Friday, October 28, 2005

Perspectives on OA: SSHRC and NRC Press

In September, Heather Morrison and I deposited in E-LIS (E-prints in Library and Information Science) an article we co-wrote summarizing a session called "Open Access, New Roles for Funders and Publishers?" that was held at the Canadian Library Association Conference in Calgary, AB, this past June. The session speakers were Cameron MacDonald, Director of Publishing at NRC Press, and David Moorman, Project Administrator and Senior Policy Advisor at SSHRC. It was an interesting session in which both speakers raised important points to think about. You can read our article here

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Willinsky on OA at VPL's "Who Own's Knowledge?" Series

At the VPL "Speak Up: Who Owns Knowledge?" Series session called "Open or Closed: Software and Information", held at the Hastings Branch last night (and which I attended), UBC Professor and Distinguished Scholar John Willinsky spoke,among other things, about the importance and advantages of open access for the public. An engaging and entertaining speaker, and of course, a well-recognized authority and expert on this topic, John summarized open access as "your right to know, particularly about research." John said he hoped to instill in the audience a "sense of entitlement and expectation." When asked what he recommends as ways to convince authors to publish OA, he said we (librarians) can appeal to authors on these 4 grounds:

1. Economically -- with OA we can distribute information much more cheaply
2. Legally -- copyright protects the author
3. Ethically -- OA fits with the human right to know
4. Vanity -- "It will make their mother prouder if more people know about their research!"

If you have an opportunity to hear John Willinsky speak about open access, take it!