I consider myself an advocate of the Open Access movement not only in words but
in deeds as well. That said I have to admit or rather just because of being an
advocate I must admit that I have some problems with Open Access publications.
Namely, I am not quite sure that Open Access publications can reach their
target audience as effectively as their counterparts behind the paywall.
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| Creative Commons |
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| GNU |
I consider myself an advocate of the OA movement, because whenever I have the
opportunity, I speak about it. Surely, I can speak about the concept of OA in
the greatest depth during my Digital Humanities classes. There I have the
opportunity to elaborate on the difference between free and OA, about the
various shades of OA (gold, green), the numerous licencing opportunities from
GNU GPL to Creative Commons and the degrees within these, the Budapest Open Access Initiative. I frequently use the OA
button in my browser. Furthermore, I also am happy to speak about Aaron Swartz
and Alexandra Elbakyan, about The Internet's Own Boy, and SciHub. When reading
out parts of the "Open Access Gerilla Manifesto," my voice betrays my
emotional involvement, similarly to the moments when reciting Bertrand Russel's
"Preface" to his Biography, or when reading out Lear’s words carrying
Cordelia’s dead body on stage.
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| Aaron Swartz |
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| Alexandra Elbakyan |
Being an advocate of OA does not only involve talking about this fantastic
concept, practice and responsibility of the Internet, but also I try to act
accordingly, too. Running a blog is one step towards academic openness. With an
English colleague we founded an OA journal, e-Colloquia, which is not alive at
the moment but should / could be resurrected soon. I regularly contribute to
Wikipedia, and request my students to do so within the framework of editathons,
too. I share the PowerPoint and Prezi presentations for my classes on
Slideshare and make them open on Prezi so that others can make use of them. I
share my course descriptions so that anyone can copy and develop them. I am
also happy to share my projects (scripts and texts) on GitHub so that anyone
interested can copy, download or fork them. So I try to act according to what I
preach.
That said I also have to share my problems with accessing OA objects in general
and OA books in particular. The case is easy once I learn about an OA object or
book: I only enter the relevant strings in the search window of the browser and
Bob's my uncle. The problem arises when I just do not know or simply forget
about, say an OA book. If I do not know anything about an OA book, then I will
not be able to find it. Where is the problem here?—one might ask. Why would you
look for something that you do not know if it exists at all? Yes, this is true
and the very problem at the same time. I learn about books that are expensive,
written by authorities in the field, counting as landmarks in the discipline,
well before their publication, as news, would reach me very fast. Appetisers,
i.e. academic advertisements would call my attention to them, and by the time
of the publication, I would be eager to purchase and read them.
But this is not the case with OA books. Their authors do not mention their OA
publications either during the pre-publication phase or after it, clearly
because of shyness, or because fearing self-promotion, believing that a good
book, article does not need advertisement, you name the reasons. The publishing
house does not have an interest in advertising the OA publication, as
advertisements need investment without return. Most of the time the funding for
the OA publication does not include the cost of advertisements, thus beyond the
fact that advertising OA publications is not in the best interest of
publishers, funding authorities never think about this: their sole objective is
to have the results of a research project published.
Should
then the cost of advertisements be built into the research costs? Maybe. Or
should a new academic culture of "care and share" be created? The
digital arena does not only foster OA publishing but also provides ample
opportunities to let colleagues know about one’s publications: they may be
notified via personal emails and email lists, the books can be advertised
through social media: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Academia.org. But do we have
the time and energy and self-confidence for this self-promotion? This initial
step should be made, I’m afraid. But then it is the scholarly community’s
responsibility to inform others about the news of an OA publication moving in
concentric circles. Furthermore it is also the task of the big names in the
guild to promote these publications, as their voice is stronger, it reaches out
to more people and is heard more easily. Does this mean that the channels of
promotion on the basis of the principle "care and share," a new
advertising culture is to be built? A culture that is not founded on profit but
on the responsibility for colleagues and for the welfare of the discipline?
Maybe.
Images:
Creative
Commons: creativecommons.org
GNU
GPL: gnu.org
Aaron
Swartz By Fred Benenson - User: Mecredis -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/3111021669/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6587124
Alexandra Elbakyan: By Apneet Jolly -
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajolly/4696604402/, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47280109
