My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses on the growing global demand for open access, a trend that is forcing researchers, publishers, universities, and funding agencies to reconsider their role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.
For years, the research model remained relatively static. In Canada, federal funding agencies in the sciences, social sciences, and health sciences doled out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support research at Canadian universities. University researchers typically published their findings in expensive, peer-reviewed publications, which were purchased by those same publicly-funded universities.
The model certainly proved lucrative for large publishers, yet resulted in the public paying twice for research that it was frequently unable to access. Cancer patients seeking information on new treatments or parents searching for the latest on childhood development issues were often denied access to the research they indirectly fund through their tax dollars.
The emergence of the Internet dramatically changes the equation.
