Public awareness of the OA movement

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

The "OA idea" is much broader than the "author-pay" approach. Confusing
OA or even "Gold OA" with the author-pay financial scheme is one of the
most common mistakes people make about open access. See Peter Suber's
recent book, Open Access, on this topic.

Not only does the "OA idea" include the "Green road", as Loet
Leydesdorff acknowledges at the end of his message, but it also includes
many journals that are sufficiently subsidized to provide gratis access
to author submissions, and "libre" (or at least gratis) access to
readers.

As for the power shift, it is a possibility, but, generally, speaking,
open access tends to nudge publishing instruments into the service of
scientific communication, rather than the reverse.

Finally, the selection of papers in the present journal system is not
limited to quality; it also includes considerations for various degrees
of relevance to various criteria such as "hotness" of a topic, prestige
of the originating lab or institution, etc. For example, the existence
of "orphan diseases" can be explained in part because of latent
selection criteria that do not relate to quality, but rather to
visibility and prestige. PLoS  One, by contrast, offers a good example
of a publishing platform where the only criteria used are respect of the
scientific method in all of its dimensions. The conclusion is that the
present system is far from being purely guided by quality. And designing
a selection process guided by quality within the OA context does not
appear particularly difficult to achieve. It already exists.

Jean-Claude Guédon

Le vendredi 24 août 2012 à 07:42 +0200, Loet Leydesdorff a écrit :

> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
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> 
> Dear Subbiah, 
> 
>  
> 
> Originally I was enthusiast about the OA idea, but more recently two
> things happened which made me aware that there are disadvantages which
> tend to turn my opinion around. First, I met an editor of an
> established journal in the social sciences who had discussed this at
> length with the publishing house and they had decided not to move in
> this direction because young scholars in his country would not always
> have the funding to pay the author fees or they would have to
> sacrifice other research expenses (such as conferences). He (and I
> agreed) found it more important that there would be no financial
> thresholds to contributing to scholarly discourse. (I know that it is
> never for free, but this adds easily a thousand dollar to the
> expenses).
> 
>  
> 
> Secondly, I became aware that the funding agencies in my (and other)
> country are actively championing for OA. Of course, OA shifts power
> balance into their direction. A lab group in the medical sciences, for
> example, easily publishes 25 papers/year and this would add appr. 25k
> to their budget. In the social sciences smaller amounts of money are
> already substantial (and thus issues of policy making and research
> management). Those without an institutional affiliation (such as some
> PhD students and retired scholars) may be excluded from access to
> publishing. When there is much demand the agencies (and universities)
> may under pressure to develop policies on who can be granted
> publication and who not.
> 
>  
> 
> Let me hasten to add that I several times received a generous
> contribution from a funding agency for publishing a book in
> non-English languages. (I had not expected that.) In summary, it seems
> better to me that Editors and referees decide on who can publish for
> intellectual reasons rather than funding agencies for (potentially)
> policy reasons. 
> 
>  
> 
> #Steve: I am aware that institutional repositories is very different
> issue.
> 
>  
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Loet
> 
>  
> 
> 
>                                    
> ______________________________________________________________________
> 
> Loet Leydesdorff 
> 
> Professor, University of Amsterdam
> Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR), 
> Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam. 
> Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-842239111
> loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/ ;
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en 
> 
>  
> 
> From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
> [mailto:SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU] On Behalf Of Subbiah Arunachalam
> Sent: Friday, August 24, 2012 3:32 AM
> To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
> Subject: [SIGMETRICS] Public awareness of the OA movement
> 
>  
> 
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html 
> 
> Friends:
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Please see the Economist debate on academic journals
> [http://www.economist.com/economist-asks/do-fee-charging-academic-journals-offer-value-added-0?sort=2#sort-comments.
> 
> 
> It has not attracted many comments from readers - a clear indication
> that the general public (at least the segment that reads high quality
> news channels like The Economist) is least interested in, if not
> indifferent to, what we consider is of paramount importance. All our
> advocacy has not reached them. I think, instead of spending our time
> talking about refining and redefining the most appropriate way to
> bring about universal open access amongst ourselves (and that too with
> some amount of rancour) we should devote our attention now to take the
> message to the citizenry at large. We should promote Students for OA,
> Alliance of Taxpayers for OA and similar initiatives in a large scale.
> In the end, public awareness and taxpayer acceptance are the keys to
> the success of the OA movement.
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Regards.
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Arun  
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
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