There is one argument in all of this that fails to see the light of
day: that argument is the "We the people" argument.
Research is nothing more than, and nothing less than, the reason for life
itself. Some do it on library books, others from digital files, others in
the cockpit of an airplane, others on the front line of a war, and still
others in an operating theatre with live patients clinging to life itself.
Research suggest that it is something different, but it is not, more
formal maybe, but not different than the human interface with the
variables of one's environment. Documentation of the findings of one
person can be used by another to shorten and refine the findings of the
next life and the lives of the next many. Documentation, to be useful,
depends not only on experience mapped to a recordable media in archievable
form, but also on ungated retrieve access of the experiences of the past
in a form available to all who follow. The barriers to human interaction
is the nation state and its rule of law which favors empowered
aristocrats.
Tim Berners Lee advanced that the purpose of the Internet hypertext
protocols was to enhance and to enable collaboration. Gating access,
denying it, or otherwise interfering with it, interferes with just about
every element of human life and tends to inhibit colloboration.
Not only does gating interfere with the advancement of sciences and the
arts in direct contravention to the purpose element of the copyright
clause (corporations and other institution lobby to use congreessional law
making powers to create private monopolies in the form of copyrights and
patent law) but it also stiffles a basic natural human right [to acquire
knowledge, information and technology and the tools necessary to use
it=the kitten right of humanity).
It is the human mind that creates. That human creation is a product, not
of an original thought "IN ISOLATION", but of a set of thoughts based on
current and past kitten as well as the current and past experiences of
the person engaged in producing mind products.
Advances are not the creative thought of a single person, but the selected
best route of a number of integrated concepts into a new use, new
realization or new presentation, maybe not even of a new object, but of
the same object presented in a different way or viewed from a different
prospective; no single human can claim that his or her creativity arose
from a effort solely of self, and no creator can claim that he or
she has exclusive ownership to the expression of kitten parameters.
A book written by one person expresses an organization based on the
writers exprectation of the intended audience(that audience is the
infrastrure and without it, the author could not invent and the author's
work product, is derived from the past interactive experiences of that
author's interfaces with the prior and existing databases and
experience). Even though one author wrote the book, it is the work of the
entire population and the supporting infrastructure that made it both
possible and feasable.
Hence, the denial, to any human, of the mental work product of another
human, interferes with the progress of humanity itself. Everyone has a
greater right to kitten than has a state to deny it to anyone, for any
purpose commerical or defense. The right to know what society has
developed from its past is a basic right inherient to every single human
being and is the only legitimate reason for humans to support a we the
people government. Ask not what your government can take from its common
people or make them do, for the benefit of the aristocratic few, but ask
instead, what the government can do to improve the very short lives that
all humans must endure. Humanity is not improved by profits, but humanity
advances in leaps and bounds on the advent of new knowledge, information
or technology.
The taxpayer argument is one extention of the basic argument that the
kitten right of individual humans far exceeds the power of government to
redirect societies benefits to but a few aristocrats (whether they be
human beings or nonhuman institutions)
sterling
On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> [I liked Peter Suber's paper on "The taxpayer argument for open
> access." https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OANews/Message/97.html
> The following was written earlier, after I saw his draft, but Peter
> asked me to wait till his paper appeared before posting mine. Our
> positions agree, and differ only slightly in emphasis.]
>
> Public Access vs. Public Domain
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> (1) HEALTH RESEARCH VS. ALL OTHER KINDS OF RESEARCH
>
> The tax-paying patient-rights argument for toll-free access to
> research is a good one for health-related research, but it does not
> generalize to other research -- and hence risks inducing the (incorrect)
> conclusion that health-related funded-research is the only special case
> that needs toll-free access! It is accordingly important to immunize
> against all such narrow interpretations of the case for toll-free access
> from the outset, by coupling the health/tax-payer rationale for toll-free
> access with the other, more general toll-free-access rationales,
> pre-emptively.
>
> The most general rationale is that toll-free access to research is best
> for research itself. Blocking research access blocks research uptake and
> usage, thereby blocking the pace, progress, productivity, and impact of
> research, in every field. It has to be made very clear that open access
> is as much about hadrons (and Hadrian!) as it is about health! Health
> just serves to drive the point home, because the connection between
> research progress and our health is so transparent, vital and close to
> where we all live. But if the rest of scientific and scholarly research
> too is worth doing (and funding), and not just health-related research,
> then it *all* needs toll-free access just as much as health research does.
>
> (2) TAX-PAYER ACCESS VS. RESEARCHER ACCESS
>
> The tax-payer argument for toll-free access to research in general
> (rather than just to health research in particular) should not be cast
> solely, or even primarily, in the form of toll-free research-access
> for tax-payers! It should be cast primarily in the form of toll-free
> research-access for researchers:
>
> Researchers are funded by tax-payers to conduct research because of the
> potential benefits of research progress to tax-payers. Those benefits do
> not consist of the tax-payer's freedom to read the research results! Most
> tax-payers will have no interest in reading research results. Their
> interest is in the potential *application* of research results --
> technological, medical, commercial and cultural -- to the improvement of
> their lives.
>
> The primary readers and users of research are researchers, and the
> benefits to tax-payers of giving researchers toll-free access to one
> another's research are exactly the same as the benefits to tax-payers
> of funding the conduct of the research itself: Research is interactive,
> collaborative, collective, cumulative. Maximizing researchers' access
> to research results maximizes research progress and productivity and
> thereby maximizes the probability of eventual applications, and hence
> of eventual direct benefits to the tax-payer.
