Challenges for the academic information enterprise: a report and analysis of two recent conferences and an important opinion paper

Article from a regional library association newsletterAll individuals and institutions which purchase professional journals are by now aware of the crisis in scholarly publication, especially in the areas of science, technology, and medicine (STM). At the University of British Columbia a taskforce studied the causes and effects of this crisis on universities and their libraries to make recommendations for future strategies. A report was published that is being used to educate our academic and funding communities. This article will extrapolate its broad recommendations into more detailed actions. Some recent events has let to a reconsideration of assumptions and to a believe that librarians in general need to extend their view of the information access problem to encompass the whole of the academic enterprise. The article summarizes main issues arising from two recent conferences on digital information and copyright and puts it in the context of a recent opinion piece by Eli Noam