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Impact of Open Educational Resources in Healthcare Technology Teaching Practices

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Impact of Open Educational Resources in Healthcare Technology Teaching Practices by Dr Gousalia Sukumar

This blog post was written Gousalia Sukumar as part of the final assignment for the module EDM 122 at City University of London

Introduction

In this essay, I reflect on the importance of integrating Open Educational Resources (OER) into my teaching practices aligned with the existing digital world.  Through critical analysis, I will be exploring how I incorporate OER to adapt my teaching strategies and their impacts on healthcare technology.

Initially, the term “Open” means universal access of inclusive education, and equity for all learners. This term is used for open education defined by the European Commission (EU Science Hub, European Commission, 2016) as “a way of delivering education, frequently using digital technologies by eliminating barriers and making learning reachable, abundant, and adaptable for all …”

I recognised OERs are fundamentally a pool of high-quality teaching and learning resources that can be accessed freely and openly. I have been using a few OERs in my teaching, learning, and research activities in addition to the online resources. However, I was not familiar with the term “OER” until I followed the EMD 122.

My research explores the ambiguity of open/openness and free/non-free controversial aspects of OER. OER classified teaching and learning materials as available for free, open to access: a set of right “5Rs of Openness” Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse & Redistribute by re-users (Wiley et al., 2014). Certain resources appear to be free under some restrictions (Winn, 2012). I recognise that they require registration, restricting modifications, or imposing commercial purpose bans. Non-free OERs grant free access, and do not allow full permission to modify the content (Creative Commons, 2019).

I acknowledge the most common definition for OERs is any format of teaching, learning, and research resources that exist in the public domain, with an open license providing no-cost access, reuse, adaption, repurpose, and redistribution by others (UNESCO, 2019). These resources have a Creative Common license (CC) that indicates how the resources may be used, reused, adapted, and shared. I was not familiar with Creative Commons before following this course. Understand that this grant free tools and copyright licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC By-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA; CC BY-NC-ND) that assist scholars/designers share their resources with others while keeping some rights (Creative Commons, 2019).

My scholarly reviews highlighted that the OER is a part of an Open Educational Practice (OEP). This explains the ways academics use OER in teaching/learning to create, use, reuse, and share in pedagogical practices (Karunanayaka & Naidu, 2020). Some scholars mainly focus on OER predominantly (Hogan et al., 2015). The idea of OEP has been shifted from resources to practice and applications. Researchers have analysed the effect of academics on knowledge creation and sharing as a form of pedagogical practice (Beetham et al., 2012). When analysing these views, the resource-centric view is highlighted by Wiley (2014) as education would improve by using OER. But Cronin (2017) argued the practice-centric approach which fosters open pedagogies and learner empowerment. Also, OEP includes OER, open pedagogies, and open sharing of teaching practices that promote collaboration and engagement Cronin (2017).

I teach Healthcare/Clinical technology, realised that digital innovation in Health technology evolves continuously but the integration and delivery of this knowledge in education remain limited. It urges a high demand for a workforce with specialised knowledge and skills to meet current expectations and minimise the gap between academia and employment on practical experience (Weeks et al., 2019). I have challenges in providing hands-on experience with expensive wearable devices, work placement opportunities, curriculum design, and policies of institutions etc. I integrate a range of online resources and a few OER in my teaching to better prepare the students for the workforce, however, I was not clear about OER’s features and confusion over copyright policies (Rolfe, 2012). This course enhanced my OER literacies and supported to integrate of more OERs in teaching to reduce the gap. Many scholars showcased OER related to my discipline as open textbooks, Open access journals, streaming videos, and digital learning objects (Bauch et al., 2020); open access clinical resources in the Osmosis library (Hassall & Lewis, 2017); Wikis, e-textbooks and podcast (Purdy, 2015); virtual patients (Lehmann et al., 2015); surgery stimulators (Funke et al., 2012); Massive open online courses-MOOC (Frey et al., 2010) promote the teaching and learning.

 Integrating OER effectively replaces traditional online-based teaching to meet all learner’s needs (Parsley et al., 2018). My learners are from different backgrounds and experiencing setbacks such as language barriers, financial, health issues, dyslexia, etc. UNESCO imagined OER as a “Universal educational resource available for the whole of humanity” (UNESCO, 2002, p.28). Adil et al. (2022) categorised the benefits as “stretched access to knowledge; support lifelong learning, pedagogical advantages and boost students’ outcomes”. Moreover, benefits learners by being cost-effective (Parsley et al., 2018), the high-quality resources are accessible (Pande, 2018), openly reachable, customisable, and adaptable (Write et al., 2019), and globally accessible (Tang, 2020).

