Thanks Wayne, > Nope, I don't agree here -- the longer you perpetuate access to non-free > content (by making sure that non-free content doesn't disappear), the longer > we fuel the monopoly of switches in the network which regulates access and > price to knowledge which should remain free.
I had to think through this one although I know I don't have your perspective. I don't get the "switches". All I see is the move from publishers doing the aggregating & distribution to a collaborative way of publishing. We should have ideals like " ..only use OER content which can be copied or remixed". But this transition will take time. It's dependent on understanding what drives people to collaborate, and providing them with the tools and rewards which will encourage them to change their habits. If we focus on your main point - publically paying once for researchers to do the research, then to have it peer reviewed, then paying again for buying an aggregation back from a third part publisher - then Open Access Journal initiatives display an ideal. You're aware that most countries have had a go at (i.e. paid for) projects like ARROW. http://arrow.edu.au/about/ You've got a better knowledge than I have of http://cnx.org/aboutus/ type initiatives If you want an idea of how this looks in Australia at the moment; check out the latest (july) ands newsletter. http://ands.org.au/newsletters/index.html Page 1 has a diagram of "the Australian Research Data Commons" which illustrates the problem. i.e. The circle around the institution. The problem for all of these kind of initiatives comes down to one simple factor. "Unfortunately, the archiving policies are often ignored by researchers". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Different_styles_of_review As one of my correspondents from a French uni's library put it. "The question remains to know who does the indexing work: librarians and/or teachers (or researchers)". He goes on to say "Indexing has to be made with a very different view". So we have a peculiar disconnect. Within the confines of a National institution, everyone tries to index "Institutional" resources. Then when outside, they classify by "discipline". We can measure the impact of these two approaches today. http://repositories.webometrics.info/toprep.asp It's so nice that these two conversations happened on this one thread. All these problems started when timmy BL joined the hypertext world (which was institutional centric) to the transmission control protocol. Then he said "we need a "domain name" for "participating entities." Good idea. But I'll never forgive him for not insisting on a policy which said "no existing institutions are allowed to use their names as a domain". He didn't, so their inhabitants still can't think outside their squares. Their duplications are endless and their inter- institutional collaborations last as long as a short-term project's funds. Imagine if he said; "participating entities can only be local/national/ global peer groups" and then went one further - in the .edu domains we will classify each group as we would classify their journals/teaching materials in a library. i.e. discipline. At least we might have had a few people from the local unis and schools talking to one another. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
