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Am I the only reader of this list who finds the comparison with the
abolition of slavery frankly ridiculous?
How can it advance the cause to make such inappropriate comparisons?
Slavery, genocide and other crimes against humanity still shame our
"civilisation" and should not be lightly invoked.
Appropriate, fair and intelligent means for communicating scientific and
scholarly research are problematic issues of another order. They will be
solved by the application of intelligent argument and steady confrontation
with the obvious advantages of managing our communications in a way
appropriate to the times.
The worst excesses of the 'traditional publishing model' are merely idiotic,
deeply idiotic perhaps but not deeply evil.
Adam
On 21 Feb 2008, at 11:06, Zapopan Martin Muela-Meza wrote:
> [Abolitionists of the world
> of the slavery of traditional publishing
> U N I T E!!!!!!!!!!!!
> --ZMMM ]
> -------------------------------------------------
> Time to End the Slavery of Traditional Publishing
> Submitted by Gavin Yamey on Sun, 2007-02-18 07:13.
> http://www.plos.org/cms/node/204
>
> In a characteristically provocative talk last week, Richard Smith, who is
> on the Board of Directors of PLoS, accused traditional subscription-based
> publishers of acting like slave owners. And he compared open access
> advocates to abolitionists.
>
> Richard was speaking at the BioMed Central Open Access Colloquium,
> alongside other "abolitionists," including my colleague Ginny Barbour,
> Senior Editor at PLoS Medicine. The talks have all been archived on the
> colloquium website.
>
> In his slavery analogy, Richard recalled the famous George Yard meeting.
> On 22nd May 1787, 12 men met in a printing shop at 2 George Yard in the
> City of London determined to end slavery. At that time, said Richard, more
> people were slaves than were free and the British economy depended on
> slavery. Yet by March 1807 slave trading was abolished in the British
> Empire.
>
> Today's traditional publishers, he argued, are the slave traders. The
> research articles and many of the academics who write them are the slaves.
> "And the shock troops of open access?Paul Ginsparg, Harold Varmus, Vitek
> Tracz, Pat Brown, Mike Eisen, Stevan Harnad?are the abolitionists," he
> said.
>
> So when was the equivalent of the George Yard meeting in the biomedical
> publishing world? Some of the crucial events, said Richard, were:
>
> * 13 November 1990: Tim Berners Lee wrote the first web page
> * 16 August 1991: Paul Ginsparg (who is also on the Board of Directors
> of PLoS) launched a high energy physics preprint archive
> * 27 June 1994: Stevan Harnad posted a ?subversive proposal? promoting
> self-archiving
> * 5 May 1999: Harold Varmus, Chair of the Board of Directors of PLoS,
> proposed E-biomed
> * Feb 2000: Pubmed Central was launched
> * 14 February 2002: The Budapest Open Access Initiative was launched
> * 1 October 2005: The Wellcome Trust implemented its open access
> mandate
>
> Richard is certainly not alone in taking a human rights-based approach to
> the issue of restricted access to essential scientific and medical
> information. I've been doing a little research on the rights-based angle
> to restricted access, and I've been surprised at how many human rights
> declarations call for free and open access to scientific and medical
> information.
>
> The United Nations, for example, has repeatedly championed the universal
> right to access scientific knowledge. Indeed, the Universal Declaration of
> Human Rights, the the primary UN document articulating human rights
> standards and norms, states that everyone has the right ?to share in
> scientific advancement and its benefits? (article 27, section 1).
>
> In 1999, the World Conference on Science, organized by the United Nations
> Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), adopted the
> Declaration on Science and the Use of Scientific Knowledge. The
> declaration emphasizes ?the importance for scientific research and
> education of full and open access to information and data belonging to the
> public domain? (article 3, section 38).
>
> The declaration also notes that ?Equal access to science is not only a
> social and ethical requirement for human development, but also essential
> for realizing the full potential of scientific communities worldwide and
> for orienting scientific progress towards meeting the needs of humankind?
> (article 4, section 42).
>
> As John Willinsky argues so convincingly in his brilliant book The Access
> Principle (which is freely available online), the right to access
> knowledge "has a claim on our humanity that stands with other basic
> rights, whether to life, liberty, justice, or respect."
>
> For the sake of global scientific progress, human development, and poverty
> alleviation, it is surely time to end the slavery of traditional
> publishing.
> Trackback URL for this post:
> http://www.plos.org/cms/trackback/204
>
>
> ---
> Zapopan Martín Muela-Meza
> Doctoral Candidate
> University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
> <http://zapopanmuela.googlepages.com/cv_english >
>
> "Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably
> control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press,
> radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most
> cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective
> conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights."
>
> --Albert Einstein (1949). "Why Socialism?" Monthly Review.
> <http://www.monthlyreview.org/598einst.htm >
> Source: Einstein, A. (2005). Ideas and opinions. London: A Condor Book;
> Souvenir Press (Educational and Academic), p. 157.
>
>
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Received on Fri Feb 22 2008 - 10:39:22 GMT