Re: Open Access Week 2010

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Sat, 1 May 2010 09:13:58 -0400

On 2010-04-30, at 5:05 PM, Allen Kleiman wrote:

> Unsigned:
>
> Are you an attorney? Under the Fair Use and other provisions of the US Copyright law I can send anything I want for use by students. Furthermore my publishers have given me permission to send copies of scholarly works whenever I have asked. I am going to attach one but do not know if the Moderator will allow it. This whole agony over open access is just a self-aggrandizing agenda of a few people. Why  MIT with whom I am affiliated, among others,  makes so much in science and technology available as to satisfy most inquisitors without any prompting by open access organizations. Furthermore most of the scholarly work of any merit is kept secret in order to obtain a competitive advantage either for tenure or other financial gain.
>
> Most research and scholarly publications are read by 'insiders' who for the most part have open access through libraries and Fair Use. I am a researcher and scholar and have access to anything published in the world. So what's the point?

Dear Allen Kleiman

I think you may have misunderstood the nature and purpose of open
access (and possibly also the nature and purpose of research
publishing):

(1) Emailing eprints on request is not Open Access (OA) and far from
being good enough to meet the usage needs of scholars, scientists,
students, teachers and the tax-paying public in the online era. When
published research findings can be visible and accessible free online
with one click, it should no longer be necessary to try to email the
author and wait and hope that the request will eventually be
fulfilled.

(2) Emailing eprints semi-automatically is "Almost-OA," and provides a
useful supplement to OA for those papers that have been deposited in
the author's Institutional Repository as "Closed Access" because the
author wishes to comply with a publisher access embargo. Almost-OA
will help institutions adopt OA mandates (like the 157 mandates in
ROARMAP http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ ) and it will
help tide over research  and researcher needs during publisher access
embargoes, and eventually put an end to them, but on no account is it
good enough, or a substitute for OA.

(3) It might be a useful exercise (and we would be happy if you posted
your results!), if you were to test your hypothesis that "I am a
researcher and scholar and have access to anything published in the
world" by going to PubMed in nursing -- which I infer is your field
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FSW/is_3_25/ai_n27284264/pg_7/
 -- finding a sample of, say, 50 current articles in nursing journals
for 2009, and reporting to this list what percentage of them was (i)
OA (meaning anyone could access them immediately with one click), (ii)
Almost-OA (meaning you could sem-automatically request an eprint from
the author with one click) -- and what percentage of those responded
with an eprint (and how soon), (iii) neither OA nor almost-OA, but one
could find the author's email address and email for and eprint (and
how soon) -- and what percentage of those responded with an eprint
(and how soon), and (iv) what percentage did not even have an email
address for the author.

I hope you will agree that it is systematic random sampling as in (3),
field by field, that can reveal the objective state of research access
today, not the subjective impression of one researcher in one field.
Do it, and you will see "what's the point."

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010)
Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair
Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren
Wershler, Eds.)  http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/

Stevan Harnad


From: boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
[mailto:boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Carolina
Rossini
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 4:05 PM
To: boai-forum_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
Subject: [BOAI] Re: Open Access Week 2010 declared for October 18 to
24--Researchers challenged to demonstrate the impact ofOpenAccess on
research and scholarship

That is against copyright and library rules....plus what you do
fosters a club culture that does not solve the issue of lack of access
from developing countries.

On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 8:25 AM, Allen Kleiman <allenk_at_panix.com> wrote:
What I try to do, upon request,  is to e-mail any of my papers to
other countries and any others I have available from my library.Of
course what you are describing is not entirely or even partly due to
the open access project -- it is because your libraries are not funded
properly. I am not qualified to discuss that problem however.

Allen




From: boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
[mailto:boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Françoise
Salager-Meyer
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 9:50 AM
To: boai-forum_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
Subject: [BOAI] Re: Open Access Week 2010 declared for October 18 to
24 --Researchers challenged to demonstrate the impact of OpenAccess on
research and scholarship
Importance: High

Not so in developing countries, Mr. Kleiman, where it is extremely
difficult to have access to the materials we need to conduct our
research because our libraries are almost empty (only subscribe to a
few journals and not the top-notch ones ... and no books).
Françoise Salager-Meyer
(Universidad de Los Andes. Mérida. Venezuela)

********




Most research and scholarly publications are read by 'insiders' who
for the most part have open access through libraries and Fair Use. I
am a researcher and scholar and have access to anything published in
the world. So what's the point?

Second your practice of moderating e-mails is contrary to your stated
goal of open access.

