Scholarly communication first entered our professional consciousness in the 1990s, centered on the topic of rising serials prices and their impact on libraries’ budgets. Our lexicon was one of problems, crises, and the clear definition of an enemy. Several years’ experience working in this arena has led to a more informed, broader perspective —part of a natural evolutionary process. Formerly we focused almost exclusively on the economic case, with some real successes. A number of faculty and administrators became outraged and engaged. But many also told us the system works just fine for them; publishers told regulators that the real problem is underfunding of universities. To achieve a marked, sustained impact on scholarly communication, librarians need to be advocates for faculty and administrative action. Scholars must be the new face of this effort and focus on how the present system restricts access to their scholarship. In other words, this is no longer just a library problem of serials inflation (with a spillover effect of reduced monograph purchases), but a series of scholarly communication issues and opportunities owned by scholars, their campuses, and their societies.
We still recognize access problems caused by continued high subscription costs, changing copyright laws, and the licensing of access. Current publishing models are still not economically sustainable. But there is a growing awareness of new opportunities for more sustainable models through ongoing advances in technology. There is genuine hope that the symbiotic relationship between higher education institutions, scholarly societies, and commercial publishers, which could previously be characterized as tense and antagonistic, will realize more cooperative and beneficial partnerships in the future.
Where do we go from here? ... Through the cumulative effect of our actions we can accomplish infinitely more than we could alone. In that spirit, the goal of this resource guide is to give nascent scholarly communication efforts a shared knowledge base, one that provides colleagues with tools to build effective programs on their campuses....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/21/2006 11:32:00 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.
