Open Agenda Research Articles

A Trust Framework for Online Research Data Services

There is worldwide interest in the potential of open science to increase the quality, impact, and benefits of science and research. More recently, attention has been focused on aspects such as transparency, quality, and provenance, particularly in regard to data. For industry, citizens, and other researchers to participate in the open science agenda, further work needs to be undertaken to establish trust in research environments. Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper examines the issue of trust in an open science environment, using virtual laboratories as the focus for discussion. A trust framework, which has been developed from an end-user perspective, is proposed as a model for addressing relevant issues within online research data services and tools.

Rhythms of the Pachakuti: Indigenous Uprising and State Power in Bolivia

Of the many studies of Bolivia’s popular uprisings of 2000–2005, Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar’s participatory-observer account stands out. In addition to furnishing an innovative framework for understanding the “rhythms” of social struggle during those years, the book grapples with some of the tensions and dilemmas common to diverse emancipatory struggles. This translation of the 2008 original (with a helpful new foreword by Sinclair Thomson) makes the analysis available to English readers.Gutiérrez Aguilar’s first objective is to illuminate the “interior horizon” of the forces that mobilized during this period (xx). She sees two common threads: an anticapitalist quest to recover collective resource wealth and an anti-authoritarian struggle to replace the state with participatory decision-making structures. These two impulses were central to the successful campaign against water privatization in Cochabamba in 2000; the Aymara protests over water, land, and coca cultivation rights starting that same year; Chapare coca farmers’ resistance to forced eradication in 2000–2003; and the popular coalition against neoliberal hydrocarbon policies in 2003–2005.For Gutiérrez Aguilar these dual aims distinguish these movements from the older, “orthodox” left. Whereas a “national-popular,” state-centric perspective guided many struggles in twentieth-century Bolivia, the revolts of 2000–2005 were animated at least as much by a “communitarian-popular” ideal that prioritized participatory democracy. Many recent Bolivian activists sought not to take state power but to replace the institutions of governance themselves. Nor did they merely want to return privatized water or natural gas to state hands, insisting instead that resources “should be self-managed by the citizens themselves” (26). The Quechua concept of pachakuti—“an inversion of the fundamental order of things” (51)—captures this far-reaching desire to supplant existing social relationships with new ones modeled on indigenous and popular communal norms. I think the book oversimplifies the twentieth-century Left just a bit, but its analysis of recent struggles is still compelling.Gutiérrez Aguilar’s second overarching objective is to explain why the resultant changes fell short of popular aspirations. Though the Evo Morales administration (2006–present) has partially fulfilled some popular demands, Morales’s MAS (Movement to Socialism) party represented a relatively conservative current among the resistance. For example, while many demanded renationalization of gas under “social control” (217), the MAS favored only a substantial increase in taxes on private companies. In various ways, it has helped to suppress and domesticate more radical elements.The explanation for this outcome, Gutiérrez Aguilar argues, lies not only in external actors but also in radical movements’ own mistakes and contradictions. A key recurring tension was between “the rejection of the general order” and a desire for integration into that order on different terms (48). Many activists remained wedded to the routine of negotiating with the state, perhaps lured by the prospect of winning concessions. At crucial moments, they seemed to cede decision-making power back to state officials, allowing their demands to be “translated and locked into dominant state conceptual and linguistic codes” (65). Also lacking was detailed movement debate about what new institutions should look like. Developing a longer-term collective vision might have been difficult, but it arguably could have made popular forces more resistant to co-optation.Gutiérrez Aguilar’s analysis raises crucial questions for social movements everywhere: If some sort of engagement with existing state institutions is necessary to achieve reforms, how can movements avoid state co-optation in the process? How can radical, antistate forces avoid being eclipsed by more reformist state-oriented competitors, as happened with the rise of the MAS? Rhythms of the Pachakuti admittedly offers no clear answers. Overcoming capitalism and the state are, in the author’s words, “a challenge and an open agenda for everyone” (188).

