K.A. Wallace, Marketing Ideas, Science Progress, April 10, 2008.
... If the “markets” for scholarly works are changing, and developments in digital technology—the cyberinfrastructure—suggest that they are, then academic authors and institutions need to take a very different stance towards the conditions under which authors’ works are published and distributed, and to become much more actively involved in reshaping the digital publishing world.
Whether the interest is profit or dissemination, academic authors need to stop signing restrictive publishing agreements. First, if there is profit to be had, academic authors should have a fair share of it. ... Second, for purposes of dissemination, authors may be poorly served by a standard restrictive publishing agreement which grants publication and distribution rights exclusively to the publisher. ...
Universities, too, have an interest in how this new world is structured. As things stand now, universities already pay the salaries of academic authors, and hefty subscriptions to journals and research databases. Thus, when a university has to pay copyright fees it could, ironically, and unlike corporate clients, end up paying twice or even thrice for the use of material. ...
At the same time, individual attempts to negotiate with publishers may not be a sufficiently coordinated action to make a dent in current publishing practices and to overcome each individual’s interest in publication for other reasons—for example, getting their ideas published, prestige, tenure, and promotion. All the more reason, then, for scholarly organizations and universities to get into the act if humanities and social science scholars are really going to reorient themselves to the technology and new economics of digital publishing. Even in the sciences, which are ahead of the humanities and social sciences in terms of grappling with the implications of digital publishing, a huge amount of scientific scholarship still lives behind a subscription wall, earning publishers huge amounts of money. ...
Universities, too, need to engage in coordinated, systematic action to facilitate more reasonable conditions for the dissemination of ideas that is the lifeblood of research. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 4/26/2008 02:38:00 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.
