Stevan You may think that pressure for biomedical mandates is a special case, but I do not, as I thought I had made clear. Not only are there much bigger public interest groups in other areas, but biomedical research is often much more tentative and confusing than hard science. Sometimes it is plain wrong, or damaging (remember thalidomide? homeopathy?).
Really, just repeating the mantra that OA is for researchers first and alone provides a rationale for OA does not change anything. I am happy to agree that all research outputs (even those that are wrong or falsified) are of interest to the researchers in that field. However, I am glad that you are now recognizing that OA for exploiters (or 'appliers' to use your word) is also relevant and not covered by the researcher mantra. This is a step forward. I am happy to concede that there are some fields in which applicability cannot be discerned at the time of writing (or never) such as the search for exoplanets, cosmology, or the Higgs boson. The only exploiters I can think of for these are the popular science journalists, the journal publishers, and science fiction writers and film-makers. [Though on reflection, the techniques may be applicable as second-order benefits.] The reason that I suggest that your points 8 and 9 need rewording is that they are both plain wrong. Let me analyse them: > "8. But most peer-reviewed research reports themselves are neither > understandable nor of direct interest to the general public as reading matter." This statement is so offensive that it must be replaced. I assert that most if not all peer-reviewed research reports are understandable in some sense to at least some members of the general public. We cannot prove otherwise. Where do we find the research to back up either statement? It may be that you are implicitly making the insertion 'to all the general public', but you cannot sustain this as a statement worth making nor a similar insertion in the researcher equivalent. The other charitable interpretation is that if you can understand the paper in some sense, you are a 'researcher'; if not then you are a 'member of the general public'. I cannot accept that either. I remember some interesting research about a decade ago that the average paper is skimmed for interest by perhaps 100 researchers, read carefully and understood by about 10, and acted on by about two (for which citations are a lower bound). In other words, not all researchers can be bothered to understand all papers (or may not be competent to), even in the same narrow field. > "9. Hence, for most research, "public access to publicly funded research," > is not reason enough for providing OA, nor for mandating that OA be provided." If clause 8 fails, the 'hence' fails. One could instead argue that it is difficult to determine which research outputs are of direct interest to the general public, but if most of them are it is a waste of resources to try to predetermine this, and hence OA should be mandated to provide public access to publicly funded research, of which researchers and exploiters are a special case. There is also the transparency argument: expenditure of public funds entails a responsibility to acquit those funds by showing they are spent wisely, and hence OA should be mandated to provide public access and acquittal of publicly funded research. Peer-reviewing does not alone provide sufficient transparency - for example, it may not expose plagiarism or fraud. Best wishes Arthur Sale -----Original Message----- From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Monday, 30 April 2012 2:51 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access On 2012-04-28, at 9:25 PM, Arthur Sale wrote: > 1 the Australian NH&MRC funder mandate that is proposed > was strongly influenced by general public pressure to access > biomedical research. It was not as strongly influenced by researcher > pressure for access. I suspect the same is true of the NIH mandate I've always agreed that pressure for biomedical OA mandates is a indeed a special case, strengthened by pressure for public access. But that it is not representative of all or most of research, whereas researcher need for researcher access ("peer access") is. Researcher pressure does not induce mandates: mandates induce researchers to provide OA. Researchers' (and research's) need for peer access is universal: it's a rationale for mandating OA to *all* research. > 2 Industrial and commercial developers and exploiters are not researchers. Industrial and commercial developers and exploiters are not the general public but appliers of research. Evidence of their uptake and usage can be as useful a contributor to the research impact of research and researchers as citations can be. But industrial applicability is not representative of all or most of research, whereas researchers' need for researcher access is. > 3 I challenge the group to nominate an area of science or social science > in which there is not public interest. The (undoubted) existence of *some* public interest in *some* research does not provide a rationale for making *all* research OA, whereas researchers' need for researcher access does. That is why peer access must be given priority over public access. There is no disagreement at all about the usefulness of supplementary rationales for providing and mandating OA, such as public access. The substantive point is about *priorities* (and universality). > Let's ditch Stevan's Points 8 and 9 and replace them by: > > X8. All peer-reviewed research outputs are of direct interest to > differing subsets of the general public. Some have small subsets; others large. > > X9. Hence, for all research, "public access to publicly funded research" > is good reason for providing OA, or for mandating that OA be provided, > while noting that this argument is more persuasive to managers and > politicians than to researchers who rely on peer assessment for > financial rewards." Public access is a credible supplementary rationale, for some research. It is not credible as the primary rationale for providing or mandating OA. I suggest leaving the original points 8 and 9 intact, and instead treating X8 and X9 as supplementary rationales for providing and mandating OA -- relevant to some but not all research output. > For reference, the original was: > > 8. But most peer-reviewed research reports themselves are neither > understandable nor of direct interest to the general public as reading matter. > > 9. Hence, for most research, "public access to publicly funded research," > is not reason enough for providing OA, nor for mandating that OA be provided." Stevan Harnad
