Philosophical Transactions to the Finch report: The events that defined academic dissemination

Throughout history the creation and dissemination of knowledge has been influenced by innumerable ‘events’, cultural, technological and political in nature; from the invention of Cuneiform to the rise and fall of Classical civilizations and cultural incubation by the Catholic Church through the European Dark Ages to the Enlightenment. The invention of the printing press is obviously pivotal and in 1665 Henry Oldenburg inaugurated the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (Phil Trans), utilising print technology to establish the principles of scientific priority and peer review that have defined scientific discourse ever since. In the 20th Century scholarly publishing became exploited by commercial academic publishers and, as journal prices began to outstrip inflation, ultimately resulted in the “serials crisis” of the 1970s. These unsustainable price rises coincided with emergence of the internet and in 1990 Stevan Harnad introduced Psycoloquy, the first peer-reviewed online scientific journal which paved the way for free academic publishing on the web after 1993. In spite of this, and with the World Wide Web over 2 decades old, the traditional subscription model persists, dominated by multinational corporations that generate huge profits and restrict access to scholarly material. The Open Access movement is a worldwide effort to make scholarly work available online to everyone regardless of their ability to pay for access and in 2011 David Willetts set up a Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, chaired by Dame Janet Finch and publishing the so called “Finch report” in 2012. The HEFCE policy on OA that comes into effect in 2016 perhaps represents the most recent cultural and political event in this space. This paper will explore the events that continue to influence academic dissemination and examine how Universities and academics themselves, particularly early career researchers, can utilise modern technology to be part of their own open knowledge event.