[Open-access] Well, this is unexpected!

Tue Feb 28 09:54:16 UTC 2012

On 28 February 2012 08:09, cameronneylon.net <cn at cameronneylon.net> wrote:
> 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 like the idea of describing IRs as publishers.  That isn't
necessarily a point we need to make -- we can just start talking that
way as though it's always been assumed.  "Like other publishers, IRs
make works available under some specific licence; unlike many other
publishers, that licence is often permissive."  That kind of thing.

> 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.

National security?!

Is anyone seriously going to propose that OA poses a threat to
national security because when we publish How To Build Atom Bombs with
Elsevier, the terrorists won't pay the $35?

-- Mike.