Topic 5 2017, Page 4

Firstly… what does it mean when material is freely available online? and what is a content producer? Infographic created by the author (Boston College Libraries, 2017) Here’s a video to give an insight into the role of a content producer! (HowToRuleTheWeb, 2013) So what happens when people work really hard to create content, but then people get it for free? or equally, what happens when people have to pay for it? One of the predominant aspects of the free content debate is OPEN... Continue reading →

[Source: https://youtu.be/AzcMEwAxSP8?t=2m10s]. Clearly, disparity exists with regard to knowledge accessibility in today’s society. Paradoxically, it appears that despite an increasingly digital society, information is not effectively reaching the intended audience. This is because journals charge for access rights; they essentially have a monopoly on research dissemination (Harnad et al., 2004). Some even claim that journal prices have outstripped inflation by 260% (PHD, 2012). Continue reading →

As a student, I am usually first to exploit freely available information online; this is called open access: when knowledge is shared without charge and without most licensing restrictions. Personally, I benefit from open access through scientific research however, free online content also includes media platforms such as newspapers, music and television shows which is further elaborated in Figure 1. However, this post will mainly focus on academic research. Figure 1. Continue reading →

Figure 1. Definitions of Open Access and Paywall. Created via Canva. Within today’s digital world, Open Access (OA) is being used more frequently as a business model for publishing peer-reviewed journals (Björk et al., 2016). According to Van Noorden (2013), a large proportion of academic journals are behind paywalls, which charge subscription fees for users to access the online material. Continue reading →