[GOAL] Re: Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access

[Andrew A. Adams]

> Researchers may already know that providing peer access is in their
> best interest, yet they don't massively take that interest to
> heart. The scientific 'community' is very conservative. Scientists,
> like politicians, are generally into reluctant followship, less into
> leadership. In my view it is time to change tactics and put more
> effort into mustering the persuasiveness that the potentially more
> dynamic general public may be able to provide. A recent spate of
> articles in The Guardian and The Observer in the UK, and even articles
> in The Economist, are good examples of what can be done to create an
> atmosphere in which not providing open access is frowned upon and
> becoming unacceptable. The pressure of public opinion can be
> formidable, particularly on governments and government-backed funders
> (though rarely admitted, of course). Recent steps taken by the RCUK
> may well (subconsciously) have been inspired by a desire to preempt
> such public pressure (and having to admit that 'it was the pressure of
> public opinion wot did it'). Especially in times of austerity it pays
> to keep the general public on board. Literally.

Jan,

How much influence does public opinion actually have on real policies and 
real actions by ordinary academics, though? Having been an academic union 
activist for a number of years and having tried to talk to my friends about 
the highly stressful situation of academics and the poor pay they receive in 
the UK, I found that even those with degrees (most of my friends) really had 
no understanding of academic work, situations etc. I suspect that's the 
reality found by most academics. Since they know non-academics don't 
understand academia, they tend to ignore pressure from the general public on 
specific issues because they assume the general public just doesn't "get it" 
about academia (and in many cases they are right, even if they're wrong in 
this one).

Getting the general public to support OA may help in getting funder mandates, 
although as we've seen, often those funder mandates are slightly mis-aimed at 
central deposit. The numbers also suggest that support for medical literature 
will be easy (everyone needs health and even those without the understanding 
will know someone (their own doctor if no one else) who would probably 
benefit from OA). However, the number who actually read any field are likely 
to be a minority, and those who read any particular field an even smaller 
minority. Trying to get them all to get behind OA in general may well be hard 
to do with the publishers using their large warchests to fight us in the 
public debate (if you think large warchests don't matter in public debate, 
look at US presidential politics).

We're also talking about where to focus our (i.e. archivangelists) efforts to 
achieve the quickest route to as much OA as we can get. Spreading ourselves 
thin by trying to swing general public opinion round as well as the rest may 
end up delaying OA if instead we focussed on persuading researchers, 
librarians and managers at universities and research institutions that it is 
in their best interests to adopt a mandate and promote it with the Liege 
model. By all means where there are opportunities to promote public access 
and funder mandates let us do that, but not at the expense of following up on 
the hopefully S-shaped curve of mandate adoption to keep it moving on the 
increasing acceleration path we've seen in the last few years. I think we're 
in danger of taking our eyes of the ball just as we are beginning to get 
somewhere with mandates.

-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/