[GOAL] Re: Wikipedia founder to help in [UK] government's research scheme

[Jan Velterop]

In my view, this is why OA hasn't really taken off yet in a big enough way. All logic, little persuasion on an emotional level. 

BTW, Expunging mistakes from the peer-reviewed literature (whether they are willingly forged or not) is a nigh-impossible task. Peer-review works surprisingly well, in many cases, but it fails completely at times as well.

Jan

On 2 May 2012, at 12:40, brentier at ulg.ac.be wrote:

> Sorry, but I disagree with this. 
> 
> I understand all the help that celebrities can bring to a cause, but the choice of the celebrity should be wise. In this case, there is a dangerous risk of mixing up concepts.
> 
> Wikipedia is, by definition, the negation of peer reviewing. Or, at best, it is considering everyone as a peer to everyone else. 
> It works surprisingly well, by the way, in many cases, but it fails completely at times as well. Expurging mistakes from WP (whether they are willingly forged or not) is a very difficult task and it can take forever. And you cannot control everything.
> 
> I do not want to engage in a debate on Wikipedia's qualities and weaknesses, but tens of thousands of professors around the world spend time explaining their students why WP, though comfortable (who has never used it?), is a dangerous tool because it makes widely public a lot of informations that have not been reviewed by acknowledged specialists.
> 
> Considering how people these days conflate Open Access and lack of peer reviewing, considering our relentless efforts to fight this confusion, I find it dangerous for a government to choose WP's founder as an advocate of scholarly OA.
> 
> Bernard Rentier
> Chairman, EOS (Enabling Open Scholarship)
> http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/j_6/accueil
> 
> 
> 
> Le 2 mai 2012 à 12:47, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> a écrit :
> 
>> Strict logic is not what we win the battle for open access with. Some celebrity involvement is to be welcomed. On a visceral level the success of Wikipedia (not a logical outcome at the outset on the basis of the premises) may well influence the perception of open access.
>> 
>> Jan Velterop
>> 
>> On 2 May 2012, at 11:00, Andrew A. Adams wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>>>  "The [UK] government has drafted in the Wikipedia founder Jimmy
>>>>  Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain
>>>>  available online to anyone who wants to read or use it."
>>> 
>>> I was hoping that the new government might be less star-struck than the 
>>> previous one. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose, it would seem. We really 
>>> don't need Jimmy Wales advising on this. The team behind eprints has been 
>>> (with minimal funding) developing the technology needed for many years and 
>>> there are many academics in the UK much better versed in the intricacies of 
>>> UK academic work and life than Mr Wales. Sigh. I foresee another lost couple 
>>> of years wasted on this instead of getting to grips with the known problem 
>>> and the known solution (including providing better funding for eprints 
>>> development to the team that created it and still does the software 
>>> engineering for it).
>>> 
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> 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/
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> GOAL at eprints.org
>>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>> 
>> 
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