Prior Topic Thread: "Public Access to Science Act (Sabo Bill, H.R. 2613)" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2977.html
> From: sathya AT informindia.co.in > To: lis-fo...@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > Subject: Re: The Sabo Bill and Open Access > > Question-1 > > Do Chemists world over subscribe to [the] view that Databases like Chemical > Abstracts will become superfluous as OAI initiative matures covering a large > part of journal content? It is not only premature to speculate about what may or not become of secondary publisher indexes and databases once OA prevails, but to speculate about it now only provokes needless (and groundless) resistance to OA's prevailing. Here are the facts: Self-archiving can bring 100% OA overnight. That night is long overdue. Let us focus *all* of our efforts on making that night arrive at last, and not waste more time speculating about the many things -- and their opposite -- that might or might not eventually follow 100% OA. http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#31-worries > Question-2 > > Sabo bill is a threat to the academic freedom of the scientists which gives > them benefit of copyright for their published research works even though > money is spent by their respective institutes for doing research (be it > federal funding or others)? Are the scientist-authors willing to lose this > academic freedom? This issue which is at the heart of freedom of expression, > a very fundamental individual rights. If a scientist desires to publish a > book out of his research work, will any publisher be willing to pick it up > once the Sabo bill is passed as an act? This point is made a bit obscurely here, but if I understand it correctly, it has some validity: (1) Journal articles are -- and always have been -- author give-aways, written only for research impact, not royalty income. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.1 (2) Books are not author give-aways, and are often written with the hope of royalty income. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0450.html (3) The current version of the Sabo Bill is not only unacceptable to research authors, it is also unnecessary for OA. (4) For OA, (a) the give-away text need not and should not be put into the public domain by the author (as recommended by the Sabo Bill); (b) nor is it necessary for the author to adopt a Creative-Commons copyright agreement, (c) nor to retain copyright, (d) nor to renegotiate copyright with the publisher. (4b-4d are welcome, but not necessary, and seeking them should not be allowed to hold up OA.) (5) OA applies primarily to journal articles for now, and all that is required is that those should all be self-archived. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.1 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/bookcite.htm (6) Only about 10-20% of the 2.5 million articles published annually in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed are being self-archived today. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html (7) 84% of journals have already given their official green light to author-institution self-archiving. http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php (8) There are simple, legal ways to self-archive articles even in the case of the remaining 14% http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#10.Copyright (9) The Sabo Bill should be amended to bring it in line with the recent recommendations of the US House Appropriations Committee and the UK Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, so as to mandate the OA self-archiving of all journal articles resulting from US-funded research. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/congress.html (10) The goal is 100% OA, as soon as possible. The reason for the urgency is cumulative, needless loss of research usage and impact, which in turn means loss of research productivity and progress: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0025.gif http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html Stevan Harnad UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY: BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004) is available at: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html To join the Forum: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org