About Open Access News

  • April 30, 2010. I uploaded my final post.

  • January 16, 2010. OAN is a solo blog again and I'm still unable to give it the time I once did. I allow it to shrink and recommend the OA tracking project as an alternative source of news. (Details.)

  • January 15, 2010. Gavin Baker moved on as assistant editor. (Details 1, 2.)

  • July 1, 2009. I stepped back from systematic daily blogging in order to free up time for my position at the Berkman Center. (Details.)

  • February 4, 2008. Gavin Baker joined OAN as Assistant Editor.

  • September 16, 2007. For the first five years or so of this blog's life, I aimed to be comprehensive. But as the volume of OA-related news increased, I had to abandon that goal. Now the blog is frankly selective.

    At first I responded to the problem of growing volume by narrowing my scope. I aimed to be comprehensive on the topic of OA but I dropped related topics (copyright, peer review, academic freedom, electronic publishing...) unless some new development or article on one of these related topics had a strong OA connection. That worked for a while. But in mid-2007 it became clear that even the narrow band of hard-core OA news was too large for one person to cover comprehensively.

    I still try, within the limits of my time, to cover all the primary developments and omit only the secondary. But I acknowledge that I have to draw this distinction, just as I acknowledge that I use my own criteria. I give preference to developments that have a strong OA connection, that are new, and that are described in English. As long as I'm writing all this out, I should also acknowledge that the boundary between primary and secondary shifts day by day, in small ways, according to the day's volume of news and the rest of my workload.

    I keep reminding myself that the unmanageably large and growing volume of OA-related news is a sign of success.

  • May 19, 2006. I converted OAN from a group blog to a solo blog.

  • June 28, 2003. I changed the blog's name from FOS News to Open Access News.

  • May 26, 2002. I launched the blog, then called FOS News ("FOS" for "Free Online Scholarship").

  • Permanent links to individual posts can be found in the post title or link icon This is an inactive example. in the byline.

  • To discuss the postings and their issues, use our discussion forum (SPARC Open Access Forum). Anyone may read SOAF; only subscribers may post; subscription is free.

  • When technical problems keep me from updating the blog (rare), I send email versions of new posts to the discussion forum (above).

  • To search the blog and its archives, use this search box or the one in the blog sidebar.

  • Open Access News is supported in part by the Open Society Institute, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, and the Wellcome Trust.

Last revised, April 30, 2010

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Peter Suber
Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge
Senior Researcher, SPARC
peters@earlham.edu

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