sep
11
2012

Open Access Book Launch

Tuesday, September 11, 6:00 pm
Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein West A Room
RSVP required for those attending in person via the form below
This event will be archived on our site shortly after.
Reception to follow. Co-sponsored by the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication and the Harvard Law School Library.

Special guests include: Stuart Shieber (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), Robert Darnton (Harvard University Library), June Casey (Harvard Law School Library), David Weinberger (Berkman Center / Harvard Library Innovation Lab) and more.

The internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue.

In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.

About Peter

Peter Suber's work consists of research, writing, organizing, advocacy, and pro bono consulting for open access to research. He is the Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, Special Advisor to the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication, Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center, Senior Researcher at SPARC, Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, Open Access Project Director at Public Knowledge, and author of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter. He blogs at Google Plus.

Links

• Book home page
  

Click the play button below to start the audio.

Location

Berkman Center for Internet and Society

License

Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported

Copyright Holder

The President and Fellows of Harvard College

RB 206: Unlocking Research

Disseminating knowledge was once a costly undertaking. The expenses of printing, distributing, and housing the work of researchers and scholars left most research in the hands of publishers, journals, and institutions in a system that has evolved over centuries. And the licensing model that has arisen with that system butts heads with the quick, simple, and virtually free distribution system of the net. The key to breaking free of the traditional licensing model locking up research is the promise of the "Open Access" movement. And the movement has already made significant strides. Over the summer the United Kingdom was enticed enough by the potential for greater innovation and growth of knowledge to propose Open Access for any research supported by government funds. But Open Access still remains a wonky, hard to understand subject. Today, Peter Suber — Director of the Harvard Open Access Project — shares insights with David Weinberger from his new guide to distilling Open Access, called simply Open Access.

Produced 15 Aug 2012

download media

• MP3 audio for computer or portable device 13 mb
• OGG audio 27 mb