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February 22, 2008, 02:52 PM ET
Will Open-Access Publishing Free Enslaved Academics?
Is the movement toward free and open access to published material a human-rights issue? Richard Smith says it is. The former editor of the British journal BMJ is on the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science, a nonprofit group that publishes journal articles online and makes them freely available to the public.
In a talk last year at a publishing conference, Mr. Smith said the push toward open access was analogous to Britian’s abolitionist movement in the late 18th century. The slave traders of that time are like today’s traditional publishers, he said. The slaves are akin to research articles and academics, and the abolitionists are open-access activists like Stevan Harnad, a cognitive scientist; Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate; and Paul Ginsparg, a Cornell University physicist. —Andrea L. Foster
Categories: Libraries
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