Edward Iglesias, Open Source Culture, a paper presented at the ACRL annual conference in April. A good review of the rise of free and open source software, trying to draw out its implications for libraries. Excerpt: "It is not news to anyone that subscription costs to journals have skyrocketed. This is largely due to the fact that journals are starting to market their products like the computer industry does licenses. In this way publishers control not only content, but, what may be done with that content once the user has it. This is an inevitable trend in the same way that the RIAA now makes their products unusable in any form except the one they dictate. Librarians and faculty have already started reacting to this hostile trend that threatens the very content we depend on to survive. New initiatives such as SPARC are forging alternatives to current journals with their exorbitant prices. Already places like Los Almos National Laboratories publish their field’s findings first and foremost in electronic form. Ever since 1990 when the Journal of Postmodern Culture became the first scholarly journal to be available in only electronic form the changes have been coming." (Thanks to Gary Price.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/10/2003 11:16:00 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.