Building a Political Sociology of Legal Professions in Africa: Stakes for an Open Research Agenda

Law in Africa often conjures the question of colonial legacies or the image of a legal vacuum. Counter to this deceptive representation, the aim of this presentation is to lay the stakes for the development of a political sociology of lawyers on the African continent. Built as a trend report it draws a reflexive analysis of past research and trends on legal processes and legal institutions on the continent, looking in particular at: the (dis)entanglements between scholarship and imperial and post-imperial practices on the continent; the articulation between law and politics of the state; and the relationship between political economy, political configurations and legal practices. It then lays the ground for an open research agenda focused on lawyers: It argues that lawyers offer an entry-point that highlights transformations of the state and politics, as well as the historicity of dynamics of globalization on the continent, including the colonial enterprises and their aftermaths. Tracing the social characteristics of lawyers, their professional strategies and their political mobilizations points to individual biographies that collectively connect different sites, at the local, national and international levels, in the longue duree. It underscores meanwhile that it is in these so-called African peripheries that major legal, political and economic revolutions are at play. This trend report is the extended version, in English, of the introduction to Juristes, faiseurs d’Etat, edited by S. Dezalay, with the contribution of G. Karekwaivanane, Politique africaine, 138, 2015.

Innovation summits: comparison and conceptualisation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the strategic intent and consequent organisation of innovation summits. Innovation summits have recently appeared in practice as a new approach by which firms strategically market and further their open innovation agendas both internally and externally. Design/methodology/approach To advance the knowledge of this novel phenomenon, which has not yet been described in theory, a qualitative research design is appropriate. Consequently, this research conducts comparative case studies of four leading companies. Findings The paper contributes knowledge on how innovation summits can be designed and used as a strategic marketing approach to mobilise and match key people for open innovation. The authors find that the strategic scope and cognitive distance of invited firms are critical dimensions in characterising distinct types of innovation summits and propose a classification scheme for understanding different types of summits. Practical implications For practitioners, the authors present two central questions to consider before staging a summit: what is the strategic scope and who should be involved? This classification scheme offers managers an understanding of the implications of these choices. Originality/value While much research takes a macro-perspective on open innovation, much less is known about the micro-level of bringing parties together. In practise, the concept of innovation summits has gained a significant interest; however, the concept is still relatively unknown in the literature. This paper is one of the first to advance knowledge of this novel phenomenon.

Creating their own domains. Polish female aristocrats and gardening during the eighteenth century

Abstract The text examines the meaning of gardens for Polish enlightened female aristocrats at the turn of the eighteenth century, in relation to their personality and against a sociohistorical background. Noblewomen such as Izabela Czartoryska and Helena Radziwill considered gardens as their own domains; due to their activities the landscape garden became part of the emerging aristocratic culture. In search of the individual character of these gardens the text analyses the combination of various decisive factors: specific property rights granted to noblewomen, the national ideal of a country life and the exchange of ideas with like-minded European intellectuals, in which aristocratic women participated. Their gardens had open or hidden agendas, which initially alluded to literary, philosophic or freemasonic topics; by the end of the century they focused on patriotic clues expressing devotion to national traditions. This became all the more important after the partition of the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealt...

Three tasks for mediatization research: contributions to an open agenda

Based on the interdisciplinary experience of a Swedish research committee, this article discusses critical conceptual issues raised by the current debate on mediatization – a concept that holds great potential to constitute a space for synthesized understandings of media-related social transformations. In contrast to other, more metaphorical constructions, mediatization can be studied empirically in systematic ways through various sub-processes that together provide a complex picture of how culture and everyday life evolve in times of media saturation. The first part of this article argues that mediatization researchers have sometimes formulated too grand claims as to mediatization’s status as a unitary approach, a meta-theory or a paradigm. Such claims have led to problematic confusions around the concept and should be abandoned in favour of a more open agenda. In line with such a call for openness, the second part of the article introduces historicity, specificity and measurability as three transdisciplinary and transparadigmatic tasks for the contemporary mediatization research agenda.

Assessing the perceived limitations of Reflexive Groups for supporting clergy in the Church of England

ABSTRACTFor this research, eight Church of England Bishops’ Advisors for Pastoral Care and Counselling were interviewed to ascertain the limitations of Reflexive Groups (RGs). The data were analysed using a thematic analysis. One superordinate theme emerged: Hindrances, along with 10 subordinate themes. An online survey was then sent to RG participants (n = 64), to see if their experiences matched those limitations identified by the Bishops’ Advisors. The data reveal that RGs are perceived as limited by the inability of clergy to commit to the time; it was scary for participants to be vulnerable with others; sometimes the needs of some participants were too big and could sabotage the group; dual relationships could cause complexity and hinder sharing; prayer; being sent by a Bishop or Archdeacon; the open agenda and style of facilitation does not suit some people; and sometimes there are struggles with expectations.

