Open Science, Open Access & Institutional Repositories

During my times as director of IRIS, I became very interested in the relationship between sustainability and resilience of human communities affected by climate change and other ecosystem disturbances, and access to knowledge and information.

This led to my development of the concept of Knowledge as a Nutrient. I'm currently carrying out research into the notion that opening access to research via university institutional repositories may increase people's adaptive capacity to diverse challenges. My students and I are currently carrying out research into how well academic, and other communities know about the ins and outs of contributing to, and using open access knowledge.

IMG_6081More information about these ideas can be found in Bazely et al. 2015 in Mitchell and Moore's new book Planetary Praxis and Pedagogy: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Sustainability. My chapter, with Ellie Perkins (far left), Nicole Klenk and Miriam Duailibi (at left in green jacket), explores concepts such as tecnologia social (the Brazilian policy and political framework of Social Technology), and open access.

The image below is from a poster that we presented at the Adaptation Futures Conference in Brazil in 2014. It's one of the stops along the way of my development of the concepts associated with Knowledge as a Nutrient.

Adaptation futures conf knowledge flow