On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, Philip Hunter wrote:
>sh> ...one wonders how long it will take this stratum of the planetary
>sh> population (the research community), reputed, as it is, to be among its
>sh> brightest, to grasp, at last, that open-access is *already* within its
>sh> reach
>
> Speaking of 'strata of the planetary population' makes it sound as if you
> hail from somewhere beyond this planet, or else are floating somewhere
> far above us :-)
Philip,
No, I'm just another member of the research community (pointing out that
it's raining)...
>sh> Meanwhile, we archivangelists can hardly take heart in the fact that
>sh> we will eventually be seen to have been the bright lights that showed
>sh> the way, for it is so overwhelmingly obvious that our prophetic message
>sh> is no more profound or ingenious than the intellectual equivalent of
>sh> "It's raining: Put on your raincoats!"
>
> You are right. It *is* perfectly obvious within the Harnad model.
There is no "Harnad model"! ("Hypothesis non fingo"!) It is a brute
(and banal) fact that immediate open access to one's own articles can
be provided by self-archiving them, and that this has already been
successfully done for about 15% of articles, but still needs to be done
for the remaining 85%.
> However the Harnad model isn't the only one (as I have suggested before),
> despite your reluctance to embrace the possibility that there are other
> ways of framing problems and solutions. When solutions are 'overwhelmingly
> obvious', almost no-one troubles to look at other options, and so they
> don't exist.
There is no Harnad model; and I believe I have not only looked at but
*adopted* all the solutions so far proposed in the Unified Open-Access
Provision Policy:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
Have I left out anything? Paying the journal to self-archive for you? Go
ahead, if you feel like it! But do it! Don't sit around in the rain
getting wet!
> It is also perhaps (may I suggest) unwise to phrase your case in language
> which suggests an atmosphere of evangelical enthusiasm and self-proclaimed
> prophetic insight. We are talking about rational choices here, not
> the religious conversion of those without (in the Harnad model), their
> 'bril bona-fides'.
I think you have missed the irony of my metaphor! So evidently you don't
like my style. Then perhaps we could talk about substance: What exactly is
it that I am missing?
Or is it that we are not yet agreed that it's better not to stay out in
the rain without a raincoat (i.e., better to provide immediate open
access for one's research rather than to let it keep needlessly losing
research impact while we keep waiting)?
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0025.gif
Stevan Harnad
P.S. You might have your occasional jeremiads too, Philip, if you had been
doing this for as long as I have!
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
To join the Forum:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Post discussion to:
american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Hypermail Archive:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
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 Wed Feb 04 2004 - 23:44:45 GMT
