I would like you to defend your claim that PLoS is "crunching" small publishers. Can you provide an example?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Dr. Vinod Scaria" <drvi...@hotpop.com> To: <american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 9:07 AM Subject: Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives > CALICUT MEDICAL JOURNAL > http://www.calicutmedicaljournal.org > ARCHIVES AT COGPRINTS > *************************************************************** > > As we all know, Open Access Publishing is not gaining the momentum as > far as Journals published from Developing Countries are concerned [with > reference to western Journals]. Many reasons can be attributed like: > > 1. Monopolistic nature of Open Access Publishers like BioMedCentral > http://www. biomedcentral.com which pursues the "author pays" > and would drive away any author from Developing countries. Thus > obviously publishers from Developing countries would have second > thoughts before starting one at BMC. > > By meaning monopolistic, I refer to the almost complete control over open > access publishing- say about >75% of open Access Journals in Medicine.and > Mega organisations like PLOS are crunching the small publishers, as they > can easily override the smaller ones with the mega funding they have. > see: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7392/766#art > > 2. As I previously stated in my Editorial in Internet Health- > www. virtualmed. netfirms. com/internethealth/articleapril03. html , > the fear of losing revenue, which are the sole source of sustenance > of many Journals [though some make a meagre profit]. > > 3. Lack of sufficient expertise and > exposure to Open Access Publishing. >> > www. virtualmed. netfirms. com/internethealth/opinion0303. html > http://bmj. com/cgi/eletters/326/7382/182/b << > > But recent developments are worth mentioning - at least from India. Online > Journal of Health and Allied Sciences www. ojhas. org , India's first > Online BioMedical journal declared a couple of months back that they > would go Open. > > [I am in the Editorial board of OJHAS from Sept 2003]. OJHAS is > edited and published by a small group of scholars with no external > support. Everything from Web Design to Editing and Review are done by > voluntarily by the Editorial team. It also stands as a fine example of > the fact that Open Access Journals can indeed be successfully organised > and can indeed survive without an "author pays" model. > > Now coming to the Archival, Cogprints was our first choice for many reasons > > 1] It offers interoperability [as mentioned by Harnad] > 2] It offers unmatched popularity > 3] It has been there for years and we can be sure of the permanence > 4] It is of course FREE. > > And as Harnad suggested, there is no reason why Journals should not > be archived at Open Archives, be it self maintained repositories or > Centralised ones. In fact Open Archiving of electronic journals is > the need of the hour because our own studies [unpublished] show that > Electronic journals are just as ephemeral as websites. Scholarly > communication should never be lost at the cost of copyright > restrictions. Many of these journals have perhaps done more harm than > good by locking the access by copyright restrictions. > > Moreover, electronic journals are equally vulnerable to the vagaries > of the Internet. For example, JMIR www. jmir. org went suddenly offline > some time back [i think it was an year or so] making the whole content > inaccessible. [But it reappeared later and now is an Open Access Journal]. > > Thus in short, OPen Archiving of Journals as a whole is perhaps to be > discussed in a wider perspective than just making it OPEN. The major > emphasis should be the PERMANENCE of Open Archiving. I hope this post will > surely trigger a debate on the topic. > > Kind regards > > Dr. Vinod Scaria > Executive Editor: Calicut Medical Journal > Assoc Editor: Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences > Editor in Chief: Internet He@ lth > > WEB: www. drvinod. netfirms. com > MAIL: vinodscaria@yahoo. co. in > Mobile: +91 98474 65452 > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Stevan Harnad > To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER. SIGMAXI. ORG > Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 3:38 AM > Subject: Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives > > The two items that follow below are by Vinod Scario from Peter Suber's > Open Access News http://www. earlham. edu/~peters/fos/fosblog. html > > It provides an interesting and inspiring example of the power > and value of OAI-interoperability http://www. openarchives. org/ > and the interdependence of the two open-access strategies (open-access > self-archiving and open-access journal publishing) that this new online > open-access journal, produced in India, is being made accessible > by archiving it http://calicutmedicaljournal. org/archives. html > in a specially created sector of CogPrints in the UK, > http://cogprints. ecs. soton. ac. uk/view/subjects/JOURNALS. html > a multidisciplinary central archive created in 1997 for author > self-archiving (which is now being done more via distributed institutional > eprint archives -- to which the CogPrints software was adapted by Rob > Tansley, creator of eprints http://software. eprints. org/#ep2 and then > of dspace http://www. dspace. org/ -- rather than via central ones like > CogPrints). Yet there is no reason a central archive like CogPrints (or, > for that matter, any of the distributed institutional archives) cannot > provide a locus for open-access journals too! OAI-interoperability > means that they will all be picked up and integrated by cross-archive > harvesters like OOAster! http://oaister. umdl. umich. edu/o/oaister/ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >