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

Fri Dec 13 14:44:01 GMT 2013

Dear Sally, if you allow a view from the periphery, my answers below

On 13 December 2013 08:44, Sally Morris <sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>wrote:

>  I don't deny that re-use (e.g. text mining) is a valuable attribute of
> OA for some scholars; interestingly, however, it is rarely if ever
> mentioned in surveys which ask scholars for their own unprompted definition
> of OA.  That suggests to me that it is not fundamental in most scholars'
> minds.
>
> The few responses to my original posting have all focused on whether the
> 'credo' of the BBB declarations is or is not fundamental to the underlying
> concept of OA.  I find it interesting that no one has commented at all on
> the two main points I was trying to make (perhaps not clearly enough):
>
> 1)    The focus of OA seems to be, to a considerable extent, the
> destruction of the publishing industry:  note the hostile language of, for
> example, Peter M-R's 'occupying power'
>

I have not seen any call for destructing anything. Just the opposite, there
has been a attempt to rescue some of us who suffer for not being able to
connect with you, central scientists, because 1) we can't normally afford
subscriptions (so, we can't read you and stay updated)  and 2) we can't
include our contributions as we work in problems that are of no interest to
whoever controls the editorial line of the so-called core of science.

So, please, think again who is really destructive?

>
> 2)    It still seems curious to me (as to Beall) that scholars have to be
> forced, by mandates, to comply with a behaviour which is considered be
> self-evidently beneficial to them
>

Mandates, as far as I have understood, are required to change current
default, automatic behaviour. More scholars simply do not want to think of
this and blindly assume that we all have equal access to knowledge. It is
not the case.

> Does this mean that everyone agrees with me on both points?!  ;-)
>
> Sally
>
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Penny Andrews
> *Sent:* 12 December 2013 17:04
>
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of
> Beall's List
>
> Sally, for many scholars (who do currently exist, not just in the
> future) textmining is their main research activity. Open licensing to do
> that unimpeded isn't some theoretical paradise, it's what they need right
> now to do their work.
>
> On Thursday, December 12, 2013, Sally Morris wrote:
>
>>  I agree completely that 'green' and 'gold' (however tightly or loosely
>> defined) are the means, not the end
>>
>> But I still feel that the BOAI definition may be an unnecessarily
>> tight/narrow definition of the end: optimal scholarly exchange, as you put
>> it (or unimpeded access to research articles for those who need to read
>> them, as I would perhaps more narrowly describe it)
>>
>> Sally
>>
>> Sally Morris
>> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
>> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
>> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>>
>>
>>  ------------------------------
>> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
>> Behalf Of *Jan Velterop
>> *Sent:* 12 December 2013 13:44
>> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly
>> CompromisesCredibilityofBeall's List
>>
>>  But Sally, so-called 'green' and 'gold' are the means. The BOAI
>> definition is an articulation of the end, the goal. Of course, if you
>> navigate the ocean of politics and vested interests of science publishing,
>> you need to tack sometimes to make progress against the wind. That's
>> permissible, even necessary. But it doesn't change the intended destination
>> on which a good sailor keeps his focus. If that's religion, anything is.
>> (Which may be the case :-)).
>>
>> One mistake made by some OA advocates is to elevate the means to the
>> goal. Another one is to confuse the temporary course of tacking with the
>> overall course needed to reach the destination.
>>
>> In the larger picture, OA itself is but a means, of course. To the goal
>> of optimal scholarly knowledge exchange. And so on, Russian doll like. But
>> that's a different discussion, I think
>>
>> Jan Velterop
>>
>>
>> On 12 Dec 2013, at 12:03, "Sally Morris" <sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  What I'm saying is that OA may have done itself a disservice by
>> adhering so rigidly to tight definitions.  A more relaxed focus on the end
>> rather than the means might prove more appealing to the scholars for whose
>> benefit it is supposed to exist
>>
>> Sally
>>
>> Sally Morris
>> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK  BN13 3UU
>> Tel:  +44 (0)1903 871286
>> Email:  sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>>
>>
>>  ------------------------------
>> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
>> Behalf Of *David Prosser
>> *Sent:* 12 December 2013 08:37
>> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises
>> CredibilityofBeall's List
>>
>>  Let me get this right, Jean-Claude mentioning the Budapest Open Access
>> Initiative to show that re-use was an integral part of the original
>> definition of open access and not some later ('quasi-religeous') addition
>> as Sally avers.  And by doing so he is betraying some type of religious
>> zeal?
>>
>> One of the interesting aspect of the open access debate has been the
>> language.  Those who argue against OA have been keen to paint OA advocates
>> as 'zealots', extremists, and impractical idealists.  I've always felt that
>> such characterisation was an attempt to mask the paucity of argument.
>>
>> David
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
>

-- 
Jacinto Dávila
http://webdelprofesor.ula.ve/ingenieria/jacinto
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20131213/654e6d6d/attachment.html 