I'm looking for vivid and persuasive anecdotes that show the benefits of open access and the harms caused by the lack of open access. I'll use them to support the important but sometimes abstract policy arguments for open access.

Go back through your memories, email boxes, and conference notes to reassemble stories that can help change minds. The anecdotes must be true, of course, and should be detailed and well-documented. Please supply citations or links when you can.

I'm not looking for anecdotes like the launch of a new open-access archive or journal. I'm looking for concrete examples of how open access to research literature has helped people, or how the lack of it has caused harmful delay, expense, exclusion, or error.

Please send your anecdotes and supporting details to our discussion forum. That way, everyone can make use of them, you can see what's already been put forward, and we can harness the forum's wide readership to correct errors and add missing details and documentation.

If you're already a subscriber to the forum, send your stories to <SPARC-OAForum@arl.org>. If not, then first subscribe by sending any message to <SPARC-OAForum-feed@arl.org>.

Thanks,
Peter

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