Re: University of California at Santa Cruz versus Elsevier Stevan Harnad 30 Oct 2003 19:07 UTC
Again, the reasoning of the following well-informed comment takes one's breath away: It is so well-intentioned, so near -- and yet so far off the mark! And alas still so representative of current inchoate thinking on the subject: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Mike Brown wrote: > I believe given the > current climate in the academic world that we will lose this round of > the [boycott] battle and capitulate to Elsevier. > > Why? > > Impact factor and RAEs here in the UK - few are willing to take up the > call and boycott these journals for fear of being penalized when it > comes to grant applications. > > Which looks better to a funding body: > > a) Publishing your [parasitology' work in an open access Journal > or > b) Publishing your work in Trends in Parasitology (TiP, Elsevier) > > Sadly it seems the current state of play is that publishing in TiP looks > better to a funding body > > Is this not crazy!? > > What we need is for more researchers to stop agreeing with us that open > access is a great idea and start publishing more high-impact papers in > Journals with open access models - this will make Elsevier sit up and > listen. What is really crazy is that we keep expressing our desire for open access through moratoriums and petitions like this instead of taking matters into our own hands by self-archiving our own output! All Elsevier journals are Romeo "blue/green," which means they support author self-archiving. Why propose to boycott them instead of just taking them up on what can even be interpreted as a challenge: "Why should I [Elsevier] take you seriously about your alleged desire for open access if you can't even be be bothered to provide it for yourselves when you are invited to?" > I realize that open access is not about making research available to the > developing nations (and yet... ;-)) - but it is my prime concern. Open access is about making resaech available to *all* would-be users, worldwide. What on earth is the point of asking researchers to withold their papers from their preferred journals rather than simply self-archiving them? That way they can have their RAE-cake and the world can eat it too! http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0008.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0009.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.htm Quo usque tandem patientia nostra abutere...? Stevan Harnad NOTE: Complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Posted discussion to: september98-forum@amsci-forum.amsci.org Dual Open-Access Strategy: BOAI-2: Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. BOAI-1: Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm