We (Open.Michigan) are also thinking about how to engage students, particularly undergraduates, in advocacy and include them in this conversation. They are already creating new community standards for sharing work and ideas, but this has mainly been in the amateur world where profit hasn’t mattered. However, they all understand that big media is controlling content and forcing them to make concessions about sharing certain types of content. They want to retaliate but sometimes do not know how. My point here is that the culture is changing and movements like Open Access and Open Education might join in with groups like Students for Free Culture. The base principles have quite a bit of crossover.

Comment 1: Whether one accepts the http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/442-guid.html definitions of the two kinds of Open Access (“gratis” and “libre”) or one prefers to deny free access the honorific of “open,” the fact is that we do not even have free online access (whatever we choose to call it), and that asking nonproviding authors to do more, and asking institutions and funders to mandate that they do more is even more difficult than just getting them to provide the free online access, which only 72 institutions and funders — out of perhaps 10,000 worldwide — are so far doing. (Without even that, it’s all just a name-game.)

(The necessity of http://tinyurl.com/cbprro “re-use rights” for the verbatim texts of peer-reviewed research journal articles (as opposed research data, or Disney cartoons) is perhaps also worth giving some more thought.)

Comment 2: For how students can help OA, see: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/358-guid.html “The University’s Mandate To Mandate Open Access.”

Comment 3: Before getting too taken up by the theory of the “Great Conversation,” it might be a good idea to makes sure free access (at the very least) is provided to its target content.