Public Knowledge Project
Encyclopedia
The Public Knowledge Project is a non-profit research initiative of the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia
, the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University
, the Simon Fraser University Library , and Stanford University
. It is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly-funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making this possible. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments.
in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver
, British Columbia
, Canada
, based on his research in education and publishing. Dr. Willinsky is a leading advocate of open access publishing, and has written extensively on the value of public research.
The PKP’s initial focus was on increasing access to scholarly research and output beyond the traditional academic environments. This soon led to a related interest in scholarly communication and publishing, and especially on ways to make it more cost effective and less reliant on commercial enterprises and their generally restricted access models. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals, conferences, and monographs.
The PKP has collaborated with a wide range of partners interested in making research publicly available, including the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
(SPARC), the Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT), and the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) .
Together with INASP, the PKP is working with publishers, librarians, and academics in the development of scholarly research portals in the developing world, including African Journals Online (AJOL) and Asia Journals Online .
As of 2008, the PKP has joined the Synergies Canada initiative, contributing their technical expertise to integrating work being done within a five-party consortium to create a decentralized national platform for social sciences and humanities research communication in Canada.
Since 2005, there were major releases (version 2) of three software modules (OJS, OCS, Harvester), as well as the addition of Lemon8-XML, with a growing number of downloads being recorded every month for all of the software. From June 12, 2009 to December 21, 2009, there were 28451 downloads of OJS, 6329 of OCS, 1255 of the Harvester, and 1096 of Lemon8-XML. A new module, Open Monograph Press (a publication management system for monographs) is currently in development.
The PKP also witnessed increased community programming contributions, including new plugins and features, such as the subscription module, allowing OJS to support full open access, delayed open access, or full subscription-only access. A growing number of translations have been contributed by community members, with Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese versions of OJS completed, and several others in production.
, British Columbia
, Canada on July 11 - July 13, 2007 and the Second PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference was held in Vancouver
, British Columbia
, Canada on July 8 - July 10, 2009. The Third PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference will be held in Berlin, Germany between September 26 and September 28, 2011.
Notes on the presentations were recorded on a scholarly publishing blog for both the 2007 and 2009 conferences, and selected papers from the 2007 conference were published in a special issue of the online journal First Monday
. Papers from the 2009 conference are available in the inaugural issue of the new journal, Scholarly and Research Communication. The proceedings from the third conference will likely be published in the same journal.
, the Open Conference Systems, the PKP Open Archives Harvester
, and Open Monograph Press (in development). PKP briefly experimented with a fifth application, Lemon8-XML, but has since opted to incorporate the XML functionality into the existing applications. All of the products are open source
and freely available to anyone interested in using them. They share similar technical requirements (PHP, MySQL, Apache or Microsoft IIS 6, and a Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, or Windows operating system) and need only a minimal level of technical expertise to get up and running. In addition, the software is well supported with a free, online support forum and a growing body of publications and documentation is available on the project web site.
Increasingly, institutions are combining the PKP software, using OJS to publish their research results, OCS to organize their conferences and publish the proceedings, and the OAI Harvester to organize and make the metadata from these publications searchable. Together with other open source software applications such as DSpace
(for creating institutional research repositories), institutions are creating their own infrastructure for sharing their research output.
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia is a public research university. UBC’s two main campuses are situated in Vancouver and in Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley...
, the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University
Simon Fraser University is a Canadian public research university in British Columbia with its main campus on Burnaby Mountain in Burnaby, and satellite campuses in Vancouver and Surrey. The main campus in Burnaby, located from downtown Vancouver, was established in 1965 and has more than 34,000...
, the Simon Fraser University Library , and Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. It is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly-funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making this possible. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments.
History
The PKP was founded in 1998 by Dr. John WillinskyJohn Willinsky
John Willinsky is a Canadian educator, activist, and author.Willinsky is currently on the faculty of the Stanford University School of Education. Until 2007 he was the Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy...
in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, based on his research in education and publishing. Dr. Willinsky is a leading advocate of open access publishing, and has written extensively on the value of public research.
The PKP’s initial focus was on increasing access to scholarly research and output beyond the traditional academic environments. This soon led to a related interest in scholarly communication and publishing, and especially on ways to make it more cost effective and less reliant on commercial enterprises and their generally restricted access models. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals, conferences, and monographs.
