Oh my! All these distinguished OA veterans getting their backs up -- "arrogant?"unethical" -- as if I were arguing for public access denial, whereas what I am arguing for is a credible rationale for persuading (unpersuaded) peers to provide access...
On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 5:58 AM, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote: > Just a note to express my support and 100% agreement with Peter and Arthur. > > On 28 Apr 2012, at 10:00, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: > > On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 8:05 AM, Arthur Sale <ahjs at ozemail.com.au> wrote: >> >> Stevan >> >> I disagree with you in one regard. I agree that researchers are a main >> target but the general public cannot and should not be omitted. The place >> you go wrong is in your clauses 8 and 9. They are false, though perhaps a >> misguided intent is a better description. Almost all research papers are >> of interest to a subset of the general public (different for each paper, as >> for researchers). >> > > I completely agree with Arthur. It is arrogant and unethical for academics > to claim that research is primarily for academics. There are huge numbers of > people outside academia who are frustrated by lack of access. A similar > arrogance was showed by Lord Winston (an academic medic well kown on TV)? at > the Oxford? meeting on "Evolution of Scholarship" where he stated that the > general public shouldn't have access to the medical literature. Even were > this awful premise justifiable, the mechanism of doing it through > pay-barrier access for commercial gain is an appalling way. > > I am now "retired" and along with many others feel the effect of being > "scholarly poor". These are the people who want to, but cannot, read the > scholarly literature except at 40 USD per paper per day. Academics don't > care bout them and it's shameful. There are people who change jobs - e.g. > from academia to industry - who overnight get cut off from scholarship. Why > should the taxpayers and student fees and research funders subsidize library > subscriptions in academia if there is this elitism? > > Universities have failed to catch the spirit of twenty-first century > information and the world is showing its frustration with them. > > To change attitudes and show the importance of the Scholarly Poor the Open > Knowledge Foundation and Mike Taylor has set up resources at > http://whoneedsaccess.org/ and @ccess to show the waste and pain caused by > denying scholarship outside academia. Mike is outside academia - he works in > computing - and yet manages to publish peer-reviewed research in sauropods > (dinosaurs). He has also championed the cause of effective Open Access > outside academia and has several articles in the national presses. > > P. > > -- > Peter Murray-Rust > Reader in Molecular Informatics > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry > University of Cambridge > CB2 1EW, UK > +44-1223-763069 > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL at eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL at eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal >
