On April 24, 2006, a group of academics, administrators, and researchers, all interested in figuring out how to rescue the scholarly book from what has begun to seem its imminent demise, met to spend a day discussing the future of that book in a networked environment. Our particular interest in hosting this meeting was to propose the formation of an all-electronic scholarly press. This document hopes to summarize both the substance of the discussion and the conclusions that we've drawn from it....
Much of this discussion circled around a crucial question, finally articulated by Morris Eaves: are we attempting to develop a peer-review process that will be accepted by existing academic culture, or are we attempting to change that culture? Many of the folks at the meeting came down firmly on the side of acceptance, but many others felt just as strongly about transformation....
Another important aspect of this openness, however, is in the texts' accessibility; most of the meeting's attendees expressed strong interest in and support for the values of open access. Moving the peer-review process into public view and making the texts submitted for, undergoing, and resulting from that process publicly available will, we feel strongly, have important effects on community outreach -- both in terms of helping scholars connect with one another, creating discourse networks that facilitate collaboration and the development of new ideas, and in opening such scholarly discourse to a wider community of intellectuals outside the academy. Moreover, we want to make the systems that we build -- both the software systems and the human networks that support them -- freely available to any groups that would benefit from them....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/04/2006 12:23:00 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.
