Brazilian Open Access advocate Dr Hélio Kuramoto is currently translating the recent interview I did with Bernard Rentier, Rector of the University of Liège, into Portuguese.
Dr Kuramoto plans to undertake the translation in stages. The first part was posted today, and can be accessed here.
Thank you Hélio!
Showing posts with label Repositories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Repositories. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
The OA Interviews: Bernard Rentier, Rector of the University of Liège
What is striking about Open Access (OA) is that it so obviously the right and rational way for the research community to respond to the networked world. Indeed, one could aptly describe it as a no-brainer — or, as OA advocate Stevan Harnad likes to put it, OA is “raincoat science” (“It's raining, kids, and you're getting wet: Time to put on your raincoats!”).
What is odd about OA is that so few in the research community yet appear to have understood (or at least accepted) its inevitability. Such myopia is doubtless no accident — many have a vested interest in the status quo, while others instinctively fear change, and have an irrational abhorrence of the new.
As a consequence, what is surely “inevitable and optimal” has been delayed now for over a decade and a half: While universal OA could in theory be realised practically overnight, it is estimated that still only around 30% of the world's academic and scientific literature is freely available on the Web.
Fortunately some do “get it” the moment the concept is explained to them — as did Bernard Rentier, a professor of virology and immunology at the University of Liège (ULg), in 1998.
Rentier had been appointed vice-rector in charge of research policy and libraries at ULg the year before — a position that inevitably focused his professorial mind on a number of problems for which OA turns out to be the solution. This became apparent to him during a conversation he had with a science librarian, who introduced him to the concept behind the then incipient OA movement.
“[I]t was immediately obvious to me that this was the logical approach to take,” says Rentier, “especially as the new technology that was then emerging made it entirely possible.”
What is odd about OA is that so few in the research community yet appear to have understood (or at least accepted) its inevitability. Such myopia is doubtless no accident — many have a vested interest in the status quo, while others instinctively fear change, and have an irrational abhorrence of the new.
As a consequence, what is surely “inevitable and optimal” has been delayed now for over a decade and a half: While universal OA could in theory be realised practically overnight, it is estimated that still only around 30% of the world's academic and scientific literature is freely available on the Web.
Fortunately some do “get it” the moment the concept is explained to them — as did Bernard Rentier, a professor of virology and immunology at the University of Liège (ULg), in 1998.
Rentier had been appointed vice-rector in charge of research policy and libraries at ULg the year before — a position that inevitably focused his professorial mind on a number of problems for which OA turns out to be the solution. This became apparent to him during a conversation he had with a science librarian, who introduced him to the concept behind the then incipient OA movement.
“[I]t was immediately obvious to me that this was the logical approach to take,” says Rentier, “especially as the new technology that was then emerging made it entirely possible.”
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