In “Open Science: A Revolution in Sight?,” Bernard Rentier provides an overview of the Open Access (OA) movement. He acknowledges the affordances of the digital realm and points out where the academy is still holding fast to traditional practices like closed peer review and prestige-based publishing, even in the face of better options. Rentier also discusses the OA policy at his institution, the Université de Liège, which requires all faculty to deposit publications in their institutional repository. Decisions regarding promotion, funding, and other benefits are made using the repository records rather than ancillary CVs or applications. This heavy-handed approach to OA has proved very successful for U Liège, and 91% of survey respondents were satisfied with the system when polled in 2015. Overall, Rentier urges his readers to accept and enact OA practices, and calls for the global academic community to engage a coordinated approach to OA before it is too late to do so.

 

Work cited

Rentier, Bernard. 2016.  “Open Science: A Revolution in Sight?” Interlending & Document Supply 44 (4): 155-60.