Looking enviously at the open road
danah boyd says she is going to be boycotting academic journals that aren’t open access and wants other academics to do likewise. I’ve always thought it insane that we as the public are subsidising universities to produce research that is almost totally inaccessible. Glad to see that danah is pushing for this.
I hope that universities and funding bodies start insisting that the move is made towards complete open access. I actually think that open access and web access are of primary importance into inculcating undergraduate students into the mechanics of academia. Plagiarism and paid essay sites are increasing in popularity among students, and academics are having spasms over Wikipedia (perhaps for good reason) - perhaps what we should do is actually inculcate academic values in students by trusting them enough to read current research publications from when they first enter the university. Of course, for that to happen, it’d help if they could actually read the research over this zany Interweb thing, rather than have to jump through the utterly pointless hoops placed there to shore up the failing business model of journal publishers.
A publicly-funded university system should exist to enlighten, not to make money for publishers.
