On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> um, nowadays (especially in hitech like CS or Bio-sciences) a publication
> has a serious value - with epsrc and related funding often contingent
> on approaching 50% industry matched money, you may find any publication
> with any conceiveable future application of real world value will require
> some sort of IP protection on the invention (if in systems work, we write
> a LOT of software, we need to make damn sure who owns t before we a)
> write a paper about it, and b) do a startup....likewise patents.
OA is about access to the *publication,* not to the invention. Trade
secrets are either not published, or patent-protected. If they are not
published, OA is moot; if they are published, the usual benefits of
OA to the publication apply.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#27.Secrecy
> publication and academia as activities do not (now or ever) sit in some
> glorious isolation, so this black and white model is unhelpful.
All true, but all irrelevant to OA...
> on the other hand, despite being an unceremonious voter, I happen to
> agree with the motives behind both your work on metrics, and on trying
> to free up academic publication - but note this is not a clean economic
> position - it is a _political_ statement....
The view on metrics might be political, but the one on OA certainly is
not. If someone agrees on the merits of publishing something at all, it
is incoherent not to agree also on the merits of maximising access to
that publication (except if the publication is royalty-bearing, as in the
case of books). Those who wish to minimise access need merely make their
text accessible only to their chosen private audience (if any), rather
than to make it public, through publication...
Chrs, Stevan
> (and of course,as such doesnt represent the views of my employers,
> whether they be Cambridge, Microsoft, Intel, Paris VI or Thomson (yes,
> i work for all of them as well as trying to increase the sum of human
> knowledge +in my spare time+:)
>
In missive <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710021410070.32400_at_login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>, Stevan
Harnad typed:
>
> > On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Harold Thimbleby wrote:
> >
> > > A landmark publication... in which Andrew Adams says academics do
> > > their work
> > > for free. Hmm.
> >
> > At the risk of prolonging this topic -- not long ago unceremoniously
> > voted off this list -- I cannot but caution careful reading: All Adams
> > says (and quite correctly) is that the authors of peer-reviewed research
> > journal/conference articles, unlike the authors of, say, books, give
> > away those writings rather than selling them for royalty or fee. No
> > one said they were not employed and funded to do the research. But
> > since their employment and funding is contingent ("publish or perish")
> > on both the publication and -- increasingly -- the uptake, usage and
> > impact of their research, they, quite naturally, do not wish to put up
> > any needless access-barriers to their potential research impact. That is
> > why they mailed reprints to reprint-requesters in paper days, and that
> > is why many do (and all should) self-archive those papers, free for all,
> > in their OA Institutional Repositories, in today's online era. And that
> > is why their employers and funders should mandate that they all do so.
> >
> > QED
> >
> > > At 12:32 pm +0100 2/10/07, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Andrew Adams (2007) has written a powerful, relentless and
> > > > devastating
> > > > critique of Kevin Taylor's (2007) "Copyright and research: an
> > > > academic
> > > > publisher's perspective." Adams cites other archivangelists in
> > > > support of
> > > > his position, but this lucid, timely, rigorous and compelling
> > > > synthesis
> > > > is entirely his own. It will be seen and cited as a landmark in the
> > > > research community's delayed but inexorable transition to Open
> > > > Access.
> > > >
> > > > Taylor, K. (2007) Copyright and research:
> > > > an academic publisher's perspective. SCRIPT-ed 4(2) 233-236
> > > > http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-2/taylor.asp
> > > >
> > > > Adams, Andrew A, (2007) Copyright and research:
> > > > an archivangelist's perspective 4(3) SCRIPT-ed 285
> > > > http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-3/adams.asp
> > >
> > > --
> > > Prof. Harold Thimbleby
> > > http://www.cs.swansea.ac.uk/~csharold
> > >
>
cheers
>
jon
>
Received on Thu Oct 04 2007 - 12:34:40 BST