Re-posted from Open Access News (Peter Suber)
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_17_fosblogarchive.html#a111401597393903685
Interview [of Peter Suber] on OA
Peter Suber, 'OA is not just a technical question
about how to finance journals or launch repositories"
http://www.inist.fr/openaccess/article.php3?id_article=80
Libre Accès à l'information scientifique & technique (from INIST
http://www.inist.fr/index_en.php - CNRS
http://www.cnrs.fr/), April
20, 2005.
"Eric Goetmann and Marie-Catherine Gunet interviewed me on
the state of OA today. The interview was in English but it's also
available in French. (The photo in the upper left corner is not
me!) Excerpt:
"'[In response to a question about OA in Europe.] The
cutting edge of the OA movement is now in Europe. In mid-2004, both
the US and UK looked like they might mandate OA to publicly-funded
research, a rational and long-overdue step. But by late 2004,
the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had retreated from the
strong policy recommended by the House of Representatives and the
UK government had rejected the strong policies recommended by the
House of Commons.
"In February 2005, however, the Berlin3 conference
in Southampton
http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html
issued exactly the policy we needed to move forward --namely, to
require deposit in OA archives and to encourage publication in OA
journals.
"The framers of this policy were largely European and most
of the universities, laboratories, and funding agencies now signing
on to the policy are European....
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
"[In response to a question about filling OA archives.] Too many
scholars don't know about OA archiving and its benefits. For example,
they may know about OA journals but not OA archives. They may know
about OA archives but not realize that it only takes a few minutes
to deposit their work.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/
"They may not know that OA significantly increases citation impact.
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
"They may not know that OA archiving is compatible with publishing
in a non-OA journal.
"They may not know that 80% of surveyed journals allow authors
to deposit their postprints in an OA institutional repository.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
"They may have a groundless fear that archiving their preprints will
make them ineligible for later publication, when in fact the number of
journals with such policies is small and declining. Too many scholars
overlook their self-interest and see OA primarily as a political
gesture or an act of charity. They need to appreciate that OA will
make their work more visible than any kind of priced publication
(in print or online), and will make it easier for readers to find,
apply, build upon, and cite. Scholars are very busy, but they're
not too busy to do research that they love. They're not too busy
to take unloved follow-up steps, like submitting their manuscripts
to journals, responding to referee comments, sending offprints to
colleagues, or sending updated bibliographies to deans or department
chairs. They find time for these unloved steps because they understand
the connection between them and career-building. What they have to
understand is that OA is career-building, whether it is through
OA archives or OA journals. Enlarging one's audience and impact
is career-building.'"
Received on Thu Apr 21 2005 - 00:15:06 BST