Open Access and Alternative Medicine Research

research (Photo credit: suttonhoo)

I recently tried to tell a story from my experience about why Open Access is important but failed to get the whole story across to the people because of a number of factors as often is the case certain prejudices about private colleges in inner Sydney got in our way also this was at my work so.. interruptions took us away to other pressing issues. 

So I have decided to do a blog about the problems that some people encounter accessing information who are doing real research for example through a private college teaching alternative modalities (this was before universities in Australia recognised alternative medicines in any way (1994), such as Naturopathy but their place of study does not have the resources for them to access the journals and articles they need to write a major final year paper on echinacea. 

As my example takes place many years ago the journal articles that the student needs to access are still in paper form and luckily several universties hold copies of these in their collections. The student goes to the university library  gathers her journals and copies the articles she wants to cite in her work and all ends well with what is seen by the students lecturer as ground breaking research paper on echinacea and asks that the paper be submitted to a well respected alternative medicine journal where it is published.

Lets now place the same student in our digital world of 2013 writing the same paper the problems that are now presented to that student to access the articles she needs:

• The journals and articles needed to complete the research are now only available electronically and due to licencing restrictions by the publishers that the university library have been forced to agree to make these resources only accessible by students and staff who are members of the universities.

Does the story end here yes it does unless someone breaks the law and gives the student copies of the articles they need they are pretty much stuffed.

Here is a good video that also demonstrates the point well.