Radically Open Strategizing: How the Premium Cola Collective Takes Open Strategy to the Extreme

Whereas prior research has investigated cases of partially open strategizing, this article explores the practices and outcomes of radically open strategizing. We draw on a case study of the German Premium Cola collective to explore how it translates its principles of radically open agenda setting, participation, and governance into strategizing practices. Our analysis reveals that this collective not only performs radically open strategizing practices of distributed agenda setting, substantial participation, and consensual decision-making, but also performs counterbalancing practices of centralized agenda setting, selective participation, and authoritative decision-making in order to cope with practical barriers posed by information and power asymmetries between members as well as information overload. We find that these practices enable the collective to legitimize its strategic decisions, develop a collective identity, and maintain member motivation over time. Based on these findings, we conclude that radically open strategizing is a feasible practice, with limitations arising from participants making selective use of open strategizing opportunities, rather than being excluded from them.

Strategic interpretation on sustainability issues – eliciting cognitive maps of boards of directors

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the role of cognitive diversity on strategic issue interpretation among the boards of directors making sense of sustainability management. The study also investigated the centrality of the corporate sustainability issues to identify common interpretative patterns in the shared cognitive maps among the companies. In addition, the aim was to advance quantitative methods for the analysis of decision-makers’ cognition.Design/methodology/approachThe research was an exploratory study analyzing 43 individual cognitive maps collected through surveys from the boards of nine cleantech companies. For the elicitation of the cognitive maps, the study used the hybrid cognitive mapping technique. The diversity of the shared cognitive maps was analyzed using the distance ratio formula and the graph analysis method with eigenvector to measure the centrality of the strategic issue interpretation in the maps.FindingsThis study provides evidence through the analysis of distance ratios on the existence of cognitive diversity among companies within the same industry. Surprisingly, despite the cognitive diversity, the study identified strong common patterns on strategic issue interpretations among the companies. In addition, the study shows that the sustainability management issues have gained minor attention from the boards of directors.Research limitations/implicationsThe initial industry sample provided relatively restricted perspectives on managerial cognition, and to confirm the findings regarding the effects of industry on the shared cognitive maps of top decision-makers, wider industry-level data are needed.Practical implicationsThis study provides an approach to facilitate the process of strategic decision-making for top decision-makers by identifying the shared beliefs of the selected strategic theme and to concentrate on the most central strategic issues in the company and industry. It reveals asymmetry between the significance of sustainability issues in an open agenda and the real position of sustainability concepts in the shared cognitive maps in the green industry. Also, the study advances cognitive mapping techniques for application in the board’s decision-making.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to brightening the black box of corporate governance by shedding light on the interaction of the concepts of corporate sustainability and other key strategic issues within the shared cognitive maps of the boards. It also provides new empirical knowledge on top decision-making processes and the effects of cognitive diversity on the strategic issue interpretations within the corporate boards of the green industry, and it further develops the methodology for the quantification of cognitive diversity and the content of cognitive maps.

Trade Treaties: Undemocratic, Anti-Competitive and Unbalanced?

The major benefit from free trade is from domestic reform (Section 2A). Current preferential trade treaties have large sections concerning the wide range of domestic regulation that might impede trade in agriculture or services (Section 2B). These regulatory sections are highly detailed and prescriptive – the worst form of old-fashioned heavy-handed regulation (Section 2C). They need to be replaced by modern outcome-oriented objectives, with countries free to implement these as best fits other social, cultural and economic goals.As trade treaties receive little attention during elections a mandate cannot reasonably be claimed (Section 3A). These treaties tie the hands of both the current and future governments across a wide range of domestic regulation – open debate about these goals and the best means of achieving them is essential. Such an open agenda would re-build trust in government and better suit decision-making processes in a democracy. An important part of this would be independent evidence-based analysis by a trusted body (Section 3B). This would provide a factual basis for any consultations (Section 3C).The submission also considers what fair trade provisions might look like. The elements of a fair, balanced, patent policy are set out in Section 4A. These are assessed against our current treaties in Section 4B. There is a large gap. Many of our treaties fail the TRIPS Article 7 test of what a fair balanced patent policy should look like. The most essential first steps in ensuring that preferential trade treaties are democratic, procompetitive and balanced are to ensure that there is independent evidence-based assessment of the proposed content, and that the approval authority rests with parliament. Ideally there should be an active economic reform agenda, with full public debate of all the options likely to be included in trade treaties.