I become aware, that following e-courses upskill the knowledge in modern healthcare (MH). An e-health online course attaches with Health Education England, MOOC/OER support to connect the existing knowledge by integrating MH into education. Telemedicine and telehealth are offered by the University of Edinburgh to deliver remote healthcare services. I recognise following these courses provide invaluable experience for life-long education.

Active learning

Active learning is more effective than the traditional teacher-centred approach (Zhou et al.,). My usual teaching and learning strategies are primarily student-centred approach (Lee, 2018) and promote learners’ knowledge and interpreting skills (Fuad et al., 2018). OER has been very demanding in higher education (Baker et al., 2019); and enhances learning through practice and implementation (Amornrit et al., 2018). I design my activities tailored to meet all learner’s needs and learning styles (visual, auditory & kinaesthetic) (Kolb, 1984). I integrate Gamification, problem-based learning (PBL), case studies, and digital technology-based activities to improve learners’ outcomes and students’ satisfaction (Garcia et al., 2022). This evidence – high attendance, participation, and outcomes of assessments, validate my outcomes. Regarding pedagogical innovation (Rolfe, 2012), I intend to embed more suitable OER in my active learning strategies to shift from online-based activities such as Wikimedia videos, Pixabay for images, DOAJ for open-access journals; and employment-based group activities/projects and class discussion (Driessen et al., 2020).  When I incorporate the OER in active learning, I recognise that three main parts are crucial: awareness of guidelines and selection of OER; assisting learners with resources and network facilities, and delivering content through tasks (Amornrit et al.,2018).

I analysed a few selected active learning strategies as follows:

My favourite strategy is implementing practical-based PBL. Currently, I ask students to interpret patients’ clinical data (Asthma, BP, ECG, Blood Glucose level, etc). This method is very effective for clinical learning as it focuses on patient-based learning (Dring, 2019). I provide clinical practical for hands-on experience & patients’ clinical readings from different backgrounds aligned with NMC guidelines to meet the discrimination code (online digital resources from NHS, BUPA, and Diabetes websites). Integrating OER-based active learning strategies is valuable for “theory to practice” gap implementation (Dewsbury et al., 2022). To implement OERs, I am planning to integrate OER-based activities with Wikimedia Commons for medical tests/clinical videos (eg- Asthma, blood glucose test, urine test- videos on clinical medicine, medical diagnosis);  BioiXiv – operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (Cancer biology resources-case studies) that are available under a Creative Commons CC0 license (public domain – anyone can use for any purpose without attribution; enable to distribute, remix, adapt and build) which is valuable for “theory to practice” gap implementation (Hills et al., 2022).

Moreover, I use YouTube videos on clinical/wearable devices and virtual learning to bridge the gap between theoretical and real-world practical skills. Students enjoy these activities by doing and thinking (Patiño et al., 2023) is very effective for clinical learning as it focuses on patient-based learning (Dring, 2019). I use Khan Academy YouTube videos to explain pathophysiology and create activity sheets for group activities. I was not aware that these pages could be accessed via Creative Commons and lack of knowledge of licenses (Ertmer, 1999).  I now understand Khan Academy has CC-BY-NC-SA and academics can remix, adapt, and build for non-commercial purposes. Currently, I integrate online-based case study analysis where students write their views, and feedback from peers, and groups in forums. I write my feedback in the forum as well (synchronous and asynchronous). I create a forum in Moodle to share ideas among learners. Now I understand that Moodle is a search engine, this is not open accessed platform. I need to learn how to set up for open forum discussion. Moreover, I expect that it increases my workload to give continuous feedback, and it is time-consuming. In the future, I plan to do more research on open license and free access resources and copyright literacies (Atenas et al., 2015).

I integrate activities with online journals, especially on wearable clinical devices from Google Scholar, and ask learners to download, annotate, and summarise the articles. In addition, I am not aware of the copyright policies of Google Scholar journal articles. I now updated my knowledge as Google Scholar is a search engine to access journals, OERs must be open access and come through Creative Commons with open licenses this organisation allows users to reuse, retain, revise, remix, and redistribute (5Rs) the content. Many of them are behind paywalls or have copyright restrictions. Therefore, not all Google Scholar journals are freely accessible and open-licensed. I should search it through Creative Commons which is freely accessible without a paywall as teachers identified this as a barrier for adaptation Nkuyubwatsi (2017).

