Progress of every profession, academic discipline and society at large rides on the back of research and development. Research generates new information and knowledge. It is a standardized process of identifying problem, collecting data or evidence, tabulating data and its analysis, drawing inference and establishing new facts in the form of information. Information has its life cycle: conception, generation, communication, evaluation and validation, use, impact and lastly a fuel for new ideas. Research results are published in journals, conference proceedings, monographs, dissertations, reports, and now the web provides many a new forum for its communication. Since their origin in the 17th century, the journals have remained very popular and important channels for dissemination of new ideas and research. Journals have become inseparable organ of scholarship and research communication, and are a huge and wide industry. Their proliferation (with high mortality rate), high cost of production, cumbersome distribution, waiting time for authors to get published, and then more time in getting listed in indexing services, increasing subscription rates, and lastly archiving of back volumes have led to a serious problem known as "Serials Crisis". The ICT, especially the internet and the WWW, descended from the cyber space to solve all these problems over night in the new avatar of e-journals. Their inherent features and versatility have made them immensely popular. Then in the beginning of the 21st century emerged the Open Access (OA) movement with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). Philosophy of open access is to provide free of charge and unhindered access to research and its publications without copyright restrictions. The movement got support from great scientists, educationists, publishers, research institutions, professional associations and library organizations. The other OA declarations at Berlin and Bethesda put it on strong footings. Its philosophy is: research funded by tax payers should be available free of charge to tax payers. Research being a public good should be available to all irrespective of their paying capacity. The OA has many forms of access and usage varying from total freedom from paying any charges, full permission to copy, download, print, distribute, archive, translate and even change format to its usage with varying restrictions.
In the beginning, OA publications were doubted for their authenticity and quality: established authors and researchers shied away both from contributing to and citing from OA literature. But Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, 1997) and its code of conduct formulated in collaboration with DOAJ and OASPA, etc. have stemmed the rot. They have defined best practices and compiled principles of transparency for quality control to sift the grain from the chaff; to keep the fraudulent at bay. Now it is accepted that contributors to OA get increased visibility, global presence, increased accessibility, increased collaboration, increased impact both in citations and applications, and lastly instant feedback, comments and critical reflections. This movement has got roots due to its systematic advocacy campaign. Since 2008 every year 21-27 October is celebrated as the OA week throughout the world. There are many organizations which advocate OA through social media and provide guidance for others.
Open Access research literature has not only made new ideas easy and quick to disseminate, but the impact of research can be quantitatively gauged by various bibliometric, scientometric and webometric methods such as h-index, i-10 index, etc. to measure the scientific productivity, its flow, speed and lastly its concrete influence on individuals, and on the progress of a discipline. The OA movement is gaining momentum every day, thanks to technology, organizational efforts for quality control and its measureable impact on productivity and further research. It needs to be strengthened with participation of every researcher, scientist, educationist and librarian. This module covers five units, covering these issues. At the end of this module, you are expected to be able to:
- Define scholarly communication and open access, and promote and differentiate between the various forms of Open Access;
- Explain issues related to rights management, incl. copyright, copy-left, authors’ rights and related intellectual property rights;
- Demonstrate the impact of Open Access within a scholarly communication environment.
This is Module One of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Library Schools.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002319/231920E.pdf.

This little booklet, put together based on experience, can be a helpful guide to students to avoid potential traps around plagiarism and paraphrasing - after all, plagiarism needs not be deliberate and more often results from a lack of knowledge than from an intention to cheat. Although the topic of plagiarism should be standard material for every beginning student as one of the key competences all students should possess, I noticed that far from all students have ever seriously thought about, or actually learned about, the concept. The booklet does not provide you with a detailed account of plagiarism definitions, nor with lengthy elaborations on the ethical or moral considerations behind the concept. Instead, the aim is to provide students (as well as fellow teachers) hands-on insights into what plagiarism is, how it can be traced and how it can be avoided.

