Open Access Materials Research Articles

Libraries Fight Disinformation: An Analysis of Online Practices to Help Users’ Generations in Spotting Fake News

The work of libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, as facilitators of reliable information on health issues, has shown that these entities can play an active role as verification agents in the fight against disinformation (false information that is intended to mislead), focusing on media and informational literacy. To help citizens, these entities have developed a wide range of actions that range from online seminars, to learning how to evaluate the quality of a source, to video tutorials or the creation of repositories with resources of various natures. To identify the most common media literacy practices in the face of fake news (news that conveys or incorporates false, fabricated, or deliberately misleading information), this exploratory study designed an ad hoc analysis sheet, validated by the inter-judge method, which allowed one to classify the practices of N = 216 libraries from all over the world. The results reveal that the libraries most involved in this task are those belonging to public universities. Among the actions carried out to counteract misinformation, open-access materials that favor self-learning stand out. These resources, aimed primarily at university students and adults in general, are aimed at acquiring skills related to fact-checking and critical thinking. Therefore, libraries vindicate their role as components of the literacy triad, together with professors and communication professionals.

Loss and Assimilation: Lived Experiences of Brexit for British Citizens Living in Luxembourg

Inconsistent political realities are associated with mental health issues such as hopelessness, anxiety, and depression. The psychological impact of Brexit is clearly an important and timely issue, but hitherto has been understudied. This study uses a critical realist approach to qualitatively explore the lived experiences of British citizens living in Luxembourg during the Brexit era. The study reports on semi-structured interviews conducted with 6 British citizens aged 18–65. An experientially focused thematic analysis was conducted, exploring two main themes: Loss (with psychological and broader social implications) and Integration (contrasting the mover’s community with the receiving community). This study demonstrates the psychological impact of Brexit and highlights the urgency for future researchers and mental health practitioners alike — both in the UK and overseas — to consider the human consequences associated with political upheaval. Open access materials for this project can be viewed here: https://osf.io/38rg7/?view_only=b8c04dfc3fe5474f9aff4897e370b3e6.

Blockchain: At a glance idea for information science researchers

Blockchain, eventually block chain, (BC) is a distributed ledger system that processes and preserves data and their transactions using time-stamped blocks in decentralized method, which is able to address many traditional issues of information systems design. Since the introduction of the digital currency or cryptocurrency “bitcoin” in 2008, its foundation, the BC technology has gained tremendous interest, both in industry and academia. Over the past few years, many existing review articles generally focus on specific aspects of this rapidly growing disruptive technology, rather than purely investigating the BC to produce a whole landscape illustration, so that researchers may gain comprehensive knowledge on it. This paper presents a unique review on BC technology revealing the concepts, how it works, structure, types, components, characteristics, and applications. Sourcing from open-access online materials and academic outlets, we analyze sample articles concerning BC, associative technologies, their potential application and issues. A total of 56 contents on BC and related technologies were selected for relevant recent documents of the emerging development. The research team scrutinized the contents using established content analysis approach. It is anticipated that the findings would offer benefits in enhancing understanding to innovative solution for development researchers and professionals in industries.

Finding Open Content in the Library Is Surprisingly Hard

While library discovery systems offer great promise for delivering open access materials, they often fall short. Discovery tools merge multiple records together, and in the process show a preference for linking options that are less likely to successfully deliver open access full text. Third party tools offer options for bringing users to missing content, but these tools are often not fully supported in library systems. Library systems are so focused on keeping unauthorized users out of restricted content that it compromises their ability to get users into content that is freely available.

The Effectiveness of the Learning Management System of Saqural Learning Application on the Scientific Interpretation Learning Outcomes

This study aims to obtain an effective BERSAQURAL Learning Management System on the learning outcomes of BERSAQURAL interpretation through digital literacy. This study is a quantitative type with One-Group Pretest-Posttest Design. This study population was 90 third-semester science education students at the Faculty of Teacher Training and Education IAIN Salatiga who participated in a science interpretation course. The sample in this study was purposive sampling, and one group is 30 students. The data collection instrument was pretest and posttest questions of the BERSAQURAL interpretation of water. The results showed that: (1) the BERSAQURAL learning management system in the dashboard consists of the navigation menu, interpretation of science, nature, al-Qur’an, e-Problem Based Learning, evaluation, explore material, user, my profile, settings, and logout, (2) BERSAQURAL learning management system is effective on learning outcomes of BERSAQURAL interpretation through digital literacy based on the Wilcoxon test (t count -4.802, p = 0.00 <0.05). Research results of learning management system BERSAQURAL have novelty, a distance learning media (online) with open-access material as digital literacy, connecting LMS E-PBL Berketemu Ilmiah (e-pblberketemuilmiah.id) integrated with a plagiarism checker to educate honesty. There are rewards from users of the BERSAQURAL Learning Management System in the stars or on the trending menu.