When I integrate activities, I apply Roger’s (2003) diffusion of innovation theory which has five key elements knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Also, I ask, “Will the innovation be beneficial to me in my particular situation?”. On some occasions, I found this process unproductive ultimately rejecting the innovation (Nkuyubwatsi, 2017) due to some learners’ poor IT skills (Kaosaiyaporn, 2011); lack of motivation & suitable platform (Hu et al., 2015) and internet access (Adil et al., 2022).

Many hardcopy textbooks are replicated by e-textbooks (Gu et al., 2015). I use e-textbooks for making notes, research-based projects, etc. I now admit that not all e-books are OER. Many eBooks are purchased by commercials and copyrights. They cannot be repurposed or adapted the open access e-textbooks through Creative Commons allows to revise, adapt, or adjust (Wiley et al., 2014). I use OER e-textbooks from the library that support to develop of my healthcare learners’ inter-professional experience (free & high-quality materials). Open-access E-textbooks have multiple tools such as highlighter, magnification, copy and paste, download, print, and search within the book to fulfill learners’ differentiated needs. However, students and I struggled to read continuously on the computer screen, and it caused eye strain (Casselden & Pears, 2020). Some OERs are non-editable. Sometimes, I print journal/book pages to minimise this challenge. In the future, I am dedicated to integrating OER repositories like DOAJ, PubMed Central, POLS – medical journals or institutional open-access archives, and Elsevier open-access journals.

I incorporate images into my teaching resources to enhance learning making difficult concepts more understandable and creating an imaginative learning atmosphere for learners. Also, I persuade learners to use it in their tasks to improve visual communication. I extract images from Google images, my pictures, and institutional repositories. I use the Fair Use copyright clause. I understand that OER images need to be in the public domain and contain Creative Commons attributes or permission needs to be granted from the copyright holders. In the future, I am planning to use Wiki images, and Pixabay which are OERs (Perez, 2017).

Future Implementation:

  • Integrate Wikipedia pedagogy. Create active learning tasks to engage students in the Wikipedia community, asking learners to take part in encyclopaedic articles as formative assignments. It will develop digital literacy skills, research skills, and subject knowledge. Moreover, develop collaborative learning and knowledge sharing with a global audience (McDowell et al., 2022).
  • Organise training sessions for both teaching & support staff and learners due to their limited knowledge of OER. Moreover, I would attend CPD to update my knowledge (Ertmer, 1999).
  • Integrate open networks supported by social media and Web 2.0 tools (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram (Luo et al., 2020)
  • Feedback from students and support staff for further improvement

Conclusion:

The Integration of OER into healthcare technology enhances inclusive teaching and learning practices and supports scholars to adapt to evolving technologies and bridge the gap between academia and employment. However, there are several challenges addressed that could be resolved in the future to promote developed teaching practices.

I plan to publish this essay on the course blog EDM 122: “Digital Literacies and Open Practice” blog under the Creative Commons license CC- BY-NC-SA to ensure accessibility and attributions. This license allows for adaptation, remixing, adaptation, and building on the materials as long as the creator and adaptors are shared under the same licensing terms and not allow for commercial purposes (Creative Commons, 2019). I trust this license protects authoring rights and permits to develop of knowledge and thoughts impartial to future users as it needs to be shared under the same terms and in a non-commercial way.

References

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Hills, M., Overend, A. and Hildebrandt, S. (2022) ‘Faculty Perspectives on UDL: Exploring Bridges and Barriers for Broader Adoption in Higher Education’, The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotlrcacea.2022.1.13588 (Accessed: 7 January 2025).

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Canada. Available at: http://conference.oeconsortium.org/2015/presentation/showcasingopen-educational-practices-models-using-open-educational-resources/ (Accessed: 25 November 2024).

Hu, E., Li, Y., Li, J. and Huang, W.-H. (2015) ‘Open educational resources (OER) usage and barriers: a study from Zhejiang University, China’, Educational Technology Research and Development, 63(6), pp.957–974. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-015-9398-1 (Accessed: 22 November 2024).

Kaosaiyaporn, O. (2011) ‘Development of a Virtual Network Model for Multicultural Classrooms to Enhance Knowledge Construction and Cultural Awareness for Graduate Students’, Journal of Education Prince of Songkla University Pattani Campus, 24, pp. 58-69.

Karunanayaka, S.P. and Naidu, S. (2020) ‘Ascertaining impacts of capacity building in open educational practices’, Distance Education, 41(2), pp.279–302. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2020.1757406 (Accessed: 12 November 2024).

