09 March 2009
freedom for all words everywhere
Toni reminds me to remind you that the Free Our Books campaign will be launched at the Internet for Activists conference at SOAS on Saturday - and hopefully at the Communism conference as well!
Here are the details from Toni:
* * intro * *
the idea that all academic research output should be publicly available online free of charge is not new. Even Research Councils UK (RCUK) recommend it to all universities nowadays. Yet, very few academics and universities have put it in practice. I've always been puzzled why do authors who spend months or years writing a book prefer to sell 200 copies to libraries (average scenario) and keep their work off-line ... why not do both? Because publishers insists different? Publishers lost the power to dictate the conditions. The sooner authors realise this and change their own stance, the sooner we will start enjoying all academic work online free of charge. Old habits die hard, I know. Or, why do in social sciences very few authors put all of their journal articles on their university website and into repositories when even RCUK recommends so since 2005? Thinking about this has been a minor obsession of mine for the past few years. Stirling University was the first one in the UK to adopt a strong mandatory open access publishing policy in 2007.
* * actual campaign details * *
Next Saturday (14th March), as part of the SOAS student Internet for Activist conference, in the lunch break (1-3pm) of the Communism conference at Birkbeck, I will be launching the Free Our Books campaign.
Starting motto is: "Free Our Books: Make citizens' books and research papers available to them".
The campaign has a single goal:
to have electronic copies of all the majority publicly
funded research, including all books and journal papers,
available to citizens free of charge online
A way this can be achieved is through
mandatory self-archiving at the time of publishing
In other words, all the academic research output has to be placed online free of charge parallel with the act of publishing.
These are starting propositions that will hopefully change for better as the campaign develops.
There are plenty of supporting documents and a short intro text here.
Here are the details from Toni:
* * intro * *
the idea that all academic research output should be publicly available online free of charge is not new. Even Research Councils UK (RCUK) recommend it to all universities nowadays. Yet, very few academics and universities have put it in practice. I've always been puzzled why do authors who spend months or years writing a book prefer to sell 200 copies to libraries (average scenario) and keep their work off-line ... why not do both? Because publishers insists different? Publishers lost the power to dictate the conditions. The sooner authors realise this and change their own stance, the sooner we will start enjoying all academic work online free of charge. Old habits die hard, I know. Or, why do in social sciences very few authors put all of their journal articles on their university website and into repositories when even RCUK recommends so since 2005? Thinking about this has been a minor obsession of mine for the past few years. Stirling University was the first one in the UK to adopt a strong mandatory open access publishing policy in 2007.
* * actual campaign details * *
Next Saturday (14th March), as part of the SOAS student Internet for Activist conference, in the lunch break (1-3pm) of the Communism conference at Birkbeck, I will be launching the Free Our Books campaign.
Starting motto is: "Free Our Books: Make citizens' books and research papers available to them".
The campaign has a single goal:
to have electronic copies of all the majority publicly
funded research, including all books and journal papers,
available to citizens free of charge online
A way this can be achieved is through
mandatory self-archiving at the time of publishing
In other words, all the academic research output has to be placed online free of charge parallel with the act of publishing.
These are starting propositions that will hopefully change for better as the campaign develops.
There are plenty of supporting documents and a short intro text here.