The fall of the innovation empire and its possible rise through open science

There is growing concern that the innovation system's ability to create wealth and attain social benefit is declining in effectiveness. This article explores the reasons for this decline and suggests a structure, the open science partnership, as one mechanism through which to slow down or reverse this decline. The article examines the empirical literature of the last century to document the decline. This literature suggests that the cost of research and innovation is increasing exponentially, that researcher productivity is declining, and, third, that these two phenomena have led to an overall flat or declining level of innovation productivity. The article then turns to three explanations for the decline – the growing complexity of science, a mismatch of incentives, and a balkanization of knowledge. Finally, the article explores the role that open science partnerships – public-private partnerships based on open access publications, open data and materials, and the avoidance of restrictive forms of intellectual property – can play in increasing the efficiency of the innovation system.

IE-Map: a novel in-vivo atlas and template of the human inner ear

Brain atlases and templates are core tools in scientific research with increasing importance also in clinical applications. Advances in neuroimaging now allowed us to expand the atlas domain to the vestibular and auditory organ, the inner ear. In this study, we present IE-Map, an in-vivo template and atlas of the human labyrinth derived from multi-modal high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, in a fully non-invasive manner without any contrast agent or radiation. We reconstructed a common template from 126 inner ears (63 normal subjects) and annotated it with 94 established landmarks and semi-automatic segmentations of all relevant macroscopic vestibular and auditory substructures. We validated the atlas by comparing MRI templates to a novel CT/micro-CT atlas, which we reconstructed from 21 publicly available post-mortem images of the bony labyrinth. Templates in MRI and micro-CT have a high overlap, and several key anatomical measures of the bony labyrinth in IE-Map are in line with micro-CT literature of the inner ear. A quantitative substructural analysis based on the new template, revealed a correlation of labyrinth parameters with total intracranial volume. No effects of gender or laterality were found. We provide the validated templates, atlas segmentations, surface meshes and landmark annotations as open-access material, to provide neuroscience researchers and clinicians in neurology, neurosurgery, and otorhinolaryngology with a widely applicable tool for computational neuro-otology.

Tuplewise Material Representation Based Machine Learning for Accurate Band Gap Prediction.

The open-access material databases allowed us to approach scientific questions from a completely new perspective with machine learning methods. Here, on the basis of open-access databases, we focus on the classical band gap problem for predicting accurately the band gap of a crystalline compound using a machine learning approach with newly developed tuplewise graph neural networks (TGNN), which is devised to automatically generate input representation of crystal structures in tuple types and to exploit crystal-level properties as one of the input features. Our method brings about a highly accurate prediction of the band gaps at hybrid functionals and GW approximation levels for multiple material data sets without heavy computational cost. Furthermore, to demonstrate the applicability of our prediction model, we provide a data set of GW band gaps for 45835 materials predicted by TGNN posing higher accuracy than standard density functional theory calculations.

First-Trimester Abortion Complications: Simulation Cases for OB/GYN Residents in Sepsis and Hemorrhage

IntroductionSerious complications associated with first-trimester abortions are rare. The US mortality rate for these procedures is 0.7 per 100,000, primarily due to infection and hemorrhage. While complications are unlikely to arise during training, residents must be prepared to manage them in practice. To address this, we developed a 2-hour simulation-based abortion complication curriculum for OB/GYN resident learners.MethodsOB/GYN residents participated in three sessions: a case-based didactic reviewing institutional aspiration abortion practice and preop preparation; an in-vivo aspiration abortion hemorrhage simulation; and an interdepartmental postabortal sepsis simulation. Participants completed surveys before and after their participation that evaluated clinical knowledge, and self-rated competence in, and preparedness for, managing first-trimester abortion complications.ResultsResident learners (N = 26) represented all four classes of OB/GYN residents. Residents initially showed stronger clinical knowledge in managing postabortal hemorrhage than sepsis (90% vs. 62%, p < .001). Clinical knowledge improved following the sepsis simulation (62% to 91%, p < .001), and remained strong but unchanged after the hemorrhage simulation (90% to 87%, p = .3). Resident self-assessments of competence and preparedness were significantly improved after both the hemorrhage (p = .006) and sepsis (p = .002) simulations. Learners reported that the simulation increased their level of comfort in managing these complications in their future practice.DiscussionPostabortal hemorrhage and sepsis simulations increased OB/GYN residents' knowledge, comfort, and preparedness for managing rare complications of first-trimester abortions. In-vivo simulation and interdepartmental collaboration were novel aspects of these simulations that may facilitate increased preparedness and management skills.

