Drupal Gardens has captured my attention lately. If you want to follow along in the development, feel free to stop by. While many academics seem to rally around Joomla!, my pocket web developer recommended Drupal Gardens. I’ve been having a great time with it! The themes have social media features built in, the WYSIWYG editor is user friendly, simple views are, well, simple. So far, so good.
The project, ACCESS Resources, was an enthusiastic solution to a page limitation crunch for a book chapter my colleagues and I are writing. It is also a first step towards making my work more available, such as having a creative commons copyright and accessibility.
I’m interested in accessibility for a few reasons. Increasing access to research and information is one part of the translational research process. It is also an extension of social justice efforts toward negotiating the privilege hierarchy between those who are active members of higher education and those who are not. Accessibility in the form of Open Access publishing provides a connection between research funded with public resources with the public. It may even help promote academic freedom while maintaining the integrity of the peer-review process. I’m very curious to watch and be a part of the trajectory of the Open Access movement.
As I continue to learn more about Open Access publishing, I’ll share my thoughts. If you are new to to OA publications, here are a few of my new favorite sources: PLoS | Public Library of Science, PKP | Public Knowledge Project, and the DOAJ | Directory of Open Access Journals.