The PKP has collaborated with a wide range of partners interested in making research publicly available, including the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition is an international alliance of academic and research libraries developed by the Association of Research Libraries in 1998 which promotes open access to scholarship. They currently have over 800 institutions in North America, Europe, Japan,...
(SPARC), the Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT), and the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) .
Together with INASP, the PKP is working with publishers, librarians, and academics in the development of scholarly research portals in the developing world, including African Journals Online (AJOL) and Asia Journals Online .
As of 2008, the PKP has joined the Synergies Canada initiative, contributing their technical expertise to integrating work being done within a five-party consortium to create a decentralized national platform for social sciences and humanities research communication in Canada.
Growth 2005 to 2009
The Public Knowledge Project grew between 2005 and 2009. In 2006, there were approximately 400 journals using Open Journal Systems (OJS), 50 conferences using OCS, 4 organizations using the Harvester, and 350 members registered on the online support forum. In 2009, over 5000 journals were using OJS, more than 500 conferences were using Open Conference Systems (OCS), at least 10 organizations are using the Harvester, and there were over 2400 members on the support forum.Since 2005, there were major releases (version 2) of three software modules (OJS, OCS, Harvester), as well as the addition of Lemon8-XML, with a growing number of downloads being recorded every month for all of the software. From June 12, 2009 to December 21, 2009, there were 28451 downloads of OJS, 6329 of OCS, 1255 of the Harvester, and 1096 of Lemon8-XML. A new module, Open Monograph Press (a publication management system for monographs) is currently in development.
The PKP also witnessed increased community programming contributions, including new plugins and features, such as the subscription module, allowing OJS to support full open access, delayed open access, or full subscription-only access. A growing number of translations have been contributed by community members, with Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese versions of OJS completed, and several others in production.
PKP Conferences
The First PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference was held in VancouverVancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada on July 11 - July 13, 2007 and the Second PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference was held in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada on July 8 - July 10, 2009. The Third PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference will be held in Berlin, Germany between September 26 and September 28, 2011.
Notes on the presentations were recorded on a scholarly publishing blog for both the 2007 and 2009 conferences, and selected papers from the 2007 conference were published in a special issue of the online journal First Monday
First Monday
First Monday was a short-lived U.S. television midseason replacement drama centered on the U.S. Supreme Court. Like another 2002 series, "The Court," it was inspired by the prominent role the Supreme Court played in settling the 2000 presidential election...
. Papers from the 2009 conference are available in the inaugural issue of the new journal, Scholarly and Research Communication. The proceedings from the third conference will likely be published in the same journal.
Software
The PKP's suite of software includes four separate, but inter-related applications to demonstrate the feasibility of open access: the Open Journal SystemsOpen Journal Systems
Open Journal Systems is an open-source software for the management of peer-reviewer academic journals, created by the Public Knowledge Project, released under the GNU General Public License.-Design:...
, the Open Conference Systems, the PKP Open Archives Harvester
PKP Open Archives Harvester
The PKP Open Archives Harvester is software used to accumulate and index freely available metadata, providing a searchable, web-based interface. It is open source, released under the GNU General Public License...
, and Open Monograph Press (in development). PKP briefly experimented with a fifth application, Lemon8-XML, but has since opted to incorporate the XML functionality into the existing applications. All of the products are open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
and freely available to anyone interested in using them. They share similar technical requirements (PHP, MySQL, Apache or Microsoft IIS 6, and a Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X, or Windows operating system) and need only a minimal level of technical expertise to get up and running. In addition, the software is well supported with a free, online support forum and a growing body of publications and documentation is available on the project web site.
Increasingly, institutions are combining the PKP software, using OJS to publish their research results, OCS to organize their conferences and publish the proceedings, and the OAI Harvester to organize and make the metadata from these publications searchable. Together with other open source software applications such as DSpace
DSpace
DSpace is an open source software package that provides the tools for management of digital assets, and is commonly used as the basis for an institutional repository. It supports a wide variety of data, including books, theses, 3D digital scans of objects, photographs, film, video, research data...
(for creating institutional research repositories), institutions are creating their own infrastructure for sharing their research output.