In presenting assignments, professors should specify what kinds of works are acceptable and which are not. The acceptability of a resource should be based on its intellectual content, and not on the media with which it is delivered, nor the tool or process by which it is located....
Back in the 1990's, [the] assumption [that online resources were not appropriate for a university paper] would have been a safe one to make....Today, that same assumption is far less likely to be accurate. Are books no longer acceptable once they are digitized? The trend in academic libraries towards e-journals, and any of these e-journals are or will be indexed by Google and other search engines. Will they still be considered appropriate resources? What about the 3000 or so journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which have no paper manifestation. Are they valid academic resources? ...
Teaching [students] an oversimplified model for assessing information resources, while potentially effective at getting them to change their habits, does little to develop the skills they need to be successful in their studies and their future careers.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/15/2008 01:06:00 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.
