David C. Montgomery, Marketing Science, Marketing Ourselves, Academe, September/October 2003. A Dartmouth physicist reflects on the loss of academic autonomy and the rise of profit-oriented research within universities. Excerpt: "We have inherited a legacy of credibility that may not last much longer if we proceed in the directions we are going....The present rush on university campuses to channel faculty time and energy toward pursuing marketable products for corporations, or new weapons for government agencies or the military, endangers that credibility. It seems to me sheer folly to blur deliberately the distinctions between, say, an industrial engineering laboratory (which seems, by the way, a wholly proper and legitimate institution) and a university science department. They may look the same on the outside (though they shouldn't), but if they are functioning correctly, what they are after is totally different. Similar distinctions can undoubtedly be drawn between a think tank and a political science department, or an advertising agency and an art department." (PS: For detail and documentation on the trend that Montgomery is lamenting, see Eyal Press and Jennifer Washburn's excellent article, The Kept University, Atlantic Monthly, March 2000.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/22/2003 01:32:00 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.
