... I studied Biology during the late 90's in the National University of Colombia, my hometown country, and I loved it. Full of endless surprises, so many things about living beings that you could not imagine, from the beautiful molecular structures to the fact that living beings actually evolve.
.. the beautiful molecular structures! ... I wanted to learn more about them. So I started reading. ...
Wanting to learn more about it, I used to ran back to the library with the references in my hand, just to discover -to my disappointment- that THAT particular journal was not available. NEITHER that other one. NOR that one. Getting particular pieces of information about specific research was getting difficult for a college student like me. ...
I was feeling uncomfortable. How were we going to think about Biology, how were we going to create links between apparently unrelated facts, develop more unified theories, deal with the huge amount of newly produced information, tell the people about the beauty of nature, if the information seemed to be kept away from the people willing to think, create, develop, deal with, communicate? Is information still "information" when it is kept locked, not being communicated?
In those days I also learned that I was not the only one feeling uncomfortable with that situation. People around the world was having the same doubts, and I joined them in one of the first initiatives by signing this Open Letter. I did not believe my name was going to make a big difference, me a college student in a small country. But I did sing it anyway because those were the principles I believed in.
Time kept passing by and nowadays I do not think about Open Access as often as I should.
Fortunately, there are days like today, where I can sit down and remember that I still believe that the society, from the academic to the artist to the everyday person, has the right to nurture itself with the scientific knowledge that is being produced. That I still believe that the information that is not shared has less chances to survive, because information needs to be integrated in the wider web of knowledge, a process that may require the interaction of all of us. ...
One very good reason for not just asking for open access but demanding it, is that a great proportion of academic research is funded by the taxpayer, and if we're paying for this stuff, it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to see it. And yet until recently, we not only paid for the research, we had to pay to see it in the form of subscriptions to academic journals. ...
[A]s open access spreads, it carries with it a greater appreciation for the idea of openness and the benefits that accrue by sharing. In this sense, open access can help open source take root in environments where it is currently ignored or poorly understood. ...
Few things could promote communications for devlopment more effectively than free and open access to knowledge. ...
Open access is an antidote to the regulatory nightmare of digital rights management, over-zealous copyright legislation and ludicrous patenting terms which turn artists and thinkers - or their employers and publishers - into profiteers, and audiences and collaborators into 'consumers'. ...
... I fervently think that the more exchange of knowledge takes place, the more benefit to humanity overall. ... My little brother in high school a quarter way around the globe should be able to read my or my colleagues’ articles should he so desire, since his parents’ tax money paid for it. The public has given many scientists a mandate to make discoveries on their behalf. They are our patrons. They deserve full disclosure of the results of their investment. ...
... It's a day for celebration, and a day to be proud we're all part of an earthchanging movement in scholarly communication. Let's just not forget how long we have been fighting and how far we still have to go. ...
... Next year, I'm going to treat OA Day as a national holiday and take the day off work in celebration. Maybe one day everyone will do the same...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/14/2008 07:00:00 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.
