Stephen Downes, 2004: The Turning Point, Ubiquity v.4,no.46 (January 20-26, 2004). Downes offers an assessment of "issues that will change the way we use the internet." One section, headlined "Attacking Open Content," says that media industries will attempt a backlash against freely-available alternatives to their products. Alongside open courseware and open source, Downes mentions "Open access journals are forcing publishers to retrench." He sees the attack happening on both "legislative" - through intellectual property and legal channels - and "promotional" - or negative advertising on the stability of open content. Finally, Downes calls such attacks "a last desperate gasp before the bottom falls out of the content industry completely... Content is well on its way to being a value-add, something that you might attach to a product, but not something that is the product. Apple uses music to sell iPods, not iPods to sell music." (Source: The ((sci-tech) library question)
Posted by
Garrett at 1/27/2004 12:02:00 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.
