Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis
Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis
Open Access (OA) means free access for all would-be users webwide to all articles published in all peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific disciplines. 100% OA is optimal for research, researchers, their institutions, and their funders because it maximizes research access and usage. It is also 100% feasible: authors just need to deposit ("self-archive") their articles on their own institutional websites. Hence 100% OA is inevitable. Yet the few keystrokes needed to reach it have been paralyzed for a decade by a seemingly endless series of phobias (about everything from piracy and plagiarism to posterity and priorities), each easily shown to be groundless, yet persistent and recurring. The cure for this "Zeno's Paralysis" is for researchers' institutions and funders to mandate the keystrokes, just as they already mandate publishing, and for the very same reason: to maximize research usage, impact and progress. 95% of researchers have said they would comply with a self-archiving mandate; 93% of journals have already given self-archiving their blessing; and those institutions that have already mandated it are successfully and rapidly moving toward 100% OA.
open access, self-archiving, institutional repository, copyright, policy, research impact, citation, scientometrics, research assessment, preservation, plagiarism, eprints, public library of science, zeno's paralysis, permissions, piracy, peer-review, prestige, promotion, privacy, patents, publishing
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
2006
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
Harnad, Stevan
(2006)
Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis.
In,
Jacobs, N
(ed.)
Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects.
Chandos Publishing.
Record type:
Book Section
Abstract
Open Access (OA) means free access for all would-be users webwide to all articles published in all peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific disciplines. 100% OA is optimal for research, researchers, their institutions, and their funders because it maximizes research access and usage. It is also 100% feasible: authors just need to deposit ("self-archive") their articles on their own institutional websites. Hence 100% OA is inevitable. Yet the few keystrokes needed to reach it have been paralyzed for a decade by a seemingly endless series of phobias (about everything from piracy and plagiarism to posterity and priorities), each easily shown to be groundless, yet persistent and recurring. The cure for this "Zeno's Paralysis" is for researchers' institutions and funders to mandate the keystrokes, just as they already mandate publishing, and for the very same reason: to maximize research usage, impact and progress. 95% of researchers have said they would comply with a self-archiving mandate; 93% of journals have already given self-archiving their blessing; and those institutions that have already mandated it are successfully and rapidly moving toward 100% OA.
Text
harnad-jacobsbook.htm
- Other
Text
harnad-jacobsbook.pdf
- Other
Text
harnad-jacobsbook.doc
- Other
Text
harnad-jacobschap.doc
- Other
More information
Published date: 2006
Additional Information:
Chapter: 8
Keywords:
open access, self-archiving, institutional repository, copyright, policy, research impact, citation, scientometrics, research assessment, preservation, plagiarism, eprints, public library of science, zeno's paralysis, permissions, piracy, peer-review, prestige, promotion, privacy, patents, publishing
Organisations:
Web & Internet Science
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 262094
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/262094
PURE UUID: 3e1fec37-c010-46f2-8fcf-83bce8f437f7
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 19 Mar 2006
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:48
Export record
Contributors
Author:
Stevan Harnad
Editor:
N Jacobs
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics