Knowledge Unbound

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  • This is the home page for my book, Knowledge Unbound: Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002–2011 (MIT Press, 2016). — Peter Suber.

About the book

  • The book manuscript was submitted in 2011, at almost the same time as the manuscript for my shorter book, Open Access (MIT Press, 2012). We decided to publish the shorter book first, and hold this collection until the first book had a chance to establish itself.
  • The date range in the subtitle was originally 2002-2010. Here's more than you want to know about why we changed it to 2002-2011 without changing the contents of the book.
    • There's only one essay in the collection from 2011 (Open access for digitization projects). I first published the first version in my newsletter in July 2009. But then I published a slightly revised version in a collection from the Nobel Foundation in 2011. I made the revisions in August 2009, but the revised version didn't appear until 2011. For the present book, I wanted to take advantage of the revisions I made for the 2011 edition. While we could have called the revised version a 2009 article, in the end we decided it ought to be dated 2011.
  • Also see the book home page for Open Access (MIT Press, 2012).

About this book home page

  • I haven't yet decided how to use this book home page. I'm creating it now in order to let me decide later.
  • I don't plan to add the kinds of extensive updates and supplements that I added to Open Access.
  • Earlier in planning the book with MIT Press, I was going to write a brief appendix of "second thoughts" for each article in the collection. But in the end we dropped the idea. By enlarging the book, the second thoughts would force us to drop several of the articles themselves. I might write some of those second thoughts here.
  • The book only contains 44 articles. I might use this page to list the articles I like best that didn't make it into this collection, from before and during the 2002-2011 period, as well as afterwards when they couldn't even have been considered. Meantime, see this (nearly) complete list of my writings on OA.


  • Open Accessories, Radio Berkman, recorded February 26, 2009, released March 3, 2009. A 17:30 minute podcast interview with me by David Weinberger.
  • E. Canessa and M. Zennaro (eds.), Science Dissemination using Open Access, Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, July 2008. (This book knits together pieces from many sources into a single narrative. Several of the pieces are mine.)
  • "Open access", a radio interview with me by Jesse Brown for his show, Search Engine, on Canada's CBC Radio One, May 29, 2008. Now a podcast. The interview starts at minute 13:30 and lasts about seven minutes.
  • Towards Open Access, The Earlhamite, Winter 2008. An interview with me by Jonathan Graham. (Not online.)
  • The Promise of 'Open Access' Publishing, transcript of a live, online colloquy sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2004. Lila Guterman was the host who moderated the discussion, and I was the guest who answered questions.
  • The Database Paradox: Unlimited Information and the False Blessing of 'Objectivity', Library Hi Tech, 10, 4 (1992) 51-57.
    • A revised and expanded version of "How Teachers Teach, How Students Learn: Teaching in a Blizzard of Information," in Evan Farber (ed.), Teaching and Technology: The Impact of Unlimited Information Access on Classroom Teaching, Pierian Press, 1991, pp. 67-74, which is itself a revised and expanded version of "Teaching in a Blizzard of Information," Issues in Science and Technology, 5, 4 (July 1989) 29-31.
    • Copy in DASH.
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