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experimental learning. Experience as the Source of learning and Development. Prentice Hall PTR, New Jersy.

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Lehmann, R., Thiessen, C., Frick, B., Bosse, H.M., Nikendei, C., Hoffmann, G.F., Tönshoff, B. and Huwendiek, S. (2015) ‘Improving Pediatric Basic Life Support Performance Through Blended Learning With Web-Based Virtual Patients: Randomized Controlled Trial’, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17(7), p.162. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.4141 (Accessed: 1 December 2024).

Luo, T., Hostetler, K., Freeman, C. and Stefaniak, J. (2020) ‘The power of open: benefits, barriers, and strategies for integration of open educational resources’, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 35(2), pp.1–19. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2019.1677222 (Accessed: 2 January 2025).

McDowell, Z.J. and Vetter, M.A. (2022) ‘Wikipedia as Open Educational Practice: Experiential Learning, Critical Information Literacy, and Social Justice’, Social Media + Society, 8(1), pp. 1-11. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221078224 (Accessed 1 February 2025).

‌Nkuyubwatsi, B. (2017) ‘Willingness to Engage in Open Educational Practices among Academics in Rwandan Public Higher Education and Responsive Actions’, Journal of Learning for Development, 4(3). Available at: https://doi.org/10.56059/jl4d.v4i3.223 (Accessed: 26 December 2024).

Pande, J. (2018) ‘Opportunities and challenges in the adoption of open educational resources for course development: a case study of Uttarakhand Open University’, International Journal of Information Technology, 10(3), pp.339–347. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41870-018-0126-z (Accessed: 23 November 2024).

Parsley, S., Leck, A. and Patel, D. (2018). Assessing the impact of a global health MOOC/OER. [online] Available at: https://iceh.lshtm.ac.uk/files/2018/05/Assessing-the-impact-of-a-global-health-MOOC-OER-OE-Global-2018.pdf (Accessed: 1 February 2025).

Patiño, A., Ramírez-Montoya, M.S. and Buenestado-Fernández, M. (2023) ‘Active learning and education 4.0 for complex thinking training: analysis of two case studies in open education’, Smart Learning Environments, 10(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-023-00229-x (Accessed: 5 January 2025).

Perez, J.E. (2017) ‘Images and the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement’, The Reference Librarian, 58(4), pp.229–237. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2017.1346495 (Accessed: 25 January 2025).

Purdy, E., Thomas, B., Bednarczyk, J., Migneault, D. and Sherbino, J. (2015) ‘The use of free online educational resources by Canadian emergency medicine residents and program directors’, CJEM, 17(2), pp.101–106. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/cem.2014.73 (Accessed: 26 December 2024).

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Open Access and its Importance in Optometry

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This post is written by Michelle Mehta a lecturer in Optometry at City and a recent student on EDM122 Digital Literacies and Open Practice. She has licensed her work under CC-BY SA and writes……

Open Access and its Importance in Optometry

I am a Contact Lens Optician, currently working as a Professional Services Consultant for a specialist contact lens manufacturer, UltraVision, and a Visiting Clinical Tutor at City, University of London.  Both of these roles involve education within optometry.  While my role at City involves the support of teaching at undergraduate level, my role with UltraVision involves education of current practitioners and making sure they are up to date with current products and methods within our profession.  In order to do this, there is a necessity to be able to source the latest trials data and research within optometry.

One of the things that struck me while studying this module was the various meanings of the term ‘open’ and indeed ‘open access’ (OA).

According to JISC, ‘open access means making research publications freely available so anyone can benefit from reading and using research’1.  They state that this means more than simply making research available to read, but also allowing others to reuse that research; for example, by allowing its content to be analysed.

According to UNESCO, ‘open access means free access to information and unrestricted use of electronic resources for everyone’2.  It states that any kind of digital content can be OA to include text, data software, audio, video and multimedia.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative, released to the public in February 2002, stated that removing access barriers to research ‘will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge’.3

OA is a new way for academics to publish and achieve a worldwide audience.  Its purpose is to make publications freely available online to all users at no cost as opposed to the traditional subscription model in which readers have access to scholarly information by paying a subscription4.  OA publications usually carry less restrictive copyright and licencing barriers than printed works, for both users and authors alike.  This means that anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print search for information, or use it within education or in any other way within the legal agreements.  This method of publication allows authors to receive a wider audience, allows readers to access the most recent work in a given field and means that funders can finance a much broader works and reach a wider audience.

