[Open-access] [GOAL] Re: Fight Publishing Lobby's Latest "FIRST" Act to Delay OA - Nth Successor to PRISM, RWA etc.

Mon Nov 18 16:08:52 UTC 2013

I am going to use this opportunity to promote my open scholarship survey
again...

Regardless of awareness or mandates or power, what matters is what can be
done. If people can agree on what the requirements for scholarship are,
then someone will provide what is required. (Perhaps for a price, but that
price can be openly negotiable based on provision of a service that meets
requirements.)

So if enough scholars say "scholarship should be X", then we will know what
to build:

http://ifthisistheanswer.com/survey

If there are not enough people willing to take part in the dialogue and do
something about it, or willing to stand by the consequences, then we will
simply have to shut up and make do with whatever is given to us (and
whatever price is extracted for that privilege).

Mark

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 3:54 PM, Bjoern Brembs <b.brembs at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Libraries are definitely places where awareness occurs.
> > They are the sentinels. However, they don't have enough
> > power (generally) to impose Open Access as a permanent reflex with
> researchers.
>
> With journal rank gone, all that is required is a superior alternative to
> the status quo. Given the horrible dysfunctionality of our infrastructure,
> this should be exceedingly easy, see e.g.:
>
> > The only way researchers can be convinced is through
> > mandatory pressure from the funders and/or the Academic
> > authorities.
>
> I tend to agree that this is ONE way.
>
> However, I would respectfully disagree that this is the ONLY way.
>
> If journal rank no longer dictates where to publish, we don't need to
> replace this dictatorship with another one. Once we're free to publish
> where we want, wouldn't we automatically publish in something that's
> superior to what we have now?
>
> Given how easy it is to provide superior functionality, why would one
> mandate people to to choose what is already in their best interest to begin
> with? No mandates are required at all for something every researcher would
> already do by themselves.
>
> All mandates suffer from the Achilles' heel of political involvement. Once
> we have to involve politicians for mandates, we loose, because the
> corporations will always wield more power over politicians.
>
> Obviously, I'm not against green mandates, on the contrary! I'm just
> saying they're not necessary once we have the freedom to chose where we
> want to publish (which we don't have now).
> Mandates clearly are necessary now.
>
> Best,
>
> Bjoern
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Björn Brembs
> ---------------------------------------------
> http://brembs.net
> Neurogenetics
> Universität Regensburg
> Germany
>
>
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