An Interview with Peter Suber on Open Access

摘要

CL: What can librarians do to help the cause of open access? PS: Librarians can help by supporting efforts to adopt an OA policy at their institutions and then by supporting the policy itself. These policies are generally adopted by faculty and need faculty leadership. But at many schools, faculty councils were moved to act by compelling presentations from librarians. Plus, most institutional OA repositories are managed by the library. Not all librarians are well informed about OA, but as a class they're much better informed than faculty. This creates opportunities for librarians to talk with faculty about OA, to help inform them about what it actually is, and to bring them into the conversation about OA. Librarians are also on the front line pushing for enlightened government policies, since they're well organized nationally. Library associations have routinely lobbied for federal OA policies, and they're unusually persistent and effective, more effective than the better funded publisher lobbyists.