Open Access Allows Scholars To Find Information On Nearly Anything

Students access learning resources at the newly remodeled learning commons in Zimmerman Library.

...When the U.S. government funds research through the National Institutes of Health or the National Science Foundation, the researchers usually publish the results of their work in professional journals. But subscriptions to professional journals are costly. Academic libraries buy the journal subscriptions and offer students free access, although they can't afford to subscribe to all the journals. Celebrating Open Access Week was an opportunity to talk publicly about what it takes to see that the public actually has access.

“You can make the argument that the public pays for information to be produced and we need it to conduct our business and make informed decisions about how we expect our government to proceed and so transparency is important,” said Jon Wheeler, University Libraries data curation librarian...

Sometimes the battle for open access centers on the process of getting government agencies to share the information they use to make public policy decisions. Former state senator Dede Feldman laid the problem. “I’ve got to tell you there’s a lot of resistance to this," Feldman said. "You wouldn’t think that this would be so controversial.  It seems like a no brainer. Public documents that are paid for by the public should be accessible to the public. But my experience in the legislature is that there is a great deal of resistance from elected officials and from bureaucrats to opening up meetings, to opening up the filing cabinet.”...