Increasing Visibility of Open Access Materials in a Library Catalog: Case Study at a Large Academic Research Library

This article describes efforts to increase the visibility of open access materials in the catalog of a major research library. The authors describe their reasons for embarking on this work, improvements made, and challenges they encountered.

Helping medical educators worldwide to pivot curricula online: pivotmeded.com.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in the implementation of restrictions on group gatherings and educational events in many countries, creating imperatives for medical educators to move curricula online at short notice. Within medical schools and health sciences programmes, this urgency was compounded by competing priorities of health care delivery as many medical educators are also clinicians. To support medical educators, faculty development leaders in Canadian medical schools (FacDevCanada) collaborated to curate medical education resources in three categories: guidance on pivoting to online curriculum (classroom and clinical) delivery; discipline-specific learning resources, and general resources (including basic science, Indigenous health, patient safety and leadership development resources). The FacDevCanada developed PIVOTMeded (Partners in Virtual and Online Teaching in Medical Education), found at pivotmeded.com. Members of FacDevCanada crowdsourced resources in the three categories described above. Resource nominations were reviewed according to the following criteria: open accessibility; lack of evident bias; lack of (or minimal) personal information gathering, and relevance to the likely needs of learners and medical educators. A Google Site platform (Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA) was utilised in view of: (a) the platform's relative programming ease; (b) user navigation ease; (c) the platform's facilitation of responsive and dynamic displays compatible with computers, tablets and mobile devices, and (d) the curators' familiarity with the platform. Initially, one person reviewed nominations from contributors and sought materials for inclusion. Two additional medical educators with adeptness in curating resources and configuring the website became co-editors. Two administrative staff supported resource posting and website maintenance. Each resource's post includes a link and a customised annotation. PIVOTMeded launched on 17 March 2020. By 28 April (at the time of writing), the site had 2007 unique users. This indicates a high rate of utilisation; in comparison, a well-established open-access resource for family medicine educators, ‘learnfm.ca,’1 had 1265 unique users in the same 6 weeks. To date, we have curated 84 open-access resources, which support medical educators to pivot curricula online. Content comes from a variety of authors and multiple countries. Users come from 74 countries; the largest cohorts are from Canada (48%) and the USA (24%), followed by Portugal, the United Kingdom and Mexico (3% each). Half of website users visited directly (eg, by typing ‘pivotmeded.com’ into a browser), which suggests awareness of this website by name. One-third of users came through social media links and posts by individuals and organisations including the Association for Medical Education in Europe, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the College of Family Physicians of Canada, the Harvard Macy Institute, and faculty development units (all utilisation data from Google Analytics [Google LLC, Mountain View, CA, USA]). Key lessons learned refer to: (a) the value of an easily memorable name and URL (uniform resource locator) for this kind of project; (b) the importance of curating site content selectively rather than providing links to a large number of resources (as evidenced by spontaneous feedback and tweets about our project); (c) the need to have multiple people collaborate on this type of project (to ensure high-quality curation within a tight time frame), and (d) the value of tweets, posts and emails from established individuals and organisations in building awareness. Beyond COVID-19, pivotmeded.com will continue to curate open-access materials supporting online medical education.

Preservation and Reuse of Historical Seismic Data in Mexico: SISMOMex and the Online “National Seismogram Library”

Abstract The SISMOMex project represents more than 110 yr of seismological information from Mexico. Its objective is the preservation, search, recovery, systematization, reuse, and dissemination of data and information from the seismograms generated by the Servicio Sismológico Nacional (SSN, National Seismological Service of Mexico) and published material about earthquakes and seismology in Mexico. SISMOMex is the combination of resources in any format (print, electronic, multimedia, and so on) and their corresponding registry in a database and an institutional repository. The database and the repository have an interface for an online search, allowing access to open-access materials, through a link to the electronic resources generated or acquired. The project seeks to preserve for the future all the products generated by the SSN since the beginning of its operations, and organize the “National Seismogram Library” (Sismoteca Nacional en Línea), which is the physical place that stores the seismograms generated by the SSN. Similarly, it allows, under citation, the reuse of the data by interested researchers and students. These seismograms contain unique and unreproducible information. With the project presented here, support is provided mainly to the scientific community, by directing the search of historical and present data and information on the seismic activity of Mexico to a single place.

