17.1 Content is infrastructure  (Page 7/10)

May I suggest a paradigm in which all information is made available freely online, and if a hard copy is require that a Print On Demand, pay per page regime be established. We are looking at just such a strategy at Camp One for use in our outreach. Our situation is unique in that access to printed copy will be funded to 100% internally, but we are looking at a system which can produce in colour at high speed with a net cost of $0.03/Page which if we were to double that figure would provide funding for a compensation pool.

I think the major issue for expanding this scenario is that it goes against the status quo which has yet to understand that technology is close to supplanting its perception of worth. The argument that Open Access will reduce the quality of material given the nature of Peer Review in conventional journals is a specious one. Both PloS and arXix have proven that.

We have a unique situation in that the whole focus of what we do is content oriented, which is derived to a high degree from Open Access. The infrastructure is simply the means, and when we encounter a goal that can’t be achieved with what we have in place, we get more. It would be my hope that we will one day return to a Science for the sake of Science model, without the mold of course.

Note to ‘colecamplese’ - I suggest that at Penn State as at many other institutions, the Arlo Guthrie, ‘Alices’ Restaurant’ ethic applies – If they discount your first proposition as the words of a crazy person, what will they do when the whole movement comes through the door? Lead, Follow, or Get out if the way.

Change It Comes

10. wayne mackintosh - october 6th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

Hi all,

RedSevenOne, I agree with your sentiments of generating and sharing knowledge for the sake of science and society. Great to see that there are still a few of us around.

I concede that my context working to widen access to education in the developing world is very different to many folk reading this blog. I’m somewhat critical of a pay-per-page model if you want to get a hard copy. For the overwhelming majority of people in the developing world, Internet connectivity is an expensive luxury. If “knowledge” resources are free - this freedom should extend to being able to reuse, modify and redistribute the resource without restriction including the option of generating your own print version.

This is not to say that those of us supporting the freedom culture are against the freedom to earn a living from free content. In fact we should encourage this. In my view we should promote publishers and local business entrepreneurs to add value through services and expanding distribution channels using free content. (Not unlike the RedHat Linux model).

By way of example, WikiEducator is currently funding a project to develop an open source extension for MediaWiki software for users to generate their own basket of selected articles and by clicking on a button - the software will spit out a local pdf version on the desktop. This is pretty significant because any free content project using Mediawiki will be able to implement this technology. Depending on whether we can generate further funding from the international donor community, we aim to extend this functionality to export content in Open Office format which would enable faculty to customise free content without restriction. Think about it - the English Wikipedia has more than 2 million articles, and with this pdf feature we will widen access to the largest encyclopedia in the history of humankind in print format for those who don’t have access to the Internet - without the need to pay for a hard copy! So reluctant and conservative faculty are free to stick with closed proprietary content. Others will embrace the idea of working on the development of free content - that’s our mission at WikiEducator - to build a free curriculum by 2015 .