101. Assessing Scholarly Communication in the Developing World: It Takes More Than Bytes
- Author:
- David Block
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Social Science Research Council
- Abstract:
- STUDIES of scholarly communication in Western Europe and North America describe a world in crisis. (Borgman, 2000.) By the early 1990s, the cost of print journals had reached a level that discouraged their purchase by even the richest institutions, and digital editions of these works, a feature of the next decade, raised the ante higher still. Copyright, the legally-enforced ownership of ideas in some fixed form, has become more contentious in a digital realm, which potentially makes unauthorized usage as simple as "copy and paste." And, finally, while archiving scholarly publications has been difficult in the medium of acidic paper, it has become even more problematic in electronic form where the data themselves, the media that hold them and the computer programs that make them intelligible are all subject to decay or obsolescence. This triumvirate—spiraling information costs, control of information and its preservation for succeeding generations—constitutes the developed world's central focus for research and planning in scholarly communication. (Atkinson, 2000. NINCH).
- Topic:
- Development, Education, International Cooperation, Science and Technology, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- North America and Western Europe