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

[Arthur Sale]

I did not think that my comments would be as controversial as this. They are
plain common sense. Please let me make three points:

 

1    It is almost beyond doubt that the Australian NH&MRC funder mandate
that is proposed was strongly influenced by general public pressure to
access biomedical research. It was not as strongly influenced by researcher
pressure for access. I suspect the same is true of the NIH mandate and
certainly when it was being mandated there were many calls for researchers
(regardless of discipline) to support the NIH mandate. A researcher outside
his or her area of expertise is acting as a member of the general public,
not a relevant researcher. (I will accept OA researchers as relevant, of
course.)

 

2    Industrial and commercial developers and exploiters are not
researchers. They seek to exploit research and yet they often find
difficulty in accessing it, especially in small business. This is common in,
for example, ICT, general practice of medicine, and agriculture). That's why
I lump them in with the general public.

 

3    I challenge the group to nominate an area of science or social science
in which there is not public interest. I assert that there are none. Even
the Large Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson (to take the very small and
apparently irrelevant) and cosmology (to take the very large and apparently
irrelevant) are interesting to some. Maybe the best place to search might be
esoteric inorganic chemistry, but even then there are people who want
access. I don't think advanced maths cuts the mustard either.

 

BROAD SUPPORT

 

I cite public interest in climate change, the environment, earth-crossing
asteroids, whether Pluto is called a planet or not, the genetics of plants,
solar photovoltaic cells, energy, and any of the myriad fields and
cross-disciplinary areas that exist. As well as the simple existence of
science journalism (often unhealthily focused on Nature and similar peak
journals), magazines like New Scientist, and science fiction. I suspect that
there is more public interest in economics research and environmental
research (including climate) than there is in biomedical research, though
the last are often more vocal if they think their lives are at stake.

 

But I should really let Darwin have the last say. He knew that his and
Wallace's research (arguably the most important ever) was going to be of
huge public interest. The public did not contribute much to the follow-up
proofs and development (scientists did), but there is surely no doubt that
Darwin's thesis benefitted hugely from the public interest?

 

REPLACEMENT

Having re-read what I had written, I thought I should try to be positive.
Let's ditch Stevan's Points 8 and 9 and replace them by:

 

"8. All peer-reviewed research outputs are of direct interest to differing
subsets of the general public. Some have small subsets; others large.

 

9. Hence, for all research, "public access to publicly funded research" is
good reason for providing OA, or for mandating that OA be provided, while
noting that this argument is more persuasive to managers and politicians
than to researchers who rely on peer assessment for financial rewards."

 

For reference, the original was: 

 

"8. But most peer-reviewed research reports themselves are neither
understandable nor of direct interest to the general public as reading
matter.

 

9. Hence, for most research, "public access to publicly funded research," is
not reason enough for providing OA, nor for mandating that OA be provided."

 

 

Arthur Sale

Tasmania, Australia

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