How do producers benefit from providing their materials widely and freely available?
Information is a kind of product that we only get convinced to pay for it once we read it fully, so that we make sure it contains what we are after. However when we are authorized to have access for reading it, then we won’t pay for it because we already read it and are not needed anymore [1]. This uncertainty has become the reason for most of the information to be available free until now, because producers think that there are at least some advantages on allowing access to materials for free than keeping them behind the payment walls and nobody ever buy them because of not being sure what they contains.
Advantages
- As we learned in this course posting materials online build a good image of the producer which links to developing online professional profiles, hens it is best for recruits.
- Improves popularity and online presence
- Open access to online journals allows students and educational organisations to build knowledge from it. Many have produced other knowledgeable materials, referencing books and journals [2].
- It helps people sharing it; think scientifically which reflect back to improvement of the original producers through comments and feedbacks.
Disadvantages
- Perhaps the biggest disadvantage of open access that all of us can spot straight away is, no money income for the producers from the produced materials.
- It makes people lazy they stop being creative, and they totally relay on online journal articles because they can all be accessed for free, which in most cases it become breach of copyright act. I personally have witnessed lots of student at university and at college have become accused of plagiarism.
- How open should it be who and which part of the world should have access to it, these are all controlling issues, which are hard to be established.
- Because there will be no income, producers wont be able to continue publishing journal articles, which will lead the world suffering from the luck of knowledge and expertise [2].
As an example mentioned by Jonathan Eisen [3] that he was looking for a particular medical treatment and he paid for many articles, but he couldn’t find the right one, his time and money wasted for nothing and those papers also didn’t have returning policy. This problem makes people not pay for the journals because of uncertainty. I can think of one solution that all the produced materials should be bought by libraries and other educational organisations and be made available to the members.
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References
[1] http://access.okfn.org/2012/05/17/open-access-not-just-a-matter-for-scientists/
[2] http://www.edanzediting.com/blog/advantages_and_disadvantages_open_access#.VUTJORfvjOo
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY#t=271
