Thursday, May 25, 2006

It's Not Just About the Money

Recently a faculty member (male, 50s, not tenured) told me and a friend (both of us female, 40s, librarians, passionate OA advocates) that he "doesn't believe in open access." Says it will never happen, there are too many capitalists out there, too many people making a lot of money, and there's no way they're going to stop publishing scholarly articles for profit. And he's in the LIS field, too (oh, the shame!). Which doesn't necessarily mean he understands open access. Research has indicated that many academic researchers don't have a good handle, for various reasons, on the OA concept. What to say to these academic disbelievers, poo-pooing OA, confused about the money? I'm sure you have some ideas. There's an answer to the profit argument (and several others) in this Peter Suber 2002 article Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature. Give it your own style, of course.

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