Developing a «Soft» Component of Innovative Ecosystems in Flagship Universities

As a rule, flagship universities consider forming the core of the regional innovation ecosystem to be one of their main strategic goals. Achieving this goal involves not only creating an innovative infrastructure, attracting partners, but also developing social capital and innovative culture (the «soft» component of the ecosystem). The article studies flagship universities’ activities on the latter problem. The theoretical basis of the study is D. Douglas’s concept of flagship universities. The research methodology is a qualitative analysis of strategic planning documents and flagship universities’ official sites. The study showed that almost all the flagship universities aim at becoming the core of the regional innovation ecosystem. Insufficient attention is paid, however, to developing innovative culture and social capital. A number of universities do not set this task; nor do they target culture change in favour of ecosystem-friendly values. In almost all the universities studied, there is a shortage of specific managerial actions on influencing cultural values. The social capital is also underdeveloped, which can significantly impede the implementation of joint projects. The research might have certain limitations due to using only open access materials from the first-wave flagship universities. At the next stage of their development (after 2020), they should specify the goals and activities for developing innovative culture and social capital, as well as their benchmarks. Otherwise, the «hard» component of the ecosystem would not function. The results of the work may be of use for university leaders and their partners who are interested in the balanced development of flagship universities as ecosystem nuclei.

The Repository, the Researcher, and the REF: ‘It’s Just Compliance, Compliance, Compliance’

Although institutional repositories (IRs) have become widespread, they have been consistently under-populated and under-utilized. Unless their content approaches a significant percentage of a university's output, IRs can neither form a useful branch of open access to scholarly communications, nor provide a representative view of an institution's research output. The UK's 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) requires all work submitted to it to have been deposited in a repository, which for most authors would mean an IR. This research sought to understand the impact of the REF mandate upon researchers and repository staff, and upon their relationship with the university, through a series of semi-structured interviews with researchers and repository managers. The research discovered that despite steep rises in repository submissions, little resource has been made available to accommodate hugely-increased workloads, nor have interfaces improved. Researchers and repository-managers alike struggle with a tedious and difficult administrative task that may require many iterations to complete. The research concludes that the mandate, and the pressure it places on the relationship between the researcher and the institution, is highlighting unspoken tensions in this relationship. Although the mandate is increasing the amount of open access material in the UK, as well as providing universities with evidence for the REF, it is placing significant strain on the tacit contract between a researcher and their employer. Opportunities to align the participants, to create alternative metrics from newly available data, and to develop new solutions, are being missed. This has implications for the way other mandates focusing on deposit in IRs are managed, both within and beyond the UK.

Editorial

Dear readers!&#x0D; At the editorial board of the journal LES/WOOD, we are aware that two conditions are important for the success of every scientific journal: that it publishes high-quality scientific articles that show the advancement of the profession in fundamental and frontier areas, and that they reach as wide range of readers as possible, and thus disseminate new knowledge. If the first condition is fulfilled, then fulfilment of the second is easier, because with good articles the journal becomes more recognizable and is sought by more readers. Conversely, more scientific and professional readers also create a larger pool of potential authors for new scientific publications. The two are therefore interconnected. Bibliographic databases also play a key role in fulfilling these two conditions and promoting the scientific journal. Namely, by joining the databases, the journal gains reputation and visibility, while increasing search engine accessibility and readability, and the articles it publishes are cited more. This again attracts new authors and encourages them to publish better articles, which in turn enhances the reputation of the journal. In this issue of LES/WOOD, it is with the pleasure and pride that we take a look at the path of the journal’s development and highlight some turning points over the years:&#x0D; Since 1997, LES/WOOD has been listed in the CAB Abstracts database (https://www.cabi.org/publishing-products/cab-abstracts/), which is “the leading English-language bibliographic information service providing access to the world’s applied life sciences literature, giving users access to over 480,000 journal articles, conference papers and reports”. Being involved in this database has been crucial to the development of the journal, as it makes it one of the most important publications in the life sciences.&#x0D; Today, it is crucial that the journal is being digitized. Until 2012, LES/WOOD was published in printed form only. With its revival in 2017, in addition to the printed version, we introduced an electronic version and offered it to readers via web services. The ISSN number for the electronic version of the journal was obtained, and at the same time a website was set up (http://www.les-wood.si). For greater visibility, the journal was incorporated into the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system in 2017. Since then, each article in LES/WOOD has been signed with its own Digital Object Identifier (DOI) name, while the publisher has become a member of the CrossRef organization.&#x0D; Different formal, technical, substantive and design amendments are required before the journal is published in international bibliographic databases, as different bibliographic databases set clear (minimum) technical and content requirements. Of particular importance is regular publication, a clear editorial policy, the redesign (and digitization) of the editorial process, and the online publication of articles in a readable form. Especially in recent years, ethical rules of operation, a plagiarism prevention policy and clear rules on the management of intellectual property are also important, which mainly apply to the electronic version of the journal. To this end, the website of LES/WOOD journal was completely updated in the first half of 2019.&#x0D; The last important turning point happened during the summer of 2019 when LES/WOOD was included in the DOAJ database (the Directory of Open Access Journals). DOAJ is a white list of open access journals and aims to be the starting point for all information searches for quality, peer reviewed open access material. Being included in DOAJ also increases the visibility and ease of use of articles, and that of LES/WOOD as a whole. The DOAJ aims to be comprehensive and cover all open access scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality control system to guarantee the content that they publish meets high standards (https://doaj.org/).&#x0D; Further development of LES/WOOD will move in the direction of indexing in the Scopus database, which will hopefully increase international visibility, widen the readership and increase the interest of authors in publishing in the journal. In this process, collaboration, the creative exchange of knowledge, new ideas and initiatives, are crucial, which will lead all the journal’s contributors to new successes. Therefore, I warmly invite you to contribute to the promotion of the journal and its development. Thanks in advance for your support!