Open Data and Official Language Regimes

The open data movement is gathering steam globally, and it has the potential to transform relationships between citizens, the private sector and government. To date, little or no attention has been given to the particular challenge of realizing the benefits of open data within an officially bi- or multi-lingual jurisdiction. Using the efforts and obligations of the Canadian federal government as a case study, the authors identify the challenges posed by developing and implementing an open data agenda within an officially bilingual state. Key concerns include (1) whether governments may use open data to outsource some information analysis and information services to an unregulated private sector through open data initiatives, thus directly or indirectly avoiding obligations to provide information analysis and information tools in official languages; and (2) whether the rush by governments to support the innovation agenda of open data may leave minority language communities both under-served and under-included in the development and use of open data.

Are We Having Fun Yet? Institutional Resistance and the Introduction of Play and Experimentation into Learning Innovation through Social Media

Recognising and responding to behaviours and patterns of resistance is critical to the successful implementation of technology-enhanced learning strategies at higher education institutions. At institutional, academic and student levels, resistance manifests itself in a variety of forms, at best supporting a critical culture and at worst creating inertia and active disquiet. Through the lens of an institution-wide strategic learning innovation vision at the University of Greenwich, designed to enhance connectivity and collaboration, this paper will explore the modes and pathways of resistance that occurred in the process of implementing and embedding an openness agenda at a learning and teaching level. Through supporting experimentation and play with social media creation and sharing as a mechanism of curricula transformation, we identified a number of patterns of resistance to sharing and openness. Using an approach informed by grounded theory we have attempted to represent these patterns in the form of a model of institutional resistance to technology-led change.

Born out of place: migrant mothers and the politics of international labor

Born Out of Place: Migrant Mothers and the Politics of International Labor Nicole Constable Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014, xvii+259p.Scholars have theoretically couched late twentieth century and early twenty-first century human migration in terms of metaphors that invoke global fluidity, risk, uncertainty, and the dismantling of previous forms of social relations. Migrants, many of whom remain nameless, are often vilified, lambasted, and treated as second-class citizens along with their children. The label often denotes persons who come from outside the body politic and it simultaneously provokes societies to demonize foreignness, associating it with contamination, risk, and anxiety. In Southeast Asia, both the Philippines and Indonesia, have intense histories of migration within the region (and beyond it) to cater to the need for flexible workers. Both nations have sent nurses, care workers, nannies, and domestic workers to Taiwan (Lan 2006), the U.S. (Rodriguez 2010), Europe, and other parts of the world where labor is required to fill gaps in the workforce. Nicole Constable's book provides a timely addition to the literature on migrants workers living overseas. It offers a very welcome and sensitive ethnography based on her many years of fieldwork in Hong Kong (HK) complimenting other recent ethnographic works that have been carried out (Matthews 2011; Knowles and Harper 2009). It focuses on migrant workers' everyday experiences and importantly, draws out not only the voices of migrant mothers and men, but also those of the children, an oftenneglected group in migration literature.The book focuses on three issues. Firstly, temporary workers to HK enter as workers (both in regards to their contracts and the obligations placed upon them by states, brokers, and other institutions) but they are never only workers. Secondly, legal frameworks, laws, and policies implemented to regulate, control, and manage migrants movement often fail in their aims. And thirdly migrants, especially those who are single mothers, enter into a migratory cycle of atonement, a self-perpetuating, precarious pattern of migration that is often the only route to escape the shame that single motherhood brings to them and their families (p. xiii). In effect, Constable questions the very heart of the system that controls migrant's movement and aims to critique current policies in not just HK, but in other regions of the world where similar policies are in place.Chapter one, A very tiny problem, presents the overall thesis of the book and takes a sensitive gendered approach toward the issue of migrant mothers in HK, their reasons to overstay and the implications of doing so. Predominately (but not exclusively) focusing on mothers who work in HK and give birth to children overseas as opposed to those who are left behind, Constable locates some of their experiences in zones of social abandonment while reminding us of the plethora of distinctions that are used to categorize migrant workers. Modifying Giorgio Agamben's notion of bare life, an effect of state power that strips of any political significance and curtails it, Constable problematizes clear-cut distinctions to scrutinize the ambiguities of the position of migrants in HK. Chapter two, Ethnography and everyday life offers an overview of the book's ethnographic approach interweaving both methodology and interviews with migrant women in HK, an approach that continues throughout the book. This is done by contextualizing her approach within two dominant streams in migration studies: one that looks at exploitation and abuse of migrant workers and another that focuses on migration as a resource (p. 23). Constable takes the approach of an engaged humanist (p. 24) with an open agenda to contribute to discussions on social justice for migrant workers. She also emphasizes that she was not a detached interviewer (p. 55); as a feminist-ethnographer-activist she juxtaposes the creative ways in which migrants work within and utilize the structures that oppress them as well as the risks they face such as giving birth, illegal abortions, rape, sex work, and domestic violence. …

