Re: Boston Globe Article About Open Access

["Heather Morrison" <hmorrison@ola.bc.ca>]

In response to Ann Okerson's comment repeated below:

Leaving aside the question of how access is paid for, may I suggest three
reasons for providing the general public with access to academic research
(medical or otherwise)?

1. Intellectual freedom.  The individual has a right to decide what they
read.  If this is true of adults and pornography, then surely it is true
of academic research.  Whether an individual wants to read consumer health
information or reports of original research is a matter only they can
decide.

2. Many individuals and groups have substantial reasons to follow academic
research, and many individuals have the ability to read academic materials
(or the ability to learn, given sufficient incentive).

One example:  people with long-term or chronic illnesses, or genetic
illnesses, that are not curable, may well want to keep up with the
research in that area.  At least one charitable society that I'm aware of
regularly monitors research, and provides reports in their laymen-oriented
newsletter, along with citations to the actual research results.

Another example:  I understand that there are so many keen amateur
astronomers in the world that discoveries of new comets, meteors, etc.,
are more likely to be made by amateurs than by professionals.  If this is
how people choose to spend their free time and all of us benefit, why not?
I'm sure many of these people are quite capable of reading academic
astronomical literature - or writing it!

3. Information literacy.  The ease of publishing information on the
internet makes it more important than ever to educate people about how to
evaluate the information they read.  Why not have every high school
student learn a little bit about the research process, peer review,
publishing and how this all relates to what they might read in a textbook,
newspaper or magazine article?

a personal opinion by,

Heather Grace Morrison

liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu writes:

>Article below is of possible interest.  Exploring new varieties of
>business models for electronic journal publishing, including open access,
>seems very important and desirable, for various reasons.  (It's somewhat
>puzzling, though, that a key argument made for the public's needing access
>to medical journals is that people will then use the information in those
>articles to get better medical treatment or get the right, latest
>treatment for their kids.  This particular argument is, I think, one of
>the less compelling, as -- in my experience in glancing through numerous
>medical journals -- the information is very technical and not particularly
>decipherable for those not in that field.  It would be very hard to apply
>intelligently the content of such articles to one's own health care.) Ann
>Okerson/moderator