[Open-access] new open access initiative

Tue Jan 31 14:13:31 UTC 2012

Just wanted to add a hearty +1 to everything Jenny says here.

Whatever happens, we don't want to end up becoming the People's Front of Judea.

-- Mike.

On 31 January 2012 13:38, Jenny Molloy <jcmcoppice12 at gmail.com> wrote:
> From: Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com>
> Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 1:40 PM
>
>> My only reservation is that I fear the possibility that starting a new
>> initiative will further fragment the already fragmented OA landscape
>>rather than serving as a condensation point for a more unified voice.
>>(I think of the many attempts to unify document formats by making a
>>simple metaformat that can be translated into HTML, RTF, etc., with
>>the inevitable consequence that the new format becomes just one more
>>format that needs supporting.)
>
>>What can we do to avoid this?
>
> I agree that we should do everything we can to not be a 'splinter group'.
> The only thing on which we need to be immovable is sticking to the BOAI
> definition of OA for our own projects and initiatives, beyond that it should
> be about dialogue. I think we avoid splintering by:
>
> 1) Ensuring that whatever we do is not a redundant effort, if someone else
> is doing it already we should start a dialogue with them to push things
> forward, not start a rival initiative (unless our efforts fail and there is
> no viable alternative that captures what we want to do e.g. if SPARC decided
> that they wouldn't exclude CC-NC from their OA label criteria - this is a
> hypothetical situation as I don't know what their current criteria are!).
>
> 2) Focusing on open access for all, not just the scholarly community. We're
> not interested in the academic debate per se, we're interested in actively
> making things happen and building tools/apps/resources that are genuinely
> useful for evaluating the state of open access as it stands or increasing
> the production and consumption of OA materials, especially in terms of
> access and usefulness for the scholarly poor. Reclaiming OA as per BOAI is
> fundamental to what we do but that doesn't exclude us from working on
> practical things with people who hold different views and I think that
> pragmatic slant is what will stop us being just another group of people with
> a slightly different message shouting to be heard.
>
> 3) Making efforts to bring in people who to some extent are excluded from
> the OA movement by its academic nature. We have Graham and Gilles who have
> by their hard work already made an impact there and represent a lot more
> people from their respective groups. In this way we're adding people into
> the community rather than taking them away and one would hope that providing
> a platform and prominence to these voices within the more established OA
> groups would be a unifying feature in terms of expanding the goals of the
> current OA movement rather than splitting our work into a separate stream.
>
> We can discuss further on the call on Thursday, there are probably many more
> things we can do, but these are the main ones I thought about.
>
> Jenny
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com> wrote:
>>
>> If SPARC already offer certification then rather than splinter OA
>> certification we should get on board with their effort and see what we
>> can do to push it along.  We do NOT want to get into a
>> NetBSD-vs.-FreeBSD-vs.-OpenBSD situation here!
>>
>> -- Mike.
>>
>>
>> On 31 January 2012 11:40, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
>> >> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >> I don't see why we need to have the rest of the community involved from
>> >> the very beginning. Why couldn't we start with a small group and get
>> >> community support in the process? It would probably be better to not
>> >> have
>> >> too many factions involved in the beginning since this would be more
>> >> difficult to manage ( this has been said before we started this mailing
>> >> list: keep it small for the moment).
>> >> If we seek collaboration with the originators of the BOAI (and I am all
>> >> for that to happen) we wouldn't challenge anybody, except for the
>> >> people who
>> >> do not want "real" open access. And I would think that we want to
>> >> challenge
>> >> them, that is one point of the whole exercise. If we don't get the
>> >> collaboration, "at least we have asked" (as I remember this has also
>> >> been
>> >> said before in our group).
>> >> In my view a logical  first step in reclaiming the term Open Access is
>> >> to
>> >> use it in the name of the new Initiative, especially if we want to
>> >> start a
>> >> kind of certification with an OA-LOGO.
>> >> I cannot judge whether using the term Foundation would imply that we
>> >> have
>> >> a big organisation. As far as I know you can start a Foundation with as
>> >> few
>> >> as 3 people. I read in Wikipedia that the term does not carry legal
>> >> clout at
>> >> least not in the UK. In  NL we would have to be registered. A
>> >> foundation
>> >> Initiative though would not be much of a problem anyway, or am I wrong?
>> >>
>> >>
>> > This all makes sense. I carry a lot of history and that probably
>> > distorts my
>> > judgment pessismistically. So everything here seems reasonable.
>> >
>> > SPARC offer certification, though I don't get the impression it's as
>> > active
>> > as it should be. Maybe we should start with areas they don't cover.
>> >
>> > Yes - in the UK it doesn't take much to set up a Foundation in the
>> > beginning. Getting support is probably more difficult. It will be quite
>> > a
>> > lot of work. Yes, ask the original members and see what happens. We
>> > aren't
>> > asking their permission - we are asking their support.
>> >
>> > I'm happy to be part of this - probably a good idea if there are fresh
>> > drivers. There's more detail we need to work out
>> >
>> > P.
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Peter Murray-Rust
>> > Reader in Molecular Informatics
>> > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>> > University of Cambridge
>> > CB2 1EW, UK
>> > +44-1223-763069
>> >
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>> >
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