... [A] search for “open access” site:www.google.com/coop/ was discouraging. There are about twenty “living-dead” [Google custom search engines] from 2006, and no large ones updated after 2006 (so far as I could tell from a quick visit).
Pouring out all this open access content is all very well, but where’s the competition and development in open access search?
And where are the simple common standards for flagging open content for search-engine discovery and sorting, for that matter?
Now of course I’m viewing things from the outside, as an independent curator and social entreprenuer, not a librarian or OA evangelist. But it seems to me that burying your Phd thesis deep in a repository cattle-car — seemingly with only a few keywords, an ugly template and an impenetrable URL for company — isn’t serving it or the author very well. ...
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.
