POST: On Allington on Open Access

David Golumbia draws attentionĀ to Daniel Allingtonā€™s post, ā€œOn open access, and why itā€™s not the answer.ā€ Allington raises critical issues about the open access movement and whether it meets its objectives, writing:

[W]hat did its advocates (me, for example) think it was going to facilitate? And now that itā€™s become mainstream, does it look as if itā€™s going to facilitate that thing we had in mind, or something else entirely?ā€¦The more I look back, the more I realise that open access had been proposed as the solution to a range of problems some of which had very little to do with one another. The more I look forward, the more I realise that among those problems were some that might actually be exacerbated by the form of open access that has become official policy in the UK-and others that were never likely to be addressed by any form of open access (including the one in which I believed).

Golumbia closes his post with the comment he added to Allingtonā€™s blog outlining some points about the limits of the open access movement including publicity, discipline specificity, and role of libraries.

Author: Caro Pinto

Librarian & Instructional Technology Liaison
Mount Holyoke College

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