Medical Students, Other Student Groups Endorse Open Access
by Josh Hadro — Library Journal, 6/18/2009
Excerpt:
The debate over Open Access (OA) has typically been the domain of faculty and administrations, taking place near the pinnacle of academia’s ivory tower. But last week the American Medical Student Association and other student groups, brokered by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), weighed in from below with their own “Student Statement on the Right to Research.”
In the statement, students call upon faculty, researchers, and funding groups (including governments) to support Open Access principles in order to remove “barriers for scholarly and educational re-use” of research materials.
The other signatory groups on the the June 10 statement were the Student PIRGs, Students for Free Culture, Universities Allied for Essential Medicine, the California Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council, and the Trinity University Association of Student Representatives.
Nick Shockey, student outreach fellow for SPARC and former student senator at Trinity University in San Antonio, told LJAN: “Until now, there has not been much of a student voice on this issue that affects students so much, and we have a compelling case to make. Limited access to research makes us settle for what is available rather than what is best and puts those students at smaller institutions that cannot afford multi-million dollar journal budgets at a disadvantage.”
