An important addendum about the pre-Web but post-FTP "netlib" system from
Andrew Odlyzko (whose 1994 paper, "Tragic loss or good riddance? The
impending demise of traditional scholarly journals," was also a milestone
and classic of the OA movement that I neglected to mention). -- SH
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 22:00:57 -0500 (CDT)
From: Andrew Odlyzko <odlyzko -- dtc.umn.edu>
Comment on the thread "when did the Open Access movement "officially" begin"
Stevan's 9 milestones are a nice summary, but for those who are picky, it
might be worth adding at least one intermediate step between (1) and (2).
(This substantiates some of the suggestions in the discussion thread
about early OA efforts by computer scientists, before arXiv.)
FTP was a rather clumsy method, requiring knowing what was where, and
the esoteric commands that FTP required in its first few decades. Jack
Dongarra at Oak Ridge and University of Tennessee and Eric Grosse at
AT&T Bell Labs created the netlib system (for its current versions,
and a bit about its past, see
http://www.netlib.org/) in 1984. It
was designed primarily for distribution of numerical analysis software
by email, but it quickly started being used for distribution of preprints
(and my 1994 paper, "Tragic loss or good riddance? The impending demise
of traditional scholarly journals,"
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/tragic.loss.long.pdf
used it as an example of how to provide open access with little effort
for authors or readers, at that stage I was not sure the browser and
the World Wide Web would come to dominate information distribution).
Also, a small correction. While HTTP was indeed proposed in 1989, it was
not until 1993, with the widespread distribution of the Mosaic browser,
that the World Wide Web became widely used.
Andrew M. Odlyzko
University of Minnesota
Digital Technology Center
499 Walter Library
117 Pleasant St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
USA
Phone: 612-624-9510
Fax: 612-625-2002
URL:
http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko
Email: odlyzko -- umn.edu
Received on Thu Jul 05 2007 - 04:33:49 BST