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News from the open access movement


Monday, May 01, 2006

Another comment on Steven Breckler's critique

Mark Leggott, The Psychology of Open Access, Loomware, April 30, 2006. This is a comment on Stevan Breckler's criticism of the NIH policy published last week. Breckler is the Executive Director of the American Psychological Association. Excerpt:

After reading this editorial by the Executive Director of the APA I am tempted to feel like an intellectual dolt, but only because he says I should. In arguing against open access and the NIH policy in particular, Steven Breckler shows the ignorance that comes from wanting to maintain a stranglehold on academic research and thereby the APA bottom-line. He suggests that: 1) most of us would not be able to understand the complex scientific articles that are typically published in such journals; 2) those of us with intellectual capacity approaching his could get access via "a reprint request to the author, electronic access through a library, or purchase (for a nominal fee) directly from the APA website". Now, I’ve never thought of combining "nominal fee" and APA in the same sentence, but I’m sure Mr. Breckler must be right, since I suspect he can understand the journal article he cites. Mr. Breckler and the APA forget that open access is about a lot more than personal access to a complicated article, it is about: access to science for all peoples and countries; access whether you can understand it (now) or not; better access to improve the lives of all people, not just those from rich countries and institutions; reconstituting the scholarly debate in the public arena, where it belongs. There is more, but I feel my intellectual capacity waning just with those few thoughts. I guess I’ll go read the funnies...

Post-script: Yes, I did read the article mentioned in the editorial and although it was a typical wordy and dry academic article, it was readable and understandable. In other words, an excellent example of why open access is so important. In fact, this is an excellent example of the kind of academic article that HIV workers the world over might find quite useful. In speaking to one of the research outcomes, the authors state "adequate comparisons are not presently available for countries outside the United States" - specifically Africa. I'm sure that if the research was available to people in Africa, we would see some good new work to enhance this project. It is also a fine example of an article that could easily be made more accessible to a wider audience without compromising its academic integrity. My formula for success for publicly funded research: get the authors to attach a "for the masses" summary (all scientists should be able to write for the masses, despite Mr. Breckler's suggestion that it is a job for journalists); attach the raw data to the article so others can analyze it; add a wiki or blog-style discussion tool to the article so that anyone could enhance/comment on what was written. Not only would the science improve, but so would society. Mr. Breckler's final remark is "Productive solutions exist for making the results of science better understood and appreciated. The NIH public access policy, however, is not among them." NIH's policy is an incredibly positive good step in the right direction, while the APA policy of hiding research behind a fee wall is a giant leap in the direction of the Cambrian. And I don't need a scientific article to tell me that.