Planned Obsolescence: An Interview with Kathleen Fitzpatrick | HASTAC

"My outlook here, quite honestly, is not terrifically optimistic: I think we are moving toward an era in which more and more scholars, administrators, and librarians will be pressing for open access, yes, but I think this increased pressure is likely to come about because of the drastic consequences we'll be facing otherwise. Part of the problem is precisely that, the intellectual property that scholars are creating--and that we're being paid by our institutions to create--isn't housed in the databases of the library, but is rather closed in proprietary databases....We're funded...by our institutions and by public granting agencies to produce certain kinds of knowledge, which we then give away...to commercial publishers, who then license it back to the institution via the library at often extortive rates. And the licenses that our libraries purchase come with enormous restrictions, such that even the libraries of state universities can only make their holdings available to those directly affiliated with the institution, closing the general public out of engaging with the knowledge that we have produced. So clearly somethings got to give--but my fear is that its going to take a full-on breakdown in the current system of knowledge production and dissemination for a new open system to take root. There are things that can and should be done in the meantime, however, things that are often inconvenient and sometimes difficult. Those of us who already believe in open access knowledge production--and particularly those of us whose jobs are safe-- need to commit ourselves to publishing only in open access venues, or in venues that permit the open access deposit of the products of our work. We need to be sure to make our work openly available through our institutional repositories...."