Re: OA and the disciplinary differential

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

Heather Morrison said:

"(snip)

For argument's sake, let's say that chemistry is not OA.  .... (snip) ....
a library I worked at received old, outdated Chem Abstracts from a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
totheir heart's content, thanks to arXiv. Chemistry is a different story.
Here, the student is relying a fair bit on rote, textbook learning....

(snip)"

While I regret that my own original discipline, chemistry, has been so
resistant to OA, doesn't the last sentence rather forget about the
existence of flesh-and-blood teachers?  As far as I know they still exist
at both high school and university level (8-)  !  Rote learning of
chemistry may well still be a problem at high school level, but at
university, at least, teachers should be encouraging original thinking by
students.

Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK