Re: University of California at Santa Cruz versus Elsevier

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

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