Inevitably Open | Library Babel Fish
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-08-03
Summary:
"There seem to be certain things that people want and have come to expect: to be able to read research without a hassle, to be able to share their own research without having to ask permission, and to be able to develop new ways to understand what the research is telling us without endless legal roadblocks. These things can only happen if research is open access. We’ll also need a lot of interoperability, standards, indexing and preservation plans, not to mention solving the knotty problem of sustainable funding models. Librarians and other OA activists are working on it.
But look at how much change we’ve adapted to in recent decades. A physics professor once told me what a marvelous thing it was when fax machines became common equipment. You didn’t have to wait days or weeks to read a preprint, it came in minutes! We’ll figure this out, and then we’ll wonder what took us so long. Though librarians have pushed OA for years, it’s really up to authors and societies to determine what the future looks like. All indicators are pointing toward open."