Allen Kleiman


From: boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
[mailto:boai-forum-bounces_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Iryna Kuchma
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2010 3:22 AM
To: boai-forum
Subject: [BOAI] Open Access Week 2010 declared for October 18 to 24
--Researchers challenged to demonstrate the impact of OpenAccess on
research and scholarship
[Forwarded message from Jennifer McLennan]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 28, 2010

For more information, contact:
Jennifer McLennan
(202) 296-2296 ext. 121
jennifer [at] arl [dot] org

Open Access Week 2010 declared for October 18 to 24
Researchers challenged to demonstrate the impact of Open Access on
research and scholarship

(Washington, DC) Open Access Week, the global event to promote free,
immediate, online access to research now entering its fourth year, has
been declared for October 18 to 24, 2010. Open Access Week is an
opportunity for the worldwide academic and research community to
continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access (OA), to
share what they've learned with colleagues, and to inspire wider
participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship
and research.

"Open Access Week has evolved from a one-day student event on a dozen
campuses to a truly global phenomenon," said Jennifer McLennan, Open
Access Week program director at SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition). "We've seen participation expand to
include hundreds of university and college campuses, research
institutes, funding agencies, libraries, and think tanks - all
connecting the fast-growing global momentum toward openness with the
advancement of policy changes on the local level." In 2009, Open
Access Week spurred the announcement of actions including expanded
open-access publication funds, the adoption of institution-wide
open-access policies, and the release of new reports on the societal
and economic benefits of OA.

This year's OA Week preparations kick off with a challenge to
researchers from Dr. Philip E. Bourne, Professor of Pharmacy and
Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California San Diego and
Founding Editor-in-Chief of PLoS Computational Biology. In a video
posted to the OA Week Web site, Bourne calls upon scholars to think
beyond free and ready access to the literature - made possible by Open
Access - and consider how technology may be deployed to advance
research, to truly mine the increasing amount of available literature.

He says, "What I think ultimately will be the main success of Open
Access, is that you have the full text of the literature in an XML
format that can be analyzed and used by computer. The idea that we'll
be able to keep up with [the volume of literature being published] is
just untenable. To actually make full use of the literature, we're
going to require tools to help us." He challenges his peers in the
research community to surface efforts like SciVee (a new type of
learning experience that mashes up journal articles with rich media)
and UCSD's BioLit (an initiative to integrate database identifiers and
rich meta-data from open-access articles with biological databases) -
both of which "would not be possible without unbridled and free access
to the literature."

Challenges like Dr. Bourne's, and responses to them - experiences and
projects that demonstrate the power of Open Access to enable the Web
and advance discovery - will be highlighted across global efforts in
conjunction with the Week. Details may be posted or linked on the Open
Access Week Web site by October 10, 2010.

The new Open Access Week Web site, at http://www.openaccessweek.org,
details how participants across sectors - from research funders and
producers to students and libraries - have taken advantage of the
event to advance Open Access, and offers ideas for 2010.

"There are a multitude of ways to participate in OA Week," said Alma
Swan, program adviser. "It can be as simple as wearing a bright orange
shirt or as complex as introducing a new OA policy. OA Week may also
be the chance to let your imagination have full rein and come up with
something ambitious, wacky, or fun."

Organizations and individuals planning to participate or interested in
more information about Open Access Week 2010 should register now on
the Web site for access to regional and global contacts and resources.

Open Access Week is organized by SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition), with expert guidance from an
international panel of Open Access leaders. Program advisers include:
Subbiah Arunachalam (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore),
Leslie Chan (University of Toronto, Scarborough, OASIS), Melissa
Hagemann (Open Society Institute), Thomas Hickerson (University of
Calgary), Heather Joseph (SPARC), Iryna Kuchma (eIFL.net), Li Lin
(National Science Library, CAS), Donna Okubo (Public Library of
Science), Robin Peek (Open Access Directory, Simmons College),
Carolina Rossini (Berkman Center), Nick Shockey (Right to Research
Coalition), Peter Suber (Berkman Center, Earlham College, SPARC), Alma
Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd, OASIS), Ikuko Tsuchide (Digital Repository
Federation, Japan), Xiaolin Zhang (National Science Library, CAS).

For more information, visit the Open Access Week Web site at
http://www.openaccessweek.org.

##

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), with
SPARC Europe and SPARC Japan, is an international alliance of more
than 800 academic and research libraries working to create a more open
system of scholarly communication. SPARC's advocacy, educational, and
publisher partnership programs encourage expanded dissemination of
research. SPARC is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/sparc.

-------------------------------------
Jennifer McLennan
Received on Sat May 01 2010 - 14:14:36 BST

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