> The debate below has been going on for quite a while...
> Stevan use[s] numbers for what he considers to be solved
> and repetitive questions. It is not all that simple in our messy
world...
> ...research dissemination is not a logical process; it is a social
and
> institutional process. Speaking as if it were only logical ends up
confusing
> many issues because the simplification used is simply excessive...
> When arguments are pushed too hard, beyond their pragmatic social
> and institutional value, they may end up reading like rigid slogans,
> however good the logic behind these arguments may be. This is
> simply counter-productive...
It's a question of time. Others with more time on their hands and/or
fewer decades already wasted on OA may be content to sit back and wait
patiently for human nature to take its glacial social course toward OA
-- irked, perhaps, by the pointed and relentless pushing of others
toward a proven, immediate, practical solution.
But in the one brief lifetime vouchsafed one, I am not yet ready to
concede or believe that something as monumentally trivial as OA, and
as readily reachable as it has been for at least two decades, is
destined to keep on bumbling aimlessly as it has been, because of some
(unstated) law of human nature according to which this endless,
aimless, but far from speechless random walk toward nowhere is what it
is (and ever was) unalterably destined to be.
No, I shall continue to point out the simple, practical (and, yes,
logical) solution (self-archiving), already tried, tested, and
demonstrated to be feasible and successful in generating OA for
everything to which it is applied, until either the token drops, or I
do.
Because the solution is so simple, and there is only one, it is
unavoidable that there will be an element of repetition in continuing
to push for it. But there's the same element of repetition in
continuing to ignore it too; and I'd say that was even less productive.
(And I do try to preach it from a different angle each time, varying
my diction and my style. A nice bit of reciprocation would be to
actually pay attention to the content, for once, long enough to get
it, and act on it. That would be the best way to get me to shut up.
Failing that, just some sign of actually having grasped the simple
point at hand would be a rare and welcome treat for me, rather than
just the usual repetitive response of ignoring or misconstruing it for
the Nth time with a groan...)
I can think of nothing more counterproductive than these two
needlessly lost decades insofar as OA, ever within immediate reach, is
concerned (and I doubt that my relentless sloganeering has been any
bit more effectual in prolonging these decades than it has been in
foreshortening them).
Jeremiah
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Stevan Harnad
> Sent: Fri 10/30/2009 1:06 PM
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating
> Itself
>
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. <rnoel_at_indiana.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and
> > readers
> > arrive at Open Access?
>
> How they do it does not matter if they do arrive at OA. But it makes
> every difference if they don't.
>
> > the price of "Nuclear Physics B" (Elsevier) has been going down in
> > recent years
> > and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing
>
> Lower journal prices does not mean OA.
>
> > It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal,
> > but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal
>
> No, OA is the primary goal and lowering journal subscription prices is
> not a path toward that goal. (And journal boycott threats, even if
> motivated by OA rather than journal pricing, are ineffectual, as the
> PLoS boycott has shown.)
>
> Robert Noel is conflating the journal affordability problem and the
> research accessibility problem.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. <rnoel_at_indiana.edu>
> wrote:
> > Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and
> > readers arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths
> > to which Steven Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very
> > deliberately excluding other cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I
> > have not talked to Jackson about "Getting Yourself out of the
> > Business"; perhaps he read the "Wrong Advice" message below and now
> > agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know.
> >
> > It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby
> > (launched SPARC endorsed "Algebraic and Geometric Topology", and
> > "Geometry and Topology") were largely seeded by the spirit of
> > Jackson's strategy as opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has
> > been concerned about commercial publishers' journal prices and took
> > action that seems to me to have been constructive action (see
> > Notices of the AMS, 2004, "Fleeced"). The message of that opinion
> > piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's points, and not
> > so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions of
> > Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a
> > failure? The resignation of that Board was motivated by "Getting
> > yourself out of the Business". Similarly, the price of "Nuclear
> > Physics B" (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many
> > users of that literature regard that as a positive thing. Many
> > variables have driven that drop in price, and it's presumptuous to
> > think that none of them have to do with Jackson's points.
> >
> > Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic
> > than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly
> > reject other strategies from the outset. It makes me think that
> > open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to
> > open access is the primary goal, and that access itself is a
> > convenient result, but still an afterthought. It's tantamount to
> > engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar
> > and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a
> > country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev
> > trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual
> > energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact
> > counterproductive.
> >
> > Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how
> > civilization should communicate and share information?
> >
> > Bob Noel
> > Swain Hall Library
> > Indiana University
> > Bloomington, IN 47405
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
> > [mailto:boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
> > ] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM
> > To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
> > Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum
> > Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
> >
> > [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at:
> > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ]
> >
> > With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting
> > Yourself
> > Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps"
> > http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-busi
> > ness-in-five-easy-steps/
> > is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy
> > that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded
> > already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been
> > seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried:
> >
> > * Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other
> > works to
> > publications owned by for-profit firms.
> > * Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or
> > article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a
> > for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial
> > publisher.
> > * Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or
> > under the
> > control of a commercial publisher.
> > * Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series
> > being
> > published by a for-profit publisher.
> > * Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of
> > commercially
> > published journals or book series.
> >
> > In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a
> > boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their
> > journals
> > if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open
> > Access
> > (OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html
> >
> > Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals,
> > of
> > course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that
> > the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the
> > researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their
> > journals failed to comply.
> >
> > The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the
> > boycott
> > threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent
> > PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that
> > there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The
> > experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since
> > spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals)
> > of
> > a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not.
> >
> > But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that
> > providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish
> > in them instead of in their established journals, with their
> > track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the
> > author
> > publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since
> > they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very
> > slow and uncertain process.
> >
> > There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually
> > today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the
> > top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors
> > want
> > to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite).
> >
> > There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but
> > most
> > -- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi
> > journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence
> > most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the
> > signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most
> > researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their
> > preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more
> > often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or
> > their publication charges are a deterrent.
> >
> > Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either
> > threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the
> > planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers
> > who
> > were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could
> > instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed
> > research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA
> > repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make
> > them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
> > than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to
> > the
> > journals in which they were published.
> >
> > Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since
> > at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly
> > (interoperably)
> > since at least 2000.
> >
> > But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor
> > in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning
> > publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves.
> >
> > There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed
> > exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not
> > more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change
> > their policies or their economics. It is for researchers'
> > institutions
> > and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own
> > refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in
> > OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make
> > them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
> > than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the
> > journals in which they were published.
> >
> > I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA
> > advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their
> > own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching
> > more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what
> > researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they
> > should
> > deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.)
> >
> > OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research
> > community
> > to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution
> > that has been within its grasp all along.
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> >
> >
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page:
> > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f
> >
Received on Sat Oct 31 2009 - 20:23:36 GMT