Public lecture: The Future of Open Access to Research and Scholarship: Lessons from the Medieval to the Early Modern Era

Dr. John Willinsky
Stanford University

Lecture Details: Monday, October 23, 4–6 p.m., Great Hall, University Club

 

This talk will set the current state of open access in scholarly publishing within a larger history of access to learning that reaches back to the medieval period in the West. It will consider the role of the intellectual properties of learning played in the rise of both the university and modern copyright law. This history suggests a number of principles that might be kept in mind when considering today’s various initiatives for pursuing universal open access to research and scholarship, now that such access is being increasingly accepted as the longterm goal for scholarly publishing.

Biography: John Willinsky holds a PhD from Dalhousie University and is Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University, as well as Professor (Part-Time) of Publishing Studies at Simon Fraser University. He directs the Public Knowledge Project, which develops open source scholarly publishing software and his forthcoming book is entitled The Intellectual Properties of Learning: A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke (University of Chicago Press).