Allan Fels, How to bring knowledge to the entire planet, The Age, August 7, 2004. Excerpt: "The promise of the internet as an easy-to-search, open-access archive holding all humanity's accumulated research and information is not being realised. According to a new report from the British Parliament, much of the best scientific and medical research is being locked away in for-profit journals whose rising costs are increasingly putting them out of public reach....It is time that the Australian Government changed its funding criteria and approach, to encourage researchers to publish their work in ways that ensure it is accessible to all....A fascinating demonstration of how an open-access research distribution universe would look is the Los Alamos E-Print Archive (arxiv.org). This website has revolutionised physics research by serving as an open and respected resource for serious scientists....Such open-access structures lower the barriers to entry to science, bring more brains into the innovation process, and increase the potential for breakthroughs....Colin Steele, one of the conveners of the NSCF, makes the insightful argument that prosperity in a knowledge economy depends as much, if not more, on knowledge distribution power than it does on knowledge production power. One could not make a stronger case for the end of the era of high-priced academic journals and the beginning of an era of open-access publishing."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/06/2004 12:22:00 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.
