Strictly my own wayward opinions: (01)
I agree that publicly funded work should have its results made
public, and that these days that should mean openly net accessible
too. (02)
But the entire mantra of Western commercialism is, "If you can fool
some of the people some of the time, why not get away with as much as
you can without getting beaten up?" And the more folks they fool, the
more solid their institutionalisation becomes and the more they get
away with. Then that creates the fly-trap that everyone gets stuck
in, and whether some of us like it or not we have to go with the flow
to survive: The profit-oriented, production-based economy. No-one
survives who doesn't produce or add value.
So there are costs w.r.t. to any work, and if a publicly funded
institution isn't carrying them, why shouldn't independent authors
charge in order to earn and why shouldn't publishers charge for their
value-adding service? (03)
The standard counter-argument is the one about insurmountable
barriers to entry.
Yep, they exist, and they are always going to exist at any point in
the present system where costs be recouped in order to (at least)
sustain are high. (04)
Even ignoring profiteering the basic economic model is:
- get some funds, hire people with a track record of creating stuff,
keep funding them if they keep creating, exploit creations (directly
or indirectly) to raise funds to offset against costs. (05)
The costs of publishing science results used to be high. (06)
What the internet seems to be doing in respect of OA is changing the
landscape of choice over which consumers can choose what gets
sustained. Publication is clearly still necessary, but the issue of
where and by whom, and the costs involved, have drastically shifted.
The economic reality has changed, and it is allowing consumers to
question the prices of the old model and vote with their feet.
So some publishing dinosaurs might go extinct, costs will definitely
drop, and barriers to access will be lowered a lot in respect of
academic publishing. (07)
Commercially-funded research will continue to exist on another plane
though, unless the producers of the research results act. I think
that's unlikely to happen enough to sway the way commercially-funded
research happens or reaches the outside world. Corporations can mess
with researchers' careers too easily. (08)
That public interest vs. private interest battle is major, w.r.t. to
our view of what corporations are and should do. (09)
But to say that all works of any author should be open, given the
current economic constraints, is tricky. It risks devaluing authors
out of existence and killing the arts. I'm definitely not in favour
of that.
But maybe I don't have enough faith in the donation model as yet. (010)
--
Peter (011)
On 2 Jun 2004 at 8:50, Jack Park wrote: (012)
> I am forwarding Peter Suber's post to this community since the whole
> idea of open access has been of great importance in my own work.
> Curious if others agree with the importance of open access to
> publications. Last evening, I watched a NOVA thang on gamma ray
> bursters, and saw first hand how science is *not* carried out in the
> truest spirit of collaboration. With those periodic events, the trick
> was to spot a burst, then immediately aim radio and light telescopes
> at the event to look for the afterglow to assess the distances
> involved. The U.S. satellite failed to achieve orbit, but one from
> Italy did. The Italians let out the data to one group with a
> stipulation that they could not aim light scopes at it. The Dutch team
> did so anyway. That's science at its best? It seems to me that the
> folks doing Yak, PORT, CG, and lots of other generally collaborative
> things ought to be paying attention to the open access issue.
>
> Cheers
> Jack
> (013)
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