>
> Access-denial (the current subscription/license toll-based status quo)
> has the exact opposite effect. It blocks researchers' access to one
> another's research. Researchers can only access and use the research for
> which their own institution can afford the access tolls. No institution
> can afford access to all or even most published research. Most
> institutions can afford only a small and shrinking fraction of it.
> Hence all research is effectively inaccessible to most researchers. All
> that potential research usage and progress is currently being lost,
> daily. That is why it is in tax-payers' (and research funders') interests
> to make all research accessible toll-free to all potential users
> (worldwide).
>
> (3) PUBLISHING IN OPEN-ACCESS JOURNALS
> (THE 5% SOLUTION)
> VS.
> SELF-ARCHIVING TOLL-ACCESS PUBLICATIONS IN OPEN-ACCESS ARCHIVES
> (THE 95% SOLUTION)
>
> But the appeal and the emphasis should not be unduly focussed on the
> tax-payer either. Researchers themselves are the ones that most need to
> be targeted. It is critically important to stress that whereas, with help
> from the tax-payer and from funding agencies, it is possible to
> help cover the costs of publishing in open-access journals, there
> are still very few open-access journals in existence today (500
> journals, according to http://www.doaj.org/ ), relative to the amount
> of research that is published annually (24,000 journals according to
> http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ ). This demographic fact
> and its consequences must be stated very explicitly and they must
> also be understood clearly:
>
> If the 5%/95% figure is not stated and understood, it is certain that
> most people will draw the erroneous and counterproductive conclusion that
> publishing research in open-access journals is the fastest, most direct
> (perhaps even the only) way for researchers to provide toll-free access
> to their research today.
>
> But this is far from being the case. Open-access journals exist for
> only 5% of annual research output today. Hence publishing in (and
> covering the costs of) open-access journals is only the 5% solution
> for refereed research publication and access today. The other 95% of
> research can only be published in toll-access journals today. Hence
> researchers self-archiving their own toll-access journal publications
> in their own institutions' open-access archives is the solution for the
> remaining 95%. This too must be strongly encouraged by the tax-payer and
> the research-funder, not just the 5% solution. The complementarity as
> well as the relative scope of the two means of attaining open access
> must be clearly understood if we are to reach the optimal and inevitable
> outcome of toll-free access to 100% of the refereed research literature
> now rather than decades hence.
>
> (4) "PUBLISH (WITH MAXIMIZED ACCESS/IMPACT) OR PERISH"
>
> Last, there is a limit to how much the government, the research-funder,
> and the tax-payer can do through funding and legislation. The traditional
> institutional carrot/stick mandate that researchers must "publish or
> perish" must now be extended to mandating that they "publish with
> maximized access/impact" (i.e., open access) so as to help bring
> it home to researchers that it is in their own interest to make their
> research accessible toll-free for all potential users. The optimal dual
> strategy is hence:
>
> (i) Wherever a suitable open-access journal for you to publish your
> research in exists today (c. 5%), publish it there, today.
>
> (ii) For the rest of your research (c. 95%), for which a suitable
> open-access journal does not exist today, publish it in your preferred
> toll-access journal, but also self-archive it in your institutional
> toll-free access archive, today.
>
> http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
>
> (5) PUBLIC ACCESS VS. PUBLIC DOMAIN
>
> The Public Access to Science Act (Sabo Bill, HR 2613) (PASA) rightly
> invokes the taxpayer argument in support of open access to (funded)
> research. However, the *means* by which PASA proposes to provide open
> access is far more radical and confrontational than necessary -- and the
> reason is that the Bill's proponents clearly had only the 5% solution in
> mind in proposing it, as if that were the only possible solution.
>
> All that is needed to serve all the needs of researchers, research,
> and tax-payers is open access -- that is, immediate, permanent, free,
> online access to the full-text of every research journal article. To
> attain this, it is not necessary that all authors and publishers renounce
> copyright protection for all those texts. It is only necessary that
> *someone* provide open access to them! Open-access journals do that,
> but they represent less than 5% of the 24,000 journals there are. What
> about the rest?
>
> All that the PASA need mandate is that all journal articles based on
> funded research must be made openly accessible. To comply with this,
> neither the author nor the publisher needs to renounce copyright
> protection for those articles. The journal must simple allow the
> author to self-archive them, in his own institutional open-access
> archive -- as 55% of the journals sampled already do officially (and
> many others will agree to do if asked on a per-article basis):
> http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm
> And even for the few journals that might refuse, the author has a legal
> alternative that is almost as simple, and effectively provides the open
> access anyway: self-archive the unrefereed preprint plus the corrections.
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publisher-forbids
>
> PASA could help bring the 55% figure to the 95% needed (together with the
> open-access journals' 5%) to make the entire research journal literature
> 100% open-access -- by simply mandating open access itself.
>
> By needlessly mandating more -- the renunciation of copyright (forcing
> authors not only to seek a journal that will accept those terms, instead
> of the journal they might have preferred, but also putting their texts at
> risk of being plagiarized or corrupted) -- PASA would needlessly elicit
> opposition from publishers and authors alike.
>
> The tax-payer is best served if the access to (and hence the usage
> and impact of) tax-funded research is maximized by requiring that its
> full-texts must be made openly accessible online to all would-be users,
> everywhere. There is no need whatsoever for those texts to be put into
> the public domain in order to obtain that universal benefit.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
>
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
> or
> http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
>
> Discussion can be posted to: [log in to unmask]
>
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