On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 8:05 AM, Arthur Sale <a...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
Stevan
I disagree with you in one regard. I agree that researchers are a
main
target but the general public cannot and should not be omitted. The
place
you go wrong is in your clauses 8 and 9. They are false, though
perhaps a
misguided intent is a better description. Almost all research papers
are of
interest to a subset of the general public (different for each
paper, as for
researchers).
I completely agree with Arthur. It is arrogant and unethical for academics to
claim that research is primarily for academics. There are huge numbers of people
outside academia who are frustrated by lack of access. A similar arrogance was
showed by Lord Winston (an academic medic well kown on TV)Â at the OxfordÂ
meeting on "Evolution of Scholarship" where he stated that the general public
shouldn't have access to the medical literature. Even were this awful premise
justifiable, the mechanism of doing it through pay-barrier access for commercial
gain is an appalling way.
I am now "retired" and along with many others feel the effect of being
"scholarly poor". These are the people who want to, but cannot, read the
scholarly literature except at 40 USD per paper per day. Academics don't care
bout them and it's shameful. There are people who change jobs - e.g. from
academia to industry - who overnight get cut off from scholarship. Why should
the taxpayers and student fees and research funders subsidize library
subscriptions in academia if there is this elitism?
Universities have failed to catch the spirit of twenty-first century information
and the world is showing its frustration with them.
To change attitudes and show the importance of the Scholarly Poor the Open
Knowledge Foundation and Mike Taylor has set up resources at
http://whoneedsaccess.org/ and @ccess to show the waste and pain caused by
denying scholarship outside academia. Mike is outside academia - he works in
computing - and yet manages to publish peer-reviewed research in sauropods
(dinosaurs). He has also championed the cause of effective Open Access outside
academia and has several articles in the national presses.
P.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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