Open Access Breaks Scientific Feudalism, Liberates Scholars and Brings Freedom

Abstract: "The present debates about open access slowly bring about the need to look beyond the simply functional dimensions of self-archiving or open access journals to reach the level of what might be called a new "political economy" of knowledge. The complex, mixed roles of scientific publications are not there by chance. Instead, they represent the difficult materialization of protracted negotiations between various types of players beyond publishers and authors: librarians, research administrators and granting agencies are also involved in this process. Furthermore, none of these categories are homogeneous and, in particular, publishers act on behalf of extremely diverse crowds: scientists, of course, but also stockholders, and mixed, hybrid organizations abound. One of the more interesting facet of this whole debate, in the recent past, has been the question of how to build an open access world and why it has turned out to be more difficult than initially envisioned. The thesis of this talk will be derived from the fact that the real motivation behind publishing, from the perspective of authors, is visibility, authority, prestige, etc. The peacock-scientist wants to be nicely branded through journal titles. Out of this has grown a rich evaluation culture whose only flaw is that it is deeply ... flawed. To make open access work, the scientist-as-peacock has to be taken seriously and one must respond to his/her desires. A number of tactical and strategic recommendations will be made in this regard. The final result will be the vision that science as a competitive sharing of minds, as a system of distributed intelligence, will be much enhanced by open access even as individual scientist will find themselves leaving scientific feudalism to enter a true Republic of science at long last."

Source: Jean-Claude Guédon. Beyond Open Access: The Political Economy of Knowledge. A public lecture at the University of Toronto, lecture series on Open Source and Open Access (to be held 7 April 2005) [FullText][Lecture series home][Lecture Web Cast Link][OANews Record]