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

Mon Jun 18 23:33:21 BST 2012

Peter:
Thanks for the jobs response. It will go a long way.

Bernard:
I love the ivory tower as a place where you make rational argument
irrespective of where it takes you, where one can disagree yet still have a
two-way conversation.

And, then, this tweet arrived from @techdirt:

Disruptive Innovation Is Not An Orderly Process
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20120612/01404419282/disruptive-innovation-is-not-orderly-process.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

--Eric.

http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com

Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
Telephone:      (626) 376-5415
Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde
E-mail: eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 1:26 PM, Peter Suber <peter.suber at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Eric,
>
> For a direct response to the publisher claim that OA will cost jobs, see
> my blog post from January of this year.
> https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/L6QNRbt4S8x
>
> For a longer version of same response, see my article in the March 2012
> issue of SOAN on the Research Works Act and Federal Research Public
> Access Act. (The article covers many other topics; for this particular
> argument, see Section 1.11.)
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-02-12.htm#rwa&frpaa
>
>      Peter
>
> Peter Suber
> gplus.to/petersuber
>
>
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde <
> eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The statement
>>
>> Publishers are concerned that if an open access policy is adopted then
>> some of the biggest scientific companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline, might
>> move research work from British labs to those overseas where it will able
>> to protect itself from open access.
>>
>> is particularly ridiculous. That a newspaper puts this out is even more
>> amazing. By this reasoning, freedom of the press should be really harmful.
>>
>> However, as open access moves into the political realm, the larger issue
>> of "jobs" should not be dismissed cavalierly. 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.
>>
>> The open access movement has sidestepped this issue by being rather
>> pollyannaish. The message was simple: Everyone just keeps doing what they
>> have always been doing. Just add Green Open Access to mix. Eventually, this
>> will evolve "the system" in favor of openness.
>>
>> How this evolution was supposed to happen was always a bit foggy. As Open
>> Access is closing in on its goals, reality will set in that there is no
>> gradual, evolutionary path of disruption where the system remains in
>> perfect equilibrium at every step of the way. One cannot disrupt without
>> being disruptive.
>>
>> I do not think one can counter the jobs argument by simply denying it.
>> 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. This will not be an easy
>> argument to make to a skeptical public, which will be presented with
>> misleading PR like the one in the Daily Mail article.
>> --Eric.
>>
>> http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com
>>
>> Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
>> Telephone:      (626) 376-5415
>> Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde
>> E-mail: eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 8:34 AM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>>
>>>> From: CHARLES OPPENHEIM <c.oppenheim at btinternet.com>
>>>> To: "Global Open Access List \(Successor of AmSci\)" <goal at eprints.org>
>>>> Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 14:31:21 +0100 (BST)
>>>> Subject: Dreadful Daily Mail article on Open Access
>>>> The author is the City/Economics Editor of Daily Mail I believe.  That
>>>> makes the lack of research and the taking of an unnamed organisation's
>>>> statement as gospel truth all the more unacceptable.  This would have been
>>>> bad for a rookie journalist, but for a respected senior journalist, well,
>>>> words fail me.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://m.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2160753/Open-access-puts-UK-jobs-risk.html
>>>>
>>>> Charles
>>>> Professor Charles Oppenheim
>>>>
>>>
>>> Prepare for more press distortions when the Finch Report is released
>>> tomorrow.
>>>
>>>  We won't be able to counter it if we all run off in all directions. The
>>> essence of what we need to say to debunk Finch report (which is itself
>>> almost as distroted and biassed as the Daily Mail article!) is super-simple:
>>>
>>> 1. The Finch Report is a successful case of lobbying by publishers to
>>> protect the interests of publishing at the expense of the interests of
>>> research and the public that funds research.
>>>
>>>  2. The Finch Report proposes doing precisely what the US Research
>>> Works Act (RWA) -- since discredited and withdrawn -- failed to accomplish:
>>> to push the Green OA self-archiving and Green OA self-archiving mandates
>>> off the UK policy agenda as inadequate and ineffective and, too boot,
>>> likely to destroy both publishing and peer review -- and to replace them
>>> instead with a vague, slow evolution toward Gold OA publishing, at the
>>> publishers' pace and price.
>>>
>>> 3. The result would be very little OA, very slowly, and at a high Gold
>>> OA price, taken out of already scarce UK research funds, instead of the
>>> rapid and cost-free OA growth vouchsafed by Green OA mandates from funders
>>> and universities.
>>>
>>> 4. Both the loss in UK's Green OA mandate momentum and the expenditure
>>> of further funds to pay pre-emptively for Gold OA would be a major historic
>>> (and economic) set-back for the UK, which has until now been the worldwide
>>> leader in OA. The UK would, if the Fitch Report were heeded, be left behind
>>> by the EU (which has mandated Green OA for all research it funds) and the
>>> US (which has a Bill in Congress to do the same -- the same Bill that the
>>> recently withdrawn RWA Bill tried to counter).
>>>
>>> 5. The UK already has 40% Green OA -- twice as much as the rest of the
>>> world. Rather than heeding the Finch Report, which has so obviously fallen
>>> victim to the publishing lobby, the UK should shore up and extend its
>>> cost-free Green OA funder and institutional mandates to make them more
>>> effective and mutually reinforcing, so that UK Green OA can grow quickly to
>>> 100%.
>>>
>>> 6. Publishers will adapt. In the internet era, the research publishing
>>> tail should not be permitted to wag the research dog, at the expense of the
>>> access, usage, applications, impact and progress of the research in which
>>> the UK tax-payer has invested so heavily, in increasingly hard economic
>>> times. The benefits to research of cost-free Green OA vastly outweigh the
>>> (natural) pressure to adapt to the internet era that they will exert on the
>>> publishing industry.
>>>
>>> Stevan Harnad
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> GOAL mailing list
>>> GOAL at eprints.org
>>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>>>
>>>
>>
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