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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Open Access10/31/2006 12:09:22In celebration of the new Papers section on this site, a little storehouse for my academic writing, I'd like to take the opportunity to give a shout-out to the open access movement. Academic publishing is a funny thing, rather venturing on absurd. We like books, of course, and books are the product we work ourselves into. Those wonderful hard covers with bright justjackets and paper that will preserve our immortal words in recesses of great libraries for all eternity! In 15th century printing opened the doors to scholarship and the sharing of ideas in new ways. In the 21st printing causes it problems. The high prices charged by academic presses, particularly for journals, are prohibitive to scholars, who comparatively make little or no money from publication. Ideas that should belong to the whole human race are trapped in the pages of prestigious journals that make it virtually impossible to be part of cutting edge conversations without membership in a first-world research library. Technology, now, has changed the equation, and we should expect better things for our ideas! In the 21st century, dissemination doesn't mean a few printed copies shared among one's nearby colleagues. It means free paperless access to anybody in the world. Freer access means more idea-sharing and cross-pollination. I am not one to proclaim the end of books, either happily or not (as one of my former teachers does). One of my hobbies is making books my hand and doing layout. Really what I like about web design is that it is like book design. We can have our academic books when we need them. Sometimes a thing can be said better in a book. But sometimes it is just easier not to bother. Journals, in particular, have less and less business staying in print. The bottom line, though, whatever form our work appears in, should be accessibility. Plainly: the public needs to have access to what we produce and we to them. It is a question both of duty and relevance. High prices should not be put on knowledge needlessly. Those who publish need to insist that their work be freely accessible. There is a growing number of journals that offer their content up for free on the web. Some book publishers, including (I am proud to say) the UC Press, are starting to as well. An amazing thing about academics is the amount of work that people do for free. Another is that we let others profit off this work while we do not. Incidentally, the other day an excellent article on this subject appeared in 3 Quarks Daily. It has a better collection of links than I could ever offer about the open access movement and how to get involved. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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