Collaboration and the open access movement

"In anticipation of Open Access Week at Duke, where the theme will be “Collaboration,” we will offer a series of blog posts about basic, and not so basic, issues and opportunities for OA. This first post if from Pat Thibodeau, Associate Dean for Library Services in the Duke Medical Center....OA promotes the free flow of knowledge and data that makes collaboration possible and ultimately supports the generation of new innovations, creative ideas and scientific discoveries on a global scale. Collaborators are no longer hampered by institutional or international boundaries. So has open access actually made a difference? In fact yes! A recent NY Times article highlighted a research project where data were openly and publicly shared among commercial industries, universities and nonprofit groups in order to find biological markers of Alzheimer’s disease. This “collaborative effort” has led to new research on early diagnostic tests as well as treatments...."