Scholarly publishing is in a dysfunctional state. Journal costs have risen 40 percent in the last five years. The prices have become so onerous that libraries cannot afford to maintain all the subscriptions that professors and students need. Even while cutting journals, libraries must generate more income from student fees to maintain expensive subscriptions.
[The University of Nebraska-Lincoln] Libraries spend about $5.5 million a year on serials (journals) compared to about $500,000 on monographs (books). Last year the library was forced to cut almost 3,400 serials, in order to save one million dollars. ...
This University needs to adopt a policy to require, at the very least, that faculty deposit their publications ... in an institutional repository where anyone can have access. ... The necessary pieces are already in place; without any official stance on archiving university research, UNL has established the fourth largest university repository in the nation (DigitalCommons@UNL). It is time to take the next step and embrace open access as an institution. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/15/2008 06:42:00 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.
