The Future is Open Access
September 29, 2010 4 Comments
Saw this video from the SURF Foundation on an Open Access Week blog post and thought it was worth sharing. Dr Arianna Betti, doing research in the field of history of logic, describes some interesting examples of how she is creating and accessing Open Access materials. She mentions the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) project and the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, as two such examples.
Dr Betti ends the video with this:
‘Right now, we still must choose between Open Access and prestige. Let’s keep our copyright. Let’s put our publications online available in repositories. Let’s choose the journals that have the best Open Access policies. And let’s create new Open Access journals. At some point in the future there will be no distinction what so ever between prestige and Open Access. The future is Open Access.’
Interesting to hear from someone from the humanities as recently I feel we’ve been talking a lot about science.
About Willow Fuchs
Research Communications Strategy 
Is Open Access the only focus of this project/blog? What about other issues, such as current awareness, virtual research, mobile communications, and so on.
Hi Roddy,
We will be focusing quite a bit on Open Access (as it is currently one of our major concerns), though we will be exploring other areas as well. We really appreciate suggestions and comments from readers, and definitely want to hear what concerns are plaguing academics, senior managers, information professionals etc, when it comes to scholarly communication (one of the purposes of this blog is try and find out more about these concerns). We will then do our best to start discussions on these topics. Please do let us know if there is anything else you would like to hear more about, or think needs investigating.
Thanks for your comment.
Cheers,
Willow
Thanks for that quick response. I feel that Open Acccess is obviously important, though it’s not high on the list of many researchers’ communications concerns. JISC seem a bit obsessed with it, or at least blinkered to other issues.
My own interest is currrent awareness, which I feel is under-represented in terms of strategic issue awareness. This includes the OA aspect – e.g. “Many Open Access (OA) journals don’t have Table of Contents RSS feeds, and they are therefore missing out a great deal” http://roddymacleod.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/many-open-access-oa-journals-dont-have-table-of-contents-rss-feeds-and-they-are-therefore-missing-out-a-great-deal/
Developments in peer review must surely concern researcher communications, especially how social networks may or may not influence it. And I’ve just noted http://www.jmir.org/stats/mostTweeted/all/1?sort=influence WRT metrics.
Interesting. It does seem fairly ridiculous that many OA journals wouldn’t have RSS feeds, and the issue of current awareness is a fascinating one. I have been reading quite a bit about developments in peer review (though I hadn’t heard of the “most Tweeted” metric you referred to, thanks for passing it on). PR is definitely on my list of topics to discuss further in the future.
Cheers,
Willow