[A2k] Open access academic journal: a no-brainer (well, not for Emerald, Harvard Business Review publisher)

[Manon Ress]

--
[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
http://meditations71.blogspot.com/2007/02/intellectual-enclosures.html

QUOTE:
Ben Goldacre is at it again, in his excellent 'Bad Science' column,
published weekly in the Guardian. This week he deals with the issue of
access to research in academic journals and the fact that it is
becoming increasingly expensive, especially for those lacking access
via institutional (e.g., university) subscriptions. The drive by some
online publishing organisations to increase open access has been met
by a rather draconian response by the leading publishers. So should we
keep supporting them?
END OF QUOTE

Here's the Goldacre's piece:

Open access and the price of knowledge
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,,2010036,00.html
Ben Goldacre
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian

There are some things which are so self-evidently right and good that
it's hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with you. The "open
access" academic journal movement is one of those things. It is a no-
brainer. Academic literature should be freely available: developing
countries need access; part-time tinkering thinkers like you deserve
full access; journalists and the public can benefit; and most
importantly of all, you have already paid for much of this stuff with
your taxes. They are important new ideas from humanity, and morally,
you are entitled to them.

But with old school academic journals, unless you have an
institutional subscription, you have to pay to read them. Here is a
not-so-fun example: an article called "Impediments to promoting
access to global knowledge in sub-Saharan Africa", about how
difficult it is to get access to medical literature in developing
countries, and how lack of access to knowledge represents a barrier
to economic development and a further advantage for the rich west
(http://qurl.com/7933p).

Get your credit card ready, this single study will cost you $25 (=A313)
plus tax to read.

Two online, open access publishing organisations have led the fight
against the absurdity: one is Plos, from a Californian campaigning
perspective, and the other is Biomed Central, run as a money-making
empire (relax, there is nothing wrong with making money from
publishing).

They both give readers access for free, but they have not had an easy
time of it.

Firstly, they can't get journalists to directly link to their
studies. I suspect newspapers like to fantasise that they are
mediators between specialist tricky knowledge and the wider public,
but I wouldn't be so flattering.

In fact, if you have access to the original journals, you can see
just how rubbish things can get.

I couldn't write this column without my institutional login.
Sometimes I have even had to go to the library to get information
into my brain instead of using the internet.

But meanwhile, the old school, pay-for-access journals are so worried
about open access that they've hired Eric Dezenhall, the famous
American "pitbull of PR", and author of Nail 'Em! Confronting High-
Profile Attacks on Celebrities and Businesses, to aggressively
promote their interests, and undermine open access.

These closed journals are hardly the kind of people whose pockets you
would want to line. Reed-Elsevier, for example, is one of the largest
academic journal publishers in the world - they even own the Lancet -
and they are the same company that runs the DSEI international arms
fair in London, at which vile weapons are sold to murderous regimes
for cash profit extracted from very real suffering and pain, in
countries you will never visit on holiday.

These people do not deserve our charity, and I will be very pleased
to see you outside DSEI later this year, 300th copper from the left:
because when you are so wrong you need police, security, wire fences,
and the pitbull of PR to defend you, then you know you're in trouble.

=B7 Please send your bad science to bad.science@guardian.co.uk


************************************************************************
***
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Ext 16 Fax: +1.202.332.2673

Consumer Project on Technology
1 Route des  Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 791 6727

Consumer Project on Technology
24 Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX, UK
Tel: +44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252 Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607