The main effect so far as been to keep the publishers on their toes....
In your field, are scholars generally concerned about barriers to sharing information digitally?
The fact is you can only get the attention of about one percent of working academics on this issue —maybe that’s even optimistic. People are using the existing system, and working within it. If you explain to them what some of the problems are, they will express shock and horror. They may even go so far as to send in these copyright forms once or twice, but then they sort of go back to not thinking about it.
I do think the passage of time will go some way to changing these attitudes because for the younger generation everything has been digital their whole lives. So it’s not a change from one way of doing things to another.
People pay attention when there is a crisis. If your library tells you there is a big budget crisis, they have to cut 20 percent of our journal subscriptions —that gets people to pay attention....
What should be the role of funding agencies in scholarly communication change?
My view is that when the federal government is investing large money in scientific innovation, the scientific community as a whole has a right and duty to make the information available to as broad of an audience as possible.
So, the current model of taking the results of that research and giving it for free to a publisher who will then lock it up and only allow access after paying a fee is incompatible with that free communication of ideas. I really applaud the [US National Institutes of Health’s] PubMed Central initiative and I understand why Nature and Science are so upset about it, but it’s the right thing to be doing.
On the other hand, there are costs associated with publication. And the funding agencies have not been willing to provide money to pay for these things. It’s understandable that funding agencies want to focus their funding on the science, but finding a way to facilitate this kind of open communication is really important....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/08/2007 11:55:00 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.