Jessica Reynolds on the Royal Academy's Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined exhibition

At the Royal Academy's exhibition, Sensing Spaces: Architecture Reimagined, curator Kate Goodwin sets a loose brief to seven international architects: to create works that ‘encourage visitors to question their ideas about architecture and test its capacity to move them’. While the resulting large-scale installations fulfil the brief's open agenda (what work doesn't deal with the field of sensory experience?), the exhibition goes no further to challenge the larger political issues at stake in architecture and the city today, which is problematic given that it is presented at a major London art institution and geared towards educating the general public about the importance of architecture.

Elias Canetti—Rudolf Hartung: Briefe, Autobiographisches und Fotos. Aus dem Nachlass von Elias Canetti ed. by Bernhard Albers (review)

Reviewed by: Elias Canetti—Rudolf Hartung: Briefe, Autobiographisches und Fotos. Aus dem Nachlass von Elias Canetti ed. by Bernhard Albers William Collins Donahue Bernhard Albers, ed., Elias Canetti—Rudolf Hartung: Briefe, Autobiographisches und Fotos. Aus dem Nachlass von Elias Canetti. Aachen: Briefe, 2011. 80 pp. This slim volume is a luxury for specialists—perhaps even a questionable indulgence. It is the counterpart to Albers’s 1992 book with the symmetrical title (Rudolf Hartung–Elias Canetti. Ein Rezipient und sein Autor). Now almost [End Page 154] twenty years after the publication of that fascinating book, Albers publishes here the additional material he certainly wanted to include in the original volume. This little book should really be integrated into the first and reissued as a new whole, because it makes much more sense if the reader understands that Hartung was Canetti’s decisive promoter and critic in Germany. Actually, he was much more. Hartung was the lector at the Willi Weismann Verlag that published the first postwar German edition of Die Blendung (not a very successful venture, given the paper shortages and currency reform at the time). Crossing lines that today seem questionable, Hartung went on to write the first substantive (and insightful) review of Die Blendung. Isn’t this tantamount to the publisher writing his own blurb? Canetti responded with a thank-you letter (complimenting Hartung but clearly indicating that many more treasures lay undiscovered in the novel). This in turn began a lifelong relationship between “ein Rezipient und sein Autor.” But should this be? Michiko Kakutani, the leading book critic of the New York Times, is known to keep an absolute firewall between herself and the authors she reviews; she refuses to mix and mingle with authors at publishers’ parties because she feels this would compromise the objectivity and honesty of her critiques. Thus, one wonders about the probity of Hartung’s open agenda of promoting Canetti. The story told in these letters and documents turns out to be much more complex and interesting, with one exception: The epistolary exchange between Albers and Canetti is often mundane and seems to be included merely to fill out this already very thin book. Not that it isn’t amusing to witness a commanding author fully in charge of his corpus: Canetti personally approves or rejects the inclusion of letters and deletes passages he thinks are irrelevant or too personal. And he has a bit of a temper: he expects to be treated with respect and takes exception to a letter from Albers that does not even begin with a proper greeting. Further, he expresses his disdain for mass-market booksellers, reminding us (as he has elsewhere) “dass ich dem Massenkonsum des Literaturbetriebs einiges entgegensetze” (34). Canetti makes it clear that he is the boss. The most revealing parts, however, show us a Canetti fully aware of Hartung’s nuanced, evolving, and sometimes highly critical view of Canetti’s work. Already in the 1992 volume, we read of the stark difference in temperament between the two—Hartung as a sensitive, taciturn, contemplative critic and Canetti as a self-assured, apodictic, and forceful personality. But here we [End Page 155] gain a new and very personal insight: Canetti loved Hartung for who he was, and because in his uncompromising, candid criticism, Hartung taught him about his own work. Because of Hartung—especially when they disagree—Canetti comes to a clearer understanding of his own achievement. What is more: Canetti also values Hartung’s talent in transforming himself and treasures the fact that Hartung noticed (unlike many others—need I say it?—especially academic critics) that Canetti himself had evolved in content, mood, genre, and thought over time and that his magnum opus, the anthropological study Masse und Macht (1960) cannot therefore be facilely applied as a theoretical key to all works, prior and subsequent. Canetti here regrets the tyranny of Masse und Macht over his other work, noting that his dramas (particularly Komödie der Eitelkeit) are not theoretical works but creative works of fiction. The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart: Canetti had a genuine, deep, and very personal regard for Hartung, so much so that he withheld this...

