A fascinating look at Open Science and the democratization of knowledge in international development and social transformation.

A range of perspectives on the complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications of opening research and scholarship through digital technologies. The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work--to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological vacuum; there are complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications for opening research through digital technologies. The contributors examine open access across spans of colonial legacies, knowledge frameworks, publics and politics, archives and digital preservation, infrastructures and platforms, and global communities.

Drawing on ten years of empirical work and research, analyses of how open development has played out in practice. A decade ago, a significant trend toward openness emerged in international development. "Open development" can describe initiatives as disparate as open government, open health data, open science, open education, and open innovation. The theory was that open systems related to data, science, and innovation would enable more inclusive processes of human development. This volume, drawing on ten years of empirical work and research, analyzes how open development has played out in practice.

For centuries, the global understanding of Church has been shaped by Western theological imperatives. Yet today, the decline of institutional religion in the West, and the extraordinary growth of the Church of the global South mean that a radical movement beyond such theologies is required. Paul Matheny argues that the Church would benefit by becoming more contextualized and less Western. Contextual Theology is an attempt to address that issue and to examine how a reassessment of the relationship of the Gospel to cultural context can advance this critical and necessary development. Through an accessible and critical approach, Matheny considers the historical background to contextual theology. In the same way, he aims to show how to use contextual methodsto think theologically and act missiologically in different cultural contexts.

A clear-eyed examination of the open access movement: past history, current conflicts, and future possibilities. Open access (OA) could one day put the sum of human knowledge at our fingertips. But the goal of allowing everyone to read everything faces fierce resistance. In Athena Unbound, Peter Baldwin offers an up-to-date look at the ideals and history behind OA, and unpacks the controversies that arise when the dream of limitless information slams into entrenched interests in favor of the status quo. In addition to providing a clear analysis of the debates, Baldwin focuses on thorny issues such as copyright and ways to pay for “free” knowledge. He also provides a roadmap that would make OA economically viable and, as a result, advance one of humanity’s age-old ambitions. Baldwin addresses the arguments in terms of disseminating scientific research, the history of intellectual property and copyright, and the development of the university and research establishment. As he notes, the hard sciences have already created a funding model that increasingly provides open access, but at the cost of crowding out the humanities. Baldwin proposes a new system that would shift costs from consumers to producers and free scholarly knowledge from the paywalls and institutional barriers that keep it from much of the world. Rich in detail and free of jargon, Athena Unbound is an essential primer on the state of the global open access movement.

In an information and knowledge society, access to information and knowledge is a basic human right, making equitable and fair access to information and knowledge paramount. Open Access (OA) plays a huge role in addressing inequities as well as broad-based and inclusive scientific progress. On the surface, the number of publications discussing OA issues from various angles are on the rise. However, what is missing is a comprehensive assessment of the extent of OA implementation and a discussion of how to proceed in integrating OA issues from various perspectives. The Handbook of Research on the Global View of Open Access and Scholarly Communications articulates OA concepts and issues while demystifying the state-of-the-art knowledge domain in the areas of OA and scholarly communications from diverse perspectives as well as implications for the information and knowledge society. Covering topics such as ethics, copyright challenges, and open access initiatives, this book is a dynamic resource for publishers, librarians, higher education administrators, policymakers, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.