Rudy M. Baum, More Socialized Science, Chemical & Engineering News, May 16, 2005. Excerpt: 'As readers of this page are aware, I have almost no use at all for the open-access movement. Open access at its most extreme is a shell game, the unstated goal of which is to transfer responsibility for publishing and archiving the scientific literature from the private sector to the federal government. Open access starts with the axiom that scientific information should be free. This axiom is taken by advocates as so obvious and so righteous that it needs no further explication. It is the raison d'être of the open-access movement. Let me propose a parallel axiom: BMWs should be free. They’re great cars, safe and fun to drive. Cost should not be a factor in determining whether every citizen has access to a BMW. I hereby proclaim the open access to BMWs movement. The federal government and BMW dealers should join forces to ensure that every U.S. citizen has a free BMW....For all of their posturing about the public, open-access advocates are motivated by a deep antipathy toward the private sector and the firm belief that the federal government, not the private sector, should control scientific publishing. They are, in fact, advocating socialized science. In the more extreme open-access scenarios, such as ones now being developed by the National Library of Medicine, this goal is explicit and the federal government itself becomes the publisher and archivist of the scientific and technical literature.' (Thanks to Lila Guterman.)
(PS: If the creators of BMW's didn't expect to be paid, if the costs were already paid by taxpayers, and if the distribution could be done over the internet at costs approaching zero, then free BMW's might be a good idea. But until then it's just a bad analogy. For the rest, I'll repeat what I said the last time Rudy Baum called OA socialist: 'Baum overlooks the fact that the NIH plan is only about disseminating articles that have already been accepted by independent, i.e. non-governmental, peer-reviewed journals. He forgets that nothing in the plan tells scientists what to study or what to conclude, and nothing in it tells journals what to publish or how to conduct peer review. He forgets that the directive to the NIH to develop this plan was adopted unanimously by two Republican-controlled committees. He also forgets what socialism is. The NIH plan does not expropriate private property for public use, but provides public access to publicly-funded research. It does not even deny property rights in these works by individual authors or journals. Let's get back to the subject.')
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/16/2005 07:54:00 PM.
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.
