The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship
John Willinsky’s book, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship, will be released in December by MIT Press. The blurb indicates: "A commitment to scholarly work, writes Willinsky, carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible: this is the access principle."
Interesting. OA as a "responsibility," perhaps even a moral obligation. Often OA advocates discuss the benefits to authors of widespread digital exposure through OA, which boils down to enlighted self interest. And, of course, there is mandatory discussion of the need for access for the disenfranchised (not just the developing world, but anyone that can’t afford toll fees) in order to promote scholarship and other activities. (Let’s face it, who isn’t disenfranchised these days?) But, "responsibility," . . . hmmm, that heats up the dialog.
In any case, here’s a bit more: "Willinsky describes different types of access—the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, grants open access to issues six months after initial publication, and First Monday forgoes a print edition and makes its contents immediately accessible at no cost. He discusses the contradictions of copyright law, the reading of research, and the economic viability of open access. He also considers broader themes of public access to knowledge, human rights issues, lessons from publishing history, and ‘epistemological vanities.’"
By the way, Willinsky is a key figure in the Public Knowledge Project, which provides cool open source software such as Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems. (Thanks to Adrian Ho for the tip on this book.)
November 29th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
[...] D. Des Chene (goclenius) wrote,@ 2005-04-26 19:49:00 Entry tags:access open scholarship Open access Open access to scholarship may become one of the key issues for academics in the next twenty years. More and more libraries have only electronic access to journals, especially in the sciences, as university systems (rather than individual institutions or—more archaically yet—department libraries) negotiate deals for hundreds of journals at once from outfits like Elsevier and Taylor & Francis. The paper version may never enter a library at all; rather, as in California, it is stored in a warehouse. California: see the links in “Not better, just bigger” for details, especially Rob Kirby’s “Fleeced”, originally published in Notices of the AMS, Feb 2004, p181 (requires free registration). Users have access only to the electronic version. Not only have prices increased greatly, but access to back numbers is controlled by the publisher, not the library (as is the case with bound print journals). Imagine what it would be like for all the back issues of the Journal of philosophy to become inaccessible: that could happen if the publisher of an entirely electronic journal goes out of business. (If the issues are protected by password, then archives won’t be able to store them.) John Willinsky, Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology at the University of British Columbia, has started the Public Knowledge Project, which includes John Willinsky, The access principle: the case for open access to research and scholarship (MIT, 2005 · 0262232421) (the quotation below is from the website blurb). software for open access journals (Open Journal Systems) and conferences (Open Conference Systems). The software is available for free. it produces a table of contents, an archive, a form for email notification of new issues, registration for contributors, and so on. Nicely done, although the HTML it produces is old-fashioned (it uses tables for layout, not CSS) and buggy (there are syntax errors in the output). In his book, The Access Principle, Willinsky argues that A commitment to scholarly work […] carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible: this is the access principle. In the digital age, that responsibility includes exploring new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. Wide circulation adds value to published work; it is a significant aspect of its claim to be knowledge. The right to know and the right to be known are inextricably mixed. I’m not sure I would state the commitment in just this way. “As widely as possible” is too strong. On the other hand, I do think scholars ought to consider the accessibility of their work in selecting venues for publication, with a bias toward accessibility to everyone with some minimal means of viewing online material. (See Pam Long’s Openness, secrecy, authorship, Johns Hopkins, 2001, 2004 (pb) · 0801880610, for a history of attitudes toward the accessibility of scientific knowledge in antiquity and the Renaissance.) (Via Digital Koans, 20 Apr 2005.) (Post a new comment) [...]