[Open-access] An anti-RWA bill

Wed Feb 1 10:09:03 UTC 2012

Mike Taylor wrote:

> 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.

Isn't that bit like arguing that Dom Perignon would cease to
sell champagne because people can get water (or Moet et
Chandon) for a tiny fraction of the price?
Or that Rolls Royce should cease to sell cars because people
can drive around in a Hyundai just as well?

And in these markets, people actually have the choice!
Scientists who want to have a job don't have a choice of
where they publish. How would that change? 

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that P1 is like water to
champagne! lol :-)

> 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.

Reasonable enough. However, what would motivate, e.g., search
committees, instead of cutting off the list of applicants at
the first one who doesn't have a Science or Nature article,
to actually go and look at the titles and abstracts of the
papers of their ~600 applicants?
Only having one Science paper made me not make the shortlist
on a number of my applications, I've been told.
How would that change?

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

You are correct, I was exaggerating to make a point that the
benefit of OA would be outweighed by the cost of having a
luxury publishing segment without publishing in which you
wouldn't be able to get a job.

Cheers,

Bjoern

-- 
Björn Brembs
---------------------------------------------
http://brembs.net
Neurobiology
Freie Universität Berlin
Germany