======================================= The Moderator has reminded me that this list is not for general and theoretical (or ideological) discussions. This policy was articulated first here:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3721.html Accordingly I am cc-ing it to the BOAI forum where any follow up should appear. Adam ========================================= Professor Harnad says: > The problem OA is intended to remedy is not loss of author > revenue, since these authors don't *seek* revenue. The problem OA is > intended to remedy is loss of author impact, for which the only remedy > is to make sure that every would-be user can access the research. Are we sure that 'loss of author impact' is the only problem OA is intended to remedy? Increased impact may be one of several goals. But we can agree that increased author impact is part of the intended outcome. If impact matters so also citations matter..... In modern biology, one of the ways that increased authour impact becomes visible is through the incorporation of citations (Citations to Published Literature) in databases such as Wormbase http://www.wormbase.org/ Ensembl http://www.ensembl.org/ UNIPROT (used to be SWISSProt) http://www.ebi.uniprot.org/index.shtm These databases are full of thousands of authoritative citations. Such databases are really the modern equivalent of a scientific reference book, and as such quasi-literature So any sensible metric which measures the impact of modern biology will pay a lot of attention to the citations which appear in these databases. For a worm researcher, being cited in Wormbase is absolutely part of the impact of publishing research on C.elegans. Since these important databases are gradually becoming 'the publication of record' for modern biology, and since they are refereed, revised, curated and authoritative, I dont think it makes sense, in the post-Gutenberg-era, to classify them as quite irrelevant to the OA issue for conventional journals. This was one of the points that Cockerill was driving at in his original posting. Harnad says that its an empty ideological cliche to say "publishing the results of research is itself a part of the research process" . But its clear that many funders of research are coming to the same conclusion, perhaps it is not such an empty cliche when they take that view. 'Ideological'? Yes, but how can an Open Access proponent/opponent avoid ideology? Adam