Stephen Adams, Information Quality, Liability, and Corrections, Information Today, Sept/Oct 2003. A fascinating overview of the many kinds of bad information and the damage they can cause. Adams doesn't directly discuss open access, but there are implications worth investigating. For example, he reports that errors not caught by peer review are often caught by periodic consolidation of primary sources into secondary and tertiary sources. However, "[a]ccess to primary literature is now so easy and so powerful that users are tempted to merely re-run searches against a primary source at regular intervals instead of utilizing the slower process of independent data consolidation." One consequence may be that users notice fewer errors, corrections, and retractions. This is a variation on a larger theme --that users of primary literature aren't reaping the value of secondary literature, which goes beyond error correction to juxtaposition, comparison, connection, and perspective. But if primary sources are usually give-away and secondary sources usually are not, then open access will tend to be limited to the primary. The lesson (once again) is that for the foreseeable future we cannot afford to assume that if it's not free online then it's not worth reading.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/02/2003 09:58:00 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.
