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Re: Calculating the Cost : an author rejoinder

I don't pretend to know how politics work in the US, of course, but it
strikes me that the only way in which the government seems to be making a
stance is in their role as a funder of science. As a funder, they seem to
support the idea that research that they (read: the taxpayer)  paid for,
should be available free (especially to the taxpayer). That's behind the
original NIH proposal (and the 'amended' one, which, if recent reports are
to be believed, may be diluted to homeopathic levels).

Does that put the government "in charge of the dissemination of critical
ideas"? No. They are not, and publishers are not. Once research is done
and an article is written, show me the publisher who is "in charge of the
dissemination of critical ideas". If anybody is in charge, it's the
author.

Government funding agencies pay for the research (the ideas) and if they
want to, they can prevent publication, I guess. But that would have to be
publication, full stop. It makes not a shred of difference whether an
article is published in a subscription journal or an open access one. In
both cases it's public. A potentially useful reminder: a copyrighted
article published in a subscription journal may not be disseminated
freely, but the ideas it contains may.

It's great that the US has a strong legal tradition against any sort of
prior restraint. Restraining the dissemination of information based on
research paid by the public and useful for society should be avoided, too.

Jan Velterop

On 20 Jan 2005, at 00:44, Peter Banks wrote:


In a bracingly insulting way,  Phil raises some important issues.

To me, a largely unexamined question is "What is the role of government
in scholarship and in the dissemination of ideas?" Only Pat Schroeder of
AAP has discussed this in any depth (not surprisingly, given her
long-standing concern with the politization of science).

It is rather extraordinary to me that so little of the discussion of OA
has addressed the increased role of the government in the dissemination
of ideas through scholarly publishing. Were students of media law and
the history of journalism involved in this debate (as they should be,
probably), they would likely instantly point out the danger of putting
the government in charge of the dissemination of critical ideas.

There seems to be an assumption among many OA advocates that a producer
pays model (which is, in many cases, a government pays model, since
authors fees are paid for with government funds) leads to a freer flow
of ideas and information. You only have to look at the conduct of this
extremely secretive administration to question whether politicians can
ever be trusted to safeguard scientific dialogue. Are we really content,
knowing how funding for controversial areas can dry up in the political
wind, to empower the government to decide whether to allow grantees to
use grant funds to publish papers in areas like bioweapons,
contraception, family planning, stem cell research, or many other
controversial topics?

The US has a strong legal tradition against any sort of prior restraint
dating back to the 1931 case Near v. Minnesota. We should be very, very
careful before undermining one of the most important safeguards to free
expression we have--that tradition against any form a prior restraint,
which survived even the Pentagon Papers case.

Peter Banks
American Diabetes Association
Email: pbanks@diabetes.org