Re: A Prophylactic Against the Edentation of the RCUK Policy Proposal

[adam hodgkin <adam.hodgkin@gmail.com>]

On 7/8/05, Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com> wrote:
> My challenge to Mark Funk is unchanged:  if self-archiving or any other
> form of Open Access is not going to undermine the economic value of
> proprietary journals, invest your life-savings in publishers who
> authorize OA vehicles in parallel to proprietary versions.
> 
> Joe Esposito

I am tempted to accept this challenge and invest my life savings in such a
publisher. Looking around it would appear to me that the publisher who
most clearly and fully meets this criterion is Google.

But there is a problem. Google looks like an Open Access publisher
(republisher?) since they distribute their content/service without charge
(at least so far), and they encourage everyone to use their service and
the company also meets Stevan Harnad's criterion of giving full weight to
impact factors (Google's technology is entirely built on measuring impact
factors) but there is also at the present a small problem with the share
price. It looks as though my/Joe's timing is wrong and it may have gone
too high (oh yes I dearly wish I had put my life savings in a year ago).

But then again reading the contract that Google drew up with the
University of Michigan I wonder if there may be a conscience issue for me
in the fine print of that agreement. I am not sure whether or not Google
is an open access (re)publisher, since from the U of M agreement it
appears to be claiming rather strong and restrictive rights in the copies
that it will have made of works that may be in (or even not yet in) the
public domain. Perhaps they plan to become a new kind of Toll Access
publisher -- in which case Joe's challenge still stands.


adam