Stevan Harnad, Letter to the Editor: Accelerating the Transition to the Optimal and Inevitable, Information Today 21(5), 16 (May 2004). Stevan Harnad responds to Richard Poynder's article "the Inevitable and the Optimal" on the UK parliamentary inquiry on scientific publishing (see earlier blog posting). Harnad takes issue with Poynder's concern that self-archiving and library mass cancellation of journal subscriptions may lead to "a hodgepodge of (frequently unrefereed) self-archived material, " and feels that the Information Today reporter is troubling himself unnecessarily. Harnad points out the longevity of self-archiving and the distinction between the question of access and the question of subscription costs, saying that self-archiving has to do with article by article access and could scarcely create a "hodgepodge." Poynder, in his extensive reply, is not so sure, however. He sees the transition to OA as much more drawn out, and feels that indexing and searching tools such as OAIster are not yet up to the task of satisfactorily accessing self-archived material. Furthermore, Poynder disagrees with Harnad about the access/subscription distinction, maintaining that for librarians the issues are very much intertwined, and expressing his concern "that the greatest casualty of the scholarly publishing crisis will be the traditional goodwill between librarians and academics."
Posted by
Garrett at 5/03/2004 11:30:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
