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Open Access Is The Future, and The Future is Now

From October 21 through 25, Dartmouth Libraries are hosting a series of events as part of International Open Access Week. This event brings together universities, research institutes, and publishers committed to “Community over Commercialization,” prioritizing “approaches to open scholarship that serve the best interests of the public and the academic community.”

The week’s events and discussions extend on the diverse events, conversations, and advocacy the Libraries’ have facilitated over the years, including open scienceopen data, the ethical imperative of open access, and the shifting scholarly publishing landscape

Two events you won’t want to miss include

  • a keynote address by Peter Baldwin, distinguished professor of history at UCLA and NYU. He will discuss his book on open access called Athena Unbound.

  • a panel discussion with Dartmouth faculty members Roopika Risam, Nena Mason, and Rafe Steinhauer, who will converse about the opportunities and challenges associated with open access in their research, teaching, and disciplines.  

Dr. Shawn Martin, Head of Scholarly Communication, Copyright, and Publishing at Dartmouth, is co-organizing the week’s events alongside library colleagues. We spoke with him to learn more about open access, why it matters, and for some myth busting.

Explore The Week's Events 

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What is open access?

There are many myths and misconceptions that I’ve heard when people use the term open access. Fundamentally, though, open access refers to one way researchers and students can make their scholarship available. The “open” in open access simply means that anyone in the world, regardless of where they are, can read your research. Work that is not open access means that only certain readers within institutions like Dartmouth can read your research. 

Why would scholars want to make their work open access?

Increasingly, research has become international. In the past, having a small group of readers in Western, industrialized countries might have been considered good enough. Now, however, researchers collaborate with others across the world, and those global partners often work in countries without subscription access to expensive journals. These international collaborations underscore the need for a broader readership that’s more inclusive of anyone not working or studying in large research universities. Additionally, in fields like medicine, authors may want patients with certain medical conditions to read about the latest treatments or better understand their diagnosis. Federal agencies have increasingly recognized the lack of access to research is a problem, and have mandated some form of public access for their grants.

Scholars didn’t have to pay to publish research in the past, why does open access require payment by authors to publish?

This is one of those myths I mentioned previously. Open access simply means that anyone can read your research, regardless of where they are in the world. Some publishers, often the most well-established ones, have promoted so-called “gold” open access. This status requires payments by authors. This is not the only model, however. Here at the Libraries, we generally support “diamond” open access, which does not require payments by authors. There are many different models for making research available. Through the Scholarly Communication program I oversee, we help authors to understand what their options are and to think through these decisions.

This all seems a bit complicated. Why can’t publishing research stay the same as it was in the past?

That’s a great question that requires some nuance. There are four points that, I think, are most important to focus on. 

  1. Changes in technology have made it possible to distribute information (including misinformation) globally at the click of a button. This was not possible before, when we had to pay for printing and wait for distribution through traditional publishers. 
  2. Additionally, more research is being produced. Paired with technological changes, that means universities have needed to change their methods for assessing scholarship.
  3. Publishers have met these two needs by controlling both digital distribution channels and creation of metrics (like the impact factor) that purportedly measure the impact of research. Such changed roles for publishers have increased their influence on decisions in higher education, including, but not limited to, tenure, promotion, and funding.
  4. While the previous system may have worked for some, we have the opportunity now to rethink how we distribute and assess scholarship to make it more efficient and equitable. Open access is just one of the many ways to do that.

What can I expect to take away from the Open Access Week events?

I hope that this series of events will help the Dartmouth community see ways that their colleagues are using open access to meet their research needs. Additionally, I hope anyone who joins us at these events will better understand how the Libraries can help to shape events that will change the future landscape of open access. As technology continues to evolve and as global research collaborations expand, we, too, have to evolve from “how we’ve always done things” and expand. Now is a great time to help shape the future that we want and need.

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