On 2012-05-07, at 10:16 AM, Ian Stuart (U Edinburgh) wrote:
> Question: what is the norm?
>
> I believe the norm is that research papers are multi-authored, multi-institutional,
> and a statistically significant quantity of them are international (institutions in
> different countries.)
>
> Laudable as a focus on the UK is, is this not a narrow focus on a larger field?
Laudable as is the UK's lead and initiative in OA, the current thinking is
extremely fuzzy, and mixes empty political slogans with valid objectives
along with profound misunderstandings about the nature of scholarly
and scientific research, in about equal doses.
Is Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales really the one who is going to be able to
turn this into something practical and realistic?
>
> On 07/05/12 14:54, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>> The UK's continuing leadership and initiative in opening access to
>> research is wonderful and only to be applauded, supported and
>> encouraged.
>>
>> To help make the initiative focused and effective, I would suggest that
>> the following four questions should be given some thought.
>>
>> If "UK public access to UK publicly funded research" is to be the
>> guiding principle, and the two ways of providing it are either the
>> Green OA self-archiving of articles published for free in subscription
>> journals (GRNOA) or the publishing of articles in Gold OA journals
>> for a fee (GLDOA):
>>
>> 1. GLOBALISM. Is the objective really just UK public access to UK
>> research? Is the purpose of publishing research not to have it taken
>> up, built upon, used and applied in further research and applications
>> globally, and reciprocally, to the benefit of the public that funded the
>> research? (And aren't UK OA mandates likely to inspire complementary,
>> reciprocal OA mandates globally?)
>>
>> 2. RECIPROCITY. Does paying unilaterally for GLDOA for UK
>> research -- making UK research freely accessible globally, but
>> with the UK still having to pay subscriptions to access non-UK
>> research -- make sense? Is GRNOA, which does not entail double
>> payment, not more likely to inspire global reciprocity? And would
>> global GRNOA not lead to GLDOA thereafter anyway?
>>
>> 3. BOOKS. What about books resulting from UK publicly funded
>> research? Would it not be a better idea for the time being to merely
>> recommend rather than require that books be made OA, rather than
>> risk resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal
>> articles but not their books?
>>
>> 4. DATA. What about authors who do not wish to make their research
>> data freely accessible to all immediately, having gathered it for the
>> purpose of analyzing and data-mining it themselves? Would it not be
>> a better idea for the time being to merely recommend rather than
>> require that data be made OA as soon as possible, rather than risk
>> resistance from authors who are happy to give away their journal articles
>> but not their data?
>>
>> Stevan Harnad
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