Hello Angie (and list),

I, too, have looked at Greg Bak's paper and found it of considerable value
(I've thanked Andrew for the link on another list). Unlike you, though, I
have been able to view it without payment, as I am affiliated to a
university, which is why I feel moved to write this post.

It seems to me that our practice as records and information managers or
archivists (or both) is severely curtailed by the fact that so much
material in our fields is cut off behind paywalls, in both professional and
academic journals. This was raised by a practising records manager at a
Northumbria University seminar a few years ago as a serious problem in
cross-fertilizing practice with research and vice versa.

There are beacons of light: some of the most prestigious journals in our
field are *nearly* open access ('American Archivist' holds back only the
few most recent issues; 'Archivaria', though holding back more, follows the
same model). Other journals of comparable standing, however, still remain
effectively inaccessible. And that is just in our own immediate
disciplines: in this interdisciplinary and networked world, we could find
innovative thinking and practice in virtually any field.

The purpose of this post is not to have a go at publishers, but to make a
plea to all of us who publish relevant material in publications that are
not freely and openly available. It is neither right nor of benefit to our
fields of work and study that the fruits should be available to Angie or
anyone else only at $40 a shot. Especially when so much of what an author
is able to bring to a publication benefits from those very communities of
practice whose members are excluded from access to most of this work.

Many, if not most, of the publishers impose only partial restrictions on
authors in making their individual contributions available. Thus, if you
have written an article or book chapter or conference paper, you may not be
permitted to share copies of the published version, but may be allowed to
share the pre-print draft. Or there may be a time-limit beyond which it is
legitimate to share a copy of the formally published version. Perhaps
publication is permitted for educational use, broadly defined.

Whatever wriggle-room you have, use it—many of your peers, colleagues,
teachers, and students are already doing the same. Put a copy of the paper
on your own website, in an institutional repository, in a 'bank' maintained
by a professional body. Join academia.edu as an independent researcher and
upload your publications there, where you can also easily find and interact
with others working on the same topics and interests. Do this for all of
your current and future work; if you are one of those eminences of our
fields who has a list of publications as long as your arm, digitize them
and upload them if you haven't already done so. Go on, do it now, and feel
the luuurve! ;-)

And, as a brief and far from exhaustive coda, some links to open-access
material:

• JURN, a curated index covering more than 4,000 e-journals in the arts and
humanitites: http://www.jurn.org
• Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): http://www.doaj.org
• A handful of personal bookmarks to more specifically RIM-related OA
journals: http://www.diigo.com/list/paradoxographer/ark-_-oa-periodicals

Best regards,
Rachel Hardiman

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