OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
advancement of humanistic studies in all fields of learning in the humanities and the social sciences and the maintenance and strengthening of relations among the national societies devoted to such studies." In December of 2006, the ACLS released a report on a two-year study by the Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences, supported by the Mellon Foundation. The Commission carried out research, hearings, and consultations to gather information and develop perspective in 2004. A draft report was issued in 2005 for public comment, the intended audience including the scholarly community and the societies that represent it, university provosts, federal funding agencies (including but not limited to the NSF), and private foundations.
The final report, Our Cultural Commonwealth, is now available from the ACLS website.[1] This report should be required reading for those going forward with investments in the OER movement and we cannot do it justice in this brief summary. We will, however, list the primary recommendations, which include subtext addressed to different constituencies: funders, universities, technology providers, cultural institutions, etc. We assume that the connection between these recommendations and the future of the OER movement is fairly obvious. The top-level recommendations are as follows:
- Invest in cyberinfrastructure for the humanities and social sciences as a matter of strategic priority.
- Develop public and institutional policies that foster openness and access.[2]
- Promote cooperation between the public and private sectors.
- Cultivate leadership in support of cyberinfrastructure from within the humanities and social sciences.
- Encourage digital scholarship.
- Establish national centers to support scholarship that contributes to and exploits cyberinfrastructure.
- ↑ http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/cyber.htm
- ↑ Emphasis by the writers of this report.
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