Researchers, scholars and scientists main business is scholarly communication. We communicate about our work to others, as we push the boundaries of what we know and the society knows. We question established notions and truths about science. We share our findings with others, and in a way that is popularly known as scholarly communication which emerged with the publication of first journal in 1665. However, the term gained popularity only in the 1970s, as access to peer reviewed and scholarly communication became difficult. This module has four units covering introduction to scholarly communication, peer reviewed journals, electronica journals and databases and the Serials Crisis. At the end of this module, the learner is expected to be able to:
- Explain philosophy, mission, and objectives of scholarly communication
- Describe the process of scholarly communication
- Identify different channels of scholarly communication
- Discuss the dysfunctioning of the scholarly communication
In Unit 1, Introduction to scholarly communication, we have discussed different aspects of scholarly communication – particularly its genesis, importance and ethics of academic publishing, and different communication channels available in academic publishing. Some of these channels are commonly described as primary sources as they provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. Historically, scientific journals were initiated by learned societies and other scholarly communities for reporting results of concluded research works or scientific discoveries. Now many forprofit publishers have started publishing research journals.
Unit 2, Communicating with Peer Review Journals, covers two important academic publishing channels, namely peer reviewed journals, conferences and their proceedings. This Unit also highlights different methods and procedures of peer reviewing for publishing primary literature emanated from research studies. The peer reviewing is essential for validating quality of research findings conveyed by researchers, which are subject to fulfilment of ethical standards and appropriate research design, sampling and other methodological issues.
In Unit 3, Electronic journals and databases, we have discussed the emergence of electronic journals in academic and research environment due to wide proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in research communications and academic publishing. Scientific communities and scientific communications from the global South are getting substantive attentions through adaptation of electronic journals and electronic academic databases in the process of research communications.
In Unit 4, the Serials Crisis, we discuss the cost of peer reviewed publications and the problems faced by researchers in developing countries. The focus of this unit is on highlighting the problems and discusses possible solutions including the emergence of open access as one of the solutions. Open access journal publishing helps in mitigating some of the problems associated with serials crisis.
This is Module One of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002319/231938e.pdf

Gábor Lövei’s scientific communication course for students and scientists explores the intricacies involved in publishing primary scientific papers, and has been taught in more than twenty countries. Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers is the distillation of Lövei’s lecture notes and experience gathered over two decades; it is the coursebook many have been waiting for.

The book’s three main sections correspond with the three main stages of a paper’s journey from idea to print: planning, writing, and publishing. Within the book’s chapters, complex questions such as ‘How to write the introduction?’ or ‘How to submit a manuscript?’ are broken down into smaller, more manageable problems that are then discussed in a straightforward, conversational manner, providing an easy and enjoyable reading experience.

Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers stands out from its field by targeting scientists whose first language is not English. While also touching on matters of style and grammar, the book’s main goal is to advise on first principles of communication.

This book is an excellent resource for any student or scientist wishing to learn more about the scientific publishing process and scientific communication. It will be especially useful to those coming from outside the English-speaking world and looking for a comprehensive guide for publishing their work in English.

This book is an introduction to communication, affect, and learning in the classroom. The book was originally created as a way to introduce K-12 educators to instructional communication, but has been expanded to help College/University professors and Talent Development professionals as well. 

The comprehensive e-book "Volunteers4Europe" is the result of the European project of the same name, which was carried out from 2018 to 2020. The project, co-financed by the European funding programme Erasmus Plus, focused on the documentation of interesting volunteer activities in the participating partner countries. The project teams from Germany, Estonia, France, Italy and Sweden produced many photo reportages of volunteer activities, which are now all available in this e-book. On more than 600 pages, the multifaceted nature of volunteering in Europe becomes visible. There are examples from civil protection, nature conservation, environmental protection, nature conservation and animal welfare. In addition, many volunteer activities in social areas are presented, for example in senior citizens' work, for people with disabilities, with a migration background or with other disadvantages.
All age groups can volunteer in the most diverse areas. The project teams hope that with this e-book they will not only make visible and acknowledge the enormous achievements of many volunteers, but also that many readers will find inspiration for their own voluntary commitment.

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo determinar el nivel de relación entre las habilidades perceptivas y el aprendizaje de la matemática de los niños y las niñas de 5 años de una Institución Educativa de Huancavelica, en la educación remota. El diseño empleado fue el correlacional y la muestra lo conformaron 46 estudiantes de 5 años de una institución de educación inicial de Huancavelica. Los instrumentos empleados fueron, la lista de cotejo para cada variable con 30 ítems. Los resultados evidencian que existe relación estadísticamente significativa entre las habilidades perceptivas y el aprendizaje de la matemática en los estudiantes de 5 años de una institución educativa de Huancavelica, en la educación remota. Estos resultados cuantitativos, con un r=0.75, representan una correlación positiva moderada, según el cuadro de índices de correlación de Hernández, Fernández y Baptista (2018)

Thirty-five experienced and accomplished higher education leaders have come together to provide twenty-five essays on twelve topics about which all leaders, aspiring leaders and students of higher education should be informed. This is a labor of love, provided for free electronically, and there are no star turns here. Each essay is focused on providing the reader with advice based on wisdom acquired from lessons learned. Some topics covered include: beginning and completing a leadership position, responding to authority, establishing accountability, budget policy, long-term planning, affordability and student success, creating a safe community, fundraising, research funding, college athletics, and crisis management.

