G. E. Gorman, Unanswered Questions about Open Access, Information Management, January 2005. Excerpt: '[T]he success or failure of Open Access comes down to finance, and it is difficult to see that money will be available to bed down and sustain a viable model of Open Access. It ain't free, in other words! [PS reply.]...The following is based principally on [Nancy Davenport's] questions, interwoven with some of our own. The purpose of this is to put the brakes on the Open Access bandwagon by helping everyone to reflect more deeply on what is happening and to stop following the OA fad so blindly – there are too many unknowns for information professionals to be hoping that this is the answer to their problems....One suspects that Open Access materials will not be oft-cited by others, because they lack the kudos of journals with ISI impact factors, etc. [PS reply 1, 2, and 3.]...How can we know that these materials are quality-assured if any researcher can make his or her work available through OA? Where are the effective quality controls? [PS reply.]...And finally, what of the publishers? From their perspective, if it isn't broken, why are we fixing it? The current model has worked, and worked reasonably well, for decades. [PS reply]'
(PS: This may be the single most uninformed article about OA I've ever read.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/17/2005 01:11:00 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.