‘Womb for Rent’: Socio-Cultural Implications of Reproductive Tourism in India

Background&#x0D; Commercial surrogacy in India has become an increasingly controversial human rights and global health issue. Indian women living in dire poverty are the most vulnerable group in this transnational phenomenon. Reproductive tourism can be defined as the process whereby affluent people predominately from Global North countries (i.e., Canada) seek assisted reproduction in the Global South (in this case, India), to accomplish fertility and kinship formation goals while remaining oblivious to the inevitable social issues associated with this international trade.&#x0D; Objective&#x0D; This paper investigates how the media and academic anthropological research present current understandings of biotechnology, family, and kinship regarding commercial surrogacy. I argue that reproductive tourism is a multifaceted social issue with significant socio-cultural implications for kinship in India and the Global North, by being rooted in a gendered division of labour, culturally-specific belief systems, technological advancement, race and class stratification, capitalist structures, and globalization.&#x0D; Methods&#x0D; Although reproductive tourism is indeed interdisciplinary in nature, this project explicitly took an anthropological and global health approach to understanding its impacts on kinship in local and global communities. With regards to researcher positionality, I played an outsider role in understanding Indian women and the cultural context in India. I critically and reflexively analyzed diverse media sources that offered insights on reproductive tourism in India within the domains outlined in my thesis statement. These media sources were found online, and included mainstream media outlets, news articles, articles by journalists and social activists, websites for organizations of interest, corporate sources, blogs, videos, documentaries, and images. I used scholarly articles in anthropology as ethnographic evidence to support, challenge, or extend claims reported by the media. Academic sources included peer-reviewed publications, books, open access materials, grey literature, academic websites, and legal documents. I qualitatively compared and contrasted the presented narratives to conduct a secondary analysis of scholarly literature and media reports, and constructed valid arguments about the current state of reproductive tourism in India.&#x0D; Results&#x0D; The commodification of reproductive labour has had vast impacts on the cultural meanings of kinship in India and Global North countries. Reproductive tourism in India is evidence that culture influences biological, reproductive, and technological processes and how they are perceived in contemporary times. Technology and globalization were found to be propellers of commercial surrogacy that transcend international borders. Expectations related to family formation and gender within Western contexts, and Western forms of kinship contribute to the commercial surrogacy industry. Reproductive tourism perpetuates hierarchies along the lines of race and class, and Indian women face exploitation and serious health risks despite being paid for their reproductive labour.&#x0D; Conclusion&#x0D; Transnational surrogacy must be perceived by governments as a public matter rather than a private one, in order to adequately derive holistic solutions to halt the exploitation of vulnerable Indian women while balancing the desire of infertile individuals to utilize surrogacy as a means of kinship formation.&#x0D; Update&#x0D; This research paper was written in March 2018. As of December 2018, commercial surrogacy is illegal in India. The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2018 is an attempt by the Indian government to control the industry and associated issues such as the exploitation of poor women and unprecedented health consequences. This law and policy shift by the Indian government affirms the importance of this research.

