Lesley Perkins has blogged some notes on John Willinsky's talk on OA last night at the Who Owns Knowledge? conference (Vancouver, October 24-29, 2005). Excerpt:
UBC Professor and Distinguished Scholar John Willinsky spoke,among other things, about the importance and advantages of open access for the public. An engaging and entertaining speaker, and of course, a well-recognized authority and expert on this topic, John summarized open access as "your right to know, particularly about research." John said he hoped to instill in the audience a "sense of entitlement and expectation." When asked what he recommends as ways to convince authors to publish OA, he said we (librarians) can appeal to authors on these 4 grounds: [1] Economically -- with OA we can distribute information much more cheaply, [2] Legally -- copyright protects the author, [3] Ethically -- OA fits with the human right to know, [4] Vanity -- "It will make their mother prouder if more people know about their research!" If you have an opportunity to hear John Willinsky speak about open access, take it!
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/27/2005 10:21:00 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.
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.
