Open Sciences, Open Licenses: fold or raise?

Abstract

The Library of French Guiana’s University has been developing fun and interactive Information literacy gaming methods in order to promote Open Access and consider Free Copyright and legal matters with its PhD and Master Students.

Three board and card games have been created so far created by the librarians with the help of professional a graphic designer : “License to kill” deals with legal matters and promotes free Licenses (Creative Commons, Copyleft), “Super Open Researchers” sets a debate about Open Science, and “Open Strategist” learns how to build an Open Access strategy for disseminating Research results.

These tools are used for Information literacy training sessions and during special events (Open Access week…). They raise students awareness with the necessity to use free licenses or to publish their research papers in Open Access so as to contribute to disseminate scientific and academic knowledge into society. We thus initiated a reflection about Open Science issues and impact for citizen as well as for researchers. More generally, we are considering and questioning the use of new methods in promoting Open Science – having fun and through gamification. Are generation Z students more receptive to these news methods? Does innovation help delivering knowledge to all more easily and more efficiently ? How to spread out knowledge to reduce the cultural inequalities ?