The purpose of this book is to acquaint the reader with what curriculum is, how it is defined, what is involved in the process of its development, the different types and models of curriculum, as well as innovations to make teaching and learning more engaging and meaningful. This will be balanced by the impact of assessment and adapting curriculum in times of challenges with an eye towards the work of great schools and master teachers during times of change.
The inclusion of Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a new and exciting dimension to the text through the inclusion of educational resources from experts who have graciously consented to share their work with others at no cost, thereby giving all readers the opportunity of learning about curriculum without the burden of cost as a barrier that shuts out capable and enthusiastic learners from gaining the knowledge and skills necessary in becoming thoughtful consumers and practitioners of curriculum.
Each chapter has a short introduction followed by essential questions that are designed to pique the reader’s interest, then by content that will reveal answers to the questions and enhance the reader’s curriculum knowledge base through interactive learning activities (ILA).

This Open Educational Resource is an interactive eBook in the form of a website titled ADDIE Explained. The eBook focuses on instructional design from the perspective of the ADDIE Model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) and is designed for novice instructional designers. ADDIE Explained includes a number of educational and technological affordances designed and developed to assist the learners in comprehending the subject matter.

Government agencies frequently contract with nonprofit or for-profit organizations to provide services to improve the well-being of their clients―for example, by reducing recidivism, homelessness, or drug use. Governments have traditionally paid service providers on the basis of the number of clients they treat.
The past decade has seen a number of Pay for Success (PFS) or results-based finance (RBF) programs, in which service providers are paid for their outcomes or results. For example, whereas a government agency contracting with a service provider to reduce recidivism among young men released from prison would traditionally have paid the service provider for the hours spent counseling a client, a PFS contract pays the organization for success in reducing the clients’ rate of recidivism from some baseline.
This handbook is written for government officials considering the adoption of Pay For Success (PFS) programs and for students in public policy and business schools interested in studying outcomes-oriented government contracts for services. Part One introduces concepts necessary to develop and operate a service delivery program and then surveys some of the issues specific to PFS. Part Two presents two detailed case studies and a number of shorter descriptions of PFS programs. Part Three focuses on the components of PFS programs; it also discusses barriers to their development and ways of overcoming them.

The purpose of this document is to provide information to graduate and undergraduate research assistant (RAs) on how to conduct focus groups for purpose of collecting qualitative research data in the field of education. It also provides information on institutional requirements, such as ethics, the expectations of the principal investigator (PI). Though it may have applicability in other disciplines or contexts, this guide was originally prepared for RAs working in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary.This guide is intended to supplement, rather than replace, direction from the PI offered in research team meetings, electronic communications or face-to-face conversations.

Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning is a collection of chapters written by the participants of a free open course on the Canvas Open Network. A variety of methods for increasing presence in online courses were shared in this multi-institutional, international, online professional learning opportunity. Susan Spellman Cann along with Erin Luong, Christina Hendricks, and Verena Roberts happily contributed to chapter six, which focuses on social learning in online spaces. There is a special focus on the importance of relationships which are essential in any learning, but especially online.

The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when all of us, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching.The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.

This UK report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration. This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture. The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises.

This is the last Module of the course on Open Access for researchers. So far you have studied about Open Access, its history, advantages, initiatives, copyrights and licensing, evaluation matrix for research – all in the context of scholarly communication. In this Module with just two units, we would like to help you share your work in Open Access though repositories and journals. At the end of this module, you are expected to be able to:
- Understand the publication process involved in dissemination of scholarly works;
- Choose appropriate Open Access journals and repositories for sharing research results;
- Use social media to promote personal research work and build reputation.
In Unit 1, we discuss the research publication process at five stages – planning stage, preparing stage, pre-publication stage, publication stage and postpublication stage. We emphasize the importance of social media in sharing and making your work visible to the target groups.
In Unit 2, we focus on sharing your research through OA repositories and Journals. First we discussed the different types of repositories to select and highlighted the steps that you may consider including deposit in your own institutional repositories or in global open repositories. We then discuss the sources of finding and deciding on OA journals. This unit also provides guidance on choosing the right OA journals, as the quality of OA journals is often questioned.
This is Module Five of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232211E.pdf

Urban Health: A Practical Application for Clinical Based Learning is an openly licensed, peer-reviewed textbook for clinical-based nursing educators covering barriers in urban health and their impact on patient health outcomes. The authors explore perspectives of urban communities, urban patients, and urban healthcare providers to offer insight into how healthcare providers can address disparities in urban healthcare, provide meaningful care with the lived experiences of urban patients in mind, and improve patient-provider communication by moving towards a more solution-driven, team-based care approach. Features include learning activities, exemplars, and case studies.

