Open Research Online (ORO) - online research repository
11:02, 11 March 2010
.. Posted in Development, Relief and Advocacy Efforts.. Link
Open Research Online (ORO), is the Open University's online research repository, part of the open access movement to make peer-reviewed research free to readers. ORO has over 12,000 research articles across a range of subjects and around 8,000 people visit it each week.
The top three most-viewed items on ORO are currently: Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (edited by Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers and Helen Sharp); Marketing: Concepts and Strategies (Sally Dibb, Lyndon Simkin, William M Pride, and O.C. Ferrell); and Ageism (Bill Bytheway) in The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing (edited by Malcolm L Johnson, Vern L Bengtson, Peter G Coleman, and Thomas B L Kirkwood).
My favorite? Resources related to development (human, community, institutional), ofcourse, as this was the focus of my Master's studies at OU. For some strange reason, development resources on ORO are under
Mathematics, Computing and Technology, then Design, Development, Environment and Materials. Not easy to find, but excellent stuff. Whether you are an academic or a humanitarian aid/development worker, it's worth checking out.
The repository is one of the many ways in which the OU gives free access to education. Others include OpenLearn, which offers courses free online and has just had 10 million visits, and the OU albums on iTunes U, which have had 14 million downloads.
So much sharing of free information going on -- is anyone actually using all these fantastic resources in their work?
