No Dana, it wouldn't. How far do you have to travel to a 'public library'? 400 km? Do you have to take a ferry or a plane? Does this make it accessible? Of course the public library might provide an Internet service, but what's the point of that?
It would be perfectly possible to set up an Internet service so that all researchers had access to all peer-reviewed research articles, but no-one else. Imagine (as a hypothesis) that Springer owned all journals, and charged all universities a flat fee to access its database. This would satisfy the argument that research articles should be available 'free' and 'instantly' to researchers. However, this is a waste of money, besides being monopolistic. It is easier and cheaper to provide Open Access to all, and almost the whole OA movement is relying on these simple facts. The public access argument means exactly what it says: research should be available to all who want to see it. Researchers and exploiters are just special subsets of the public. Arthur Sale Tasmania, Australia -----Original Message----- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Dana Roth Sent: Monday, 30 April 2012 8:33 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access Would not the widespread provision of 'open access to the published version' at public libraries ... as is currently allowed by the American Physical Society ... solve the problem of 'public access'? Dana L. Roth Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540 dzr...@library.caltech.edu http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
