[GOAL] Re: Dreadful Daily Mail article on Open Access

[brentier at ulg.ac.be]

Sorry, but  so far, the ivory tower is not where we, open access advocates, stand...


Le 18 juin 2012 à 22:13, "Eric F. Van de Velde" <eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com> a écrit :

> Stevan:
> Very well argued. As usual.
> 
> You convince me and, probably, most members of this list. My question is: Will that argument be a winning one outside the realm of the ivory tower?
> 
> It seems to me the UK publishers are taking their fight to an arena where they're in a much better position. Apparently, their access to 10 Downing Street remains strong. UK GOAL list members: Keep your voice mail safe! 
> --Eric.
> 
> http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com
> 
> Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
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> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 12:40 PM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde 
> 
> When replacing a high-margin industry with a low-margin one, when increasing efficiency in the distribution by going open access, there will be job losses and job substitutions in the whole pipeline of information delivery. These costs of Open access do not invalidate the goals and the value of open access...
> 
> How this evolution was supposed to happen was always a bit foggy....
> 
> Open access will destroy jobs initially, but it will also create jobs by making access to research free, which is particularly significant for start-up ventures. It may also lower the cost of education or, at least, help tame the educational rate of inflation...
> 
> We can speculate about the transition from the subscription model for recovering the costs of publication to the Gold OA model for recovering the (down-sized) costs of post-Green-OA publication.
> 
> But that is not what is at issue here. What is at issue here is an attempt to halt or marginalize Green OA mandates on the grounds that they may eventually cause the subscription model to become unsustainable.
> 
> There's nothing wrong with speculating about and even planning for the hypothetical transition.
> 
> But there's everything wrong with trying to stop it from happening.
> 
> Nor are the only interests involved, or the most important ones, those of a "high-margin industry [transitioning into] a low-margin one" (i.e., the publication industry). 
> 
> Far higher-stake players are the public research funding system, the university research system, the vast R&D industry, research itself, and the tax-paying public, who, to repeat, are not funding research to keep a high-margin industry from downsizing to a low-margin industry by denying research the open access that the online medium and technology have made possible.
> 
> If the Finch Report had recommended, as it should have: "Full speed ahead with extending and strengthening Green OA mandates in the UK and wordlwide -- and then lets plan on the transition from the subscription model for recovering the costs of publication to the Gold OA model for recovering the (down-sized) costs of post-Green-OA publication if and when Green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable" no one would have had the slightest objection.
> 
> But that's not at all what the Finch Report recommended. It declared Green OA a failure that would have threatened the survival of the publishing industry and it recommended instead a slow (foggy) evolution by spending money pre-emptively on Gold OA (even though subscriptions are still paying the bill in full) rather than on planning for "replacing a high-margin industry with a low-margin one."
> 
> Indeed, in eliminating Green OA, the Report would eliminate the very factor that would see to it not only that the research community soon has the OA it needs, at long last, but the factor that would see to it that publishing eventually downsizes from the high-margin industry it now is, to the low-margin one it will be, post-Green-OA.
> 
> So keep pursuing gold-dust, and forget about both OA and downsizing?
> 
> No, OA is not primarily about the economics of publishing, it is about the pragmatics of research practice and progress in the online era. I called it the tail in my prior metaphor, but publishing is more like the flea on the tail of the vast, global R&D dog. 
> 
> How long will it continue to be allowed to block the optimal and inevitable for everyone else?
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 
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