The readings this week led me down a very informative path of figuring out how public access to research actually works.
In his article, Democracy and education: The missing link may be ours, Willinsky champions the Open Access philosophy. His main argument is based in the heart of Dewey’s democratic ideal that “more than a form of government; [democracy] is primarily a mode of associated living, of cojoint communicated experience”; in other words a dynamic and ongoing social experiment (de Tocqueville, 1969). Willinsky argues that since democracy works with difference rather than seeking one truth (with the acceptance of a few basic values) open access to research would bring into focus diverse ways of thinking. The public is currently much more informed and, he feels, using tools put forth by Gutmann and Thompson in their book Democracy and Disagreement (1969) the principles of reciprocity, publicity and accountability as tools for living with fundamental disagreements, could be ready to cultivate critical reasoning abilities, eliminating the need for journal articles to be reviewed and prepared for public consumption. (Of course, he reasons, open access will change the way research is done, researchers would need to think about how to publish for public consumption.)
Opening of access to scholarly publishing is the goal, but most schools still pay for access to journals. At the time of the article, in 2002, the Public Liberty of Science petition called for an end to the ownership of scientific research, stating it should be made public, free, interlinked and searchable (still not law yet, by the way). Also in 2002, UBC was working on developing ways to publish open access resources, but since has gone with Browzine for journal management (probably the best of the for-profit journal-housing companies – you can read my recent interview with Browzine founder Kendall Bartsch here). Willinsky even goes on to recommend a financial model for academic institutions whereby the money that is used for subscriptions should be put into innovating a way collaboratively and globally, including open forums in which to discuss open access issue within the context of the research.
I want to acknowledge here another viewpoint form the readings which I enjoyed for its opposition, The Judgement of Thamus (Postman, 1992), in which Postman loosely questions why we should even bother with advancing our ideas because, after all, as Thoreau wrote, all invention is really just “an improved means to an unimproved end”.
The sound middle ground this week was represented by Professor James O’Donnell as he eloquently discusses, in the Cambridge Forum broadcast of 1992 called From Papyrus to Cyberspace, the losses and gains that technology might bring. He cleverly bases his hypotheses by examining a prior defining moment of technological advance, the invention of the printing press, during which the prevailing view was that print would bring “unmanageable diversify of thought” (O’Donnell, 1992). O’Donnell extrapolates that although there was nothing unmanageable about new ideas abounding, that it was more the exclusion from power we should be wary of, and spending time on computer instead of interacting are most likely be some of the losses we might see with the advance of technology (he was right!). The gains would be similar to those enjoyed with the advent of print, namely a broader community through written word being spread by technology (right again I feel, mostly, if excluding the discouraging digressions exemplified by youtube comments…). He closes with a gentle reminder to us all to just calm down – doom and utopia come into play much less often than we imagine, mostly it’s a muddling through. To avoid extremism of thought either way, he sagely advises, would be our best approach.
References
De Tocqueville, A. (1969). Democracy in America (Trans. G. Lawrence). New York: Doubleday.
Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: Macmillan.
Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
O’Donnell, James J. (Presenter). (1999). Cambridge Forum [Radio broadcast]. Cambridge, MA: Public Radio
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology. Chapter1: The Judgement of Thamus. New York: Knopf
Willinsky, J. (2002). Democracy and education: The missing link may be ours. Harvard Education Publishing Group.
