T. Scott Plutchak, Embracing open access, Journal of the Medical Library Association, January 2004 (an editorial). Excerpt: "The reason to embrace the open access movement is that it promises to be a very good thing for society, not that it will be a good thing for libraries....I do not worry as much about the general public's access as I do about the doctor in rural northwest Alabama who is running a hospital on a shoestring....Some of the society publishers respond to this by pointing out that they already make their publications freely available after six months or a year....But too much of the literature is still controlled by the big for-profit companies, and they are not giving anything away. And, to tell you the truth, I am not satisfied with a year or six months anyway. Do you want your mother being treated by a clinician who is always six months out of date? Or is that just the price she has to pay for not living in a city with a major academic medical center? So, as a member of the public, I embrace the open access movement, because I think it will improve the quality of health care to the same degree that it turns out to be successful....As I write this, the major library organizations, along with a number of other public interest groups, are about to issue a public statement of strong support for PLoS and the open access movement. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Wellcome Trust have already done so. The movement is gathering steam, and, for this, librarians should rejoice. The impacts of the open access movement will be very profound and will fundamentally alter the way we manage our libraries and the role that we as librarians play in our institutions. I do not think we can underestimate how radical these shifts will be."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/04/2004 09:54:00 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.
