From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 16:08:20 +0000

Sixteen years ago, the Budapest Open Access Initiative predicted the dawn
of a new age of scholarly communication. Its declaration begins, “An old
tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an
unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of
scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in
scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge.
The new technology is the internet.”



Looking back, we might want to suggest that OA advocates spent too much
time in the early years promoting the merits of *openness*, and too little
time working out the best way of marrying *the old tradition* with the *new
technology*. In addition, more time should have been spent on establishing
what other old traditions of learning would need to be accommodated (and
how) if the new world of scholarly communication that BOAI envisaged was to
be realised. That too little consideration was given to these matters
doubtless explains why so much confusion surrounds open access today, and
why we are seeing growing frustration with it.



In light of this, a new book by John Willinsky – The Intellectual
Properties of Learning, A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke – is
timely.



More here: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-
intellectual-properties-of-learning.html