On Thu, 12 Sep 2002, Manfredi M.A La Manna wrote: > ...I [am] delighted to confirm that ELSSS['s] first journal (in direct > competition to an Elsevier title) will be coming out in early 2003... > > I have a standing bet with Stevan [Harnad] as to which strategy > (self-archiving or ELSSS') will disseminate research IN ECONOMICS of > the highest quality sooner. By the way, consistently with my view that > there is no optimal/inevitable solution to scientific communication valid > for EACH AND EVERY discipline/field, I am exploring the possibility of > an open-access journal in a field of economics where this particular > strategy seems to be most promising.
In case the substance of that bet was too cryptic for the uninitiated, it is NOT a bet about whether it will be (1) Budapest Open Access Strategy 1 (BOAI-1, author/institution self-archiving of their own published, peer-reviewed-journal research) or (2) Budapest Open Access Strategy 2 (BOAI-2, founding/converting open-access journals) that will be the first to reach the common BOAI goal of open access to the peer-reviewed-journal literature: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml . (One could have made a bet about that, but the outcome would probably have been that they will get there together, with perhaps an initial head-start by BOAI-1 in terms of number of open-access articles, but an eventual convergence with BOAI-2, as open-access itself accelerates the conversion of toll-access journals to open-access journals, funded up-front for their remaining essential services out of the windfall institutional toll-access savings). But that is NOT the substance of the bet with Manfredi! The bet is about discipline differences in the utility of open access. Manfredi suggests that open access is not the optimal or inevitable solution for all disciplines. In particular, Economics, he predicts, will prefer toll-access, but with lower tolls. The ELSSS journals (of which there is so far one, scheduled to appear in January 2003) are not open-access journals but (lower) toll-access journals. It is interesting to note that Manfredi is exploring the possibility that open access may be the most promising solution for some subfields of Economics. I will stick to my basic contention that it is the optimal and inevitable solution for peer-reviewed research in each and every discipline/field... Stevan Harnad