John Willensky, The Access Principle: The New Economics of Knowledge as a Public Good, a public lecture at the University of Toronto lecture series on Open Source and Open Access, March 31, 2005. Abstract: 'This presentation approaches open access and open source by returning to first principles. At issue today in scholarly publishing, Willinsky posits, is an access principle, that speaks to how a scholarly commitment to knowledge entails a responsibility to see to that knowledge circulate as widely as possible. Against growing restrictions on access to the growing body of scholarship and research over the last few decades, a broad range of practical and sustainable approaches has begun to emerge that utilizes new Internet technologies to improve access to the periodical literature. This presentation will outline ten new economic models of scholarly publishing, each of which is contributing to greater access, across the academic disciplines and involving the cooperation of private and public interests. The presentation will describe how this renewed realization of the access principle has immediate and direct consequences not only for scholarly work’s very claim to knowledge but for the quality of people’s lives. This presentation will draw on will be the research conducted by the Public Knowledge Project, as well as its experience in developing Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems, two of the open source solutions for open access publishing, now being used around the world in a variety of languages.' If you couldn't attend today, the webcast should soon be available here.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/31/2005 07:56:00 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.
