Andrew Adams is so right, on every single points he made.<div><br></div><div>In a few moments (noon UK time) I will post an embargoed proposal from HEFCE REF that proposes to require exactly what Andrew Adams is urging, for very much the same reasons.</div>
<div>SH<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 1:11 AM, Andrew A. Adams <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aaa@meiji.ac.jp" target="_blank">aaa@meiji.ac.jp</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
Peter,<br>
<br>
You're talking about a very narrow subset of science here. I'm talking about<br>
all of academic scholarship that is published in journals. Yes, the stuff<br>
you're talking about is a small minority of academic research. A quick search<br>
seems to show that much of Crystallography is open access. That's great for<br>
crystallographers. They're on the ball, clearly. But so few others are!<br>
<br>
Would I like scholarship to be better done (including science)? Oh my word,<br>
yes. But I don't think we're going to get everyone quickly to revise their<br>
approaches. We've seen twenty years of trying to get other fields to sort<br>
themselves out as HE Physics did and as Crystallography appears to have done.<br>
How many other fields have done this? How many people are arguing for it in<br>
those fields, how many wasted years are we seeing?<br>
<br>
I run across basic barriers of access to my own research needs day in and day<br>
out, as do my students. What I primarily need access to is papers, not large<br>
datasets. Large datasets in my areas of research are limited and nowhere near<br>
as universal as the physical sciences (well-done crystallography data is only<br>
going to be superseded when better tools come along, but social science data<br>
sets are highly time and culture-dependent, while practical computer science<br>
results are often outmoded every eighteen months by Moore's Law).<br>
<br>
If I could get the ACM, the IEEE, the IET to open all their papers held in<br>
well-developed digital libraries, I would do so. I do argue for them to do so<br>
and they're slowly moving in this direction (ACM at least, the one I'm most<br>
involved with). But it's slow and they're only a minority (albeit a large<br>
one) of CS literature and that leaves out the psychology, sociology.<br>
<br>
It sounds to me like the reason that you keep arguing for better data mining<br>
access on papers is because in your field that actual access to the raw data<br>
and the individual's access to papers (a quick search on crystallography<br>
revealed few barriers, although since I'm at work I'm not sure how many are<br>
invisible to me because of my work IP address). You're in a privileged<br>
position if this is so.<br>
<br>
Partly because my work is so interdisciplinary, I see the access barriers<br>
every day. About half the papers on my hard drive are OA versions. I can<br>
access far fewer than half of the papers I'd like to see because they're<br>
neither open access nor inside a subscription that my university pays for.<br>
<br>
So, Peter, when was the last time you wanted personal access to a paper to<br>
read it (not so that you could data mine it, but so that you could just read<br>
it with your own eyeballs) and couldn't get it? How often does this happen to<br>
you? What proportion of the papers you'd like to read are unavailable to you?<br>
<br>
Has what the crystallographers done been good? From the looks of it, it's<br>
great. But I can't get other fields to do it, because I'm not inside them,<br>
and since very few of them are showing significant movements in the right<br>
direction, I'm persuaded that we have to come at this from a different angle<br>
- funders and institutions. If we can get them to work together, then we can<br>
get the majority of papers open. That7s the first step, but only the first<br>
step, you're right. But once that first step has been taken the rest, I<br>
believe, will become much much easier to take. Otherwise we're back to<br>
finding people passionate enough to push through openness in every single<br>
discipline and most disciplines are nowhere near as cohesive as HE Physics<br>
and Crystallography.<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
--<br>
Professor Andrew A Adams <a href="mailto:aaa@meiji.ac.jp">aaa@meiji.ac.jp</a><br>
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and<br>
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics<br>
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan <a href="http://www.a-cubed.info/" target="_blank">http://www.a-cubed.info/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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