The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (Hardcover)

Description

Questions about access to scholarship go back farther than recent debates over subscription prices, rights, and electronic archives suggest. The great libraries of the past -- from the fabled collection at Alexandria to the early public libraries of nineteenth-century America -- stood as arguments for increasing access. In The Access Principle, John Willinsky describes the latest chapter in this ongoing story -- online open access publishing by scholarly journals -- and makes a case for open access as a public good.

A commitment to scholarly work, writes Willinsky, carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible: this is the access principle. In the digital age, that responsibility includes exploring new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. Wide circulation adds value to published work; it is a significant aspect of its claim to be knowledge. The right to know and the right to be known are inextricably mixed. Open access, argues Willinsky, can benefit both a researcher-author working at the best-equipped lab at a leading research university and a teacher struggling to find resources in an impoverished high school.

Willinsky describes different types of access -- the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, grants open access to issues six months after initial publication, and First Monday forgoes a print edition and makes its contents immediately accessible at no cost. He discusses the contradictions of copyright law, the reading of research, and the economic viability of open access. He also considers broader themes of public access to knowledge, human rights issues, lessons from publishing history, and "epistemological vanities." The debate over open access, writes Willinsky, raises crucial questions about the place of scholarly work in a larger world -- and about the future of knowledge.

John Willinsky is Pacific Press Professor of Literacy and Technology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED and a developer of Open Journals Systems software.

Table of Contents:

描述

對於獲取獎學金的問題，遠遠超過了最近關於訂閱價格、權利和電子檔案的辯論所暗示的。從亞歷山大圖書館的傳說收藏到19世紀美國早期的公共圖書館，過去的偉大圖書館都是增加獲取的論點。在《獲取原則》中，約翰·威林斯基描述了這個持續故事的最新章節——學術期刊的在線開放獲取出版——並提出了開放獲取作為公共利益的論點。

威林斯基寫道，對學術工作的承諾意味著盡可能廣泛地傳播該工作：這就是獲取原則。在數字時代，這一責任包括探索新的出版技術和經濟模式，以改善對學術工作的獲取。廣泛的傳播為已發表的工作增加了價值；這是其聲稱為知識的一個重要方面。知道的權利和被知道的權利是密不可分的。威林斯基主張，開放獲取可以使在領先研究大學最好設備實驗室工作的研究者和在貧困高中尋找資源的教師都受益。

威林斯基描述了不同類型的獲取——例如，《新英格蘭醫學雜誌》在初始發表後六個月開放獲取，而《第一個星期一》則放棄了印刷版，並立即免費提供其內容。他討論了版權法的矛盾、研究的閱讀以及開放獲取的經濟可行性。他還考慮了公共獲取知識、人權問題、出版歷史的教訓和“認識論的虛榮”。威林斯基寫道，關於開放獲取的辯論提出了關於學術工作在更大世界中的地位以及知識的未來的重要問題。

約翰·威林斯基是英屬哥倫比亞大學的太平洋出版教授。他是《詞匯帝國：OED的統治》的作者，也是開放期刊系統軟件的開發者。

目錄：

- 引言
- 致謝
- 第1章：開場
- 第2章：獲取
- 第3章：版權
- ...