Richard,
You are right about the abuse and the taint, and about the way even
wrong-headed ideas can  become entrenched and grow, just because of
their number of believers, not their validity.
And, yes, some thought OA would solve both the accessibility and the
affordability problem (esp. librarians) and really only joined the
fray because of affordability, not access. And never much supported
green. And are now ditching OA altogether (because affordability was
all they ever sought, and OA does not seem to be providing it.)
But, Richard, how can affordability be just important as access?
Journal affordability is not an abstraction, or an ideological matter:
The reason institutions subscribe to journals is in order to buy
*access*. That's why high prices are a problem -- because they deny
access. So how can affordability be just as important as access if
there is a way to provide 100% access (green OA) that does not make
journals more affordable? The access is still provided, and therefore,
surely, the problem of affordability is mooted: Who cares if journals
are unaffordable if we have access anyway? Why does it matter? It's
not a principle ("excess-profit publishers") that is at issue here, it
is access to their (joint) product! (Let's not forget that the major
producer of the two is the author!)
Besides, having been systematically ignored on what I thought was just
a fanciful speculation for a decade -- namely that 100% green OA will
force publisher downsizing and conversion to gold OA, as well as
releasing the money to pay for it -- I have now become pretty
confident that this is almost exactly what would happen if we all
mandated green OA. What has increased my confidence that this is
exactly what would happen is precisely the obtuse way in which
everyone is going about it instead: ignoring or deprecating green OA a
priori, and pressing for pre-emptive gold (whether as a greedy
bottom-feeder publisher, or a top publisher trying to co-opt all
contingencies, or a frustrated librarian or university administrator,
or a bemused, blinkered, and uninformed author/user).
In other words, it's the patent irrationality of the alternative paths
people are bent on taking that has made me realize that universal
green OA first is the only way -- not only to accessibility, but
eventually to affordability too!
But it's clear that -- despite all this "rationality" -- I am losing
the battle, both practically, and theoretically (in that people not
only aren't doing what needs to be done to get OA, but they are
clinging to incoherent ideas, stubbornly refusing to examine them
carefully enough to see their incoherence; and then when nothing
works, they are ready to give up on OA altogether).
If I had any sense, I would give up, and forget about it myself. But
now it's become kind of a historic mission for me. The OA juggernaut
seems to be as good an example as any of the kind of collective
irrationality that has cropped up over and over again in human
history. Might as well grasp this one by the horns, even if one is
fated to lose. At least one will have fought the good fight, and that
(if not OA) will be part of the historic record. (Nowhere near as
important as having abstained from eating animals, but not entirely
pointless just the sameâ¦)
And, believe it or not, I'm not convinced that green has lost: I am
still pinning my hopes on EOS being able to convince university
policy-makers to see reason.
(And despite the bad press they generate for OA, I am pretty sure the
fool's gold bottom-feeders are just a flash in the pan.)
Chrs, Stevan
On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Richard Poynder <poyn...@me.com> wrote:
> This is a nettle that OA organisations like SPARC, OASPA and COPE should be
> grasping.
> There are things they could be doing, and things they could be saying. And
> for so long as
> the OA movement continues to ignore the problem, Open Access is in danger of
> being discredited.
> People are beginning to conclude that OA is about dubious marketing
> practices and vanity
> publishing, not about freeing the refereed literature.
>
> To tie this up with the recent commentary on Eric Van de Velde's post:
> Personally I think I see a
> new strand in the discussion about OA in Eric's post.
>
> I say this because until now most of the debate appears to have taken
> place in the speculative realm. Those against it have focused on arguing why
> OA will not/cannot work - be it Green, Gold, or the whole shebang. Â Those
> who support it have responded that that is all speculation, and then add
> that a more
> likely scenario is xxxx.
>
> What I think we are beginning to see is a strand that says, "Ok, we've tried
> OA, and here are the consequences and the problems". And some of
> Eric's questions reveal the sort of conclusions that people are reaching:
> "What if we could significantly reduce cost by implementing pay walls
> differently?" "Are Open-Access Journals a Form of Vanity Publishing?" These
> questions may not entirely reflect Eric's conclusion, but they
> are I think indicative of where the debate is moving.
>
> Stevan may be right to say that some of the arguments used are as
> flawed and wrong-headed as they always were, and frequently presented from
> the
> perspective of the wrong people. But if one considers how a debate is framed
> and
> develops - even if the thinking behind it is wrong-headed - once ideas gain
> mindshare they tend to take on a life of their own, as the history of OA
> demonstrates.
>
> I also understand Stevan's point about conflating access with affordability,
> but at one time many in the OA movement argued that OA would solve both
> problems, and it was for that reason perhaps that people like Eric (and
> many others too) supported the movement in the first place. Indeed, the
> roots of SPARC lie in the affordability problem, not the access problem.
>
> Personally, I believe that affordability is just as important as access, and
> while one can argue that the two problems should be tackled one at a time,
> with
> access addressed first, what we are actually witnessing is publishers
> co-opting OA in a way that embeds the affordability problem into an OA
> environment, so I don't think these are problems that can be tackled
> separately. Stevan is right to argue that Green is a better option, not
> just in terms of speed, but also for its potential to solve both problems
> (by forcing publishers to downsize while also providing access), but the
> problem
> is that Gold is winning the race to the finish line, not Green.
>
> Add to this the vanity publishing issue and the situation becomes even more
> perilous. As people will no doubt recall, Elsevier predicted what we are
> seeing
> in its evidence to the Science & Technology Committee in 2004 (for
> self-serving
> purposes perhaps, but so what), and indeed the claim had been made by others
> before.
> The problem is that many now see that prediction coming true. And if Gold
> OA is tainted,
> then Green OA will be viewed as guilty by association (and of course
> accused,
> however inaccurately, of not being all the things that Eric believes it
> ought to be).
>
> Richard