The purpose of this text is to provide students with an introduction to the field of Instructional Design and building upon skills that will help the novice designer become more effective in their professional career. This text will go beyond theory to discuss such topics as recommended skillsets and traits for designers, the importance of cultivating strong communication and leadership skills and how to incorporate emotional intelligence into your wheelhouse of professional skills. In addition, tips on the management of projects as well as the instructional design process will be discussed. In an effort to broaden the concept of the instructional design profession, you will find sections devoted to instructional design in various professional venues, (i.e., consulting, educational {higher education and K-12}).

In the educational realm of instructional design, one current topic among designers is how to incorporate openly licensed material into instructional texts. We will provide a section on open educational resources and licensing to assist you in becoming knowledgeable on best practices and dealing with cutting edge initiatives in the educational world.

Effective instructional designers should be able to speak comfortably in public in various venues whether it is a business meeting, training a small group of individuals, or, presenting at a large conference. For an instructional designer, it is important to hone these leadership skills and prepare yourself for the inevitable public speaking situation. This text will provide information on how to improve upon your public speaking skills.

This module dwells on a number of methods (including old and new) available for research evaluation. The module comprises the following four units:
Unit 1. Introduction to Research Evaluation Metrics and Related Indicators.
Unit 2. Innovations in Measuring Science and Scholarship: Analytical Tools and Indicators in Evaluation Scholarship Communications.
Unit 3. Article and Author Level Measurements, and
Unit 4. Online Citation and Reference Management Tools.
Brief overviews of the units are presented below.
Unit 1 encompassed and discussed citation analysis, use of citation-based indicators for research evaluation, common bibliometric indicators, classical bibliometric laws, author level indicators using authors' public profiles, article level metrics using altmetric tools. It is to be noted that author level indicators and article level metrics are new tools for research evaluation. Author level indicators encompasses h index, citations count, i10 index, g index, articles with citation, average citations per article, Eigenfactor score, impact points, and RG score. Article level metrics or altmetrics are based on Twitter, Facebook, Mendeley, CiteULike, and Delicious which have been discussed. All technical terms used in the Unit have been defined.
Unit 2 deals with analytical tools and indicators used in evaluating scholarly communications. The tools covered are The Web of Science, Scopus, Indian Citation Index (ICI), CiteSeerX, Google Scholar and Google Scholar Citations. Among these all the tools except Indian Citation Index (ICI) are international in scope. ICI is not very much known outside India. It is a powerful tool as far Indian scholarly literature is concerned. As Indian journals publish a sizable amount of foreign literature, the tool will be useful for foreign countries as well. The analytical products with journal performance metrics Journal Citation Reports (JCR®) has also been described. In the chapter titled New Platforms for Evaluating Scholarly Communications three websites i.e. SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) [ScimagoJR.com], eigenFACTOR.org, JournalMetrics.com and one software called Publish or Perish (POP) Software have been discussed.
Article and author level measurements have been discussed in Unit 3. Author and researcher identifiers are absolutely essential for searching databases in the WWW because a name like D Singh can harbour a number of names such as Dan Singh, Dhan Singh, Dhyan Singh, Darbara Singh, Daulat Singh, Durlabh Singh and more. The ResearcherID.com, launched by Thomson Reuters, is a web-based global registry of authors and researchers that individualises each and every name. Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is also a registry that uniquely identifies an author or researcher. Both have been discussed in this Unit. Article Level Metrics (Altmetrics) has been treated in this Unit with the discussion as to how altmetrics can be measured with Altmetric.com and ImpactStory.org. Altmetrics for Online Journals has also been touched. There are a number of academic social networks of which ResearchGate.net, Academia.edu, GetCited.org, etc. have been discussed. Regional journal networks with bibliometric indicators are also in existence. Two networks of this type such as SciELO – Scientific Electronic Library Online, and Redalyc have been dealt with.
The last unit (Unit 4) is on online citation and reference management tools. The tools discussed are Mendeley, CiteULike, Zotero, Google Scholar Library, and EndNote Basic. The features of all the management tools have been discussed with figures, tables, and text boxes.
This is Module Four of the UNESCO's Open Access Curriculum for Researchers.
Full-Text is available at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232210E.pdf

In this section, you and your team will engage in a Landscape Analysis to uncover key structures and supports that can guide your work to support Accessibility in OER. You may or may not answer all of these questions, but this is an offering.