Dorothea Salo, Out of my bubble, Caveat Lector, October 17, 2005. Excerpt:
It’s easy to read the statistics. X percentage of research faculty think open access is a neat idea. Y would be willing to post their research materials. Z think they ought to keep their own copyrights. What’s not easy is smacking one’s nose into not-X, not-Y, and not-Z. What’s not easy is realizing that even among X, Y, and Z, these questions are purely theoretical for most. Sure, they think it’s a nice idea; doesn’t mean they’re aware or willing enough to do anything about it....I live in the middle of open-access evangelism. I read Peter Suber every day. My biggest del.icio.us category (well, apart from “css”) contains open-access linkage. With all this talk floating around out there, how could faculty be ignorant? Surely they’ve seen something. Then I went to a meeting where open access was confused with open source (my fault, that), where folks were concerned that open access would reduce awareness, where they worried (not entirely without justification this time) that e-publication reduced scholarly cachet. Oh, my. I have got a lot of education to do....I’m not panicking. The Evil Master Plan actually is proceeding reasonably apace, with one faculty visit definite for next month, and another likely. I’m working on squibs, handouts, an article for a local journal. The scales have fallen from my eyes, however. This is going to be an uphill climb.
(PS: Hang in there, Dorothea. Educating faculty is the front line.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/18/2005 12:04:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
