Re: Drubbing Peter to Pay Paul

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I will assume that Stevan Harnad's comment concerning "even . . . readers
of this list" is not as condescending as it sounds and address only the
communications issue presented here (and will forebear commenting on the
substance of the discussion).  The problem is that everybody is laying
claim to the term "Open Access", but the term has myriad meanings.  Peter
Suber wrote a good piece on this topic not long ago, but I think the
solution is going to be hard to come by.  By analogy, think of all the
foods that are now labelled "organic," though a serious alternative-food
type, as we have many here in my hometown of Santa Cruz, may have come to
believe that "organic" has been corrupted by Dow Chemical.

How to fix this?  Someone who has a particular meaning in mind should come
up with a new label and trademark it.  Yes, use the intellectual property
laws!  One could probably trademark "Bethesda OA" or "Budapest OA" or
maybe even "Yalta OA" or "OA according to the Diet of Worms," but as long
as everyone is packing so many different meanings into the same term,
confusion will reign.  Of course, for some people, confusion on this issue
may be the strategy.  I tried to use "Harnadian OA" a couple months ago,
but Professor Harnad assured me there was no such thing.

Joe Esposito


On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:48:28 EST, Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
wrote:

> Is it not obvious even to readers of this list that this is all just
> drubbing Peter to pay Paul? The only major recommendation of the UK Select
> Committee was to mandate OA self-archiving. Yet no one (MPs, press,
> publishers or librarians) can stop going on and on about OA publishing,
> which was *not* what was being mandated!

[SNIP]
 
> Stevan Harnad