4 ways open access enhances academic freedom

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-03-29

Summary:

"Are politicians stealing our academic freedom? Is their fetish with open access publishing leading to a “pay to say” system for the rich?  Will the trendy goal of making publicly financed research freely available skew the world of scholarship even more in the direction of the natural sciences?  I don’t think so. But it took me a while to get there ... The Norwegian government recently wrote about open access publishing as a potential threat to academic freedom. 'All research that is publicly financed should be openly accessible. This principle, however, must not hinder the academic freedom researchers enjoy to choose their preferred channels of publication.'  How could academic freedom be impeded by a requirement to publish in open access journals? Doesn’t it seem just a bit too luxurious to turn this principle into something about the business model journals use?  Maybe. But experts writing about academic freedom recently asserted a right 'to decide how publication shall happen.' This, I think, is where academic freedom and open access policies may collide.  Important policies have emerged from the National Institutes of Health, the European Commission and the Research Councils of the UK, to mention a few prominent examples. As far as I can see, not one of these mentions academic freedom — in contrast, for example, with Communia’s progressive recommendations about open access policies.  The Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research therefore deserves praise for raising the issue. The power of funding alone should not be enough to override academic freedom. The route to enhanced use of open access, in other words, is not exclusively through compulsion.  How can universities and governments nudge their researchers forward? Is there no carrot that can help?  I think there are, and here are four examples of ways in which open access publishing enhances academic freedom ..."

Link:

http://curt-rice.com/2013/03/27/4-ways-open-access-enhances-academic-freedom/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.gold oa.licensing oa.comment oa.mandates oa.nih oa.green oa.universities oa.copyright oa.ir oa.uk oa.funders oa.rcuk oa.recommendations oa.citations oa.communia oa.colleges oa.europe oa.repositories oa.hei oa.libre oa.policies oa.journals

Date tagged:

03/29/2013, 10:11

Date published:

03/29/2013, 06:11