Misprism

An update of the expanding universe of open access from Heather Morrison, a Canadian librarian whose blog deserves an award for its name:

The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
Imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world's scholarly knowledge - as profound a change as the invention of the printing press. Technically, this is within reach. All that is needed is a little imagination, to reconsider the economics of scholarly communications from a poetic viewpoint.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series

Early figures are from my preprint, The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Implications and Opportunities for Resource Sharing, Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 16, 3 (2006), and my updates:
Dec. 31, 2005 Update and 2006 Predictions
March 31, 2006 Update.
June 30, 2006 Update.
September 2006 Update.
Dramatic Growth December 2006 & Predictions for 2007
Dramatic Growth March 2007 Update & Open Data Edition
Dramatic Growth June 2007 Update
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: June 2007 Open Data Edition
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Open Data Full Data Edition
DOAJ: Strong Growth, and Understanding the Numbers
Dramatic Growth of Open Access Inclusion Criteria

On the other hand, the comment thread about the utter idiocy of Prism has grown considerably.

Jouissance de JSTOR

I think what I find most hilarious in the JSTOR project is the mutually assured destruction at the base of both its mission and its business model.

• If the mission is to preserve and perpetuate the archives of human understanding in the form of scholarly journals,
• And the business model is to preserve and perpetuate monies due upon accessing aforesaid scholarly journals,

Then to present us with pages like this is to manage at one and the same time to ensure that

1. no transmission of human knowledge occurs, and that
2. the possibility of even buying said knowledge is put out of reach of all but those who belong to a payor institutional subscriber.

Bottom line: Mr. Vettori's review of Mr. Hollander's $55 book about a single letter allegedly by Dante Alighieri remains a closed book. Ignorance, except for a happy very few, is assured; no money changes hands. Just one more blissful adventure in the psychosis of capital blindness.

Happy Labor Day, JSTOR.

Obscenity on the web

	RESOURCES FOR LIBRARIANS | RESOURCES FOR PUBLISHERS | PARTICIPATION INFORMATION

Mission and Goals

In the broadest sense, JSTOR's mission is to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in information technologies. In pursuing this mission, JSTOR has adopted a system-wide perspective, taking into account the sometimes conflicting needs of libraries, publishers, and scholars.

JSTOR's goals include the following:

• To build a reliable and comprehensive archive of important scholarly journal literature
• To improve dramatically access to these journals
• To help fill gaps in existing library collections of journal backfiles
• To address preservation issues such as mutilated pages and long-term deterioration of paper copy
• To reduce long-term capital and operating costs of libraries associated with the storage and care of journal collections
• To assist scholarly associations and publishers in making the transition to electronic modes of publication
• To study the impact of providing electronic access on the use of these scholarly materials

I'd love to know how they accomplish this last goal, given that their actual mission appears to be to protect the pulp, print and lumber industries by ensuring that no scintillae of intellect ever escape the JSTOR lockdown. And they split infinitives.