AmSci Forum readers who do not regularly read Peter Suber's splendid
Open Access News (OAN) should!
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
OAN provides a wealth of immediate information about OA developments.
It has been my first (and most frequent) daily port of call for
years now.
Yesterday Peter did two characteristically fair and gentle -- but
resolutely firm -- rejoinders to the increasingly shrill (but remarkably
shallow) attempts by representatives and partisans of some -- certainly
not all, possibly not even most -- sectors of the journal publishing
industry to oppose the growing number of Green OA self-archiving mandates
being adopted and proposed by research funders and universities
worldwide.
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
The two articles Peter rebuts are by Brian Crawford, Chairman of the
PSP Executive Council of AAP and an editorial by the CEO of ALPSP about
a similar -- but somewhat more reasoned -- article by Nevada librarian Rick
Anderson. As usual, the claim is that the Green OA self-archiving mandates that
have been adopted and proposed will destroy journals and peer review
by destroying subscription income. As usual, the reply is that (1)
there is to date no evidence at all that Green OA self-archiving will
not co-exist peacefully with subscription-based cost-recovery, but (2)
if and when it no longer does, then there will be a conversion to Gold
OA publishing-fee-based cost-recovery, paid for out of the very same
money that institutions now spend on subscriptions, money they would
have saved in having cancelled subscriptions (not money redirected
from research). But the fact that 100% OA is both attainable via the
Green OA mandates and highly beneficial -- to research, researchers,
research institutions, research funders, the vast R&D industry, students,
the developing world, and the tax-paying public that funds the research
-- is beyond dispute. Research is not funded and conducted in order to
guarantee the journal publishing industry's current revenue streams and
current ways of doing business.
For Peter's much gentler rebuttals, please see:
Crawford:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117496662083616559
Anderson:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007_03_25_fosblogarchive.html#117494461136900827
Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Mar 27 2007 - 12:55:09 BST