Next-Gen E-Government: A Study on Reconciling Data Protection and Government 2.0

The evolving model of the Future Internet has at its heart, Internet users. The Web 2.0 and Government 2.0 initiatives help citizens communicate better with their government. Such initiatives have the potential to empower citizens by giving them a strong voice in both traditional and digital society. Pressure is mounting on governments to listen to the voice of the public expressed through these technologies and incorporate their needs into public policy. On the other hand, governments still have a duty to protect their citizens’ personal information against unlawful and malicious intent. This responsibility is essential to any government in an age where there is an increasing burden on citizens to interact with governments via electronic means. This paper examines this dual agenda of modern governments to engage with its citizens, on the one hand, to encourage transparency and open discussion, and to provide digitally offered public services which require the protection of citizens’ private information on the other. It is argued that a citizen-centric approach to online privacy protection that works in tandem with the open government agenda will provide a unified mode of interaction between citizens, businesses and governments in digital society.

The Open Translation MOOC: creating online communities to transcend linguistic barriers

One of the main barriers to the reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER) is language (OLnet, 2009). OER may be available but in a language that users cannot access, so a preliminary step to reuse is their translation or localization. One of the obvious solutions to the vast effort required to translate OER is to crowd-source the translation, as exemplified by Wikipedia ( Wikipedia Translation ) or TED ( Ted Open Translation Project ). From October to December 2012 the Department of Languages at the Open University UK ran a MOOC on Open Translation Tools and Practices (OT12). Participants explored a range of online open translation tools ( Amara , Transifex , Google Translator Toolkit ) that enable and facilitate the crowdsourcing of translation, dubbing and subtitling. For this MOOC, participants collaborated in the translation and subtitling of OER mainly to and from English and Spanish, but also Portuguese, French, Greek, German and Catalan. Forum discussions, synchronous online sessions, recorded podcasts and the tasks themselves were designed to provide input, facilitate discussion and share views not only on the linguistic specificities of translating different languages, but also on issues such as quality assurance in open translation and the ethics and practicalities of openness in education and translation. Data for this paper is drawn from online surveys covering participants' backgrounds and their prior experience as translators; their expectations and motivation for participating in the OT12 MOOC; and their evaluation of the outcomes of the MOOC. We understand MOOCs as events (Cormier, 2010) or, following the principles of connectivism, catalysts for starting conversations within a network (Downes, 2011), and therefore feel that they might be a suitable way of engaging online communities of translators, language teachers and learners, and those interested in the crowdsourcing of translations for OER. This paper attempts to open up a debate on how the world of open education can harness crowdsourcing and existing open translation models to further the openness agenda.

The OER mix in higher education: purpose, process, product, and policy

Success in open educational resources (OER) has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OER are in learning and teaching. Approaches to OER policy and sustainability are just two other key aspects that remain unresolved across the sector. Based on the findings from the Open, Transferable, Technology-enabled Educational Resources (OTTER) project at the University of Leicester, UK,1 we introduce the OER mix framework: purpose, processes, product, and policy. We argue that different mixes of the four Ps can generate different approaches to OER. We discuss the relevance of the framework and its importance for social inclusion and widening access to higher education. We also discuss the implications of the OER mix for the openness agenda. Institutions may find value in adapting and applying the framework. We invite colleagues to critique it and report back.

