RE: Reuters article and Jan Velterop's comment

["Adam Hodgkin" <adam.hodgkin@xrefer.com>]

There is an issue underlying this which deserves broader consideration.

Proponents of OA Journal publishing may be too fixed on the concept of
replicating the 'form and feel' of the traditional scientific periodical.
Perhaps they should be more open to new possibilities ('There are more
things in heaven and earth, Horatio,....')

A few considerations (of very differing weight and provenance) which go in
this direction of new horizons being contributor driven, not only as to
content but as to form:

(1) The fundamental technology which enables this possible shift is the
techology (-ies) of the web, and in this context it surely is a mistake to
see Scientific or Scholarly Publishing as an isolated business (perhaps
one of the problems with the traditional business of print STM publishing
is that it is viewed too much as a peculiar/unique business). The web
brings broader horizontal considerations into play: of which Google,
blogs, Open Source software etc are obvious and heterogenous examples.

(2) Speaking as a 'died in the wool' publisher, I can understand why PLoS
and BMC have decided to implement Journals which in form and function look
pretty close e-translations of traditional journal formats (thank heavens
they didn't opt for PDF-only). But speaking as an enthusiast for the new
electronic publishing which will do MUCH MORE for readers and authors than
conventional print, I would suggest that these early OA journals are
'clean', 'sensible' but, at this point, disappointingly unresponsive to
the new technology opportunities. Lets hope that there is a lot more
diversity to be uncovered, in functionality, immediacy, web-inventiveness,
collaborativeness, bibliographic intelligence, scientific-data-embedding,
etc

(3) Scientific periodical publishing first evolved (became
institutionalised) in the 17thC from the ordinary communications of
scientists in that time. For this reason, if for no other, we should keep
a close eye on the potential of even list servers, and certainly of blogs,
and of other communication technologies which scientists and scholars
adopt in this day.  One of the advantages of OA publishing/archiving is
that it will permit more discrimination and more variety in the forms of
publication. Not everything useful or deep needs to be a 'Research
Article' in Science/Nature, or to look like it.

(4) If OA-proponents need a lode-star to tell them that the OA approach is
(probably) sustainable and socially beneficial, we might agree that the
strongest examples to cite are (a) Open Source software development, and
(b) the way that Public Deposit of Genome Data swept the board in the
brief contest between Celera and the Publicly funded Genome effort. The
publication of primary scientific research is different from either of
these, but we should be aware of the parallels and the much broader
context in which scientific and scholarly research publications play their
part. If the inventors of Open Source and of the Public Genome Databases
had used the obvious prior art models {previous Operating Systems, or
large scale Chemistry Databases), they would have not have made the
crucial steps they needed to make.

Adam

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: 09 March 2004 22:40
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: RE: Reuters article

Joe Esposito wrote:

> user-generated content [...] the stewpot out of which open access 
> research publications will arise.

Perhaps in the same way as the prestigious scientific journals arose out
of the drivel found in the magazine racks of the average airport
newsstand? Or more like the statistically significant effect of the
decline of the stork population on the birth-rate of humans in Western
Europe?

Jan Velterop