Summary collection: Elsevier
A collection of topic summaries to which anyone can contribute
The topic for this post is the academic publisher, Elsevier — including several countries’ and institutions’ decisions not to renew their subscriptions. This publication includes writing on both Elsevier and large academic publishers — but there is more current news on this also.
What is this?
This summary collection is part of Open Knowledge in Higher Education. We encourage you to seek out a wide range of views on the title topic, then write a summary of these views as a response to this post, including links to sources.
Why?
We believe that reading summaries from a diverse range of people can strengthen your understanding of a topic far more than hearing from one or two people. This is what Mike Caulfield calls “Choral Explanations”.
Additionally, you may use these summaries a to refresh or develop your knowledge and opinions around the topics covered, and they may be of use when working on your assessed contributions.
How do I take part?
If you are in a face-to-face session, you may choose to share the ‘research’ part of the task — and you can use our private hypothes.is group if you like — then either write a group or individual summaries as you prefer.
In the session we will ask you to choose one topic to summarise, but we invite you to contribute further summaries afterwards. If you cannot make the session, please take part at a time which suits you.
For some topics, there is a wealth of writing already within this publication. Use the OKHE, OKHE1, and OKHE2 tags, and comments on Topic posts, to explore the bulk of contributions. It will also be useful — or for very current topics, necessary — to look beyond the publication. You may for example find writing on blogs and social media, news publications, and journals.
Summarising a topic is a useful way to curate a range of views/angles on a topic for your own and others’ benefit, but of course is itself not neutral; we encourage you to produce your own summaries and read others’, and it is up to you how much of your own opinion you add to your summary.
What format should I use?
This is up to you — all that we ask is that you respond to this post, and either write your summary as an extended response in Medium, or if you choose to produce it elsewhere, include a short explanation and a link.
