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

[Andrew A. Adams]

Eric Van de Velde wrote:

> 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.

Indeed, the analysis being quoted by David Willets and the Mail, and on which 
the Finch Report seems to be based, is a standard example of the classis 
"Broken Window Fallacy" where what is easily seen in the economy is taken to 
be more valuable than that which takes detailed analysis to observe and which 
can frequently only be estimated not directly measured (though those 
estimates if done properly can include decent upper and lower bounds and good 
confidence figures.

While the UK may see money come into its economy on balance from worldwide 
universities paying publishers their parasitic profits, the cost to UK 
Universities alone (let alone any other UK body which pays these profits) and 
how much amplification on wealth production (investment in universities is 
very lucrative for an economy, one of the reasons the current governments' 
strategies on university funding are so deeply flawed) would almost certainly 
outweigh any loss of income from worldwide publishing rents.

-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams                      aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan       http://www.a-cubed.info/