[Open-access] An anti-RWA bill

Wed Feb 1 09:37:01 UTC 2012

On 1 February 2012 09:28, Björn Brembs <b.brembs at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Mike Taylor wrote:
>
>> Please.  No-one is talking about expulsion, as I am sure you well understand.
>
> Oh, sorry, that's how I understood it. My bad, I apologize.
>
> I was expecting evidence for why an author-pays publishing
> system should not have a luxury segment like all other
> markets I can think of. Your question instead of an answer
> appeared to me like a veiled "shut up or get out!" :-)

No, not at all.  My intent was "it seems that your goals are not
aligned with what I understood those of the group to be, so why do you
want to be here"?  Apologies for not being clearer.

As to the substance of your concern: I suppose it comes down to how
much you trust markets.  It seems to me that if it costs $50k to
publish in Nature of $1350 to publish in PLoS ONE, people will quickly
enough desert Nature.  Just as "the Internet interprets censorship as
damage and routes around it", so a clearly viewed market will
interpret exploitation as exactly what it is and route around it.

Also, you set up a false dichotomy of taxpayers vs. scientists.
Scientists ARE taxpayers.  Openness benefits us as much as anyone --
more, in fact.

-- Mike.