From UCT OpenContent to a Journal Article

We are delighted to share this great story of openness!! One of our recently added open educational resources has been selected for publishing in an academic journal.  Yes, you read that correctly.  One of the teaching and leaning resources which had been shared under an open license was found by a journal editor who wanted to publish it in their journal!

Matumo Ramafikeng designed her learning module on occupation focused conceptual frameworks for her own teaching practice.  Her materials were intended to be used by the students in her course at UCT and met an instructional objective.  We were happy to have met Matumo early on in our project and share with her the idea of open educational resources.  Matumo was happy to make her teaching material open and have it used more widely by sharing on the UCT OpenContent directory.  The material was used in the class as usual but also made available for others to use.  The OpenContent directory stores metadata about the teaching material which makes it more discoverable through web search.

So the Journal of Occupational Therapy of Galicia contacted Matumo through the site after viewing her teaching materials.  They indicated that they were interested in the material and wanted to publish it in their journal.  Matumo agreed to have the article published and the process began.  The article was then translated into Spanish and published in the September 2010 edition of the journal!!!  According to the journal editors the article would be the first of “The Model of Creative Ability” published in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries (Latin America, etc)

This is a great example of how openness can lead to benefits for people working in academia.  It’s not all about giving it away for free; it’s about operating transparently so that others can see all the great work we are doing.  Operating openly allows us to make connections with other people and haveopportunities that would not be possible in a closed system.  The internet enables this openness; we just need to embrace it!

In this case someone found Matumo’s teaching materials and considered them so valuable that they wanted to share them more widely though the journal.  Matumo still gets all of the credit for the article and can add a publication her list of accolades!

Congratulations Matumo from the entire OER UCT team!  

By the way, this is big news and the story also made it on the University of Cape Town news feed.