Report on the First International Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Scholarly Publishing Conference

In the January 2008 issue of the journal Searcher, David Mattison reported on the first International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference 2007, held in Vancouver, British Columbia, from July 11-13, 2007. The keynote speech was given by Prof. John Willinsky, author of a key work on scholarly communication, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship and one of the pioneers of the open access and open source software movement.

Because the conference covered a wide array of issues that are essential for the development of scholarly communication (the need for more open access journals, open access archives, education of academics, etc.), the article serves as an excellent overview of scholarly communication and its future. The article is available to the BC community. True to his own philosophy, Willinsky has made his book, The Access Principle (MIT Press, 2005), freely available.