Why open access should be a key issue for university leaders | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

"Our libraries spend more on electronic publications than paper. We reach large numbers of students online using increasingly significant digital media. But while bandwidth is now as basic a need as electricity and parking, there are critical choices ahead. Central to these is openness – the extent to which those working and studying within the university and college system can get access to any digitally-based information they need without encountering a virtual gateway: a password, subscription requirement or payment.  Paywalls and passwords are an irritating but natural consequence of the privatisation of the web; they are also essential for online security. For the future of research, though, the need for openness is far more than a convenience. It arises because the volume and rate of production of online publications and digital data sets has now outgrown the limits of conventional research methods and is changing the ways in which new knowledge is created. Without openness across global digital networks, it is doubtful that large and complex problems in areas such as economics, climate change and health can be solved.  There are two primary reasons why these changes to research are taking place: 1) The sheer volume of new, peer-reviewed publications is already too great for manual review in many fields of study. In medicine for example, more than two new papers are published every minute. The volume of research outputs is accentuated by China and India, the emerging giants in university-based research.  Thirty years ago, when today's senior researchers were in their early careers, big university and copyright libraries could claim to stock printed copies of everything published in a discipline; today, many researchers never need to enter the library building at all.  2) The sharply declining unit cost of bandwidth, digital storage and processing capacity, combined with the breathtaking pace of technical innovation, is allowing massive, almost instantaneous flows of digital data across the world. In many cases, these flows are being constantly fed by devices linked together as the "internet of things". Some of these devices are highly sophisticated – for example, real-time seismic measurements used to predict tsunamis and terrestrial earthquakes. Others are commonplace – citizen journalists using smart phones to upload images or the millions of daily financial transactions that track economic trends.  These massive digital data flows are the new raw materials for research. For highly complex problems such as climate change, epidemiology, financial stability and space exploration, access to global big data is already a basic condition for research to take place at all ..."