Re: End of Free Access in Bangladesh

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

No comment on Jean-Claude's remarks on the workings of the market 
or its desirability, but I do want to say that the phrase "close 
to a cartel" is overheated.  I have never seen anything even 
vaguely resembling collusion among publishers--not now, not ever. 
I simply don't think it's appropriate to throw out words like 
"cartel" without some evidence.

Joe Esposito

On Fri, Jan 14, 2011 at 2:22 PM, Jean-Claude Gueson
<jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca> wrote:

> Like David, I am very much saddened by this piece of news; but 
> I am not surprised. In fact, I have been expecting something 
> like this for quite some time. I have always been doubtful of 
> "charitable" moves: they can be arbitrarily and swiftly removed 
> for any pretext. This is the reason why, while commending the 
> efforts of the Hinari people who work hard on behalf of poor 
> countries, I could never feel completely secure and happy with 
> this programme. I also saw the Hinari approach as a way, for 
> publishers, to explore beachheads for a later commercial 
> landing: Hinari uptake allows for a precise monitoring of the 
> state of uptake in a national market. The intent is to 
> transform it into an operational commercial market at the first 
> opportunity. In this perspective, the process of scholarly and 
> scientific communication is viewed as necessarily embedded 
> inside a commercial, market driven agenda. The need to finance 
> scientific and scholarly communication is never imagined in any 
> way other than a market mechanism. And to make things worse, 
> the market is dominated by a few, powerful players acting 
> together as an oligopole close to a cartel.
>
> Scientific communication is an infrastructural element of 
> scientific research and education. Like roads, it has to be 
> financed, but not necessarily according to market conditions. 
> We all have an inherent right to access and use roads, and, 
> likewise, scientists and scholars should have a right to access 
> all the validated research results of their colleagues. 
> Presently, we have a financing system that grossly distorts 
> this objective, all in the name of market fundamentalism. Toll 
> roads that are sometimes mentioned in an effort to disprove the 
> above, do not change the issue, even when run by private 
> companies: there are always alternative itineraries to reach a 
> particular destination. Not so with journals, unless their 
> articles are archived in OA depositories.
>
> There is a deep lesson in the Bangladesh story, and we should 
> heed it. It underscores the fact that Open Access is needed 
> more than ever. With it, charitable attitudes will become 
> superfluous, and the humiliations accompanying such charitable 
> moves will be a thing of the past.
>
> Jean-Claude Guedon