I just finished reading The Access Principle (Willinsky, 2006) which I would recommend to librarians looking for an introduction to Open Access as a whole (those who read around this subject widely probably won’t find too much new here). Willinsky defines the access principle as:

“commitment to the value and quality of research carries withit a responsibility to extend the circulation of this work as far as possible, and ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it”. (Willinsky, 2006, p. 5)

Willinsky discusses the Public Knowledge Project which initially developed Open Journal Systems and Open Conference Systems, both of which are very useful to publishers (and librarians who are increasingly publishers themselves). Libraries becoming publishers is a topic I would like to see turn into a whole book, or several, in the very near future. Willinsky writes:

“Membership in a publishing and archiving cooperative world would enable libraries to participate more directly in journal publishing and archiving to ensure affordable access to research and scholarship. It would offer its members a means of containing and controlling costs, with cost containment far more of an issue for research libraries than reaping a wide-scale windfall from journals going open access.” (Willinsky, 2006, p. 85)

Such publishing efforts would be alongside current initiatives like institutional repositories and libraries who currently host electronic journals. Dorothea might not always be sure about this brave new world of libraries, but lately, at least, I’ve been feeling confident that it is an important step. Hence the LISauthor wiki in some ways.

On a slight tangent, I was thrilled to be asked a few questions by Rachel Singer Gordon for her latest Publish, Don’t Perish! column. The column is now online - Open Access Archives.