[GOAL] Re: Hitler, Mother Teresa, and Coke
Publishers are capitalists - I don't think they'd argue the point. The hostage metaphor really works for me and for many of my colleagues, as it involves elements of ENFORCED TAKING and subsequent DEPRIVATION tied to conditions of RANSOM. Eric's piece makes the really interesting and helpful point There are no Hitlers. There are no Mothers Teresa. There are just individuals and organizations looking out for their self-interest in a market complicated by historical baggage He's certainly right about Hitler, but only he made the comparison in the first place. (A search for Hitler and open access reveals a rather funny Downfall video about Hitler's attitude to peer review, but it's not really what Eric was concerned about.) He's absolutely on the nose about self-interested individuals and organisations, and this is rather the point of open access! The research publishing industry's self-interest need not be such an enormous problem to the self-interest of the research industry. Thanks to the Web, the research industry can regain a better balance in the scholarly ecosystem. Les Carr On 6 Nov 2012, at 04:32, Eric F. Van de Velde eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.commailto:eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com wrote: Publishers are manipulative capitalists who extort academia by holding hostage the research papers they stole from helpless scholars on a mission to save the world. This Hitler vs. Mother Teresa narrative is widespread in academic circles. Some versions are nearly as shrill as this one. Others are toned-down and carry scholarly authority. All versions are just plain wrong. To see how this ends, go to http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2012/11/hitler-mother-teresa-and-coke.html Comments welcome. --Eric. http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com Google Voice: (626) 898-5415 Telephone: (626) 376-5415 Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde E-mail: eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.commailto:eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.orgmailto:GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Hitler, Mother Teresa, and Coke
Les: I thought the first paragraph made it very clear I was attacking not only Hitler arguments, but all of the weaker versions that portray one side as morally inferior to the other. In my mind, the explicit and the non-explicit versions are all equivalent, and all equally irrelevant, as they are just different levels of name calling. I am not aware of anyone making the explicit Hitler argument when it comes to open access. In fact, even my shrill version of the argument was a non-explicit version. I thought I was clear about this in the post, but just restating it to be absolutely clear. --Eric. http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com Google Voice: (626) 898-5415 Telephone: (626) 376-5415 Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde E-mail: eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 12:23 AM, Leslie Carr l...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: Publishers are capitalists - I don't think they'd argue the point. The hostage metaphor really works for me and for many of my colleagues, as it involves elements of ENFORCED TAKING and subsequent DEPRIVATION tied to conditions of RANSOM. Eric's piece makes the really interesting and helpful point There are no Hitlers. There are no Mothers Teresa. There are just individuals and organizations looking out for their self-interest in a market complicated by historical baggage He's certainly right about Hitler, but only he made the comparison in the first place. (A search for Hitler and open access reveals a rather funny Downfall video about Hitler's attitude to peer review, but it's not really what Eric was concerned about.) He's absolutely on the nose about self-interested individuals and organisations, and this is rather the point of open access! The research publishing industry's self-interest need not be such an enormous problem to the self-interest of the research industry. Thanks to the Web, the research industry can regain a better balance in the scholarly ecosystem. Les Carr On 6 Nov 2012, at 04:32, Eric F. Van de Velde eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.commailto:eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com wrote: Publishers are manipulative capitalists who extort academia by holding hostage the research papers they stole from helpless scholars on a mission to save the world. This Hitler vs. Mother Teresa narrative is widespread in academic circles. Some versions are nearly as shrill as this one. Others are toned-down and carry scholarly authority. All versions are just plain wrong. To see how this ends, go to http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2012/11/hitler-mother-teresa-and-coke.html Comments welcome. --Eric. http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com Google Voice: (626) 898-5415 Telephone: (626) 376-5415 Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde E-mail: eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.commailto:eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.orgmailto:GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Hitler, Mother Teresa, and Coke
Erice Van de Velde wrote: In my mind, the explicit and the non-explicit versions are all equivalent, and all equally irrelevant, as they are just different levels of name calling. I am not aware of anyone making the explicit Hitler argument when it comes to open access. In fact, even my shrill version of the argument was a non-explicit version. I thought I was clear about this in the post, but just restating it to be absolutely clear. I don't think we need Hitler's to exist in order to say that en masse the role of scientific publishers has become a net negative for scholarly work, but is so entrenched and there are far too many collaborators amongst particularly senior academics and managers of academic institutions (sometimes the same group, or the latter drawn from the same group but not always). However, at the risk of sounding shrill and falling afoul of Godwin's Law, I do think that the banality of evil applies here. The current commercial publishers, many of them multi-media conglomerates who have gobbled up the smaller companies who were quietly making modest profits and working with the academic community in a way much more similar to the scholarly societies than the large commercial publishers (*), have taken the existing agreement on things like copyright transfer rather than license to publsh and gone beyond the unwritten bargain and started applying the letter of the copyright law by doing things like requiring written permission before allowing re-use of a diagram (even by the author and creator) and by charging ridiculous sums per article - more than many books, the standard price usually being about $30-40 per article, delivered electronically. All this while the technology has allowed them to cut costs substantially (and to transfer some of the lowered costs onto authors who now do large parts of the typesetting themselves). They do this while now restricting access from what it could be. Their motives are immaterial, the result is evil. (*) largely run by and employing people who cared about the content of what they were publishing rather than simply seeing it as one more cash cow -- Professor Andrew A Adams a...@meiji.ac.jp 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 GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
