Open Access: Fundamentals to Fundamentalists | The Scholarly Kitchen

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-05-23

Summary:

" ... I must admit to being rather tired of the fundamentalism that pervades discussions around open access policies and business models. On the one hand there are the advocates, and through the laws of conservation of energy, the equal and opposite reaction of anti-open access advocacy. There seems little room for rational debate about open access in the midst of such an antagonistic atmosphere. We really need to take a step back from the debate and collaborate to innovate, understanding what open access business models really represent in the marketplace, with special reference to the researcher, who after all is the author of a published article. What is it that we actually know? We know that the market for research information (depending on your discipline) is set up through a web of funding agencies and institutional funds. In mathematics, for example, there is NSF funding, but you would be surprised at the number of top-flight mathematicians who work at the top of their field and do so from community colleges without significant funding. We know that at least in the USA, funding for research is flat if not reducing, leaving academics feeling unloved and discouraged as they are forced to fight among themselves for available resources. We know that libraries sit in the middle, squeezed on all sides. They see increases in the volume of academic literature. They see demand for literature from the academic communities they serve. They see budget declines and are set up in natural opposition to an economics version of the no-carb diet. We know that institutions are operating under enormous pressures to maintain their fiscal integrity, while at the same time supporting the information needs of students, researchers, and the institutional brand. We know that commercial publishers, in their 1980’s feeding frenzy of easy profits, have left a taste of mistrust in almost everyone, yet there is a tacit realization that despite everything, their innovations and their sheer scale and power have actually enabled research to thrive, and made content more available. Although societies are arguably perhaps best placed to hold the academic’s agenda closest to heart, there are natural conflicts of interest built into a society’s mission. On the on hand a society must serve the needs of their membership. But to do this resources are needed, and for many this means being a publisher. Many societies are being squeezed, perhaps even more so than libraries, by the might and sheer scale (e.g., the ‘Big Deal’) of the commercial publishers. We do know that a researcher cares about quality – of peer review, copy-editing, publishing alongside respected peers, and perhaps most of all citation ..."

Link:

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/05/22/open-access-fundamentals-to-fundamentalists/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.societies oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.universities oa.libraries oa.budgets oa.prices oa.debates oa.funders oa.quality oa.impact oa.hei

Date tagged:

05/23/2014, 16:43

Date published:

05/23/2014, 12:43