Many of us join causes and movements at
different times in our lives, if only because we like to feel part of something
bigger than ourselves, and because most of us have a healthy desire to improve
the world. Unfortunately, movements often fail to achieve their objectives, or
their objectives are significantly watered down – or lost sight of – along the
way. Sometimes they fail completely.
When their movement hits a roadblock, advocates
will respond in a variety of ways: “True believers” tend to carry on regardless,
continuing to repeat their favoured mantras ad
nauseam. Some will give up and move on to the next worthy cause. Others will
take stock, seek to understand the problem, and try to find another way forward.
Jutta Haider, an associate professor in Information Studies at Lund University, would
appear to be in the third category. Initially a proponent of open access, Haider
subsequently “turned into a sceptic”. This was not, she says, because she no
longer sees merit in making the scientific literature freely available, but
because the term open access “has gained meanings and tied itself to areas in
science, science policy-making, and the societal and economic development of
society that I find deeply problematic.”
Above all, she says, she worries that open
access has become “a business model, an indicator for performance measurement,
tied to notions of development purely imagined as economic growth and so on.”
This is not how open access was envisaged when
the movement began.
