Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week

A few years ago, we started the web-site Who Needs Access? to highlight some of the many ways that people outside academia want and need access to published scholarly works: fossil preparators, small businesses, parents of children with rare diseases, developing-world entrepreneurs, disability rights campaigners and many more.

Who Needs Access? is an anecdotal site, because often people will respond more to stories about individuals than to numbers. As has been said, “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”.

But as scientists, we also want to be able to point to evidence for the wider importance of open access outside academia. To that end, I am delighted to announce that we now have a Who Needs Access? Bibliography, kindly contributed by ElHassan ElSabry. (ElHassan is doing his Ph.D on the wider impact of open access, at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. Part of his work will involve analysing and synthesising the articles in this bibliography, so we can expect additional useful contributions from him.)

Check out the bibliography!