Openness
‘Open access’ refers to information being made publicly and freely available. There are many different models which can be adopted and JISC is taking a 360 degree view of the topic, looking at how the principle of open-ness can be applied throughout the lifecycle of teaching, learning and research.
It’s a subject explored in practice by projects funded by JISC and the Higher Education Academy that support the release of open educational resources for free use and repurposing by teachers all over the world, which began in April 2009 and will complete in April 2010.
In Dr Read’s chapter on the topic published in The Tower and the Cloud, he takes up the cause in relation to course notes and handouts produced for use in universities. 
Dr Read explores the pros and cons of open access to educational resources, with the rights of students, authors, publishers and copyright holders each needing serious consideration.
Not merely a voice in the crowd, JISC is committed to leading the debate about open access. Sharing research information via a more open access publishing model could bring save over £170 million pounds of savings to the higher education sector as well as benefiting UK plc, according to a new research published this year.
Professor John Houghton from Melbourne’s Victoria University and Professor Charles Oppenheim at Loughborough University were asked to lead research that would throw light on the economic and social implications of new models for scholarly publishing. The results of the ‘Houghton report’ have been widely publicised and will be used to build potential models in the years to come.
Podcast: Uncovering the social and economic benefits of open access (Duration: 28:00)
Creating discussion and debate is core to JISC’s activities. Its engagement with the library community makes JISC uniquely placed to survey the full impacts of this revolution in the way students and teachers access resources. A public debate at the Bodleian Library in Oxford asked the question: what will the library of the future look like? A first for JISC was combining a physical launch alongside a virtual audience in Second Life, and allowing a third group to take part live in the debate through social media tools like Twitter, thereby bringing the event to new audiences, virtually. That’s one thing we can be sure of: the library of the future will not just be about physical space, but will embrace virtual technologies too.
See more on JISC's work in open access