[GOAL] Re: Fee-free scholarly publishing

[Stevan Harnad]

If we wait for subsidized Gold OA in order to reach universal 
OA we will wait till the heat death of the universe.

Please, please let's get behind a realistic, pragmatic, scalable, 
sustainable, reachable course of action otherwise we will keep 
running off in all directions and getting nowhere for years and 
years to come.

There is only one (sic) such realistic, pragmatic, scalable, 
sustainable, reachable course of action and that is universal 
ID/OA mandates by funders and institutions.

Please let us back it, instead of compounding the confusion 
about what needs to be done, and how.

The priority should be clear: First ensure that an effective 
Green OA mandate (ID/OA) is adopted, and then -- and 
only then -- consider supplementary steps, such as 
trying to seek journal subsidies, 
or trying to seek further user rights,
or trying to improve navigation tools,
or trying to seek Gold OA fee payment funds, 
or trying to negotiate copyright agreements, 
or trying to reform copyright, 
or trying to reform publishing, 
or trying to reform peer review, 
or pursuing endless hypothetical, ideological debates,
or what have you… ?

Once we do reach the optimal and inevitable outcome 
(universal OA) we will be kicking ourselves for all the 
needless years of  somnambulism, despite the relentless 
wake-up calls.

Isn't the Finch Report symptom enough that we have been
dallying far too long with funding matters instead of doing
(and mandating) the few keystrokes it takes to provide 
cost-free Green OA?

Stevan Harnad

On 2012-08-17, at 12:38 AM, koltzenburg at w4w.net wrote:

> thanks, Heather
> 
>> Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has long 
>> had an academic journal subsidy program
> 
> incidentally, Croatia, too, which started their policy in Yugoslav times
> 
> for some details see the following from the Fifth Belgrade International Open Access Conference, 18-20 May 
> 2012:
> 
> Supporting Open Access nationwide	Jadranka Stojanovski
> University of Zadar, Zadar, and Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
> slide presentation: http://boac.ceon.rs/public/site/Stojanovski.pdf
> 
> Keynote Lecture Three
> Can Small Journals Provide Leadership?
> Ana Marušić
> University of Split, School of Medicine, Split, Croatia
> slide presentation: http://boac.ceon.rs/public/site/Marusic.pdf
> video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnJAENp7wqE
> 
> my source: http://boac.ceon.rs/index.php/BOAC/12/pages/view/presentations