Peter Suber interviewed by INIST/CNRS

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 00:15:06 +0100

    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

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