Stevan Harnad, Self-Archive unto others..., University Affairs, December 2003. A clear and succinct statement of the argument for self-archiving. Excerpt: "Research journal publishers are still stuck in the old system. Every journal now has both a paper edition and online edition, and they charge tolls for access to one or the other or both. Besides, most other kinds of authors are not like researchers: they do want to be paid royalties out of the sales of their writing, so the toll barriers suit them just fine. The special case of research papers is just a tiny and unrepresentative minority in the world of writing and its economics. So what are researchers, who seek only research impact, to do? The toll-booths deny access to all those potential users worldwide whose universities can’t afford to pay them. And journals are so expensive that most universities can’t afford most journals (there are 24,000 research journals in all). Yet if the publishers cannot or will not make their research accessible for free on the Web, why can't the researchers do it for themselves? Why don’t they just put it all up on their own Web sites for free? That is what the 'self-archiving initiative' is doing."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/16/2003 09:09:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
