Of the many great pleasures of this year's Charleston conference - one of the highlights, for me, was the opportunity to meet the opening keynote speaker Ray English. Ray's topic, building on the conference theme of Unintended Consequences, was Unintended Consequences of the Profit Motive: Or Why the Open Access Genie is Out of the Bottle.
In a nutshell, Ray is questioning whether the focus on profit - and the subsequent price increases for serials so far above inflation that today's 8% increases (still, far above inflation) are portrayed as "good news"- is the reason behind the unleashing of the open access genie....
In the words of Rick Johnson, Founding Executive Director of SPARC and currently SPARC Senior Advisor:
Ray has been a chief contributor almost since the founding of SPARC....He has been a leader within the Open Access Working Group (OAWG), a SPARC-organized framework for collective advocacy of open access as a public policy matter. And now, of course, he is the chair of SPARC....Ray has been especially energetic in his support of expanded public access to taxpayer-funded research. He has been tireless in his efforts to mobilize library support and communicate this to the U.S. Congress....Bottom line: he's amazing. I benefitted gratefully from his wise counsel throughout my years as SPARC's director.
SPARC did not begin as an organization for open access advocacy, of course - rather, the original purpose was, and remains transformational change in scholarly communications. In Ray's words, Open access emerged as a visible movement after SPARC got started and it's clearly become the most powerful strategy for transformational change....
Ray's advice for the OA Librarian? I think the most important thing anyone in the US can do at this point is to support the Federal Research Public Access Act. There are a variety of ways to do that, from individual letters to Congress to developing more organized support. In terms of access to information I think it's probably the most important bill that's ever been introduced into Congress. I'd also encourage all librarians to work at the campus level to inform / educate faculty about scholarly communications issues....
For all your contributions to transforming scholarly communications, Ray - past, and hopefully long into the future - thank you.
PS: Ray deserves all this appreciation and more. Read the full post for laurels and details I had to omit from this excerpt.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/28/2006 11:05:00 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.
