In his Chairman's Corner column in the fall issue of the Professional Scholarly Publishing Bulletin, Elsevier's Pieter Bolman supports Stevan Harnad's assessment of the current state of open access, even citing a recent Harnad posting to the AmSci forum. Quoting Bolman:
[T]here appears to be some concern in the original OA camp that the launch of new OA journals, such as the PLoS title, while welcome, is diverting attention from the easiest, surest and quickets road to Open Access, namely author self-archiving. It seems that those committed to starting new OA journals do not have any inclination to stress this other way. Although one can quibble with the ultimate practicality or even legal feasibility of author self-archiving (and I certainly do), it is more likely, in our lifetime, to transform the huge body of 15,000 or so journals (with their annual 1-2 million articles) to a form of open access than the start of a few new journals every year, however well funded they are.
(PS: Because Bolman's opposition to OA is well-documented, it's hard to interpret this comment as free strategic advice to his opponents. My advice, however, is not to interpret it as a mischievous attempt to accentuate differences within the OA movement, and not to let it, or our own intramural debates, turn differences into divisions. We should simply focus on the issue and continue to promote both OA journals and OA archives, discussing on the side, as we go, how the two strategies complement one another. If those working hardest on OA journals and those working hardest on OA archives disagree about which strategy is most promising or urgent, then the disagreement is a healthy spur to action. It only harms us when it slows us down.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/08/2003 10:29:00 AM.
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.
