Open Access: To share or not to share, that is the question | S|M| i |L|E

"The first observation is that law journals could make their tables of contents and abstracts available. There are two implications of keeping these behind a paywall. The first is that people without a subscription don’t even know they exist. This leaves authors’ research hidden on the web and researchers none the wiser as to its existence. This is hardly a good outcome for publicly funded research nor for the enhancement of knowledge in our discipline ... The second implication of the paywall is that for academics, impact factors derived under altmetrics systems are not available for material behind a paywall. While altmetrics is only emerging as a relevant indicator in higher education, legal scholars publishing in such journals paywall will be left behind their humanities and science colleagues ... Finally, when prescribing materials for students, consider the impact on them of the accessibility of research materials. And so we return to the theme of the Writing by Research piece this week. 'If the monograph is not dead, but alive and disseminated better than ever before in refereed ebook form with supporting blogs and Twitter feed, then the big book thesis too revives.'  The same can be said for our other works, including journal articles. But it will take a collective commitment for this to happen."