I feel I have to speak out against the opinions voiced by Stevan - I don't like
to do this as there is - possibly - a common goal. But they are so exclusionary
that they must be challenged, if only for those people people on the list and
more widely who are looking for guidance.
The idea that there is a set of "researchers" in Universities who deserve
special consideration and for whom public funds must be spent is offensive. I
fall directly into SH's category of "the general public", whom he now identifies
as of peripheral importance and thankful for the crumbs that fall from his
approach.. I have worked in industry, work with industry and although I have
been an academic am not now paid as one. The idea that I am de facto
second-class is unacceptable, even if you accept the convoluted logic that this
is necessary to achieve Green Open Access.
Â
There are no areas of science and more generally scholarship which are not in
principle highly valuable to "the general public". I am, for example, at present
working in phylogenetics - not a discipline I have been trained in - and I and
my software wishes to read 10,000 papers per year. Most of these papers could be
of great interest to some people - they detail the speciation of organisms and
are fully understandable by, say, those whose hobby is natural history or those
with responsibility for decision making.
SH's pronouncements do considerable damage to the OA movement. I am a supporter
of publicly funded Gold OA and of domain repositories. I am not prepared for
these to be dismissed ex cathedra. Both work well in the areas I am acquainted
with - I am on the board of UK PubMedCentral and also on the board of a
BOIA-compliant Open Access journal (where, by the way, half the papers come from
outside academia and are every bit as competent and valuable). I have personally
not many any scientists who are highly committed to Green OA and before stating
their position as "facts" it would be useful to hear from them and listen.
There is an increasing amount of scholarship taking place outside Universities
and without the public purse. Wikipedia is, perhaps, the best example of this
and could - if minds were open - act as an interesting approach to
respositories. It's notable that uptake of publication-related tools such as WP,
Figshare, Dryad, Mendeley, etc. is high, because people actually want them. I
would like to see effort on information-saving and sharing tools that people
need and community repositories.
I'll stop there - I sincerely hope that SH's list does not get wider traction.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
emeritus 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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