Abstract
When people talk about the downside of open access publishing, they typically focus on things like high article processing charges and the difficulties that arise in differentiating between reputable peer-reviewed journals and low-quality journals from predatory publishers. But when OA publishing is equated with making articles and other academic content available exclusively via OA sites like (most) institutional repositories, there is arguably an even more serious downside: the effective quarantining of scholarly research.
We’ll explore how institutional mandates to promote a library’s IR sometimes override a researcher’s desire to make research available to peers via Google Scholar and other common workflows. Without losing sight of OA’s core mission to provide access to information on the basis of need rather than an ability to pay, we will consider several perspectives on OA publishing. Our objective will be to reconcile tensions not only between librarians and researchers but also between universities and publishers.
Your IR is Not Enough: Exploring Publishing Options in Our Increasingly Fragmented Digital World
When people talk about the downside of open access publishing, they typically focus on things like high article processing charges and the difficulties that arise in differentiating between reputable peer-reviewed journals and low-quality journals from predatory publishers. But when OA publishing is equated with making articles and other academic content available exclusively via OA sites like (most) institutional repositories, there is arguably an even more serious downside: the effective quarantining of scholarly research.
We’ll explore how institutional mandates to promote a library’s IR sometimes override a researcher’s desire to make research available to peers via Google Scholar and other common workflows. Without losing sight of OA’s core mission to provide access to information on the basis of need rather than an ability to pay, we will consider several perspectives on OA publishing. Our objective will be to reconcile tensions not only between librarians and researchers but also between universities and publishers.