[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List

[Stevan Harnad]

On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 4:45 PM, Beall, Jeffrey
<Jeffrey.Beall at ucdenver.edu>wrote:


> I would ask Prof. Harnad to clarify one thing in his email below, namely
> this statement, "OA is all an anti-capitlist plot."
>
> This statement's appearance in quotation marks makes it look like I wrote
> it in the article. The fact is that this statement does not appear in the
> article, and I have never written such a statement.
>

No, you wrote the following (and more), for which that was a mercifully
short synopsis (in scare quotes):  "*The OA movement is an anti-corporatist
movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it
disagrees with…."*

Prof. Harnad and his lackeys are responding just as my article predicts.
>

[!]

 *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org
[mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org<goal-bounces at eprints.org>]
*On Behalf Of *Stevan Harnad

> *Sent:* maandag 9 december 2013 16:04
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of
> Beall's List
>
>
>
> Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open
> Access <http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514>.
> TripleC Communication, Capitalism & Critique Journal. 11(2): 589-597
> http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514
>
>
>
> This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall
> is doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals,
> but I now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy
> theory! "OA is all an anti-capitlist plot." (Even on a quick skim it is
> evident that Jeff's article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright
> nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but
> maybe this is a good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's
> list is as kooky as this article! But alas it will now also give the
> genuine "predatory" junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting
> Jeff's work altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing lobby
> some good sound-bites, but they use them at their peril, because of all the
> other nonsense in which they are nested!)
>
>
>
> Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to set
> the stage:
>
>
>
> *JB: **"ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be
> about making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much
> different. The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to
> deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement
> is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that
> restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders
> sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing
> countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access
> journals.  The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous
> predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of
> research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of
> pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science."*
>
>
>
> *JB: **"[F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA advocates...
> demand that for-profit, scholarly journal publishers not be involved in
> scholarly publishing and devise ways (such as green open-access) to defeat
> and eliminate them...*
>
>
>
> *JB: **"OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for mandates,
> focusing only on the supposed economic benefits of open access and ignoring
> the value additions provided by professional publishers. The arguments
> imply that publishers are not really needed; all researchers need to do is
> upload their work, an action that constitutes publishing, and that this act
> results in a product that is somehow similar to the products that
> professional publishers produce….  *
>
>
>
> *JB:  **"The open-access movement isn't really about open access.
> Instead, it is about collectivizing production and denying the freedom of
> the press from those who prefer the subscription model of scholarly
> publishing. It is an anti-corporatist, oppressive and negative movement,
> one that uses young researchers and researchers from developing countries
> as pawns to artificially force the make-believe gold and green open-access
> models to work. The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free
> choice away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an
> onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats...*
>
>
>
> *JB: **"The open-access movement is a failed social movement and a false
> messiah, but its promoters refuse to admit this. The emergence of numerous
> predatory publishers – a product of the open-access movement – has poisoned
> scholarly communication, fostering research misconduct and the publishing
> of pseudo-science, but OA advocates refuse to recognize the growing
> problem. By instituting a policy of exchanging funds between researchers
> and publishers, the movement has fostered corruption on a grand scale.
> Instead of arguing for openaccess, we must determine and settle on the best
> model for the distribution of scholarly research, and it's clear that
> neither green nor gold open-access is that model...*
>
>
>
> And then, my own personal favourites:
>
>
>
> *JB: **"Open access advocates think they know better than everyone else
> and want to impose their policies on others. Thus, the open access movement
> has the serious side-effect of taking away other's freedom from them. We
> observe this tendency in institutional mandates.  Harnad (2013) goes so far
> as to propose [an]…Orwellian system of mandates… documented [in a] table of
> mandate strength, with the most restrictive pegged at level 12, with the
> designation "immediate deposit + performance evaluation (no waiver
> option)". This Orwellian system of mandates is documented in Table 1...  *
>
>
>
> *JB: **"A social movement that needs mandates to work is doomed to fail.
> A social movement that uses mandates is abusive and tantamount to academic
> slavery. Researchers need more freedom in their decisions not less. How can
> we expect and demand academic freedom from our universities when we impose
> oppressive mandates upon ourselves?..."*
>
>
>
> Stay tuned!…
>
>
>
> *Stevan Harnad*
>
>
>
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