[Open-access] An anti-RWA bill

Wed Feb 1 11:59:29 UTC 2012

I came upon two more interesting arguments for new ways of scientific
knowledge sharing at the  ResearchGate.net where a discussion is running on
the topics of Science2.0 and Open Access:

Eberhard Hilf of the Institute of Scientific Networking in Oldenburg
(Germany) writes:
"In the new digital age, do scientific journals serve science researchers?
No, they don't. And the very concept of the 'paper in a scientific journal'
does not fit the needs either anymore.Neither is it complete, giving all
the details if wished by the reader, nor is it compact enough to be easily
re-used for own research. Thus we need new forms scientific information
transfer chunks. "

and Vladimir Teif (Deutsches Krebsforschungs Zentrum) writes:
-- I can give you an example of the traditional publishing system where the
author always pays to the publisher: This is the advertisement industry.
The author of the advertisement pays to the publisher to publish the
advertisement. This is exactly what the open-access business model is.
These scientific publications are equivalent to paid advertisements, and
their purpose is mostly to advertise the work of the group to help
fundraising, not to disseminate scientific knowledge.

TOM

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Nick Barnes <nb at climatecode.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:09, Björn Brembs <b.brembs at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
> > 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?
>
> That would change instantly if - as you describe - publication in a
> top journal became an indicator simply of ability to pay, rather than
> of quality.  Hiring committees don't care about ability to pay.
>
> This is what I mean when I say that top journals are terrified of
> losing their status.  They won't do anything which deters a
> significant proportion of authors.  There is a significant snob value,
> which feeds back into citation counts and impact factor, but
> ultimately a journal is only indispensable if it has high-quality
> content.
>
> In any case, this is a ridiculous hypothetical.  Has it happened with
> the NIH mandate?  I don't believe so (although nobody has answered my
> request for first-hand experience).  So why are we even discussing it?
> --
> Nick Barnes, Climate Code Foundation, http://climatecode.org/
>
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>
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