Re: OA - What cost? What value?

[Peter Banks <pbanks@bankspub.com>]

This formulation calls to mind Jakes Barnes' final line in The 
Sun Also Rises: "Isn't it pretty to think so?."

When in the history of any human enterprise (at least after the 
discovery of simple machines) has a "negligible" investment 
produced "double" the output? Let's say "negligible" is 0.05 in 
whatever arbitrary units you choose--dollars, say. A 40-fold 
increase in impact? Common sense tells us otherwise. So do the 
data that exist.

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
pbanks@bankspub.com
www.bankspub.com
www.associationpublisher.com/blog/


On 4/13/07 9:53 PM, "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> Green OA:
>
> Cost: Negligible
> Value: Doubles research impact
> How: Mandate Green OA
> When: Now
>
> (Then, afterward, go back to debating and speculating about the
> future of publishing and the Green, Gold and Other options; not
> now; not instead; not while Green OA is already fully within
> reach and there is nothing to lose and everything to gain -- a
> and time is passing and passing and... )
>
> P.S. OA is not about publishing costs, it's about research access
> and impact loss, needlessly continuing day upon week upon month
> upon year, year in and year out, as we just keep on rehashing the
> same old hypothetical conditionals instead of doing the obvious,
> practical, doable, and grotesquely overdue...