As we know, DH reflects the Humanities meeting the digital age which makes it easier for information to be readily available to the public. However, OA, as a practice, has been a topic of debate. There are those who speak loud and clear as to the benefits of OA, both for the author and the public. Then as with many things, there are those who raise concerns about the information being made accessible and the potential drawbacks especially to those who are concerned about the future of scholarly communication. In my essay, I will address both sides of the debate. Ultimately, you will see that my opinion is to open the floodgates and let the information flow through, and I will discuss why I am in agreement with those who are in favor of open access.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Open Access in the Digital Humanities
A Brief Overview of My Final Essay
First,
what is open access? Just like when you ask an individual to define digital
humanities (DH), each person has their own spin on what it means. The same can
be said for open access, but on a much smaller scale. For purposes of this
blog, I will use the definition offered by Peter Suber who is a respected advocate for open
access: “Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” In my essay, I will
elaborate on the meaning of OA because before you can analyze why or why not
something should exist, you must first understand what it means.
As we know, DH reflects the Humanities meeting the digital age which makes it easier for information to be readily available to the public. However, OA, as a practice, has been a topic of debate. There are those who speak loud and clear as to the benefits of OA, both for the author and the public. Then as with many things, there are those who raise concerns about the information being made accessible and the potential drawbacks especially to those who are concerned about the future of scholarly communication. In my essay, I will address both sides of the debate. Ultimately, you will see that my opinion is to open the floodgates and let the information flow through, and I will discuss why I am in agreement with those who are in favor of open access.
Additionally,
I will touch on what the future might look like for DH open access. Even though
DH is not limited to one field, it is clear that it has a strong presence in
academic institutions. Therefore, the academic institutions can play a large
role in the future trend of open access. As Jason Heppler states "If the
philosophical goal of the university is to serve as the sanctuary of knowledge,
then the work we do should be publicly accessible. Not just open access for
students, but open access for anyone seeking exposure to the world
electronically."
Finally,
I will share some open access works from the DH field that I found of interest.
Well, got to get back to working on my essay so I am signing off for now.
As we know, DH reflects the Humanities meeting the digital age which makes it easier for information to be readily available to the public. However, OA, as a practice, has been a topic of debate. There are those who speak loud and clear as to the benefits of OA, both for the author and the public. Then as with many things, there are those who raise concerns about the information being made accessible and the potential drawbacks especially to those who are concerned about the future of scholarly communication. In my essay, I will address both sides of the debate. Ultimately, you will see that my opinion is to open the floodgates and let the information flow through, and I will discuss why I am in agreement with those who are in favor of open access.
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