[GOAL] Re: Disruption vs. Protection

[Thomas Krichel]

  Stevan Harnad writes

> It does not, because it is both arbitrary and absurd to cancel a journal
> because it is Green  rather than because their users no longer need it"

  It is not. There simply is not the money to buy all subscriptions, and
  the more a journal's contents can be recovered from the web the more
  the need for subscribing to it declines.

> But more important than any of that is the gross disservice that gratuitous
> public librarian announcements like that do to the OA movement:

  Libraries are not there to serve the OA movement.

> to get the money the UK has foolishly elected to throw at Fool's
> Gold unilaterally, and preferentially.

  I agree. But the subscription model is even more foolish.

  Let toll-gating publishers have embargoes till kingdom come.  If
  nobody reads the papers, authors, who need the attention of readers,
  will have to use the IR to place a version of the paper
  out. Scholars will find alternative ways to evaluate these papers.

> With friends like these, the OA movement hardly needs enemies.

  I'm all in favour of OA, but it will not happen until subscriptions
  decline. The more subscriptions decline the better for OA.

--

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel                  http://openlib.org/home/krichel
                                              skype:thomaskrichel