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

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I feel I have to speak out against the opinions voiced by Stevan - I don't
like to do this as there is - possibly - a common goal. But they are so
exclusionary that they must be challenged, if only for those people people
on the list and more widely who are looking for guidance.

The idea that there is a set of "researchers" in Universities who deserve
special consideration and for whom public funds must be spent is offensive.
I fall directly into SH's category of "the general public", whom he now
identifies as of peripheral importance and thankful for the crumbs that
fall from his approach.. I have worked in industry, work with industry and
although I have been an academic am not now paid as one. The idea that I am
de facto second-class is unacceptable, even if you accept the convoluted
logic that this is necessary to achieve Green Open Access.

There are no areas of science and more generally scholarship which are not
in principle highly valuable to "the general public". I am, for example, at
present working in phylogenetics - not a discipline I have been trained in
- and I and my software wishes to read 10,000 papers per year. Most of
these papers could be of great interest to some people - they detail the
speciation of organisms and are fully understandable by, say, those whose
hobby is natural history or those with responsibility for decision making.

SH's pronouncements do considerable damage to the OA movement. I am a
supporter of publicly funded Gold OA and of domain repositories. I am not
prepared for these to be dismissed ex cathedra. Both work well in the areas
I am acquainted with - I am on the board of UK PubMedCentral and also on
the board of a BOIA-compliant Open Access journal (where, by the way, half
the papers come from outside academia and are every bit as competent and
valuable). I have personally not many any scientists who are highly
committed to Green OA and before stating their position as "facts" it would
be useful to hear from them and listen.

There is an increasing amount of scholarship taking place outside
Universities and without the public purse. Wikipedia is, perhaps, the best
example of this and could - if minds were open - act as an interesting
approach to respositories. It's notable that uptake of publication-related
tools such as WP, Figshare, Dryad, Mendeley, etc. is high, because people
actually want them. I would like to see effort on information-saving and
sharing tools that people need and community repositories.

I'll stop there - I sincerely hope that SH's list does not get wider
traction.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
emeritus Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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