Open Access

The Open Access movement has attracted the interest of many in higher education — as well as, presumably, those involved with corporate media. The idea of open access is quite simple and expresses a certain idealism about how information can be free and flow unimpeded. What is slightly amazing is that this form of idealism has not been quashed at birth, but appears to be experiencing some success.

[If you’d like a more detail on Open Access, please see Open Access Overview, put together by Peter Suber, an important figure in the OA movement.]

While the initial push for open access was aimed at peer-reviewed research articles, the movement has broadened to include longer texts. While we would normally think of calling these longer texts ebooks, I have become convinced that this term serves to limit our thinking about how longer texts can be developed in the web environment. (Think of the term that was originally applied to automobiles – horseless carriages – to understand where I am coming from.)

I direct you to a few sites that provide working models of what open access can achieve:

Directory of Open Access Journals
926 journals that are scholarly and free
Note that the Neil Hellman Library includes these OA journals in its comprehensive listing of full-text journals available. If one of these journals is indexed in a database we subscribe to, you will find a link that takes you to the article.
http://www.doaj.org/

Comment Press
An initiative from the Institute of The Future of the Book, Comment Press is a effort to provide tools and a platform for authors who want to create texts that comply with open access guidelines and allow for interaction between readers and authors.
Examples of Comment Press texts:

• Comment Press: A WordPress Theme for Social Texts
• The Effect of Mass Digitization Projects on Copyright Law and Policy

Creative Commons
Tools for authors wishing to “mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry.”
http://creativecommons.org/