On Thu, 25 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote:
> PLoS and BMC are open access publishers and thus have to be expected to put
> most of our effort into promoting open-access journals, just as you put most
> of your effort into promoting self-archiving.
Mike,
I put all of my effort into promoting open-access provision, via the
Unified Joint Open-Access Provision Policy:
(OAJ) Researchers publish their research in an open-access journal if a
suitable one exists, otherwise
(OAA) they publish it in a suitable toll-access journal and also
self-archive it in their own research institution's open-access research archive.
I have been promoting both components of this strategy for over 10 years,
and the OAJ cost-recovery model in particular since well before either
PLoS or BMC existed! For some time now I have been faithfully promoting
them jointly, as the complementary components they are.
OAA (self-archiving) is not promoting a product, nor has it ever had
a subsidy or promotional budget, as PLoS and BMC have. It is being
promoted purely on the strength of the existing evidence as the powerful
and effective means that it is for providing immediate open access to all
of the peer-reviewed research literature: The existing evidence is that
OAA actually does provide at least three times as much OA as OAJ does
today, and could provide OA to all current journal articles overnight,
tonight.
>sh> I hope... Public Library of Science (PLoS)... officially supports
>sh> and promotes the signing of this statement to institutions in its
>sh> own open-access promotional efforts. So far, both PLoS and BMC have
>sh> been promoting only [OAJ] and not [OAA] in their negotiations with
>sh> institutions.
>
> I can't speak for PLoS on my own, but will run this by our board and staff
> and will pass any additional suggestions they have on to you.
If the Public Library of Science is dedicated to promoting OA for all
journal articles, and not just to promoting OA journal publishing for its
own articles, I hope that it will elect to use its vast subsidy to promote
the Unified Joint OA Provision Policy, rather than just promoting OAJ alone.
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Received on Fri Dec 26 2003 - 02:19:35 GMT