A piece of research carried out by Nagaraj and Bhandi, at Mangalore University in India in 2017,5 in which they researched the advantages and disadvantages of OA journals, found that researchers gave priority to factors such as the quality of the peer review and impact factor before selecting an OA journal for publishing.  They also found that 80% of researchers agreed that there is a fundamental benefit in open access publishing.  They wanted to explore the factors that influenced publications in OA journals and ascertain the perceived advantages and disadvantages of OA journals by physics researchers.

Among the advantages they found was that OA journals drive innovative research articles.  As OA journals are free to access, it went without saying that they had more readers.  They also found that OA journals lead to higher visibility, as many researchers use Google as their main search engine, where OA is going to give higher visibility.  Finally, they also found that OA increased the number of citations.

Although OA journals provide full-text access to users, they did find that there were some disadvantages.  One of the factors found to have constrained authors from publishing in OA journals was the impact factor; among research scholars, 47% of participants agreed that OA journals have a low impact factor.  Authors agreed that article processing charge is an added expense; the copyright policies also varied among publishers and many do not have a clear copyright policy.

When it comes to healthcare, OA publishing can add value to a number of health and social care professionals and their work in the health services.  Many peer-reviewed research is published in subscription journals, which are only accessible to those in institutions, or those who are willing or indeed able to pay the required subscription fees.  This causes research to lose its impact as it’s only being made available to a small number of people.  OA provides a constructive solution to this problem6.  A worthy goal is to allow dissemination of important medical and scientific information to promote scientific advances and improvement in medical care7.  The increase of access to research and allowing more contribution opportunities for publishing by junior authors and developing countries is made more possible with OA.

One of the barriers to access to research has been the pressure on academics on how often they publish and the prestige of the journals they publish in.  Some, for example, will insist that there should be a minimum number of publications in a respected journal with a higher impact factor, but these journals tend to be older and non-OA journals.  The objective of OA is not to replace existing journals but rather to maximise research impact and access.

There is high value of OA to patients and health care professionals.  Publishers allow free access to their journal content in developing countries, making it implicit that OA has both value and has a positive impact on patient care.  A key example of this would be in the fight against Ebola.  This demonstrates the value of OA to publish scientific research for immediate patient care.  Many publishers are allowing free and unrestricted access to scientific and medical databases and journals to West Africa, where this battle continues7.

Overall, it has been shown that health research is significantly beneficial due to its capabilities to advance research, evaluate and improve the service and empower the profession.  As a result, research should be an imperative component of all health professional’s work.  OA provides an innovative and more accessible way for these professionals to engage in research.  The opportunity for medical students, academic physicians, community physicians and international authors to contribute to and learn from OA journals is priceless.

So, what about the relevance of OA in the field of Optometry?  In 2014, the University of Waterloo in Canada, wrote an article in their School of Optometry and Vision Science Newsletter, in which they stated ‘as practicing optometrists, access to evidence-based research to answer clinical questions is particularly important, in order to provide the best possible support to patients’8.  They went on to state that the prohibitive cost of subscription rates for many vision sciences journals, providing access to important medical information makes OA literature increasingly valuable.

An independent and vibrant profession commits to discovery as a basis of better patient care and optometry is no exception.  Some recent discoveries in our field are breath-taking and the increasing awareness in health care, including optometry, of the advantages of accepting the challenge of translating these discoveries to patient care is becoming ever more eveident.9. Through more formalised research and discovery, the profession’s knowledge base expands and tools for diagnosis and management of patients becomes more useful and more sophisticated; and like other healthcare professions, optometry is moving to a more formalised clinical application of research results in what is termed ‘evidence-based’ practice.

Applications in clinical research trials form the basis of the kind of research that is becoming increasingly a component of healthcare, including optometry.  In its most rigorous form, we have the outcomes of randomised clinical trials which are applied quantitively to populations of patients.  This is considered the best of what is commonly described as evidence-based medicine.9 One of the most recent of these applications would be in what the profession is terming its very own pandemic, known as progressive myopia, leading to its treatment, myopia management.

When my own son, was first described as one of those children with progressive myopia and a clinician friend of mine had advised me to consider myopia management strategies for him, not only was I not familiar with this, but many of my peers and colleagues had not heard of this either and were very dubious.  Five years later, through the availability of results of clinical trials, as well as promotion of awareness in the profession, treating, or at least discussing myopia management, with the parents of these children, is now becoming best practise.

