Re: The easy way to 100% OA

From: Donat Agosti <agosti_at_AMNH.ORG>
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 14:14:33 +0100

-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of Leslie Carr
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 11:03 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: The easy way to 100% OA

On 4 Dec 2006, at 19:55, David Goodman wrote:

> 5. People who want OA will send you an email.
It's always worth standing back from the solution to which you are
dedicating so much effort and looking around to see if there are
easier/cheaper/better ways of achieving the same thing. Repositories
and OAI-PMH included. Now if PubMed (or Google/Scholar) were to
implement Stevan's "please email a copy of this article" button, then
yes, that could potentially deliver a kind of OA. The kind of OA that
depends on people's continual goodwill, rather than once-for-all
deposits.

Les Carr

The last point you make is just the real difference between Internet and
sending reprints by snailmail: "Just ask me and I send" as the only
alternative at that time. If one looks a bit into the future (I mean just
beyond OA as such), then any kind of such roadblocks disrupt a potential
seamless knowledgebase (all the oa journals, and the underlying primary
data) which, in a Web2.0 environment can be mined, data extracted from, etc.
It also opens up science to a much wider community which is not controlled
by arbitrary rules (eg OARE, AGORA, HINARI) or the goodwill of individual
scientists.
I think, this aspect is ultimately the legitimation of why open access is of
paramount importance for the future of science.
Open access as a necessary stepping stone for the future.



Donat Agosti
Received on Tue Dec 05 2006 - 14:05:37 GMT