Re: Petitions, Boycotts, and Liberating the Refereed Literature Online

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 01:18:35 +0000

Mike Brown wrote:

> the statement from the University of California Senate was actually
> about pricing structures for online access rather than open access

It will turn out to be one of the (many!) unfortunate misunderstandings
that delayed the long-overdue era of open access that the crusade for lower
access tolls got mixed up with the crusade for toll-free access. One is a
serials librarians' battle (on behalf of researchers) and the other is a
researchers' battle. The serials crisis alerted us to the possibility and
the necessaty of toll-free access, but there the relationship ends. What
is best for lowering tolls is not necessarily what is best for toll-free
access. (And the posting in question was to an open-access forum, not
a serials pricing forum!)

> If you want people to start self-archiving then, first you need to make
> them aware of what self-archiving is and the benefits.

Been doing that, 'lo these 10 years at least...

http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.htm
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/harnad.html

> Second you have to have some software with a decent interface
> that joe researcher would be able to use.

Been there, done that. Joe Researcher at at least 109 institutions,
over half the archives in OAIster, uses the software we created:

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD
http://www.eprints.org/
http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/software/
http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/

None of that is enough. What is needed is graphic empirical evidence of
the causal connection between access and impact:

http://citebase.eprints.org/cgi-bin/search
http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/astro-jasist.pdf

And then, on that basis, an open-access policy mandated by research
institutions and research funders, along the lines of the recent Berlin
Declaration:

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/che.htm
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#institution-facilitate-filling
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#research-funders-do

Stevan Harnad
Received on Fri Oct 31 2003 - 01:18:35 GMT

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