In addition to this, educators are also acutely aware that optometry is a rapidly evolving discipline and that courses and clinical knowledge must be kept up to date.  Constant changes in healthcare make a static lecture that changes little from year to year of diminishing value to students.  Aging books, while very worthwhile for foundational knowledge, cannot keep up with the rapid changes.10   With this in mind, the hope would be that the discovery of new knowledge will happen under the OA model.

Likewise, students, who are often unable to afford paying subscription fees, gain great advantage when information is freely available.  It enables them to read complete publications, helping them to maintain the evidence basis for what they are being taught.  It also helps to reduce the misuse of abstract-only referencing.  As many online researchers will know, access to articles beyond their abstract is often blocked by what is known as ‘paywalls’.  What makes this worse is that if the article turns out to be not what the researcher was looking for, there is no ‘returns policy’.

The optometric profession is seeing exciting discovery that is surely going to impact future practice and place optometry in an even stronger position to provide better care.  This is made more possible when the results of this discovery are made accessible to educators, students and existing practitioners, enabling them to keep up to date with latest trials and advances, which in turn enables them to give the most up to date patient care and treatment.

I wanted to establish how many journals there are in the optometric professions that are fully OA.  In my search, I found out that there are one hundred fully OA journals in optometry, according to oa.mg11.  However, of those hundred, only thirty came under the list of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  The DOAJ is ‘a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone’.12 In addition to this, I could not see, on that list, any of the optometry journals that many of us in the profession are familiar with here in the UK.

Optometrists in the UK generally gain access to journals through paid subscription.  There is further access, without charge, to journals by professional bodies that they may be member of, although they are paying annual fees to retain this membership.  Clinicians will often not be aware of search engines, such as PubMed or Google Search, which can often give access to some OA articles or trial data; especially those that may have qualified some years back.  This may be different for more recently qualified practitioners who would have used these search engines in their undergraduate studies.

On 4 September 2918, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), a group of national research funding organisations announced the launch of cOAlition S.  This is an initiative to make full and immediate OA to research publications a reality, which is built around Plan S; this consists of one target and ten principles.

cOAlition S state: “With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or be made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo”.13

It has been found that subscription journals have mostly adapted so that Plan S affected scientists can still publish with them.  The biggest disruption has been with the highly selective journals, which reject most of the papers submitted to them and recoup their costs through subscription fees.  However, in the end they have adjusted by retaining their subscription models but have also announced new OA publishing options.14

Plan S has already catalysed a shift in the open access landscape.  Journals that previously only offered no route to make peer-reviewed articles immediately open access now do, even if only for authors with Plan S funders.14

I am a member of a new clinical and research committee set up by the Association of British Dispensing Opticians, who have a number of aims and objectives for members.  One of these is to try and find a way for members to have access to research in a similar way to those in the nursing profession.  Through this module I have learnt how this is changing rapidly and I hope, with the launch of cOAlition S, that more OA will be available to us as a profession, enabling us to give the best patient care, with the support of the most up to date access to research an innovation, and evidence-based treatment.

 

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References

  1. An Introduction to Open Access. https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/an-introduction-to-open-access
  2. UNESCO Open Access Publications. https://en.unesco.org/open-access/what-open-access
  3. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/
  4. The Importance of Open Access Publishing. https://www.conference2go.com/blog/the-importance-of-open-access-publishing/
  5. Nagaraj, M. N. and Bhandi, M. K. Physics Researchers’ Perception of Advantages and Disadvantages of Open Access Journals: A study. International Journal of Library and Information Studies, 2017, Vol 7, p 132
  6. Lawton, a et al. The value of open access publishing to health and social care professional in Ireland. Ariadne. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/73/lawton-flynn/
  7. Wang, J. Z. et al. Open access medical journals: Benefit and challenges. Clinics in Dermatology, 2019, 37, 52-55
  8. Sterling, P. Open access and its relevance to practicing optometrists. School of Optometry and Vision Science Newsletter. University of Waterloo, Spring 2013, Vol 17, No.2, p 14
  9. Adams, j. The role of research, evidence and education in optometry: a perspectivea. Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 2007: 90: 4: 232-237
  10. Kundart, J. Open access publishing: opportunities and challenges. Optometric Eductaion, Volume 38, Number 3/ Summer 2013, p 89-91
  11. mg. https://oa.mg/journals/open-access-optometry-journals
  12. https://doaj.org/about/
  13. https://www.coalition-s.org/about/
  14. Else, H. A guide to Plan S: the open-access initiative shaking up science publishing. Nature, News explainer, 08 April 2021, Correction 12 April 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00883-6