In a guest posting today to Glenn Reynolds' blog, Lawrence Lessig explains why he's providing free online access to the full-text of his new book, Free Culture, why his publisher allows it, and why even Amazon links to the free edition. The theory is that those who sample the book online and then buy the priced edition will outnumber those who would have bought the book but decided against it when they found it online for free. If so, "then making it free makes sense for the publisher."
It also makes sense for the spread of culture and knowledge. For the single most important consequence of being able to make my book available for free is that the ideas in the book can spread broadly. Many can't afford the book. Many come from countries where it is not now, nor will it ever be, sold. And so if we can find a way to both increase sales and spread the book more broadly than it could ever have been spread otherwise, then we should try.
That's the idea behind the Open Access Movement in scientific publishing. Groups like the Public Library of Science are committed to finding a way to publish high-quality scientific research in a form that everyone, regardless of income or access to a library, can get access to. No one knows whether this is possible. But the key is to experiment: to see what works, and to see what works better.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/30/2004 09:20:00 PM.
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.
