Science in the Open » Blog Archive » The Limits on “Open”: Why knowledge is not a public good and what to do about it

"This is the approximate text of my talk at City University London on 21 October for Open Access Week 2015. If you prefer the “as live” video version then that its available at YouTube. Warning: Nearly 6000 words and I haven’t yet referenced it properly, put the pictures in or done a good edit… Eight years of Open Access Week, massive progress towards greater access to research, not to mention data and educational resources. The technology landscape has shifted, the assessment landscape has shifted. The policy landscape has certainly shifted. And yet…amongst friends we can express some misgivings can’t we? Certainly this has been harder and longer than expected, certainly harder and longer than those who have been pushing on wider access for twenty years had hoped, or expected. Of course we have learned, internalised through bitter experience, that collective action problems are hard, that while technical problems are easy, the social ones are hard. That cultural change is slow and painful. But this isn’t my biggest concern. My real concern is that, just as it seems we have tipped the balance, made progress towards Open Scholarship inevitable, that it is too easy for that momentum to be subverted. For well resourced players to swoop in and take advantage of these shifts. For incumbent players to protect their existing positions, and profit margins, and to prevent new innovative players from eating into their market. Yet at the same time, while we (often) cheer on those small scrappy new players, we become less enamoured as they mature and grow, become more embedded into the traditional landscape and, perhaps, start to look and sound like those old incumbents, or be bought by them. I believe we can understand what is happening, and understand what we could choose to do about it, through a shift in the way we think about the processes involved. For me Open Access was never the goal, it is a means to an end. That end might be loosely characterised as “Open Knowledge” or a “Knowledge Commons”, a concept that is half socialist utopian and half neo-liberal; that technology can enable the effective sharing of knowledge as a resource, and that that shared resource is a more effective base for value creation. That the sharing economy of Uber and AirBnB would co-exist, indeed would mutually support a sharing economy built on donated time, shared co-creation for its own sake. Under-exploited capital working hand in hand with Clay Shirky’s cognitive surplus to make better markets but also a better world...."

Read the full article including the text of Cameron Neylon's OA week talk (approximately). He discusses long term hopes for OA, the business of it and much more.