Many members of the DePaul University community were saddened to hear of the recent death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz’s life and legacy have been broadly discussed over the past few days, including stories in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Given Swartz’s advocacy of the cause of open access to scholarship, the fact that the Tribune story is available only behind a “paywall” provides a notable irony.

Many scholars and scientists have decided to pay tribute to the complicated legacy of Aaron Swartz by making versions of their work freely available online through open access repositories such as DePaul’s Via Sapientiae and under the trending Twitter hashtag, #pdftribute.

The DePaul University Library has been an active participant in discussions of open access and the future of scholarly communication through its support for, and instruction in the use of, open-access content, including that found through the Directory of Open Access Journals, the HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive. The library also provides support for faculty members interested in publishing their work through open-access journals, including the Vincentian Heritage Journal, the Journal of Religion and Business Ethics and College & Research Libraries, all of which are edited by members of the DePaul community. 

DePaul faculty and students with an interest in learning more about the issues in scholarly communication inherent in the Swartz case, or in learning more about the manner in which they can better exercise their own copyrights as part of their scholarly work, are encouraged to speak with their liaison librarian or with Jim Galbraith, Associate Director of Libraries for Collections and Scholarly Resources.