...While I was already sold on the idea of open access publishing — I’m an early adopter of the Open Access Law Pledge and work on an open access law journal as well as having several open access publications — [John Willinsky's book, The Access Principle, MIT Press, 2005, print edition, OA edition] did however make me really think about the state of open access in law in the UK, Ireland, and Europe more generally.
My thoughts are that we are in a pretty poor state of affairs over here and I would like to issue a “call to arms” on kick starting open access to law. Here is why.
I know that SCRIPTed is open access...but I haven’t found a comprehensive list of just UK and IE [OA] law journals....
The Science Commons...maintains an Open Access Law Program. As part of this project, they list law journals that follow the Open Access Law Journal Principles. There are only two publications listed as adhering to open access in the UK and none in Ireland. There are over 30 listed in the US. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has a handful out of the 53 journals from the UK and IE.
If you are on one, please email your journal details so that this list can be built out quickly. I may be wrong — there may be tons of you out there. But until we start to get things together, we may miss some great opportunities to work together....
When you publish an article in a legal academic journal, is it solely to get some points for the RAE or advance your career, or is it have an impact on the field of law? ...
Public interest organisations are interested in what we legal scholars are producing, but they have no access to our papers because they do not have expensive Westlaw subscriptions or educational institutional affiliations....
I think we need our own conference or a stream at a conference to explore ways to work together on open access publishing. We can figure out what works for us, and how we can grow our journals and increase our impact. I have a couple of suggestions on how this could take place....
And finally, create our own conference! I suggest an Open Access Law stream at a new UK conference on open content and open access....
I think that we need to see a greater push for open access to law in the UK, and we need to get together to start that push.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/02/2007 12:59:00 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.
