Mark Liberman recently posted an interesting piece on Language Log about how the situation of commercial scholarly publishing effects researchers, specifically in linguistics. In his post Mark points out how profoundly our way of finding and working with scholarly information has changed in recent years because of the Internet:
But the sad thing about all this is that hardly anyone will ever read the printed volumes, which will sit gathering dust on the shelves until eventually they are shipped to off-site storage. That’s not because no one is paying attention to the contents — I can’t answer for the rest of this particular publication, but the Bird & Liberman article that they’re reprinting has been widely read and cited, and we continue to get interesting feedback from people who are reading it and thinking about it and trying to improve the ideas in it. However, I can’t remember the last time that I went to the library to find the text of a recent article or book chapter in paper form — everything that matters is available online. (That’s not true, I hasten to add, for older works, for which I often do rely on the library; and I’m still a big fan of physical books, as a glance around my offices and living quarters will reveal.)
Another interesting read in the context is this article by Lee C. Van Orsdel and Kathleen Born, published earlier this year in Library Journal. From the article:
Open access is no longer a subtext in the annals of the journals industry. It stands alone as an alternative to the existing system of journal publication, which most say is unsustainable in its current form. It can mean different things to different proponents—a shared path to many ends. Libraries want relief from journal prices that are patently outrageous and defy cost-benefit justification. Authors want impact, and OA articles get cited much more often. Scientists want faster and easier access to others’ research, but a recent paper, “UK Scholarly Journals: 2006 Baseline Report,” found that half of all researchers in Britain have problems securing access to needed articles. Universities want a better return on their investment in intellectual capital, authors, peer reviewers, and editors. Taxpayers want to be able to read the research they sponsor.
One thing that is often overlooked is the last point: the significance of making research results available to those who sponsor it - the taxpayers. While there are areas of scientific inquiry which may seem more relevant to the general public than linguistics (say, cancer research), there’s a lot of interest from people all over the world in topics such as endangered languages, language and cognition, and many other issues that linguists investigate. Free and unrestricted access to information is beneficial on many levels and with eLanguage, we hope to contribute to the larger effort that is Open Access.
- Cornelius Puschmann, eLanguage developer
team@elanguage.net
