John Willinsky and Abdur Rahman Abou Almajd on improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research

We have a fresh opportunity to reflect about improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research, At this point John Willinsky who takes part in the 1st Saudi Conference for Scientific publishing at King Khalid University. He isn’t going to talk about his views on the development and importance of the "open access" publishing model for research only but also speaks about the future of Scientific publishing in Saudi Arabia Universities too.

John Willinsky

John Willinsky is a Canadian educator, activist, and author.He is currently Khosla Family Professor at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He was the Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

He is the author of Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End, which won Outstanding Book Awards from the American Educational Research Association and History of Education Society, as well as the more recent titles, Technologies of Knowing, If Only We Knew: Increasing the Public Value of Social Science Research and The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship -- the latter of which has won the 2006 Blackwell's Scholarship Award and the Computers and Composition Distinguished Book Award.

He retains a partial appointment at Simon Fraser University, where he directs the Public Knowledge Project, which is researching systems that hold promise for improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research.

In October 2009 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Simon Fraser University for his contribution to scholarly communication.

Q:Welcome to the 1st Saudi Conference for Scientific publishing at King Khalid University. I wonder if this is the first visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

Willinsky:It is indeed my first visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and I am very much looking forward to this opportunity, given the country's achievements and history.

Q: You take part in this conference what about your paper.

Willinsky: I am honored to be able to contribute to this conference on scholarly publishing at King Khalid University. I will be speaking about the development and importance of the "open access" publishing model for research, which ensures that researchers, professionals, and others, around the globe have access to the knowledge that they need and are interested in learning more about. I think that this new model for publishing is both historically consistent with the spirit of open science, which dates back to at least the Abbasid Caliphate in Islamic history, and one of the great benefits afforded by the Internet in increasing the global exchange of knowledge.

Q: I want to see how you see Scientific publishing in Saudi Arabia.

Willinsky: Saudi Arabia offers a fine collection of scholarly journals that contribute to learning and research across the globe. These journals often have international editorial boards and provide a platform for research both from within and beyond the boundaries of Saudi Arabia. A number of these journals are published in an "open access" format, I am pleased to note, including, for example, the Journal of King Saud University in Science, which uses Elsevier's ScienceDirect platform, one of the leading sources of research in the world today. Other titles, such as the Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, are published using the subscription model by Springer, another of the leading publishers in this field. The journals of Saudi Arabia can be found through various indexes, which is another critical factor in making a strong contribution through scholarly publishing. My interest is in seeing if there are ways of further assisting universities in Saudi Arabia in extending their publishing capacities for research, which builds, in turn, their research culture and their contributions to knowledge, international understanding, and the quality of life. You won't be surprised to hear, I trust, that I think open access publishing models are key to this development.

Q: How do you find King Khalid University that held the 1st Saudi Conference for Scientific
publishing?

Willinsky: I think that it shows an admirable degree of initiative for King Khalid University to
undertake a conference on this topic, which is one of the most critical and promising areas in current efforts to take advantage of the new connectivity offered by the Internet. The conference is very well organized, under the leadership of Eed Bin Lafi, Al-Otaibi Dean of Scientific Research at King Khalid University and Chairman of the organizing committee for this conference. Too often we take the publishing part for granted with research, as I did for the longest time, but clearly, it seems to me now, at least, that publishing is key to the production and sharing of knowledge, which is, after all, the goal of our work in the universities.

Q: What about the new in Scientific publishing that you want to focus on?

Willinsky: Among the issues that I will address will be not only the advantages for pursuing an "open access" model but the means, including the economics and technologies, that make it possible. I will consider recent developments in scholarly publishing, such as the "mega-journal" and "article-level metrics" that greatly improve our ability to both share research and understand the nature and value of that sharing. I will also be putting on a workshop, in association with Chris Bendall of Springer, demonstrating some of the new open source (free) technologies for scholarly publishing that the Public Knowledge Project, with which I work, has released.

Q: How do you see the future of Scientific publishing in Saudi Arabia Universities?

Willinsky: I think that the prospects for the future of scholarly publishing in Saudi Arabia are excellent. The country has made university education widely available, and there are many opportunities for graduate students and faculty to conduct research that will contribute to innovations and discoveries, to refinements and extensions of existing knowledge, and to a greater understanding in many important areas. Given that new technologies make it easier to manage the vital peer-review process, which ensure the quality of research, and to publish in an open access format for global distribution, there is every reason for Saudi Arabia to increase its contribution to learning through scholarly publishing for the benefit of its own people, and the world at large.

AbdurRahmanAbouAlmajd: Thank you very much, friend John.

Willinsky:Thank you, Abdur-Rahman, for this opportunity.