The University of Alicante's institutional strategy to promote the open dissemination of knowledge

From the abstract: ...This paper seeks to present the gamble made by the University of Alicante (Spain) on the promotion of open knowledge....The educational environment cannot continue to be fixed, closed and isolated, where students – assuming a basically passive role – receive standardised teaching. It must consequently experience a fast and decisive transformation which allows it, amongst other things, to respond to the new challenge posed by society: the need for all of us to share the knowledge we generate, so that further progress can be made....The Institutional Repository (RUA) and the OpenCourseWare of the University of Alicante (OCW-UA) were conceived from the very beginning as related projects that could constitute consecutive phases in the open publication of knowledge. In this way the aim of presenting the promotion of open knowledge not as a series of discrete projects but as a global strategic gamble of the institution was achieved....