Berkman Buzz: January 31, 2013

Thank you for this opportunity to join the others on this panel in talking about open access. I will concentrate in particular on the relationship between open access and the future of scholarly societies. I’m thinking in particular of small to medium scholarly societies, which have small publishing programs that are often central to the solvency of the societies and to their ability to do the important work that they do. In one sense it should be obvious, and I think it’s been made obvious by the previous speakers, that open access meshes well with the missions of scholarly societies. LSA’s mission, for instance, is “to advance the scientific study of language. LSA plays a critical role in supporting and disseminating linguistic scholarship both to professional linguists and to the general public.” So I’ll just assume the societal benefit of open access to researchers and to the general public alike. For the purpose of conversation let’s just take that as given.

Because Vietnam’s filtering regime has not greatly changed in intensity, the increase in reporting from Vietnam may reflect growing concern about the country’s political filtering. The 2012 Vietnam data indicates that over two-thirds of the reports to Herdict were related to political or news sites. In contrast, very few inaccessible reports were about internet tools such as proxies, providing some confirmation that circumvention has historically not been difficult in Vietnam.

Growing battle. RT @ivonotes: For anyone interested in state surveillance of citizens, anywhere, this is worth reading: http://bit.ly/Xa6Cqy
—Zeynep Tufekci (@techsoc)

Old school activists think of DDOS as a form of censorship, and thus it is not acceptable. For many digitally-enabled activists (e.g., Electronic Disturbance Theater) DDOS is a form of disobedience. For EDT, DDOS is an auxiliary form of activism: “DDOS is something you do when you’re out on the streets so your computer can be at home protesting.” DDOS is sometimes seen as a type of sit-in, although Molly thinks this is inapt. For some, DDOS is a direct form of protest, and in others, it’s an indirect and symbolic action. Anonymous melds these approaches: influence via technology + influence via media + direct action disruption.

I don't often work on quantitative projects, but since publishing Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Brittanica with Lauren Rhue I've come to appreciate just how difficult it can be to communicate findings unambiguously. Of course, had we found that Wikipedia had no biographies of women that would be straightforward enough. However, what we found was a bit more nuanced.

Lenders that are factoring social network data into loan eligibility http://slate.me/WfkOmt
—John Deighton (@HBSmkt)

When I started this blog about a year ago, one of the first things that I argued was that a fundamental division exists in education technology between those who believe that learning can be delivered and those who believe that learning must be experienced. In many ways, this is the core question of education philosophy in the U.S., most profoundly shaped (or at least symbolized) by John Dewey, father of the progressives, and Edward Thorndike, one of the fathers of standardized testing. These ideas continue to profoundly shaped education discourse, and these poles are still helpful in understanding the spectrum between.

How online analytics are changing the college admissions process, from @peteyMIT: http://t.co/QF48joUf
—Ethan Zuckerman (@ethanz)

The world's leading jailer of journalists has struck again. At least 12 Iranian journalists were arrested by agents of the regime's over the weekend. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published a statement about the mass arrest of journalists, on Monday, January 28, 2013. According to RSF, in a renewed crackdown on news media in the Tehran, plain-clothes intelligence ministry officials yesterday searched the headquarters of four daily newspapers – Etemad, Arman, Shargh and Bahar – and the weekly Asemanand, without any explanation, arrested at least 10 journalists.