Re: 2nd Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication .agendas/Watkinson

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

Publishers have always been asked to speak at certain conferences. As I
mentioned the Charleston Conference is a good example.

It does however seem to me Steve somehow suggests that the academic
library community is part of the academic community in a way that academic
publishers, whether commercial or not-for-profit, are not part of that
community. Some librarians are academics and some publishers are academic
but most librarians and most publishers are not academics in the sense
that academics in general would recognise. They are intermediaries and
facilitators

I have been working in publishing for over thirty years. I move in
academic circles. I talk daily to academic editors and authors. I am just
off to an international conference in an academic discipline. They think I
represent them as authors in facilitating scholarly communication.  I try
to do so.

The library community represent the academic community as a user
community. The publishing community represents the academic community as
authors.

It is fair enough that Steve and his friends should get together at
Southampton. It is difficult for them to avoid distractions if they are
confronted with the reality of what most academics actually want. However
my complaint about the Nordic Conference is that it is billed as a
conference about scholarly communication in which commercial publishers
have a role because my guess is that they publish for the academic
community the majority of the papers they produce. It is a guess - so
perhaps I should say a lot of the papers. I am not suggesting that the
Nordic Conference is particularly unusual in this respect but it did post
information on the list. Fortunately the moderators of this list have
always taken a broad view of scholarly communication.

Anthony


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Hitchcock" <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 05, 2004 10:46 PM
Subject: RE: 2nd Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication
.agendas/Watkinson

> Wasn't there once a time when, UKSG and ALPSP meetings apart (in the UK at
> least), senior publishers kept their own counsel and got on with running
> the business quietly and efficiently out of public view?
>
> Now the opposite seems to be the case, and it's a lot to do with open
> access. Of course, publishers have a major role in OA, and this makes the
> current debate more interesting. But there is also the case at the moment
> for the academic community to focus on some aspects of open access - e.g.
> institutional archives, funding, assessment - without the constant
> distraction of other concerns. We recently held a meeting at Southampton
>
> National Policies on Open Access (OA) Provision for University Research
> Output http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19prog.html
>
> where the programme didn't include publishers for this reason, and was
> successful because it was focussed, or to use Colin Steele's term
> 'holistic', and therefore somewhat different (Colin was one of the main
> instigators and speakers, btw). That did not prevent a range of views
> being expressed, and clearly the outcomes will need to take account of the
> wider OA picture, for which I'm pleased to note there are currently many
> forums.
>
> Steve Hitchcock
> Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk