OA and the disciplinary differential

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

There are differences in the rate at which different disciplines have been
moving to OA, with physics being an example of an early disciplinary
adopter (see, for example, the arXiv website at http:// arxiv.org/

If some disciplines and sub-disciplines move quickly to OA, and others do
not, what will the final result be on the disciplines or sub-disciplines
themselves?

To take physics as an example, one of things the arXiv website does is to
facilitate early dissemination of research results, making it possible to
make advances in this field faster.  However, I suspect arXiv is doing a
great deal more than any of us quite suspects right now.

As one example, thanks to arXiv, any educator in the area of physics,
whether at the post-secondary or high school level, has everything they
need, not only to keep up with the research, but to facilitate teaching
their students about the research projects per se.  arXiv makes it
possible to give students free reign to freely explore their research
interests in this subject, whether under the direction of a caring
educator or (for the most motivated, of course), on their own initiative.

Imagine a student at the high school or early college/university level
with outstanding talent in science.  This student is taking courses in
several sciences, including physics and chemistry. For argument's sake,
let's say that chemistry is not OA.  (The author humbly admits her lack of
recent knowledge here, although I do recall the great gratitude with which
a library I worked at received old, outdated Chem Abstracts from a
university library - giving us no hope of offering up-to-date research, of
course, but at least the ability to transmit some information literacy
skills in this area).

The gifted student can fulfill their curiosity in the area of physics to
their heart's content, thanks to arXiv. Chemistry is a different story.  
Here, the student is relying a fair bit on rote, textbook learning.

Will this kind of situation eventually result in the best and the
brightest tending to move towards the OA friendly fields?  Would the
physical sciences, over time, tend to come to be seen more through a
physicists' eye-view, with chemistry gradually decreasing in importance?  
In the interdisciplinary areas that could be studied as either physics or
chemistry - will the best minds and research funding tend to go to physics
rather than chemistry?

Graduate students and professional researchers, of course, will learn all
about research at some point. However, if there are differences in the
ability of educators working with librarians to teach about literature at
the undergraduate level, does this mean that graduates with degrees in OA-
friendly disciplines will be more likely have the strong information
literacy that are becoming more and more important in the information age?

It is my totally subjective and admittedly biased viewpoint that, of the
sub-areas in the displine of my undergrad major, psychology, cognitive
science has been advancing at a tremendous rate.  Is it possible that the
work of Stevan Harnad and his colleagues in developing Cogprints http://
cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/, is a factor here?  If cognitive scientists are
more likely to self-archive, and other while other areas self-archive less
frequently, will this eventually affect the relative impacts of the
sub-discpline as a whole?  Will the OA friendly sub-discpline attract more
attention, research funding, etc.?

totally wild and unsubstantiated speculation by,

Heather Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
heatherm@eln.bc.ca
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6