Re: Electronic Publication and Narrowing of Science and Scholarship

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Just being open access, as Joe has stressed, doesn't necessarily 
lead to either recognition or use. If you are searching for 
something and an open access journal has the relevant content, 
but has not created the kind of network or brand identity Joe 
speaks about, you likely will not find it. Being listed on page 
10 of a Google search result is about as helpful as not being 
listed at all.

For smaller players especially, like a university press of our 
size, it seems imperative to develop methods for creating more 
links that will lead people to our site. For our Romance Studies 
series to flourish, since we can't scale it to the level of an 
OUP, for instance, we need to find partners publishing in this 
same area who will be willing to engage in a game of 
inter-referencing. In that way, as Chris Palma of Google 
recommended to those of us attending his session at the recent 
AAUP annual meeting, our books will get a higher ranking on 
Google when searches are made and thus are more likely to find a 
market and the audience we hope to reach worldwide.

My college classmate, now Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter, 
did pioneering research on the value of networking years ago in 
relation to job searches. It is clear that this is just as 
important for content searches in the age of mass information 
output. It's all about networking, baby! :)

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>I would say that the problem with marketing is going to be more 
>important for the Open Access movement. DOAJ, Open J-Gate, 
>NewJour, EBSCO and many more are part of the solution. Open 
>Access journals are today part of thousands of library 
>catalogues.
>
>I would say that the movement is very young, toll access 
>journals have been on the market for hundred of years now. Some 
>lessons have been learned.
>
>After the Second World War it was the commercial publishing 
>industry that really changed science, from something 
>nationalistic to something international. But today the open 
>access movement has hints of the old nationalism. You know the 
>globalization demands that every country is in the forefront in 
>the information society, in the knowledge society or in the free 
>liberal market society otherwise the Chinese or Indians will 
>catch up.
>
>I would say that the open access movement has a tendency towards 
>nationalism and regionalism and that this also narrowing science 
>and scholarship.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society
>
>Jan Szczepanski
>Forste bibliotekarie
>Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
>Box 222
>SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN
>E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski@ub.gu.se
>
>Opinions expressed here are my own and not that of Goteborgs
>universitetsbibliotek
>
>____
>
>Joseph J. Esposito wrote:
>>  Ease of use is an aspect of product marketing.  The head of
>>  product marketing is the individual who studies user behavior
>>  and competition and submits the product requirements document
>>  to the engineering group.  In most software companies the head
>>  of products reports to the VP for Marketing.
>>
>>  Many people in the academic community have too narrow a view of
>>  marketing. It is not simply advertisements and sales brochures.
>>  It includes the design of a product (as distinct from the
>>  underlying technology that drives the design), competitive
>>  analysis, identifying trends, pricing, and much more. For
>>  companies operating on the Internet it includes such things as
>>  developing ideas for getting users to recommend sites to others
>>  (known as FOAF--friend of a friend).
>>
>>  For an outstanding piece of academic marketing, consider MIT's
>>  Open CourseWare.  MIT chose to give away (with funding from
>>  philanthropies) online course material, but with the important
>>  qualification that the MIT name be attached to the package.
>>  Thus, at no or little cost to MIT, the MIT brand has been
>>  aggressively promoted throughout the world.  MIT, of course,
>>  has one of the great schools of business.  The many
>>  institutions that are copying MIT in the open courseware area
>>  are not likely to get the same brand lift that MIT got as the
>>  "first mover."
>>
>>  The more sophisticated technology platforms drive up usage by
>>  developing mechanisms to have other sites link to their own, to
>>  encourage "pass along," to store certain links so that users
>>  return to them, etc., etc.  In the Cloud Computing model (where
>>  we increasingly live now, with Google as the extreme example),
>>  the cost of doing this is simply enormous, as so much of the
>>  Internet is free, lowering barriers for people to publish, but
>>  making it harder and harder to distinguish one information
>>  object from another, which is what marketing is all about:
>>  creating attention.
>>
>>  The low cost model will soon be gone forever.  There is simply
>>  too much information to take in.  People need ways to filter
>>  information, and tech companies will find various methods to
>>  direct people's attention to certain products and services.
>>  These services, having attracted more viewers, will then
>>  attract better content, creating a virtuous cycle.  This is one
>>  of the many network effects that drives the Internet economy.
>>
>>  I repeat what I said in an earlier post:  this has nothing to
>>  do with whether something is open access or toll access.  The
>>  advantage that toll access publications have is that they have
>>  a more reliable means of raising the capital to fund the
>>  investments that must be made.  A shrewd marketing organization
>>  like the Public Library of Science, which is entirely open
>>  access, can also play this game.  It is simply an expensive
>>  game to play.
>>
>>  Joe Esposito