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Begin forwarded message: > From: Cable Green <[email protected]> > Date: June 19, 2013, 5:51:22 PM EDT > To: Educause Openness Constituent Group <[email protected]>, OER > Forum <[email protected]>, OER Advocacy Coalition > <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" > <[email protected]> > Subject: [OER-advocacy] Open Access Inaction: a researcher's perspective > Reply-To: [email protected] > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/political-science/2013/jun/18/science-policy > > Like many academics, I am currently trying to work out what I should think > and do about open access. I share with many scientists strong personal > commitments to the idea of openness. I am in this game because I think > research is valuable, and I work at a University because I like the idea that > research that should be in the public interest should mostly be publicly > funded. Like many other academics, I find it utterly daft that such research > is paywalled. Unlike some academics, I do not presume that the people who are > able to get past these paywalls (other academics at rich universities) are > the only relevant readers. > > But I also have an intellectual interest in the questions behind the debate. > Much of my research is on the idea of "responsible innovation" – how > scientists and innovators take responsibility for the future that they help > to bring about. Access to scientific knowledge by other researchers (wherever > they are), citizen scientists, policymakers, members of the public or whoever > is vital if science and innovation are to be made more inclusive and more > democratic. > > So, taking my own ideals into turgid academic cultures and publishing > structures, I am dumbfounded at how stupid the whole thing is. > > I am in the process of publishing various bits of my research. The final > destinations of my various thoughts say something about the mess that > academic publishing is currently in … > > First, I've written a couple of chapters for this book, but it costs 90 quid. > One of the chapters is given away on the website as a tease, but that only > reinforces how odd it is that the rest aren't. Even though I'm in the book, I > would advise my students not to buy it, but instead to ask the authors to > email them their chapters. > > Second, I've published this paper in a journal called Science and Public > Policy – a conventional way of being read by other academics. Except that > whatever baroque negotiations have taken place between the journal's new > publisher and the UCL library mean that, despite being a member staff at one > of Europe's largest universities, I don't seem to have access to that > journal. This piece of research, funded by British taxpayers, can't even be > read by me. > > Third, I've recently submitted a paper to a purely open access journal, one > of the PLoS stable, just to see what that's like. > > Fourth, I've just published this paper in a journal called Research Policy. > Like many of its competitors, this journal has an open access option, which > you pay for, but which releases your paper to the world immediately. Thanks > to a new policy by the research councils, they have agreed to pay for > so-called "gold" access. UCL has some sort of clever agreement in which the > university pays the journal directly so the money doesn't come through my > pocket. > > On the surface, this all seems to work. But it doesn't take much scratching > to see that, beneath this new system, the research councils are paying to > publish something they have already paid for. This money could have been > spent on more research. Instead, it is subsidising a rather large publisher, > paying Elsevier more money on top of the subscription fees already coming > from university libraries. The only reason I went for this option was because > the journal has a ridiculous embargo period before it lets authors > self-publish their papers (known as "green" open access). My decision to go > for gold seems to be rewarding the journal's intransigence. > > Finally, I am also on the editorial board for a journal called Public > Understanding of Science, which publishes work on how scientists and members > of the public talk to one another, but is itself closed. This has, quite > rightly, attracted criticism. We have agonised about offering an open access > option, but decided, perhaps wrongly, that it would penalise the many > researchers and institutions who can't pay the $1,500 required(pdf). > > All of this leaves me perplexed. Occasionally I get angry, but not angry > enough to join the valiant efforts of people like Tim Gowers, who led the > boycott of Elsevier, Michael Eisen, who created The Public Library of > Science, Peter Suber, who has dissected the issue in a new (open access) > book, or Stephen Curry, of this parish, who reviews Suber's book here. And I > haven't even started on the arguments for sharing the data and metadata that > currently sits behind the clunky pdfs. > > I understand the arguments of the publishers that robust knowledge is > expensive to curate. But mostly I think they should just get on with > developing a model that works rather than profiteering from their own > stubbornness. I hope that, in t10 years or so, we will look back on this > period and see it as a historical blip. Science has, in the three centuries > since the creation of the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions > (probably the world's longest running journal), been ahead of the openness > curve. It is currently lagging way behind. > > > > > -- > > > Cable Green, PhD > Director of Global Learning > Creative Commons > @cgreen > http://creativecommons.org/education > reuse, revise, remix & redistribute > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "OER Advocacy Coalition" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/oer-advocacy-coalition. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > >
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