Extreme Open Access – scholarly publication as a public infrastructure  

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The whole idea of scholarship is oriented towards maximising the dissemination of research results. In this domain, research organisations should be able to design scientific information policies to help researchers to get access to existing publications (traditionally through journal subscriptions), publish their own results to a wide audience (by means of publication repositories) and manage associated research assets (laboratory notes, observations, primary sources, databases). Beyond the traditional, and probably sclerosing, categories of green and gold open access, I will defend a vision of scholarly communication that is entrenched in the wider notion of public research infrastructure. We need to see what the consequences of such a vision are, in terms of budget shifts, investments in technological settings, but also in changing the roles of research libraries so that they can provide the necessary editorial support to such environments. The change may be drastic, but this may be the only way to optimize tax-payers’ money at the service of science.