Fans Of Open Access, Unite: You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chained Libraries

"When books were rare and extremely expensive, they were often chained to the bookcase to prevent people walking off with them, in what were known as “chained libraries”. Copyright serves a similar purpose today, even though, thanks to the miracle of perfect, zero-cost digital copies, it is possible simultaneously to take an ebook home and yet leave the original behind. For a quarter of a century, the open access movement has been fighting to break those virtual chains for academic works, and to allow anyone freely to read and make copies of the knowledge contained in online virtual libraries.

The detailed history of the movement can be found in Chapter 3 of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available). As the timeline there, and posts on this blog both make clear, the open access movement has made only limited progress despite the enormous effort expended by many dedicated individuals. Moreover the open access idea has been embraced and then subverted by the academic publishers whose greed and selfishness it was meant to fight.

One version of open access, known as the “diamond” variant, still offers hope that the goals of free access to knowledge for everyone could still be achieved. But even this minimalist approach to academic publishing requires funding, which raises questions about its long-term sustainability. Economic issues also lie at the heart of wider discussions about what could replace copyright, which was born in the analogue world, and whose dysfunctional nature in the digital environment is evident every day."