In the summer of 2001, I was commissioned by WHO to write a paper summarizing the spate of "free and low cost initiatives" that had appeared on the publishing horizon and their possible benefits to developing countries. Looking back through my archives I see that, with a consultant's magpie instinct, my first title for the study was "Open Access Initiatives", and the term "open access" occurs frequently throughout the paper - evidence that quite a few people must have been calling it that in early 2001 (I certainly didn't come up with the term!).
Don't forget that, at the time, "open" initiatives were the new black - open source, open knowledge, open archives, even open money! Chris ______________________________________________ Chris Zielinski WHO Regional Office for Africa TOffice: +47 241 39935 THome: +47 241 39400 M: +242-068 29 79 49 F: +47 241 39503 From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jan Velterop Sent: 07 August 2012 17:11 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: Omega Alpha | Open Access Subject: [GOAL] Re: First use of the phrase "open access"? Gary, About half a year before the BOAI meeting in December of 2001, in the early summer of 2001, BioMed Central already used the term on its web site ("BioMed Central's unshakeable commitment to open access."). And ever since. See Wayback Machine 9 July 2001: http://web.archive.org/web/20010709143907/http://www.biomedcentral.com/<http://web.archive.org/web/20010709143907/http:/www.biomedcentral.com/>. Best, Jan Velterop On 7 Aug 2012, at 00:29, Omega Alpha | Open Access wrote: Greetings. Does anyone know who/when first used the phrase "open access" to refer to toll free publication and/or access to scholarly literature, though not necessarily yet as a technical term? Could this be a candidate? I'm reading the transcript of Stevan Harnad's presentation: "Implementing Peer review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic Journals" in the Proceedings of the 1993 International Conference on Refereed Electronic Journals, 1-2 October1993. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba, 1994, 8.1-8.14, and come across the following excerpt: "Enter anonymous ftp ('file transfer protocol'--a means of retrieving electronic files interactively). The paper chase proceeds at its usual tempo while an alternative means of distributing first preprints and then reprints is implemented electronically. An electronic draft is stored in a 'public' electronic archive at the author's institution from which anyone in the world can retrieve at any time....The reader can now retrieve the paper for himself, instantly, and without ever needing to bother the author, from anywhere in the world where the Internet stretches--which is to say, in principle, from any institution of research or higher learning where a fellow-scholar is likely to be. "Splendid, n'est-ce pas? The author-scholar's yearning is fulfilled: open access to his work for the world peer community. The reader-scholar's needs and hopes are well served: free access to the world scholarly literature (or as free as a login on the Internet is to an institutionally affiliated academic or researcher)...." (8.4-8.5) The use here is clearly not yet technical, and yet it has all the earmarks of future application. The words "access," "open, "and "free" are used repeatedly in the Proceedings, but I was unable to find any the phrase "open access" was used elsewhere. I suppose the next question would be: At what point did this informal and (perhaps) coincidental use become formalized into a technical signifier? Curious and interested. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess@ gmail.com<http://gmail.com> | @OAopenaccess _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
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