Alec Magnet, Libraries vs. The Internet, The New York Sun, January 19, 2006. A book review of John Willinsky's The Access Principle. Only these opening words are free online for non-subscribers:
John Willinsky's new book begins - quite effectively - by describing how rising prices and a fluctuating currency have forced the Kenya Medical Research Institute to cancel most of its subscriptions to medical journals. The true shame, the institute's librarian told Mr. Willinsky, is that that the five titles the library could still afford did not include any leading journals on the institute's prime research focus, tropical diseases. Libraries, publishers, and the contributors to the journals, Mr. Willinsky argues in "The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship" (MIT Press, 287 pages, $35), are at the center of a global economic struggle that may determine the influence of scholarship on the world. Access to research and scholarship is in decline, as for-profit publishers drive up the cost of scholarly journals, forcing libraries to decimate their subscription lists.
(PS: I'll post a more salient excerpt if I can gain access to the full text.)
Update. I've now seen the full text. Excerpt:
Mr. Willinsky cites a study showing that Reed Elsevier, the largest publisher of academic journals (with 1,800 titles in its portfolio), cost the University of California half its budget for online publications in 2002, though its titles accounted for only a quarter of journal use....The problem, Mr. Willinsky argues, is that these corporations have figured out a way to increase their profits even as their journals' circulation declines, by "bundling" less popular titles with those that libraries cannot afford to cancel....Mr. Willinsky contrasts these market mechanisms with what he claims is a basic human right - the "right to know" - a right that "stands with other basic rights, whether to life, liberty, justice, or respect." He attempts to defend that right as a philosophical truth (relying on such strange bedfellows as Kant, Derrida, and political scientist Richard Pierre Claude). In this, he fails, as nontheistic arguments for the absolute existence of rights so often do....He is on much firmer ground in his argument that scholarship - often funded in large part by public money and conducted at nonprofit institutions whose purpose is to further public knowledge - should be publicly available. "With so much scholarly activity funded by public money," he writes, "it is only natural to ask whether there is now a way to distribute the resulting research in ways that make it open and available, as a global public good." There is: The Internet, which eliminates the cost of printing, binding, and shipping journals, allows as many readers to view a work as can find their way to a computer. Many can't, Mr. Willinsky acknowledges, but why wait until the technology gap is closed to start providing the information to which the Internet can grant access? The subtitle to this book is somewhat misleading, as "The Case for Open Access" takes up only a portion of the book....[H]is book is thoughtful, informed, and thought-provoking, and his account of the role of the Internet and an incipient open-access movement is genuine news.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/19/2006 08:02:00 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.
