Access
One of the biggest barriers to self-directed education is access to the materials and media as well as the advice about where, when and how to develop cogent, useful skills, reliable knowledge and positive, productive attitudes. It is fully within my philosophy of education that access should never, ever be too costly for anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is commercialization that creates the greatest barriers of cost to distribution. Open Source and Open Access are two paths toward lowering the costs of access. Antitrust actions b;rought by the US DOJ against Apple, Google and Amazon may rectify some of the commercial barriers to access. Patents and copyright are only temporary barriers to access and these impediments are becoming increasingly fungible through new business models. For instance, give away the product but provide support, if needed, at cost.
Open Source mostly targets and includes software accessible to everyone through a General Public License (GPL) accessible through a websites that deliver open code applications from servers. This software is not copyrighted but is said to be copyleft; that is to say it is a part of the Creative Commons, recognizable with the legend CC BY NC , rather than © . NC says that use must be non commercial and BY means attributing the source or author. Typically the only restriction on the use of such licensed software is that the authors are credited (BY). There may also be restrictions on the commercial use, which mostly means that no fee is charged for the code per se (NC). however, when the distribution (Distro) is by way of media such as a DVD or flash drive, the cost of that form of distribution may be recovered through a one-time fee. Examples of open source software include the Linux Operating System, Wikipedia. Open Office, Libre Office, YouTube, Flickr, Skills Commons, PloS and many others. All of education should become open source and open access.
The phrase “Open Access” is most typically applied to literature in the form of journals; the Public Library of Science (PloS) being an excellent example. It has become a highly used form for dissemination of scholarly articles. Open Access distributions are emerging and now includes some textbooks. Open Access was greatly stimulated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) when the US Federal Agency began requiring grantees to publish without copyright restrictions.
A common form for Open Access is for the author(s) to pay for publication. These Open Access fees are often in the range of $1,000 to $5,000 with a typical fee of around $3,000. These fees pay for editing, printing and distributing the journal. These fees are included in proposals to grant-making agaancies dnd foundations. Any number of journals are distributed to the membership of a professional organization that includes the journal as a benefit of membership. Cost, of course, can also be mitigated by not using ink-on=paper—providing distribution through only the Internet as HTML or PDF files.
Certain eBooks are published in such a way that readers are charged nothing or a very nominal fee. This is also used by the Kindle publisher Amazon for many of their books. With payment of an annual fee, a reader of Kindle books may acquire virtually unlimited access to the library of Kindle books listed by Amazon. Presumably Amazon uses the revenue from the Kindle membership to pay royalties to the authors and at a rate that may be very comparable to a royalty of around !5-30% from an individual sale of the book in its print or electronic form. For any book published in the Kindle format (.modi) and priced under $9.99, the royalty is nominally a very generous 70%. When a Kindle eBook is priced above $9.99, the royalty drops to 35%. Similar rules of pricing aply to Amazon paperback books that are also published as Kindle Books. The logic and economics of this is sensible but is neverhteless baffling.
Open Access has changed the publishing industry dramatically. One outcome has been the rise of Independent Publishers (Indies). This is because it is no longer necessary for the publisher to own and maintain very expensive printing presses and to warehouse literally hundreds to thousands of books prior to distribution. Just-in-Time (JIT) printing is common. One conspicuous publisher using JIT strategy is Barnes & Noble. The printed cost of a 200 page book with a hardcover may be around $25.00 for just a single copy even when the book is a vanity self-publication and does not include an International Standard Book Number (ISBN). Textbooks are slowly becoming open access.
Open Access and Open Source have opened the world of education to any with personal motivation to develop skills, knowledge and attitudes that serve a larger community.