Re: 2nd Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication .agendas/Watkinson

[Steve Hitchcock <sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek advocating publisher-free meetings,
but Anthony goes on to raise a serious point:

At 07:36 06/03/04 -0500, Anthony Watkinson wrote:

> It is fair enough that Steve and his friends should get together at
> Southampton. It is difficult for them to avoid distractions if they are
> confronted with the reality of what most academics actually want.
Which is:

1 Improved impact
2 Universal access (universal access is achievable through open access)
3 Publication in high-quality refereed publications

We are not distracted. This is what we are working towards. Can any of
this be denied? No, because apart from the substitution of 'universal
access' for 'widest possible access', and the fact that 1 and 2 (as widest
access)  in the past had to be wrapped in 3, this is what authors have
always wanted. Our approach is to make universal access happen at the
lowest cost and greatest benefit and with least disruption by advocating
open access institutional archives. That is what the academic community
can do all on its own.

Perhaps Anthony will try and distract us by suggesting this is not what
authors want. My guess is that Anthony's 'reality' will be revealed in the
forthcoming CIBER report, since he has referred to it on this list, and
further I guess it might reveal that authors don't want the author-pays
open access model, in which case let's hope the report makes this clear
rather than equating this model with all open access models. We shall see,
but if so, then it doesn't change what we are working towards at all, and
merely underlines the need to avoid distractions.

Prizes will go to those publishers and journals that can best adjust to
meet these needs. They have two choices:

1 Produce open access journals
2 Produce paid-for journals but allow authors to self-archive their 
 published papers in open access institutional archives (Romeo 'green' 
 journals)

There won't be a third choice, do nothing, for those who do not support
one of these two. Here the CIBER report and any similar reports, as is
likely, will not be a distraction for publishers as they will inform this
important decision.

Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton SO17 1BJ,  UK
Email: sh94r@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel:  +44 (0)23 8059 3256     Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865