Over the last week I've seen two very different examples of where Open Access would have been beneficial. The first, widely reported example, comes from an article in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization [PS: blogged here on May 11]:
A physician from southern Africa, engaged in perinatal HIV prevention, whose primary access to information was abstracts posted on the Internet. Based on a single abstract, they had altered their perinatal HIV prevention program from an effective therapy to one with lesser efficacy. Had they read the full text article they would have undoubtedly realized that the study results were based on short-term follow-up, a small pivotal group, incomplete data, and were unlikely to be applicable to their country situation. Their decision to alter treatment based solely on the abstract’s conclusions may have resulted in increased perinatal HIV transmission.
The second, and obviously less significant example, comes from a post to a mailing list intended for those undertaking CILIP's Chartership programme. The author was looking for articles from the journal 'Impact'. Some of these are made freely available via the journals’ site but the vast majority are not available. The response from one of the editors, offering to scan the required articles, suggests that the editors of the journal are not intending to prevent access - which makes me wonder why they don't just provide access to all articles? I presume they would not do anything to prevent authors of articles from adding them to relevant repositories?...
In my previous working existence (on a Library Help Desk) I was continuously met with frustrated researchers who couldn’t understand why we couldn’t afford access to all the journals from their subject. Perhaps there’s an opportunity to add a couple of lines explaining the aims and purposes of Open Access to each apologetic email explaining our lack of access - thus encouraging a focus on Open Access and self-archiving at the time when they are most susceptible to it’s charms?
Comment. I like the idea in the last paragraph. Libraries should write short, standardized messages to send to faculty who complain about limited subscription access. They could include links to a general overview of OA, some essentials about OA that every scholar ought to know, and some suggestions on what faculty can do to help bring it about.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/15/2006 08:20:00 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.
