Peter Suber, OA is not just a technical question about how to finance journals or launch repositories, Libre Accès à l'information scientifique & technique (from INIST-CNRS), April 20, 2005. Eric Goetmann and Marie-Catherine Gunet interviewed me on the state of OA today. The interview was in English but it's also available in French. Excerpt: '[In response to a question about OA in Europe.] The cutting edge of the OA movement is now in Europe. In mid-2004, both the US and UK looked like they might mandate OA to publicly-funded research, a rational and long-overdue step. But by late 2004, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had retreated from the strong policy recommended by the House of Representatives and the UK government had rejected the strong policies recommended by the House of Commons. In February 2005, however, the Berlin3 conference in Southampton issued exactly the policy we needed to move forward --namely, to require deposit in OA archives and to encourage publication in OA journals. The framers of this policy were largely European and most of the universities, laboratories, and funding agencies now signing on to the policy are European....[In response to a question about filling OA archives.] Too many scholars don't know about OA archiving and its benefits. For example, they may know about OA journals but not OA archives. They may know about OA archives but not realize that it only takes a few minutes to deposit their work. They may not know that OA significantly increases citation impact. They may not know that OA archiving is compatible with publishing in a non-OA journal. They may not know that 80% of surveyed journals allow authors to deposit their postprints in an OA institutional repository. They may have a groundless fear that archiving their preprints will make them ineligible for later publication, when in fact the number of journals with such policies is small and declining. Too many scholars overlook their self-interest and see OA primarily as a political gesture or an act of charity. They need to appreciate that OA will make their work more visible than any kind of priced publication (in print or online), and will make it easier for readers to find, apply, build upon, and cite. Scholars are very busy, but they're not too busy to do research that they love. They're not too busy to take unloved follow-up steps, like submitting their manuscripts to journals, responding to referee comments, sending offprints to colleagues, or sending updated bibliographies to deans or department chairs. They find time for these unloved steps because they understand the connection between them and career-building. What they have to understand is that OA is career-building, whether it is through OA archives or OA journals. Enlarging one's audience and impact is career-building.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/20/2005 12:37:00 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.
