Re: ALPSP's Facts About OA Report

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:11:19 +0100

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005, Jan Velterop wrote:

> The best defense against the dangers of self-archiving is pro-actively
> offering open access publishing. OA publishing is completely
> compatible with self-archiving, mandatory or voluntary.

It seems the only ones who keep talking about the "dangers" of
self-archiving are publishers, whether OA or non-OA -- and ever without
a shred of evidence.

Speaking instead for the research community: what we need "defense"
against is not a hypothetical danger, with no objective evidence for
its effects. We need defense against an actual loss of research impact,
with unrelenting daily, monthly, yearly evidence of its effects. We need
immediate defense against daily access-denial and the resulting daily
impact-denial, which amounts to 50%-250%+ of our total potential impact.

And mandated self-archiving (along with publish-or-perish) provides
that immediate defense against daily access denial and impact loss. No
contingency whatsoever on OA publishing, and certainly no need to wait
for "pro-active" OA publishing (welcome though it would be, but which,
unlike self-archiving, cannot be mandated)...

On all existing evidence, both OA and non-OA publishing are completely
compatible with self-archiving.

Stevan Harnad
Received on Sat Oct 15 2005 - 01:31:11 BST