Dick Kaser interviewed Deborah Shorely, president of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) for the Information Today blog, December 1, 2005. Excerpt:
"I think there are also serious financial barriers [to information access]," Deb continued. "We in the U.K., complain terribly about the cost of [print] subscriptions and online subscriptions, because they are eating into our declining budgets dreadfully . . . But then when you go to what we now call the South --the developing world-- and you realize what they’re trying to wrestle with, I think it’s rather obscene for us to complain . . . I think the whole publishing model is a barrier to open access to information."
She called Open Access publishing a "very interesting" development.
"It’s got some way to go, and it’s a long game," she observed. "But if you and I were talking even five years hence, I think the whole publishing model will have changed. I have to believe that, because, otherwise, there will be real barriers to knowledge, which will compromise everything. If you don’t have the information to do the research, you can’t do it."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/01/2005 08:44:00 AM.
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.
