Open and Shut?: The Open Access Interviews: Professor Jack Meadows

"Any movement dedicated to changing long-established ways of doing things is likely to engender a heated debate, and a debate that inevitably produces polarised views. Thus it is with the Open Access (OA) movement. But what is distinctive about the OA debate is that it has produced not a simple juxtaposition of those who support the old and those who support the new. It is more complex than that. On one side of the OA rift, of course, are the traditional subscription publishers. They are determined to protect their business interests, and fearful that OA might threaten the high levels of profitability to which they have become accustomed. On the other side, however, is to be observed not a single movement (or even a single OA organisation), but rather a disparate collection of factions — all of whom want change, all of whom are passionate in their advocacy for OA, but most of whom end up constantly disagreeing with one another — about objectives, about strategy, and even about definitions. In fact, the more passionate OA advocates tend to disagree with one another even more violently than they do with their publisher opponents. And the resulting internecine warfare has only intensified as publishers have begun reluctantly to provide OA — because in doing so publishers are invariably providing it in ways, and at a cost, that pleases some OA advocates while displeasing others. The debate is further complicated by the fact that much of the discussion about OA tends to lack historical perspective. It is also frequently based on unfounded claims and unfulfillable expectations, on all sides.  One consequence of all this is that politicians and bureaucrats are frequently confused when trying to work out what to do about OA. This can lead to badly-thought-through and controversial policies, which appears to be what happened with the Finch Report — now official UK government policy — and the subsequent OA policy announced by Research Council’s UK (RCUK) last July. RCUK’s new policy was immediately attacked from all directions. The upshot is that OA must be viewed as a potential quagmire for universities, for research funders and for politicians. The problem they face is that it is no longer possible not to respond to the clamour for OA. Yet the wrong response can end up making matters worse. It does not help that the abundance of advisers and consultants willing to offer advice on OA invariably have their own agenda, and often a vested interest in a particular outcome. All in all, one is left wondering if there is anyone in the world able to provide an objective assessment of the current state of play of scholarly communication and its likely future development, including OA’s role in that development. But perhaps there is someone. What about Jack Meadows, Emeritus Professor of Library and Information Studies at Loughborough University? ..."