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Alma Swan, Open Access and the Progress of Science, American Scientist, April-June 2007. Excerpt:
Comment. Alma is right: the central question is whether OA advances science and scholarship better than the current system. If it does, then we should agree on the goal and work together on the means. We may be close to agreement on the goal already --or at least most the bickering seems to be about the means. Some of this bickering is unavoidable: there are some honest disagreements about the means. But some is not: there is widespread fixation on illusory problems and repetition of groundless objections. This confuses many researchers and policy-makers new to the debate, who erroneously conclude that the disagreements go to the merits of OA itself rather than to implementation details. If we were more explicit in our agreement on the goal, then more stakeholders would join the work of implementing it and the work could be less fractious and more collaborative. And if we encountered new, real problems --problems not already solved and not based on misunderstandings-- then we could start from agreement that they were worth solving. Update. Steve Hitchcock has blogged some excerpts from discussion lists in which supporters and critics of OA were debating the issues raised by Alma Swan's article. (Alma's article was already in press at the time.) |