Thoughts on the opportunities for records professionals of the open access, open data agenda

PurposeThe purpose of this editorial is to highlight the potential challenges and opportunities for information and records managers of the “open access” agenda. This is becoming increasingly high profile not only in the research sector, but also the public sector as a result of a number of key drivers, namely, research funder requirements, regulatory compliance, and the demand for greater openness, transparency and accountability.Design/methodology/approachThe article is a viewpoint informed by the findings from two recent projects directed by the author and on wider conversations and publications. It is not an in‐depth analysis of the literature.FindingsThe author suggests that the increasing profile and importance of “open access” and “open data” offer new opportunities for information and records managers. They provide technical as well as people challenges and a new context in which information and records managers can apply their expertise. This will be different to the compliance agenda; it will be focused more on economic and competitor advantage.Originality/valueThe viewpoint brings together thoughts on the information and records management implications of open access and the potential value and role of records professionals. Its purpose is to stimulate debate and action.

Writing as Penance: National Guilt and J. M. Coetzee

Writing as Penance:National Guilt and J. M. Coetzee Forrest G. Robinson (bio) In company with samuel clemens and gunter Grass—writers I have discussed comparatively in an earlier essay (Robinson)—South African novelist and Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee has wrestled in his writing with a sense of anguished moral entanglement in his country's crimes against humanity. In their very different ways, all three writers answer potently competing impulses to confess and to conceal their accusing self-knowledge. Clemens is the least conscious in his literary negotiations with conscience. Repressed memories of slavery surface unsummoned in his writing, where they give rise to bad faith evasions or baffled retreats into silence. Grass, by contrast, has been shrewdly knowing in his fictional dissections of national guilt in post-Holocaust Germany, but failed until very recently to disclose the damaging truth of his own involvement in the moral debacle. In a very real sense, I believe, we owe the gift of his insights into national guilt to his own half-century of public denial. Coetzee's writing is similarly torn on the topic of apartheid, but in ways so various and seemingly contradictory as to suggest a desire on his part to invite and at the same time to frustrate critical scrutiny. Over the course of a long career, his attention has been less focused on the actual horrors of modern South African history than on the moral challenges faced by white people entangled in them. The need to intimate the worst of himself in several of his novels may appear to be a kind of grudging penance for feelings of moral complicity endured—and resented—as the unjust accidents of historical circumstance. As Sam Durrant has argued in a rather different critical framework, Coetzee's "novels seem to replay the agony of his implication in apartheid" even as they "are modes of protesting this affiliation" (19). [End Page 1] Yet Coetzee's attention to historical guilt is seldom direct. Rather, the topic is most often broached obliquely, as a consideration submerged in or apparently secondary to a diverse array of more open agendas—literary theory, autobiography, the problem of confession, and anti-Americanism prominent among them. Indeed, it is testimony to the simultaneous urgency and moral delicacy of the issue of historical guilt that it is so widely and yet so guardedly at large in Coetzee's work. His approach to the subject is characteristically ambiguous, at once a revelation and a concealment, an elusive crossing of signals that seems to express both his compulsion to show himself and an answering resistance to compromising disclosure. In a double movement clearly akin to the dynamics of bad faith, his work may be said to resist its own drive toward confession. Viewed in this way, Coetzee's novels may appear to be the work of a "colonizer who refuses" to endorse or support colonialism, but who is nonetheless, in Albert Memmi's characterization, deprived of moral tranquility because he "suspects, even if he is in no way guilty as an individual, that he shares a collective responsibility by the fact of membership in a national oppressor group." A white South African of Afrikaner descent, educated among Afrikaners and fluent in Afrikaans, but opposed as an adult to the inhuman apartheid regime created and enforced by his kin, Coetzee may appear to be a "benevolent colonizer" who, by Memmi's reckoning, "can never attain the good, for his choice is not between good and evil, but between evil and uneasiness" (39, 43). The novelist's predicament, as Stephen Watson has persuasively argued, registers clearly in the "dominant moral impulse at work" in his early fiction: the "insatiable hunger of all his protagonists" to escape the "shackles of their historical position" as colonizers (23). "I never wished to be drawn into this," complains the magistrate, a horrified witness to state torture in Waiting for the Barbarians (1980). But he is also an agent of the state, and therefore complicit in its crimes. Little wonder that he wants "to live outside the history that Empire imposes on its subjects," and wonders how such a wish can be a "cause for shame" (8, 154). In...