Why should scholars care about open access publishing? Dan Cohen explores the ways in which open access, although associated with new media, actually aligns well with traditional scholarly values. Cohen looks at a number of these values, such as impartiality and the advancement of knowledge, as well as the more self-centered values, such as reputation.

Dan Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and the Director of the Center for History and New Media. Dr. Cohen is the co-author of Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), author of Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), and has published articles and book chapters on the history of mathematics and religion, the teaching of history, and the future of history in a digital age in journals such as the Journal of American History, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Rethinking History. He is the co-editor of Hacking the Academy and the author of Learning from the Blog: The Ivory Tower and the Open Web, both forthcoming in 2012 from the University of Michigan Press.

At the Center for History and New Media Dr. Cohen has co-directed, among other projects, the September 11 Digital Archive and Echo, and has developed software for scholars, teachers, and students, including the popular Zotero research tool. Dan Cohen's Digital Humanities blog (http://www.dancohen.org/) is one of the most read in academia, with thousands of subscribers–more subscribers than many academic journals–and an average of 10,000 unique readers a month. Major posts on the blog have reached an even wider audience; for instance, Cohen's “Is Google Good for History?” was read by over 50,000 people and received coverage ranging from Inside Higher Ed to Wired.