At the end of his article in Jetzt, Philipp Berens touches on the "pitbull tactics" suggested to the Association of American Publishers by its new PR advisor. He writes that "Not all publishers think such a campaign is a good idea," and follows with a quotation from Jan Velterop, the Open Access Director at Springer and former publisher of BioMed Central. Here's Jan's own English, rather than Berens' German or Google's English:
That's a dismal state of affairs. It doesn't get us any further and can only do damage. We want a constructive dialogue with scientists and researchers, in order to find mutually satisfactory ways of economically sustaining formally published peer reviewed literature. If the EU conference can contribute to such a constructive dialogue, that would be great. I hope it will.
Jan also commented on the tactics in a January 26 post to the American Scientist OA Forum:
PR battles like this are extremely unsophisticated; perhaps that's in their nature. As a publisher, I wouldn't want to be associated with rather rabid sound-bites such as "Public access equals government censorship".
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/10/2007 05:35:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
