[GOAL] Open access strategy and political change: a question

[ElHassan ElSabry]

I am not so familiar with British politics, but I believe there are two
lines of argument that can prove (already proved actually) to be very
efficient in the American context. One is the taxpayer access
<http://www.taxpayeraccess.org> argument, with the rising emphasis now on
decreasing/efficiently using federal funds, etc. The second one is actually
a only variant of the first, which is the emphasis that most a lot of the
subscription revenue actually goes to European corporations, not American
ones. You can watch Pat Brown here
<https://youtu.be/F7CMMdQgbew?list=PLKzRudZaXUD0SA6IMycQD9UOIE-kYOPfm&t=2047>tell
the story of the congressman who first introduced the amendment to the NIH
appropriations bill (2-3 minutes.. it's really worth it).

Regards,
ElHassan

On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 12:54 AM, Heather Morrison <
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:

> Good points, thanks David.
>
> It strikes me that isolationism / protectionism does not bode well for
> global businesses of any kind, including a few large commercial scholarly
> publishers with globally based businesses. For example, healthy profits of
> UK-based publishers might seem like a very good idea to the current UK
> government, but I suspect this is less of a priority in other countries
> such as the rest of the EU post-Brexit.
>
> Make sense?
>
> Heather
>
> On 2017-01-19, at 9:53 AM, David Prosser <david.prosser at rluk.ac.uk>
>  wrote:
>
> Around the time of the Finch Report in the UK one of the arguments one
> heard against the UK attempting to be a first mover towards total open
> access was that it we would ‘give away’ our research to competitors
> (especially the Chinese - the whiff of xenophobia in the argument was
> always a detectable undertone) while they would keep theirs for
> themselves.  This would put us at a disadvantage.
>
> It took a lot of effort to remind people that we were talking about
> research that had been made public (though subscription journals).  We
> weren’t revealing anything that hadn’t been revealed before, just making it
> more accessible.  (We also pointed out that countries such as the US and
> China were publishing more in open access journals than the UK was.)
>
> So I guess my fear is that if some of us are moving in a more isolationist
> direction, one in which we are much more concerned about our positions in
> trade negotiations (and trade wars) and ‘protecting’ our assets, then
> perhaps that agreement might be seen again.  Ironically, the people who
> will perhaps argue most strongly against it (and who have the ear of
> government through powerful lobbying machines) are those who are seeing
> massive increases in their revenues from hybrid open access fees!
>
> David
>
>
>
>
> On 19 Jan 2017, at 14:25, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
> wrote:
>
> I am not an expert on politics, so apologies if my assumptions here are
> naive:
>
> It appears to me that some governments, notably the US and the UK, have
> undergone a political shift from a trend towards globalization towards
> protectionism / emphasis on the local. Whether this is a good idea or not
> is an important political question. Many people will  have strong feelings
> about this matter, and this will include people in the OA movement as well
> as those we work with.
>
> Assuming that it is the case that some of our governments are inclined to
> focus on the local, what are some strategies to advance open access that
> would fit with the local-minded government?
>
> My first thoughts are that institutional repository OA policy and
> supporting local publishing (for us, ideally OA publishing), would seem to
> fit. Perhaps some politicians would see the benefits of sharing our own
> work openly as a display of the strength of the country?
>
> My two bits. What do others think?
>
> Heather
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-- 
ElHassan ElSabry, *M.Sc.*

Doctoral Candidate
Science & Technology Policy Program
National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (Japan)
<http://www.grips.ac.jp/en/>

Content Development Specialist
Directory of Free Arab Journals (DFAJ) <http://dfaj.net/>
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