The repository, the researcher, and the REF: “It's just compliance, compliance, compliance”

Although institutional repositories (IRs) have become widespread, they have been consistently under-populated and under-utilised. Unless their content approaches a significant percentage of a university's output, IRs can neither form a useful branch of open access to scholarly communications, nor provide a representative view of an institution's research output. The UK's 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) requires all work submitted to it to have been deposited in a repository, which for most authors would mean an IR. This research sought to understand the impact of the REF mandate upon researchers and repository staff, and upon their relationship with the university, through a series of semi-structured interviews with researchers and repository managers. The research discovered that despite steep rises in repository submissions, little resource has been made available to accommodate hugely-increased workloads, nor have interfaces improved. Researchers and repository-managers alike struggle with a tedious and difficult administrative task that may require many iterations to complete. The research concludes that the mandate, and the pressure it places on the relationship between the researcher and the institution, is highlighting unspoken tensions in this relationship. Although the mandate is increasing the amount of open access material in the UK, as well as providing universities with evidence for the REF, it is placing significant strain on the tacit contract between a researcher and their employer. Opportunities to align the participants, to create alternative metrics from newly available data, and to develop new solutions, are being missed. This has implications for the way other mandates focusing on deposit in IRs are managed, both within and beyond the UK.

Literature on screen: teaching adaptations in a multimodal course

ABSTRACT Literature on Screen (http://kirjandusekraanil.ee/) is an online learning platform focused on film adaptation of literary texts. The paper, that starts with an overview of film education in Estonia, provides a theoretical framework for discussing and analysing adaptations in class with the help of multimodal and digital media. The methodology stems from the tradition of the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School, which implies a holistic approach to meaning-generating processes in human culture. Literary adaptations are regarded as invariants of the same story existing in different media and discourses. The paper describes the process of the development and testing of the platform in Estonian- and Russian-speaking schools in Estonia. The results of the testing allow us to compare the patterns of media consumption and production in different classrooms and open up opportunities for promoting cultural diversity through adaptation studies. Literature on Screen constitutes a part of Education on Screen, a project developed by the Transmedia Research Group at the University of Tartu. The project’s goal is to develop open-access online materials to support the teaching of humanities-related subjects in secondary schools.

Lessons Learned from the Development of Open Educational Resources at Post-Secondary Level in the Field of Environmental Modelling: An Exploratory Study

Open educational resources (OER) have become increasingly popular in recent times. Here, the aim was to synthesise the lessons learned through the development of OER materials for a university-level course called “environmental modelling”. Consequently, the topics of discussion included: (i) how to choose an appropriate creative commons license; (ii) ways of incorporating materials from other sources, such as publicly available sources, other open access materials, and an author’s own published materials if not published under a creative commons license; (iii) the impact of the developed OER in the field of environmental modelling; and (iv) the challenges in developing OER material. Upon developing the materials, we observed the following: (i) students enrolled in the course did not purchase textbooks; (ii) our OER materials ranked as one of the most accessed (i.e., number 7) materials according to the usage data that summed the number of file downloads and item views from PRISM (i.e., the hosting platform maintained by the University of Calgary); (iii) the students learned relatively better as per the data acquired by the University of Calgary’s universal student ratings of instruction (USRI) instrument; and (iv) other universities expressed interest in adopting the materials.

Crowdsourcing in medical research: concepts and applications.

Crowdsourcing shifts medical research from a closed environment to an open collaboration between the public and researchers. We define crowdsourcing as an approach to problem solving which involves an organization having a large group attempt to solve a problem or part of a problem, then sharing solutions. Crowdsourcing allows large groups of individuals to participate in medical research through innovation challenges, hackathons, and related activities. The purpose of this literature review is to examine the definition, concepts, and applications of crowdsourcing in medicine. This multi-disciplinary review defines crowdsourcing for medicine, identifies conceptual antecedents (collective intelligence and open source models), and explores implications of the approach. Several critiques of crowdsourcing are also examined. Although several crowdsourcing definitions exist, there are two essential elements: (1) having a large group of individuals, including those with skills and those without skills, propose potential solutions; (2) sharing solutions through implementation or open access materials. The public can be a central force in contributing to formative, pre-clinical, and clinical research. A growing evidence base suggests that crowdsourcing in medicine can result in high-quality outcomes, broad community engagement, and more open science.