RE: Darnton on the Google settlement

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

If the contents of local IRs were only available locally then Jan may just
be right.  But we have the internet now.  Local content is available
internationally.  And if it is open it can be federated and re-used and
re-purposed.  The local OAI-compliant IR is, in many cases, less 'atomistic'
than many international journals with limited circulation.

We are seeing the effects of this, anecdotally, with the offers of
international collaboration to researchers who have depositing their papers
locally, the students offered international post-graduate positions after
depositing their theses, etc.  Open access through IRs has the potential to
make research more international, more collaborative, not less.

David

David Prosser
Director, SPARC Europe

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Jan Szczepanski
Sent: 28 January 2009 05:08
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Darnton on the Google settlement

On Sunday Sandy Thatcher wrote some quick observations on
Rick's observations amongst them:

"if the commercial sector had not stepped in to support the rapid
growth of science in the wake of WW II, we would all be a lot
poorer for it in terms of available resources"

Very true.

May I add another historical fact and that is that the commercial
sector changed science from being nationalistic to
be truely international after WW II.

One of the sad effects of open access is that we
can see a trend back to nationalism and even back
to atomism (IRs).

Jan