I am of course in complete sympathy with the thrust of the posting by
my friend and OA comrade-at-arms, Keith Jeffery, but some minor
corrections on the message below need to be noted.
(1) COST: The core problem with the attempt to link Gold OA (publishing) with Green
OA self-archiving mandates is that it substantially increases the risk that the
mandates will not be adopted at all. The reason is that it would entail
diverting research funds toward paying Gold OA publication costs, today.
This would generate research community resistance to the OA mandates (and
already has).
(2) and (3) EASE OF ACCESS and COST are moot, because all Gold Publishers are
also Green. Hence all Gold OA journal articles can (and should) be self-archived
in the author's own Institutional Repository as well, just like non-OA journal
articles. That will guarantee the full functionality Keith rightly seeks
(including the all-important CRIS and CERIF functionality he urges).
Stevan Harnad
On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, Jeffery, KG (Keith) wrote:
> All -
>
> From a selfish point of view my arguments against OA Gold are as follows:
>
> 1. COST: on currently declared prices OA Gold would cost my institution at least 3 times more than the current subscription model (I know all gold journals say prices will come down but all evidence of past behaviour by publishers is to the contrary);
>
> 2. EASE OF ACCESS: with gold OA availability in many different storage/retrieval systems (1 per publisher) researcher time is wasted doing multiple separate searches. Past attempts by companies to provide a one-stop-shop portal have failed because publishers keep on changing their interfaces / APIs
>
> 3. CONTEXT: with gold OA publications in the databases of commercial publishers it is extremely difficult to provide the researcher or other end-user with integrated access from the publication to the research datasets, software etc related to the publication and also to the CRIS (Current Research Information System) data such as project, participants, organisations, facilities, equipment, events, patents, products etc etc which describe the context of the research (see CERIF under www.eurocris.org)
>
> With OA-green NOW all of these difficulties are overcome and researchers (and for that matter innovators/intermediaries/entrepreneurs, research policymakers and the media) get much better access to the research outputs. We currently run a Green IR ( epubs.cclrc.ac.uk ) with pre- and postprints and grey literature. We have tested the linkages mentioned above but they are not yet in full production.
>
> There are other arguments about decomposing the workflow of research output and paying for the parts that are necessary in a competitive open market but if I go down that route Stevan will (rightly) criticise me for speculation!
>
> K
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Received on Fri Jan 26 2007 - 11:13:47 GMT