Any student who’s ever Googled the title of an academic journal article, only to be confronted with a two-line teaser interrupted by a demand for a credit card number, knows how frustrating — and expensive — scholarly research can get.
But if the open access movement has its way, those barriers will be history....
“It’s a movement that started among scholars and librarians who were concerned about the rising costs of scholarly publications,” said Jocelyn Godolphin, Assistant Director of Collection Services. “The issue is to provide alternative ways of publishing scientific and scholarly research that ensures it is freely accessible on the internet.” ...
Besides hosting outreach activities on the first international Open Access Day, Concordia University Libraries is developing an open access repository for Concordia....
The university is developing the required software and should have a working prototype online by next spring....
On Open Access Day October 14, librarians passed out brochures, buttons and bookmarks and answered student questions about open access, including, most frequently, “Does it mean that everything will now be free?”
“No. We are still paying huge costs for our subscriptions (to academic journals) and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to do so,” Godolphin said....
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the National Research Council’s Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) have all developed policies to encourage open access.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/23/2008 11:25:00 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.
