Dear All,

I do think Ben is tilting at windmills in his crusade against ORCID. It is simply a means of providing easy access to one’s work. There is plenty of Big Brother stuff going on out there, but I would not lay particular blame upon ORCID.

T&F, Elsevier, Springer, Wiley & Co are powerful publishers, but there are plenty of mid-range and small publishers, so there is no stranglehold on academic publishing. I am much more concerned about the hundreds of pirate publishers, such as OMICS, and the hordes of spoof journals that they have founded.

Distraction with details, such as ORCID, takes attention away from the real issues associated with the rise of the neoliberal university. Social and economic control is not achieved via ORCID when there are so much more powerful and direct methods by which it can be exercised (see attached).

We need to worry about the arbitrary use of power over us and the blind monetarisation of all our activities. ORCID is a very small and insignificant cog in that mechanism.

Respectfully,

David Alexander