Another take on Monbiot:
Research and funding councils need to get serious about open access
Research Fortnight
“just imagine what would happen if research departments were prevented from submitting hot papers from journals such as Science, Nature and The Lancet unless those papers were open access”.
MK
From: psci-com: on public engagement with science [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Francis Sedgemore
Sent: 2011-September-07 15:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PSCI-COM] Serials crisis and corn laws
I'm a week or so behind with my Grauniad reading, and have only just noticed that George Monbiot recently pronounced on the "serials crisis" in academic publishing…
As with most things, Monbiot doesn't get it. Or at least he fails to appreciate the complexity of the problem, and is reduced instead to scoring cheap rhetorical points.
After a cursory introduction to the issue at hand, Monbiot goes on to pontificate…
"What we see here is pure rentier capitalism: monopolising a public resource then charging exorbitant fees to use it. Another term for it is economic parasitism. To obtain the knowledge for which we have already paid, we must surrender our feu to the lairds of learning."
And it gets worse. Much worse…
"The knowledge monopoly is as unwarranted and anachronistic as the corn laws. Let's throw off these parasitic overlords and liberate the research that belongs to us."
Encouraging the growth of open-access publishing will require a more thoughtful approach than is offered by a newspaper columnist whose primary aim is to draw attention to himself.
Francis
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