[Open-access] Well, this is unexpected!

Tue Feb 28 08:09:01 UTC 2012

I think its particularly important to accentuate positive routes for action and practical ways forward. My suspicion is that following the positive message of yesterday we should brace ourselves for a series of negative attacks. Points of details, attempts to create wedge issues, and certainly to distract. If I were running tactics for Elsevier that would be my game plan. My guess is that the current strategy is to try and capture the OA publishing movement and drive a wedge between us and the repository folks. In the longer term we need a much more sophisticated message for that - I think IRs and DRs are just publishers, simply different types of publishers for instance - but in the short term keep your ear to the ground for whispers.

> I agree that we need to force the positive. Some months ago I proposed that access to the scientific literature should be a fundamental human right:
> http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/09/30/access-to-scientific-publications-should-be-a-fundamental-right/
> It's simple to understand, compelling and politically tractable. 
> Is there a chance that this would fly in Europe? I have been invited to a meeting where Neelie Kroos will be present - we need a simple concept that we should hammer.

I hesitate to push the human rights angle in the UK at the moment, but in Europe it might. Or at least as part of the puzzle. But it does somehow need to be balanced against the national security and IP concerns that will ranged against it. I don't mean that it needs to be a balanced argument but it needs to be clear why the right of access to information from research is different in some sense - because otherwise that will be seen as an easy take down approach.

Cheers

Cameron