As part of Open Access week, Gordon Baylis, vice president for Research, spoke with WKU faculty and staff on the importance of research with the tongue-in-cheek presentation “The Value of Research: Tyranny and Democracy of Knowledge.”

Open Access week began four years ago, but has been celebrated annually for two, said Connie Foster, department head of Library Technical Services.

Open Access is full, free access of research articles for everyone, Foster said.

She said TopSCHOLAR is WKU’s version of Open Access, and its goal is to compile all of WKU’s knowledge in this one, centralized location.

WKU faculty, staff and faculty-sponsored students are able to publish

to TopSCHOLAR, Foster said.

Foster said this year alone, 63,000 people across the world have visited TopSCHOLAR and have downloaded 88,492 items.

Since TopSCHOLAR’s May 2007 launch, more than 145,000 items have been downloaded, she said.

Baylis said that all should be able to have access to such a vast database.

“But there are evils to the access to all of this information,” he said. “You’ll rue the day when your request for all of the information is answered.”