Friday, October 26, 2012

Intellectual Freedom Beyond Banned Books

At our last FLIF meeting, we talked about how intellectual freedom is about more than just the freedom to read and banned books. Intellectual freedom issues can affect us as students as well as the broader academic community. One such issue has been raised in a PhD comics video entitled Open Access Explained!. As the video explains, open access has come about as a result of digitization and journal price increases. With open access, the public is free to read and free to re-use scholarly research.

The video was made in partnership with the Right to Research Coalition (R2RC). The R2RC has a number of helpful ideas in how we can promote the use of open access as individuals, as student organizations, and as librarians. The section on Why Open Access? explains how traditional publishing practices and open access impact students, researchers, individuals in developing countries, and many other groups in addition the general public. Open access in academia is just one example of how issues of intellectual freedom can extend beyond the traditional notions of censorship and banned books.

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