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

From: Peter Banks <pbanks_at_BANKSPUB.COM>
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2007 09:30:55 -0500

The reason to focus so much on large medical journals is that, at least in
the United States, policy policy debate regarding scholarly publishing is
almost entirely focused on clinical medicine--and on rather ignorant
misconceptions of how OA can serve the general public.

Exhibit A among the Legislators-Gone-Batty is Sen.John Cornyn: who claimed
this in introducing the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (S.2695):

³^Êall Americans will be positively affected as a result of this bill:
Patients diagnosed with a disease or condition will be able to use the
Internet to access the full text of articles containing the latest
information on treatment and prognosis^Ê The Internet gives the homemaker in
Houston the ability to find volumes of information about a recent medical
diagnosis given to a family member.²

I have no met a homemaker in Houston who cares to read the American Journal
of Physiology, no offense to that fine journal.

On 1/29/07 3:26 AM, "C.Oppenheim" <C.Oppenheim_at_LBORO.AC.UK> wrote:

> Peter Banks wrote:
>
>> You, like so many in the OA community, are looking at small journals in
>> basic or social science and assuming that the funding is the the same for
>> medical journals (which are the center of public policy debate). Enlightened
>> debate on this topic demands that we not start with false assumptions.
>
> To which the obvious reply is:
>
> You, like so many in the anti-OA community, are looking at a very small
> number of large journals rather than the small journals that provide the
> vast bulk of scholarly information.
Received on Mon Jan 29 2007 - 16:25:25 GMT