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Budapest Open Access Initiative: BOAI Forum Archive [BOAI] [Forum Home] [index] [prev] [next] [options] [help]boaiforum messages[BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
On 1-Nov-09, at 10:21 AM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: >> SH: Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. > > TW: Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in any > event, it is > the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the > publisher. Free OA > journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial > publisher, > since it is without cost in either case. Irrelevant to what? I would say that it is the details of peer review that are irrelevant, when what we are seeking is access to peer- reviewed journal articles, all annual 2.5 million of them, published in all the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- of which only about a 5th at most, and mostly not the top 5th, are OA journals. If researchers -- as authors and users -- want OA, it borders on the absurd for them to keep waiting for journals to convert to OA, rather than providing it for themselves, by self-archiving their journal articles, regardless of the economic model of the journal in which they were published -- but especially for the vast majority of journals that are not OA journals. (And it is equally absurd for researchers' institutions and funders to keep dawdling in doing the obvious, which is to mandate OA self-archiving. And posting to unrefereed content to a "social network" is no ↵ solution to the problem. Among the many dawdles that never seem to relent diverting our attention from this (and our fingertips from doing it) are irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and publishing reform. And whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact keep burning to ash... >> SH: The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the >> publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to >> refereed >> research articles. > > TW: The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the > scholarly community > to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case > originally. > Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has made > redundant. In "any true sense"? What on earth does that mean? The only sense in ↵ which articles are truly free online is if we make them free online. Waiting for publishers to do it in our stead has been the sure way of *not* accomplishing it. >> SH: The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a >> (virtually cost- >> free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and funding. > > TW: The only way it is cost free is through the publication of free > OA journals - > anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with withdrawal of > permission to archive. Truly astonishing: Charging author/institutions publication fees today is decidedly not cost-free, especially while the potential funds to pay it are still locked up in subscriptions to journals whose articles authors are not self-archiving to make them free! The cost per article of an Institutional Repository and a few author keystrokes is risible. And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" canard, I expect that people can and keep invoking it, against all sense and evidence, for 10 more decades as yet another of the groundless grounds for keeping fingers in that chronically idle state of Zeno's Paralysis: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ >> SH: Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their own >> hands >> is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles >> in their university's OA Repository. > > TW: No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to develop > and publish in > free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the > publishers and that > can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes > evident. Repeating the Poisoned Apple canard does not make it one epsilon more true. Fifteen percent of articles are being self-archived, yet 63% of journals have already endorsed immediate OA self-archiving -- and for the rest, there is the immediate option of deposit plus the "Almost OA" via the IR's email eprint request button (for those authors who wish to honor publisher embargoes). http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html These are all just the same old, wizened Zeno's canards, being repeated over and over again, year in and year out. http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries I've lately even canonized them all as haikus -- ↵ http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/648-guid.html -- upgraded from koans: http://bit.ly/1CfGir But it doesn't work; they seem to be imperishable, and just keep being reborn, as my voice goes hoarse from making the same rebuttals and my fingertips decline into dystonia... >> SH: No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just >> deposit >> all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon >> acceptance. > > TW: I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is > happening now - there > is no reason why a dual strategy cannot be applied. The focus upon > repositories > at the expense of adopting free OA publishing supports the status > quo, which, > in any event cannot survive the changes taking place. You may not think you are arguing for waiting, but what you have been doing is invoking the main classical canards that have kept people waiting (instead of depositing, and mandating) for well over a decade now (including Gold (OA) Fever). I'd say 4000 Gold OA journals vs. 100 Green OA mandates is a a symptom of attention deficit, not focus. The total amount of OA provided via spontaneous Green OA self-archiving is and always has been greater than the amount provided by Gold OA publishing, but that (15%) is no consolation, considering that the other 85% is and has always been within reach all along too, whereas publishers' economic models are not. >> SH: The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research from >> access- >> barriers, not to free it from peer review. > > TW: I'm not arguing that publication should be freed from peer > review - I'm saying > that the developments in such things as social networking, etc. make > it > possible that non-peer-review open publication is one of the > possibilties. I would say that keystrokes and keystroke mandates, for the existing peer-reviewed literature, such as it is -- the one OA is trying to free -- are a far better bet (for OA) than speculations about the future of peer review. >> SH: The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's target >> content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the planet's >> 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and >> institution/funder self-archiving mandates. > > TW: Impossible to achieve - arguing for a single strategy when that > strategy is not > achievable is to bury one's head in the sand. Changes in > communication methods > will continue to take place and it is likely that multiple methods > of OA > publishing will evolve Impossible to achieve? Perhaps only in the sense that overcoming Zeno's Paralysis may not be possible to achieve. But certainly not because of the validity of any of the several Zeno rationales that you have invoked. And changes in "communication methods" are not what is at issue, when ↵ the target is to communicate validated peer-reviewed research rather than simply posting or blogging in a social network. (The latter is a supplement, not a substitute.) http://cogprints.org/1581/ Stevan Harnad -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] [Forum Home] [index] [prev] [next] [options] [help]
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