Barbara Quint, The Great Divide, Searcher, February 4, 2004. Acknowledging the benefits of OA but also the drawback for libraries --in this sense remarkably similar to Scott Plutchak's editorial in JMLA, which also appeared today. Excerpt from Quint: "The 'Open Access' movement for freeing scholarship from commercial control has now spread across continents. It has moved from the offices of angry librarians to the laboratories of indignant scientists....Legislators have joined the fray...From sea to shining sea, librarians raging against publisher prices and contractual rigidities constitute a major lobbying force in these developments. But let's look down the road a bit, shall we?...The economic justification underlying the existence and continuance of most libraries lies in the expense of information." (Thanks to Jill O'Neill.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/04/2004 01:02:00 PM.
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.
