On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 6:22 AM, Klaus Graf <[email protected]> wrote: > Stevan Harnad in the American Scientist Open Access Forum: > > On Sat, 15 May 2010, Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for > Development] wrote: > > What is very confusing about [the SAGE survey's] call for feedback is > the title ["Open Access Publishing"]. > http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/soap_survey_a > > I do not understand the phrase 'Open Access Publishing'. Open access is > about 'access'. It is not a publishing process. The title should refer to > 'open access journals'. The use of the phrase 'OA publishing' reinforces the > idea that OA is about publishing and this is one reason why 'OA repositories' > are often left out of the equation. With the title provided it is unlikely > that anyone will think it is about OA repositories. > > Those I respect in the OA world tell me I am being pedantic, but it is > little things like this that cause confusion to newcomers to the debate. I > make a plea that we stop using the phrase 'open access publishing' and use > 'open access journals' or 'the publishing of open access journals' instead! > > Dear Barbara, you are in no way being pedantic! > > You are quite right that the relentless (and mindless) tendency to > refer to (and think of) OA itself as "OA Publishing" instead of just OA > (thereby completely conflating and confusing Green OA self-archiving > with Gold OA publishing) has been an endless source of misunderstanding, > misdirection and, worst of all, delay in the progress of OA. > > A high-profile accomplice in the perpetuation of this constant canard is > the entry for "Open Access" in Wikipedia, Google's ubiquitous "top hit" > (hence always the top hit for "Open Access" queries).
I certainly have respect for Steven Harnad's work in this area. But I have also had the open access articles watchlisted for some years now, and they are one of those surprisingly controversial mini-areas in Wikipedia. Since it's also an area that isn't very well defined *in the field itself* (I say, as someone writing up some materials about open access for my library as we speak), I'm not surprised that [[user:harnad]] is frustrated. It looks to me like a straightforward disambiguation on [[open access]], and the argument is over what to put in the parenthesis for the article about the type of open access that is associated with both research and publishing. I am reminded (perhaps inexplicably) of RMS's discursions on the GNU/Linux articles last wikimania.... -- phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com * _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
