This page is part of the Open Practices briefing paper

OERs and open scholarship

The UK OER programme has to date identified few links between OER and open scholarship. However, the forms of collaborative knowledge-building described in the previous sections blur the boundaries between learning and research. From other programmes, for example the Exeter Cascade and Vitae projects in the JISC Developing Digital Literacies programme, and from the JISC research data management programme, there is evidence that open scholarly practices are popular among early career researchers, and that this is filtering through into teaching approaches that make use of open data (for example to allow practice with data analysis and interpretation) and open access publications.

Digital reputation management is a skill required both by researchers seeking funding and by students seeking work. Social networking facilities such as commenting, reviewing, rating and referral are increasingly used to support scholarly exchange: it will be interesting to see whether this lowers the threshold of participation in scholarly communities for students who have acquired these habits in non-academic contexts.

Go to the next page in the Open practices briefing paper: Common Issues in Open Practices