[GOAL] Re: [SCHOLCOMM] More Skulduggery from the Scholarly Scullery: Sore Losers

[Stevan Harnad]

On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Joseph Esposito <espositoj at gmail.com>wrote:

I cannot agree with Professor Harnad on this.  The obvious first point to
> make is that Kent Anderson does not represent any publishing lobby.  He
> runs a not-for-profit medical publisher and is currently head of a trade
> organization whose members are largely not-for-profits and include PLoS.
>

(1) Joe, I have been struck (haven't you?) by how remarkably little
difference there is between the stance of not-for-profit and for-profit
subscription publishers regarding OA.

(2) And once they become big and successful one is also struck by how the
differences between the OA publishers and the subscription publishers
shrink (both for for-profit OA publishers like Springer/BMC and
not-for-profits like PLoS).

(3) And of course there's the matter of competition; so publishers
*will*squabble amongst themselves.

The publisher lobby does not just consist of registered lobbyists. But the
priorities and line of argument are pretty recognizable, don't you think?


> The second point is that whatever outcme one may want, the people behind
> PubMed Central violated their own policies.  I fail to see how advocating
> lawlessness is in the society's interest.
>

Whether there has been any lawlessness at all is for the courts to decide.

I am not without my own criticisms of Wellcome, PMC, PLoS or eLife, by the
way:

I think Wellcome has been rigid, unreflective, and dogmatic about its own
view of OA and how to achieve it (subsidize Libre Gold rather than
strengthen Gratis Green mandates), and that they played a big part in the
Finch Fiasco.

I think PMC should harvest OA articles from institutional repositories,
rather than being a mandatory  locus for direct deposit by either authors
or publishers.

I also think pre-Green Gold is premature, overpriced and unnecessary (*as a
means of providing OA*) -- though I do think PloS Biology and PLoS Medicine
are excellent journals, as journals.

But I very much doubt that Wellcome, PMC, PLoS or eLife have done anything
illegal, as the Scullery chefs seem to triumphantly believe they have the
evidence to prove!

Stevan Harnad

On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Not worth responding to, but fun for a year-end peak:
>>
>> PubMed Central Revealed -- Reviewing and Interpreting the Findings of a
>> Surprising 2013<http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/12/24/pubmed-central-revealed-reviewing-and-interpreting-the-findings-of-a-surprising-2013>
>>
>> The publishing lobby is clearly becoming increasingly desperate -- and
>> ad-hominem.
>>
>> (Not a proud swan song for the Gutenberg era in Scholarly Publishing --
>> more like what one would expect from the tobacco industry or Big Agra…)
>>
>> Stevan Harnad
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Joseph J. Esposito
> Processed Media
> espositoj at gmail.com
> @josephjesposito
> +Joseph Esposito
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20131228/c9fdfb99/attachment.html