An OASIS in the turbulent open access times
OASIS, the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook, was launched in 2009 with seed funding provided by the Information Program of the Open Society Institute and the personal efforts of two open access advocates, Alma Swan and Leslie Chan. Their efforts are supported by an international steering committee/advisory board of very recognizable open access advocates.
OASIS combines the traditional notion of pulling together useful content with the practice of community building, allowing registration and participation among a group of pre-defined communities of interest:
If you browse around the site, it becomes quickly apparent that all the content dates from mid to late 2009, so OA bloggers and tweeters can rest assured that OASIS is not attempting to be generating its own report of immediate news. There is certainly usefulness in creating and distributing customizable materials that project a consistent story, as well as build an easier on-ramp to open access advocacy. The organizers and advisors of OASIS are some of the busiest and in-demand advocates for open knowledge issues in their respective countries and in cross-pollinating advocacy organizations.
Now that is it built, will users come? It would be interesting to see the pattern of users registering for the site. Just as my blog is attempting to fill a niche of need -to-know about open access and biomedicine, perhaps the simple categories of librarian or researcher are too general to lead a reader to enroll. But for front line advocates new to their advocacy roll, there is a good set of repurposeable material to get started, endorsed by the champions of open access and covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
