When it comes to weighing your options, it is easy to see why e-books became the more popular choice among so many. E-books refer to the electronic version of a book that can be read on a variety of devices, including but not limited to an e-reader, laptop, tablet, and smartphone.
Benefits of e-books
There are numerous reasons why e-books are beneficial for individuals as well as institutions. Some of the most popular reasons include the fact that they are space savers - because they do not take up physical space, they are easy to store at the convenience of the user. An entire collection of books can be housed on a single device. E-books are searchable - locating information can be quick and easy. With a multi-user license - there is no need to wait ages to use a book if someone else is using it. Multiple users are able to use the book simultaneously. Some e-books even have interactive features which include the use of audio-visual material such as music and animated images, as well as videos, which can enhance the message being portrayed in the book and make available various resources within a single item, some of which may include links to other related and relevant information. Best of all they are environmentally friendly so no trees need to die in order to produce them!
E-books are no doubt very useful and convenient, but as the old saying goes, "everything that glitters is not gold" and e-books are no exception.
Challenges of e-books
Not all titles are available in electronic format
Many licenses require repeated payments
If links are damaged, the books are inaccessible
Can be pretty costly as you need to acquire the correct hardware to gain access to the book
No Right or Wrong
There is no right or wrong choice when it comes to digital vs printed books. People prefer various formats for a variety of reasons. As for myself, when it comes to having to choose between a hard-copy of a book and a soft-copy, I am still one of those old school people who enjoy paging through a book and discovering the secrets they contain within their pages. I read to escape from an otherwise "online" life and I enjoy not having to worry about my book running out of power :)
Once upon a time, there were a group of scholars and researchers who set out to make the world a better place by making new discoveries, developing new theories, and advancing existing knowledge. They were not interested in being famous or making lots of money. They done what they done for the love of learning and sharing. Unfortunately, getting their work out there was not an easy task. They had to go through publishing companies who agreed to put their work out there for others to access. However, these publishing companies had a different agenda. Their aim was to make money. Though they do not do much to add value to the research they publish, they make a huge profit which, ultimately, benefits only them. Although they kept their word about putting the research "out there", they charged fee upon fee for the access and reuse of the research they now owned. Since most publishing companies own all rights to the research, they alone made the rules and researchers had no say. This began to trouble researchers as it thwarted their initial intentions and goals.
As these complaints continued to pour in from researchers and students, and as the internet continued to grow and make things more widely available to anyone and everyone, the cry of the people were heard and a new movement began! The movement of Open Access! This movement had two leading fronts, namely:
Gratis and Libre
Gratis who agreed that people should not have to pay to access research, but should be able to access the information freely as was the intentions of the researchers who produced the research. However, gratis did not give people freedom to use the research as they please, but maintained restrictions in terms of distribution, making copies, and modifying the research in anyway beyond that of fair use. Libre on the other hand, felt that research should not only be free to access, but also took it a step further by granting people additional rights and privileges by applying the Creative Commons license so that people could reuse and remix the research as required and the dreams of the researchers could be fulfilled, by sharing knowledge for the good of all the world!
Benefits of Open Access
Open Access also holds a number of benefits for libraries, institutions and students, where for libraries, resources will be accessed more often, institutions will have quality, credible information available to students, and students will have unlimited access to reliable research and resources at no cost to them.
BBB...Leaders of the Open Access Movement
Budapest OA Initiative: Literature that should be free to access should be those used by scholars not seeking payment for their contributions, including peer-reviewed journal articles as well as any un-reviewed pe-prints they wish to share online. By making this open access, it means that anyone wishing to use the research would be free of any technical, legal, and financial barriers that may previously have hindered them. The only limits remaining would be that granting authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be acknowledged and cited.
Budapest also proposed two methods of achieving open access namely:
Self-archiving
Open Access Journals
Bethesda Statement on OA Publishing: Extending on the definition of OA, some key points raised in this statement are that authors and copyright holders grant users free, irrevocable, worldwide perpetual rights to access, copy, use and distribute the work in a digital medium for any legal purposes, provided, again, that authors be correctly acknowledged and cited when their work is used.
Another point states that a complete version of all research and supplementary materials be deposited in at least one online repository, in a standard electronic format as soon as it published. The repositort should be controlled by a tertiary institution, governmental agency or well established organisation.
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Science and Humanities: There are minor differences between the Berlin Declaration and Bethesda Statement, but they essentially say the same thing.
To implement the Berlin Declaration at institutions a policy should be implemented
Requiring researchers to deposit a copy of all published articles in an open access repository.
Encouraging their researchers to publish research articles in suitable open access journals, where possible.
With information so readily available at the simple click of a button, it becomes easy to just spear-head your way through without stopping to consider that information, like most things, is protected. This is for the simple fact that people exhaust every effort to procure sound, credible information that can be used to further develop or enhance various aspects of life and the world as we know it. It becomes unfair, when others simply click a button, download a document and attach their name to it, taking credit where credit's not due.
...So how do we protect intellectual property?
Copyright and Creative Commons
Copyright: According to Harrod's Librarians' Glossary (2000) copyright refers to the procedure whereby original pieces of work also called intellectual property, including but not limited to books, music, and articles, are assigned a series of rights that prevent the unauthorized publishing, editing, broadcasting, etc of that work by anyone other than the creator of that work. Copyrights remains in place for the entire lifetime of the creator, plus an additional 50 years thereafter. Copyrights expire after the additional 50 year period is reached, in which case the work then becomes open to the public and is entered into public domain.
Creative commons: This refers to licensing by a non-profit organisation enabling the free and legal distribution of work that are otherwise copyrighted http://creativecommons.org/.
In a nutshell...
Knowledge is created to be shared, and used by others for personal insight and further development. however, we need to be careful when reproducing information and ensure that sources are correctly acknowledged by citing works that are not your own and referencing them so that they can be verified. This is especially important for us as students and current or future researchers to be aware of so that we do not end up being perpetrators of intellectual theft (plagiarism).
