

New Relic is giving away these t-shirts with a free

trial of their software.

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Is this the ‘Nerd Economy’? (2)

• “Coding is as hot as it’s ever been and yet we graduated more students with CSci degrees in The Year of Our Orwell as we do today”

• “Some of the most innovative companies on the planet are starved for talent while at the same time job prospects for new college graduates are pretty bleak. What will it take to resolve that paradox?”

-John Bischke, “They Ain’t Making Any More of Them: The Great Engineering Shortage of 2012”, Tech Crunch, Apr. 2012

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Tech and the future of Higher Education (1)

1. The concept of ‘digital’ will fade2. There will be even more personalisation of

technology3. The boundaries between formal research

and scholarship, formal education and training will become increasingly blurred

4. The ‘added value’ of face to face educational experiences will start to break down (?!)

Sarah Porter, head of innovation at JISC, shares her view of the future: “Seven predictions for our technology-enabled

universities.” JISC Inform, Issue 33 (2012)

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Tech and the future of Higher Education (2)

5. The digital environment will provide more opportunities for institutions to provide an enhanced and customised student experience

6. More organisations will accredit chunks of learning

7. Organisations will think about services, not systems