> Researchers may already know that providing peer access is in their > best interest, yet they don't massively take that interest to > heart. The scientific 'community' is very conservative. Scientists, > like politicians, are generally into reluctant followship, less into > leadership. In my view it is time to change tactics and put more > effort into mustering the persuasiveness that the potentially more > dynamic general public may be able to provide. A recent spate of > articles in The Guardian and The Observer in the UK, and even articles > in The Economist, are good examples of what can be done to create an > atmosphere in which not providing open access is frowned upon and > becoming unacceptable. The pressure of public opinion can be > formidable, particularly on governments and government-backed funders > (though rarely admitted, of course). Recent steps taken by the RCUK > may well (subconsciously) have been inspired by a desire to preempt > such public pressure (and having to admit that 'it was the pressure of > public opinion wot did it'). Especially in times of austerity it pays > to keep the general public on board. Literally.
Jan, How much influence does public opinion actually have on real policies and real actions by ordinary academics, though? Having been an academic union activist for a number of years and having tried to talk to my friends about the highly stressful situation of academics and the poor pay they receive in the UK, I found that even those with degrees (most of my friends) really had no understanding of academic work, situations etc. I suspect that's the reality found by most academics. Since they know non-academics don't understand academia, they tend to ignore pressure from the general public on specific issues because they assume the general public just doesn't "get it" about academia (and in many cases they are right, even if they're wrong in this one). Getting the general public to support OA may help in getting funder mandates, although as we've seen, often those funder mandates are slightly mis-aimed at central deposit. The numbers also suggest that support for medical literature will be easy (everyone needs health and even those without the understanding will know someone (their own doctor if no one else) who would probably benefit from OA). However, the number who actually read any field are likely to be a minority, and those who read any particular field an even smaller minority. Trying to get them all to get behind OA in general may well be hard to do with the publishers using their large warchests to fight us in the public debate (if you think large warchests don't matter in public debate, look at US presidential politics). We're also talking about where to focus our (i.e. archivangelists) efforts to achieve the quickest route to as much OA as we can get. Spreading ourselves thin by trying to swing general public opinion round as well as the rest may end up delaying OA if instead we focussed on persuading researchers, librarians and managers at universities and research institutions that it is in their best interests to adopt a mandate and promote it with the Liege model. By all means where there are opportunities to promote public access and funder mandates let us do that, but not at the expense of following up on the hopefully S-shaped curve of mandate adoption to keep it moving on the increasing acceleration path we've seen in the last few years. I think we're in danger of taking our eyes of the ball just as we are beginning to get somewhere with mandates. -- Professor Andrew A Adams [email protected] Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/ _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
