Open access as enterprise in the colonies

There are so many ways I could spin this bit of news. It’s tempting to go with how wonderful it is the National Library of Australia will host an open access repository. I’ve thought this was the way to go for some time, in part because of the costs to government of keeping the present business model, in part because good things happen when national libraries give legitimacy to open access – things like a reputation for quality and greater ease of repository searches.

But as that seems so self-evident, I’ll instead run with how nifty it is that Open Journal Systems is the software platform being used to run the national library’s venture. OJS is a project of the Public Knowledge Project underway at Simon Frasier University and the University of British Columbia. The software is open source, of course, which goes some way to reducing publishing costs.

Here’s hoping that Library and Archives Canada follow suit.