...In February, Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to create "open access" copies of all their scholarly articles. In May, Harvard Law School followed suit. Then in June, Stanford University School of Education faculty unanimously voted for a similar motion.
By endorsing this open-access policy, my Stanford colleagues have agreed that publishing an article in a respectable journal is no longer the end of it. They will also post a copy of their work online, where educators and the public can freely read what we have learned about learning. Such public access to knowledge only makes sense, given Stanford's belief that educational research - whether it examines how children master subtraction, how communities can improve opportunities for youth, or how teachers can improve their teaching - should be available to those who are interested as well as those, such as teachers, who can make productive use of such knowledge.
It also makes sense, in light of the recent public scrutiny over whether tax-exempt private universities like Harvard and Stanford do enough to further the public good. Yet it is our hope that now that we have broken this new ground, other public and private institutions will follow our lead in pursuit of knowledge as a public interest.
Certainly, the public's hunger for accessing knowledge online has never been stronger....
Even if this new access to knowledge has yet to affect test scores or improve U.S. rankings in international comparisons in education, it does provide students with richer sources from which to learn. Citizens have new opportunities to consider and critically review sources of information. Open access of scholarly research can only add to the educational and deliberative quality of democratic life.
Are there risks with such access? Will policy blogs and school board meetings distort and misunderstand academic research and scholarship? Inevitably. But that has long been a danger, and at least now, everyone will have access to a range of relevant studies....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/10/2008 09:08:00 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.
