RE: Open Access, journalism, & promoting the academy

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

Joe Esposito wrote:

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:48:40 EDT liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote:
> >This is a nice case of a mainstream newspaper reporting an interesting 
> >scientific puzzle for lay readers.
> 
> JE:  I love the Economist and I think it's great that it can link to an
> Open Access archive for further elucidation, but, please, let's not kid
> ourselves and call the Economist mainstream or the urge to know more about

> a topic a widespread phenomenon.  This is elite media.  OA of research
> materials, if and when it happens, is still going to be of interest only
> to a narrow sliver of the population.  The door swings one way:  you can
> democratize research publications (maybe), but you can't put the demos
> into the academy.
> 
> Now, as for Survivor and Hilary Duff . . . .
> 
> Joe Esposito

My understanding is that there are so many serious amateur astonomers in
the world, that when something new happens in the heavens, it is more
likely to be spotted by an amateur than by a professional!  Many of these
people, I"m sure, are more than capable of reading the relevant scientific
literature - and that IS rocket science!

I'm not sure that making the scholarly literature openly accessible would
tear everyone away from Survivor.  But if there were a few people who
decided to switch from such fare to, say, academic literary analysis -
would that be such a bad thing?

Perhaps a more important example of how journalists might be better able
to contribute to our society by having open access to the scholarly
literature, though, is when people in a community feel the need to
determine the problems they are experiencing arise from environmental
damage, what the cause of and remedy for the environmental damage is, that
sort of thing.

This kind of investigation can require - not just one article - but rather
access to a wide range of the scholarly literature, ranging from chemistry
to agriculture to environmental science to law.

Another example is how journalists have helped to bring illnesses such as
anorexia nervosa, bulimia, skin cancer and the relation with sun exposure
(etc. etc.) int popular awareness.  Awareness, in many cases, helps
individuals and families to recognise early symptoms, and minimize damage.  
In other cases, awareness helps people to see the need for research, and
no doubt helps to spur efforts to raise funds to pay for research.

The idea of how open access can help journalists was partially inspired by
a course I took in Freelance Article Writing.  Our teacher mentioned the
local university web sites as a good place to look for potential stories,
especially science-type stories.  If you could access the articles
directly, this would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?  Is it possible we
would all end by benefiting from hearing a little bit more about those
important advances taking place at our own universities?  Wouldn't this
help us all to understand better why that research (as well as the
teaching) at our universities is so very important?

Heather Morrison
BC Electronic Library Network
heatherm@eln.bc.ca