[GOAL] Sponsorship of video interviews by open access publishers, and related issues

[Richard Poynder]

Recently I was contacted by Library Journal (LJ) in connection with a series
of video interviews it is conducting with open access "VIP's and leaders".
The first interview - with the Director of Harvard University's Office for
Scholarly Communication Peter Suber - has already been published. Would I
have some time to do an interview myself, I was asked? The project is for a
new section of LJ's web site sponsored by the open access publisher Dove
Press.

 

I liked the idea of doing a video interview but I was instinctively shy of
being associated with a project that has a large Dove Press banner on the
top right hand corner proclaiming it to be the "exclusive sponsor" of the
site, along with a list of featured articles with "Sponsored by Dove Medical
Press" in prominent red ink strapped across the top of each one. I felt that
taking part would amount to endorsing Dove Press, which for reasons I
explain in a blog post I did not want to do.

 

I emailed LJ back to say I was not comfortable with doing an interview for a
site sponsored by Dove Press, and asked whether it would consider posting
any such video elsewhere on the LJ site. Strangely, I received no reply to
this. As I was now intrigued as to how this site had come about, who had
suggested the idea, and what its purpose was I also emailed LJ's Managing
Editor. To this too I received no reply.

 

The blog post on this can be accessed here:

 

http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/why-i-wont-be-doing-that-video.html

 

Some comments on my post by Peter Suber can be read here:

 

http://bit.ly/1Qu7LF4

 

A tweet to Library Journal inviting it to respond to the about comments is
available here:

 

https://twitter.com/RickyPo/status/702241648839958534

 

Richard Poynder

 

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