Open Access in Digital Humanities – Gillian Morrissey | DH6033: Conceptual Introduction to Digital Humanities
ab1630's bookmarks 2018-06-20
Summary:
"DH6033: Conceptual Introduction to Digital Humanities
Name: Gillian Morrissey
In the pursuit of the development of knowledge, academic scholars need regular and easy access to relevent, independent and scholarly literature. By it’s very nature and functionality this literature is seen as interdisciplinary. It is also defined as expensive, of a global nature and has digital applications. Increasingly it is more difficult to access specific sites using licence restrictions. These restrictions do not just apply to members of the public who face problematic stone walling in securing knowledge. it is indiscriminate in nature, as even scholars at the most prestigious universities find accessing certain literature problematic. As a result of their status, they have some access, while the poorest in society have little or no access at all. The prevalance of Google and other internet sites have seen certain types of sites opened up under the pressures to create an open community with unlimited access. This was not a societal inclusion issue, internet sites and other forums of information provision would not charge for access to specific sites, but users would be bombarded with adverts for products and services they didn’t want or need which were related to specific searches. So, in that respect open access was not entirely open or free without obligation. There is no suggestion that fundamental changes will be made to the traditional scholarly communications system. Alterations made are done with the objective of transforming its limited availabilty of site technology in the digital environment. A major problem in the last few years has been the adoption of a core definition of what open access actually meanas in theoretical/practical terms. There is no universally accepted definition as such. The difficulty is that the concept is an evolving one. It is also subjective and means different things to different people. In 2001, The Budapest Open Initiative defined open access..."