Over the past 10 years, libraries across the country --including Duquesne’s own Gumberg Library-- have faced increasing challenges in providing a breadth of quality, scholarly publications to their patrons. Currently, many national peer-reviewed scholarly journals are controlled by large publishers that charge exorbitant subscription fees to libraries. These fees are increasing at an alarming rate. Electronic resource subscriptions alone cost the Gumberg Library $1 million per year, meaning that other areas of the budget, such as book purchases, have to be scaled back. Under the current publishing system, faculty members do the research, write the papers and, in some cases, even pay a “page fee” to have their work published, yet the journal publisher owns the copyright and charges others to access the information. An exciting new revolution in scholarly publishing known as “open access” offers hope for the future. Open access seeks to make scholarly journals and full-text articles freely available via the Internet....While open access offers a promising solution, it does face some challenges. At the forefront of these challenges is a veritable Catch 22: in order to be successful, open access journals must develop reputations that can compete with those of traditional journals. However, many researchers are reluctant to publish in open access journals because they do not have the time-tested reputation of the traditional journals. Through education of university faculty and researchers, pro-open access organizations such as ARL hope to convince more scholars to use open access publications, thus bolstering their reputations to a level competitive with the traditional journals. Open access also raises questions about copyright enforcement, academic integrity and archiving information for the future.
On Wednesday, April 5, the Gumberg Library invites the University community, especially faculty, to attend a symposium on open access and what it means to the future of scholarly publishing. Open Access: Whose Research is it Anyway will be held from 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Fisher Hall Conference Center. It will include a panel discussion and provide an opportunity for questions. The guest speaker will be Julia C. Blixrud, assistant executive director of external relations for the ARL and assistant director of public programs for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. Panel participants include: Dr. Rush Miller, director of University Libraries, University of Pittsburgh; Dr. Ellen Detlefsen, associate professor, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh; Susan Wadsworth-Booth, director, Duquesne University Press; and Dr. Jeffrey Evanseck, holder of the Fr. Joseph Lauritis, C.S.Sp., Endowed Chair in Teaching and Technology, Duquesne University.
Comment. It's true that OA journals face this Catch-22. But not all OA is delivered through OA journals. OA archives or repositories do not face this Catch-22 at all. I discuss some solutions to the Catch-22 for OA journals in this 2004 article (Section 4, esp. pp. 13ff).
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/16/2006 07:24:00 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.
