In a blog post for Inside Higher Ed, college librarian Barbara Fister considers University of Minnesota Press director Doug Armato’s January blog post on open access and the future of scholarly publishing alongside a recent statement from the American Historical Society in favor of protecting scholars’ dissertations from public view. Her reaction:
What’s especially worth noting is that the publisher is more interested than the scholarly society is in how ideas flow in and out of various stages of development and how much more public this activity is today – and why that’s a good thing. Armato sees the publisher’s work as “pattern recognition” rather than gatekeeper or conveyor of disciplinary distinction.
I think the change in the way scholarships works today is set up much better for acquiring students than before. It allows the accepted more freedom also in their transitions.