When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced in 2001 that it was planning to offer free online access to educational materials from hundreds of its course offerings, the university in Cambridge said it hoped its OpenCourseWare (OCW) Web site would inspire other educational institutions to help create a “worldwide web of knowledge that will benefit humanity.”
Judging by the enthusiastic worldwide response to MIT’s gesture, the university appears five years later to be leading an international movement that is affecting education on every continent. Twelve U.S. educational institutions currently are participating in what has become an international consortium comprising more than 50 institutions in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/02/2006 07:47:00 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.
