Criticizing supporters of giold OA

From: (wrong string) édon <jean.claude.guedon_at_umontreal.ca>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:46:02 -0500

    [ The following text is in the "utf-8" character set. ]
    [ Your display is set for the "iso-8859-1" character set. ]
    [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]

In a recent post, in response to Tom Wilson, Stevan Harnad wrote:

That's what I'm banging on about. I'm not criticizing the pursuit of
other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm
criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without first doing the
doable, and already long overdue.

This is a telling admission:

1. So, an individual motivated to launch an OA journal, and only
that, and who works exclusively on that project, is going to be
criticized even though his contribution is obviously positive for the
OA movement. !!!!

2. The argument seems to rest on efficiency, probabilities, etc., but
what happens if the individual in question reacts by saying: it is an
OA journal that interests me, or nothing? In other words, if this
"banging on about" end up repelling a number of people, is it so very
efficient?

Another statement says the same thing in slightly different words (in
response to Marc Couture):

The one point on which we may not see quite eye to eye is whether an
individual who (unlike Marc) has not self-archived, nor promoted
Green OA self-archiving for the sake of OA, should promote Gold OA
publishing (or journal boycotting) for the sake of OA.

First of all, the hypothetical individual in question will certainly
not ask permission to promote OA his (her) way from Stevan Harnad.

The symmetrical statement would lead to the strange conclusion that
if people have not promoted journals or Gold OA, they should not
promote green OA alone... Let us leave boycotting aside; it is not at
all at the same level as publishing a journal or self-archiving.

How about decoupling the two roads a little? How about letting people
support what they feel comfortable with? How about banging on people
that oppose OA, rather than on people that support OA in a slightly
different way?

Jean-Claude Guédon
Received on Thu Nov 12 2009 - 20:19:23 GMT