Re: Five Universities Sign Open Access Funding Compact

[<bernd-christoph.kaemper@ub.uni-stuttgart.de>]

B.G. Sloan schrieb:

> " . . .five schools at the forefront of the open access debate 
> -- Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, 
> MIT, and UC Berkeley -- have announced their joint support for 
> 'A Compact on Open-Access Publishing.' The release accompanying 
> the Compact touts the economic advantages of a robust 
> author-pays option for scholarly publishing, and urges the 
> academic community to step up university-wide efforts to make 
> the author-pays model more viable."
>
> http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6696797.html
>
> Bernie Sloan

I admit that I am still lost at seeing what is 'compact' here, 
and now that I have learned that Stevan Harnad views this more a 
dilution of OA (no surprise here), I am wondering again.

Would some kind soul, from Harvard or from Have-Nots, please 
elucidate a non-native english speaker what this ominous 
"compact" is referring to. I am familiar with abstract monsters 
like compact topological spaces and usually not slow at grasping 
concepts but the origin and purpose of the term in this context 
still gives me headaches.

Thank you very much in advance.
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper, Stuttgart University Library