Re: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article in Nature Magazine

From: Peter Banks <pbanks_at_BANKSPUB.COM>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2007 08:50:30 -0500

It is quite astounding to hear the outcry over publishers engaging in "media
messaging" rather than "intellectual debate."

For years, the OA camp has used media messaging--with its attending
distortions and gross simplifications--to great effect. Consider a pearl
like, "Taxpayers have the right to access research they have already paid
for." Indeed they do. They can look at exactly what they have paid
for--which is research up to the stage of preprints. They have not, however,
paid for peer-review, copyediting, composition, or any of the other value
that a publisher adds to the manuscript. That inconvenient fact has not,
however, stopped OA advocates from disingenuously implying that publishers
are cheating taxpayers from something they already own. (By this logic, one
might argue that citizens have the right to free bread for having paid
agricultural subsidies.)

Before OA advocates start huffing about the need for "intellectual debate,"
they need to demonstrate their own intellectual integrity.

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
10332 Main Street #158
Fairfax, VA 22030
(703) 591-6544
CELL (703) 254-8862
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pbanks_at_bankspub.com
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www.associationpublisher.com/blog/
Received on Sat Jan 27 2007 - 04:22:16 GMT