[GOAL] Re: R Poynder Interviews I Gibson About 2004 UK Select Committee Green OA Mandate Recommendation

[Jan Velterop]

In response to what we heard in the market, Richard. That our offering was launched so quickly after the Select Committee Report came out was more like a happy coincidence. 

Besides, should we have realised the importance of repositories as a result of the Inquiry, would there be a problem with actually offering concrete assistance to repositories some time *after* we realised the importance of repositories' role? Well, in our case the realisation came quite some time before we offered the service. These things take preparation, you know. Extraordinary, isn't it?

You may recall that we were convinced of the potential importance of repositories as evidenced already at the BOAI, and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access, both of which I signed on behalf of BMC.

The point I tried to make is that we argued for OA. And yes, we did try to convince authors to publish in the fully and immediately open BMC journals. Calling that "Lobbying for giving up authors' preferred journals in favour of Gold OA journals" is spin. Were I to use similar spin, I could say something like "the Green OA advocates are lobbying for authors to be mandated to deposit their manuscripts in repositories, and be forced to accept sub-optimal OA, with access delays, technical and usage limitations, and problematic financing of publishing via subscriptions." 

But spin is not doing Open Access justice. It is Open Access I advocate. Immediate and with full re-use rights. If 'green' achieves that, too, great. Most repositories do have final, published, OA articles in their collections as well. Open from day one. With CC-BY licences. 'Gold' is not antithetical to repositories. I don't think it is good, though, to be satisfied with sub-optimal solutions just for reasons of expediency. 

Jan

On 29 Oct 2012, at 10:34, Richard Poynder wrote:

>  
> On 28 Oct 2012, at 23:07, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> 
> 
> Giving up authors' preferred journals in favour of pure Gold OA journals was what (I think) BMC's Vitek Tracz and Jan Velterop had been lobbying for at the time 
>  
> Stevan may think so, but that doesn't make it correct or accurate. What we advocated (lobbied for in Stevan's words) at the time, and what I still advocate now, is open access. Period. We argued that a system of open access publishing at source is better than a subscription system, and we realised that repositories would likely play an important role in achieving open access. That's why BMC offered assistance with establishing repositories, and the company still does: http://www.openrepository.com
>  
> I think it would be true to say that BioMed Central launched its repository service in response to the Select Committee Inquiry?
>  
> http://www.biomedcentral.com/presscenter/pressreleases/20040913
>  
>  
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