Translated by André Hagenbruch / Deutsche Version

I have been a supporter of the open movement for a few years: Research results particularly from publicly funded projects and facilities have to be provided to the public within the meaning of the Open Definition. It’s unacceptable that the taxpayer should have to pay several times for such research.

The more the publishers misappropriate the topic of open access, the more perverse practices arise. For example, authors are not allowed to self-publish preprints by their publishers under the pretence of the forthcoming open version despite the horrendous fees they paid for Open Access publishing. On top of that publishers don’t even reduce subscription costs (even though the authors do the most of the work anyway when publishing) …

I have come to think that I, as a member of an academic library, should go as a good example and publish my findings at least as green road Open Access publications. But unfortunately, the publishing practices of German Library and Information Sciences don’t adhere to this way of thinking, despite the many preachers advocating Open Access publishing…

In addition to the practical experience I wondered whether this actual practice in publication is still timely. There is certainly no easy nor general answer to that.
We live in a time in which one is almost permanently online, lives in social networks, and tries to discuss issues in these networks or on Google, Bing and so forth in a cooperative and open way. Increasingly we see that researchers document their findings and questions on blogs and discuss these by using the comment functions. Is there a better way of review than this?
At such a time it seems to me the classic publishing practices for the latest research findings are outdated, especially in a relatively soft science as is library and information science.

I have now decided to go handle this blog in this way. The advantage for me is the fact that I can make time-independent and smaller results of my work (topics of my blog) directly available to the public and discuss them. But there will certainly be situations where “old school” publications are useful for me and the community 😉

In this sense I am looking forward to feedback!