You’re a Researcher Without a Library: What Do You Do? | Medium

Research | Access | Libraries | Open Access

by Jake Orlowitz  | Nov 15, 2017

Investigating solutions for frustrated scholars, nonprofits, independent learners, and the rest of us.

Wikimedia Commons

 

 The world of publishing is evolving frantically, while it remains frustratingly fragmented and prohibitively expensive for many. If you’re a student who just left your academic library behind only to discover you are now locked out of the stacks; a startup researching water usage in Africa and keep hitting paywalls; a local nonprofit that studies social change activism, but all the latest papers cost $30 per read… This article is for you.

Local Library

Citizens, taxpayers, cities, states, and nations pay a lot of money to provide free services. Use them! Public libraries often subscribe to costly databases; the annual investments for these licenses are only worth it if they are of use to the libraries’ constituency. The good news is that most people have a library nearby, many of the resources are fully available online (especially the databases), and a library card is often free or inexpensive. Also, libraries have librarians, who are pros at finding what you want (or something even better).

Bad news is that your local library may not be that local, and you may need to jump through some hoops to get your library card. Not all local libraries can afford masses of scholarly journals either, although many have at least some access. Read more...

Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices | Science | The Guardian

Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices | Science | The Guardian: Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices
University wants scientists to make their research open access and resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls

A memo from Harvard's
faculty advisory council said major scientific publishers had made
scholarly communication 'fiscally unsustainable'. Photograph: Corbis

Exasperated by rising subscription costs charged by academic publishers, Harvard University
has encouraged its faculty members to make their research freely
available through open access journals and to resign from publications
that keep articles behind paywalls.



A memo from Harvard Library
to the university's 2,100 teaching and research staff called for action
after warning it could no longer afford the price hikes imposed by many
large journal publishers, which bill the library around $3.5m a year.



The
extraordinary move thrusts one of the world's wealthiest and most
prestigious institutions into the centre of an increasingly fraught
debate over access to the results of academic research, much of which is
funded by the taxpayer.



The outcome of Harvard's decision to take
on the publishers will be watched closely by major universities around
the world and is likely to prompt others to follow suit. Read more...

Related articles

• Harvard Does the Right Thing (zwingliusredivivus.wordpress.com)
• Harvard University says it can't afford journal publishers' prices | Science | The Guardian (theguardian.com)
• Martin Eve: Building the Open Library of the Humanities (lj.libraryjournal.com)
• Debunking six myths about open access scientific publishing (p2pfoundation.net)
• Guest Post: Phill Jones on The Changing Role of the Postdoc and Why Publishers Should Care (scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org)
• The Open Access Interviews: Dagmara Weckowska, lecturer in Business and Innovation at the University of Sussex (poynder.blogspot.com)
• Survey reveals researchers' views on monographs (researchinformation.info)
• Peter Suber, Promoting Open Access in the Humanities (dash.harvard.edu)