<div dir="ltr"><b style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">Berlin Stonewalling -- or Flip-Flop</b><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">1. Richard Poynder's take on Berlin 12 is basically valid (even though perhaps a touch too conspiratorially minded).</span><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">2. The much-too-long series of Berlin X meetings, huffing on year after year, have long been much-ado-about-next-to-nothing.</span><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">3. The solemn "</span><a href="http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">," with its unending list of </span><a href="http://openaccess.mpg.de/319790/Signatories" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">signatories</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">, was never anything more than a parroting of the 2003 "</span><a href="http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing[sic]</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">," which was, in turn, a verbose reiteration of half of the 2002 </span><a href="http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">Budapest Open Access Initiative</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> -- skewed to only BOAI-2 ("gold" open access publishing), virtually ignoring BOAI-1 ("green" open access self-archiving).</span><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">4. For what it's worth, I attended </span><a href="http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/berlin_symp.htm" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">Berlin 1</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> in Berlin in 2003 (out of curiosity, and in the hope it would lead to something) and we hosted </span><a href="http://openaccess.mpg.de/319838/Berlin_3" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">Berlin 3</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> in Southampton in 2005 (at which it was officially recommended to </span><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">require</span><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> BOAI-1, green OA self-archiving, and to </span><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">encourage</span><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> BOAI-2, gold OA publishing.</span><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">5. After that the Berlin series went on and on (I never attended again), but the progress on implementing the Southampton/Berlin-3 recommendations was transpiring elsewhere (with the </span><a href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">ROARMAP</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> adopted mandates in the UK, Australia, EU, and US, starting from 2003 to today).</span><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">6. As far as I can tell, the Berlin X series just continues fussing about gold OA, and although I am less suspicious than Richard, I too suspect that the "secrecy" was because the institutional reps attending Berlin 12 are trying to forge a common front for working out a gold-OA "</span><a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?serendipity%5Baction%5D=search&serendipity%5BsearchTerm%5D=flip&serendipity%5BsearchButton%5D=%3E" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">flip</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">" deal with publishers.</span><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><br style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px">And my prediction, for </span><a href="https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=ZW91VrDFAqeC8QenqKyICA&gws_rd=ssl#q=harnad+flip+%22open+access%22" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration:none;font-size:13px">reasons</a><span style="color:rgb(32,32,32);font-size:13px"> I've repeated, unheeded, many, many times, is that any flip will be a flop.</span><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 5:06 AM, Richard Poynder <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:richard.poynder@cantab.net" target="_blank">richard.poynder@cantab.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div lang="EN-GB" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">The 12th Berlin Conference was held in Germany on December 8th and 9th. The focus of the conference was on “the transformation of subscription journals to Open Access, as outlined in a recent white paper by the Max Planck Digital Library”.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">In other words, the conference discussed ways of achieving a mass “flipping” of subscription-based journals to open access models.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">Strangely, Berlin 12 was "by invitation only". This seems odd because holding OA meetings behind closed doors might seem to go against the principles of openness and transparency that were outlined in the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">Or is it wrong and/or naïve to think that open access implies openness and transparency in the decision making and processes involved in making open access a reality, as well as of research outputs?<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">Either way, if the strategy of flipping journals becomes the primary means of achieving open access can we not expect to see non-transparent and secret processes become the norm, with the costs and details of the transition taking place outside the purview of the wider OA movement? If that is right, would it matter?<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">Some thoughts here: <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/open-access-slips-into-closed-mode.html" target="_blank">http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/open-access-slips-into-closed-mode.html</a><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><u></u><u></u></font></span></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">Richard Poynder<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></font></span></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
GOAL mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:GOAL@eprints.org">GOAL@eprints.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>