Saturday, February 18, 2012

Free L2 and haptic research studies and reports!

Clipart: Clker
Clipart: Clker
You may have noticed that most of the research or sources linked off this blog connect to sites that are free, accessible to anybody. There is a good reason for that.You may also have noticed in the last decade or so that more and more  published research is only accessible through publishers or professional associations. Although I do occasionally buy a copy of a study online, at $30+ per piece, the budget runs out quickly. And when I do get the article, I still cannot follow up on many of the sources in the reference list--for the same reason. The "Guild," the traditional owners of information, membership and privilege are attempting to maintain what control they have left today. The very notion that those of us without access to the original research should simply accept uncritically the digested version of a study by any expert is losing ground rapidly today. There are a growing number of excellent, online refereed and unrefereed journals such as the Asian EFL Journal, that are freely accessible--let alone a phenomenal number of quality research blogs. In many disciples, the blog is quickly replacing the journal article as the venue of choice for disseminating research findings. As a matter of principle, if the HICP practitioner cannot personally check the details and validity of a study--for free, it will generally not be cited here. (For one of my favorite musical depictions of the fading power and place of the Guild in a culture, see the Youtube link above.) Granted, that still somewhat restricts the scope of what can be brought in to substantiate haptic-integrated classroom practice, but  fortunately it also limits the necessity of taking too seriously "Die Meister-Thinkers" of disembodied, inaccessible research--and opinion,  as well. 

5 comments:

  1. If you are interested in more on this issue, you might begin here http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/harnad-1-022007_en.pdf or here: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/416-Journal-Affordability,-Research-Accessibility,-and-Open-Access.html

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  3. Quality research is intellectual property worth protecting. This is not a bad thing in our world of impatient knowledge aquisition. Wisdom is for those who search for it and pay the price for it. Even the Bible recognizes that. What it doesn't recognize is research that is disembodied.

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  4. I have no problem with that. The question is what the price should be--especially when research is paid for by government grants--and who should be authorized or sanctioned to interpret such generally inaccessible research to the rest of us. Who are we to trust with that responsibility? Having been a reviewer for professional journals for decades I have seen how compromised and politicized the Guild has become . . .

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  5. I think knowledge should be available to and for everyone, anytime, anywhere. This flattens hierarchy, power, and inspires creativity, ingenuity, and FREEDOM. A fast and good read on a very successful company that has flattened power to inspire personal investment, process, production, creativity, and loyalty is Hamel's (2011) article 'First Let's Fire All the Managers' published in the December 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review. This article support’s Acton’s (1992) thesis in ‘Technique Entropy in Language Teaching’ that informed change should be the norm, not the exception. If Acton (1992) and Hamel (2011) are correct then it would seem fair practice that research and knowledge are collective entities and the entire world should have equal access. Humans are ascending and transcending into an open world – love live openess and FREEDOM!

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