Re: Physics World: The CERN Gold OA initiative

From: (wrong string) édon <jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 09:49:56 -0500

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Le jeudi 08 mars 2007 à 13:13 +0000, Stevan Harnad a écrit :

 On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, David Prosser wrote:

[snip]

 *Allowing* research fundees to use part of their research funding to
cover publication costs at their own discretion is not the problem (and
I of course have no objection to that). That is simply a change in the
allowable category of expenditure, as you note, and leaves the choice
entirely up to the fundee.

However:

(1) On no account is the *needless* redirection of scarce research funds
towards other uses than research welcome.


This raises an interesting issue: when a research council, such SSHRC in
Canada, supports 161 journals at the tune of about 2 million dollars a
year, it is obviously choosing to divert that amount of money from scarce
research funds. Following Stevan Harnad's argument would lead one to
recommend the abolition of such support to SSHRC. How politically
acceptable would such a recommendation be?

The point I am trying to make (and I have made it over and over in this
list) is that scientific and scholarly research, however "pure" it claims
to be, however insulated from the world it tries to be, remains very
dependent on the social structure that surrounds and finances it. This
little "detail" should be worked out fully in any policy discussion and
any reiteration of first principles will simply not be very helpful. This
little "detail" ought to be a central focal point for a list allegedly
devoted to policy building.

Jean-Claude Guédon
Received on Thu Mar 08 2007 - 15:38:39 GMT