February 11, 2005
CiteULike
I have to echo Brian's Furl Comments on the issues with CiteULike. I love the idea but several of the links I tried led me to academic journals that were locked behind subscription access. Of course, this points to the much bigger issue of open access to research and is something I discussed in my previous post on the NIH allowing free access to government-funded healthcare research.
It is not that the publishers of journals do not do good things with the money generated by subscriptions (ok, some publishers do good things with the money they generate). In addition to the administrative costs required to put together a quality publication, academic journal subscription fees often help to support non-profit organizations, provide continuing education, and even finance small research grants.
However, I believe the model is changing and organizations that depend on journal subscriptions as a primary source of revenue are going to have to rethink their business models. The benefit, as Brian points out, is more open access to knowledge that can help break down barriers between academia and the "real world."
For every benefit there is a cost. It might mean that professional organizations have to raise fees in other areas. This is a tough thing to do if members see the primary value of there membership as exclusive access to information.
In many ways, this leads to the discussions that are occurring within many professional organizations about how to maintain their structure (should they even be maintained?) or to redefine their purpose altogether. This is certainly a hot topic for members of AECT as noted by several entries on Cognitive Dissonance.
Posted by Rovy at February 11, 2005 4:25 AM