This year's SPARC/ACRL forum at the American Library Association Midwinter meeting, entitled Working with the Facebook Generation, began on high note: a round of applause for SPARC executive director Heather Joseph. Moderator Ray English, librarian at Oberlin College, praised SPARC for its work in passing the recent NIH mandate for public access, saying it would free as many as 65,000 peer reviewed research articles funded all or in part by taxpayers. English then turned the program over to three student presenters, who suggested that the upcoming generation, enabled by technology and somewhat disenchanted with the status quo, are poised to help change the information ecology....
Andre Brown, a Ph.D. student in physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania and co-blogger for Biocurious engaged librarians with his presentation on the potential power of blogs in scholarly communication, saying they facilitated the "open practice of science." He explained how blogging, easy and cheap with "a low barrier to entry" thanks to free software, offered the potential to get ideas into the field more quickly, a key point for scientists, who often lament that it can take years for journal articles to be published. He acknowledged, however, that concerns over credit and citation remain a key stumbling block to more widespread use of blogs in science. He suggested that at some point scientists would desire and get used to more "rapid communication." ...
[T]he forum represented a big step for SPARC in engaging the next generation, whose information ideals are still forming, and are being increasingly molded by powerful technology. While the session wasn't without its glitches, it nicely raised the importance for librarians of engaging students, not just their faculty, when it comes to information access issues....
One of the presenters..., Stephanie Wang, an economics student at Princeton, gave librarians a heartening reminder of what they are advocating for. "We just want to do kick-ass science," she said.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/18/2008 02:26:00 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.
