Why I’m Not In The Mood To Celebrate Open Access Week

Excerpt: "The good news is that most of the chairs and faculty I encounter are aware of the open access movement. Most aren’t really paying it much attention. I bring up the benefits, talk up the importance of public access – and remind them about our own walled garden. No one is opposed to open access publishing, they just don’t want to be the ones doing it. As I’ve now heard more than once, “I’m all for providing public access to my research, but what matters most – more than the possibility of thousands of hits on Google – is knowing that the 200 people that matter the most in my discipline read my article in our most prestigious journal – and that’s not going to happen if I publish in an open access journal in my field.” They also remind me that our institution’s tenure and merit process are quite clear about the importance of publishing in top tier, high attention-attracting journals...." (PS: The faculty being quoted, and perhaps the librarians pitching OA to those faculty, still misunderstand something basic. Not all OA is gold OA. Faculty who publish in high-prestige TA journals usually have the journal's permission to deposit their peer-reviewed manuscript in an OA repository. For more, see ##1 and 20 in my field guide to misunderstandings about OA, http://bit.ly/bQbud2 .)