[GOAL] Re: Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access

[Arthur Sale]

I did not think that my comments would be as controversial as this. They are
plain common sense. Please let me make three points:

 

1    It is almost beyond doubt that the Australian NH&MRC funder mandate 
that is
proposed was strongly influenced by general public pressure to access biomedical
research. It was not as strongly influenced by researcher pressure for access. I
suspect the same is true of the NIH mandate and certainly when it was being
mandated there were many calls for researchers (regardless of discipline) to
support the NIH mandate. A researcher outside his or her area of expertise is
acting as a member of the general public, not a relevant researcher. (I will
accept OA researchers as relevant, of course.)

 

2    Industrial and commercial developers and exploiters are not researchers.
They seek to exploit research and yet they often find difficulty in accessing
it, especially in small business. This is common in, for example, ICT, general
practice of medicine, and agriculture). That's why I lump them in with the
general public.

 

3    I challenge the group to nominate an area of science or social science 
in
which there is not public interest. I assert that there are none. Even the Large
Hadron Collider and the Higgs boson (to take the very small and apparently
irrelevant) and cosmology (to take the very large and apparently irrelevant) are
interesting to some. Maybe the best place to search might be esoteric inorganic
chemistry, but even then there are people who want access. I don't think
advanced maths cuts the mustard either.

 

BROAD SUPPORT

 

I cite public interest in climate change, the environment, earth-crossing
asteroids, whether Pluto is called a planet or not, the genetics of plants,
solar photovoltaic cells, energy, and any of the myriad fields and
cross-disciplinary areas that exist. As well as the simple existence of science
journalism (often unhealthily focused on Nature and similar peak journals),
magazines like New Scientist, and science fiction. I suspect that there is more
public interest in economics research and environmental research (including
climate) than there is in biomedical research, though the last are often more
vocal if they think their lives are at stake.

 

But I should really let Darwin have the last say. He knew that his and Wallace's
research (arguably the most important ever) was going to be of huge public
interest. The public did not contribute much to the follow-up proofs and
development (scientists did), but there is surely no doubt that Darwin's thesis
benefitted hugely from the public interest?

 

REPLACEMENT

Having re-read what I had written, I thought I should try to be positive. 
Let’s
ditch Stevan’s Points 8 and 9 and replace them by:

 

“8. All peer-reviewed research outputs are of direct interest to differing
subsets of the general public. Some have small subsets; others large.

 

9. Hence, for all research, "public access to publicly funded research" is good
reason for providing OA, or for mandating that OA be provided, while noting that
this argument is more persuasive to managers and politicians than to researchers
who rely on peer assessment for financial rewards.”

 

For reference, the original was:

 

“8. But most peer-reviewed research reports themselves are neither
understandable nor of direct interest to the general public as reading matter.

 

9. Hence, for most research, "public access to publicly funded research," is not
reason enough for providing OA, nor for mandating that OA be provided.”

 

 

Arthur Sale

Tasmania, Australia




    [ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]

_______________________________________________
GOAL mailing list
GOAL@eprints.org
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal