I’m writing an assignment for a class I’m taking and two sentences in I said “This was before Open Access, and before Wikipedia.” That’s when I caught myself: Really? Is it really? Check it! And I spent the next 10 minutes looking for the birth date of Wikipedia (2001 – easily found on Wikipedia itself – perhaps the one topic it’s a definite source on) and the birth of the phrase or idea of “open access”. I found it! The phrase “open access” comes from the Budapest Open Access Initiative officially dated February 2002, and initiated at a conference in December 2001.
The assignment I’m writing is on MIT OpenCourseWare first proposed in 2000, announced in 2001, and launched in 2002.
So, yes, it was conceived before Open Access and Wikipedia were known, but this endless fact checking is why everything always takes so long to write…
I love MIT OpenCourseWare. I’ve been listening to Bob Weinberg’s Intro to Biology lectures lately.
Fact checking? That’s what grad students are for. Just make it up.
But I am a graduate student, so that’s why I have to fact-check!
well, there you go. Hoist by your own petard.