Re: Commercial Publishing, Scholarly Communication, and Open-Access

[Heather Morrison <hgmorris@sfu.ca>]

Thomas Krichel <krichel@openlib.org> wrote:

> Heather Morrison writes
>
>> We discuss our experience in both commercial and open-access
>> publishing.
>
> A bad start to an abstract. Open access should be discussed vs
> restricted access, not vs commercial publishing. There are
> commercial open-access publishers around, and there will be more
> in the future, I bet.

Correction: these are not my words, rather quoted from Conley and
Wooders' article in Economic Analysis and Policy.

I agree with Thomas that it makes more sense to compare and 
contrast open access and toll access publishers, as there are 
commercial publishers that fit both descriptions.

It would be helpful to figure out which elements of publishing 
are actually helpful to scholarship, and which are harmful.

For example, actively encouraging self-archiving is a help to 
scholarship, regardless of commercial or even open access status 
of a journal or publisher.

On the other hand, adding digital rights management to documents 
that precludes academic work, is a harm to scholarship, again 
regardless of commercial / OA status of a publisher.

This would be a useful topic for the Research Questions portion 
of the Open Access Directory.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com