Re: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy Proposal

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Stevan Harnad wrote:

>The argument that self-archiving will lead to journal cancellations and
>collapse, in contrast, is not based on objective fact but on
>*hypothesis*. There are of course also counter-arguments, based on
>counter-hypotheses

   http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2

>but it is also a fact that all objective evidence to date is *contrary*
>to the hypothesis that self-archiving leads to journal cancellation and
>collapse:

JE:  This is a very unfortunate statement.  The only valid metric is for
proponents of Open Access to invest their life savings in the companies
that publish research journals, in order to prove that they do not believe
that OA will hurt the financial performance of publishers that accommodate
OA.  I have no quarrel with those who believe that OA will hurt
traditional publishers, and no quarrel with those who experiment with
different forms of publishing that happen to be OA (e.g., arXiv)--and no
quarrel with funding bodies that require OA publication of funded
research.  But to say to a publisher, "Give this away; you're not going to
feel it at all," is simply ridiculous.

Joe Esposito