How Open Access is Good for Us

Open Access Week - University of Cambridge

Rufus Pollock

[Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge]
[Open Knowledge Foundation]
Licensed under cc-by v3.0 (any jurisdiction)

Open Access to Text and Data

Open: Freedom to Use, Reuse and Redistribute
http://www.opendefinition.org/

An Example

From my own research

Book Production and the Public Domain

CUL Holdings

Total CUL Holdings by Year (Black) and Public Domain (Red)

What About Roman Times?

Roman Libraries

Library Resources and Creative Writing at Rome by A.J. Marshall

The Issues

Roman Libraries

How many times did I have to log in?

The Issues

Roman Libraries

Why no plain text?

The Issues

Roman Libraries

Why are references not linked

Roman Libraries

And what about if I want to follow a reference?

The Issues

Roman Libraries

Usually yet another walled garden ...

Data Issues

CUL Holdings

Can I share it (and my changes)? (Probably not)

Data Issues

CUL Holdings

Can I mix it with other data?

Data Issues

CUL Holdings

Can we make changes? (More than 50% of authors have no death date ...)

What are The Costs of this Lack of Openness?

1. Loss of Access

Directly - and from 'Transaction Costs'
I don't read - or even find - the article

2. STOPS Development of
New Tools and Processes

For Discovery, Sharing, Using Knowledge

The Possibilities are Revolutionary

Example: Take Reviewing

Rating, tagging etc could be done by anyone, reviewing the reviewers etc etc

http://www.rufuspollock.org/2009/07/20/the-dissemination-of-scholarly-information-journals-open-access-and-distributed-filtering/

Conclusion

The Digital Revolution makes so much Possible

Large Scale Knowledge Recombination Requires Openness

A World in which each of us Preserve our own Islands of 'Rights'

Is Not A Sustainable Future

Is It Open Data?

Is It Open Data

http://isitopendata.org/

Open Access is Central to Creating a True Academic Commons

Thank-you

Rufus Pollock
rp240@cam.ac.uk and rufus.pollock@okfn.org