[Open-access] [open-science] Open Science Anthology published

Tue Jan 28 12:21:47 UTC 2014

On 28 January 2014 12:01, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com> wrote:
> I completely agree with all that Jan Velterop said..

Absolutely. The best post I've ever seen on this, or any other, mailing list.

> If I remember correctly Mike Taylor at Berlin11 argued that many more
> billions of dollars are in fact wasted by not being able to share
> information to the full extent, than can be earned by protecting pieces of
> info in order to be able to sell them.

Exactly. The problem we face is that accountants can calculate the
money that's to be made by hiding information, but the enormous
benefits of NOT hiding it are much harder to estimate (and, really,
impossible to know). The cost to worry about in academic publishing is
not subscriptions, page-charges or APC. It's the incredible
opportunity cost of NOT freeing our research.

> I also particularly oppose the notion of protecting the taxpayers property
> in one country from being used freely by citizens in other countries. The
> idea of open access restricted to one country is non-sense. How shortsighted
> can you be? People playing with these ideas probably implicitly suppose that
> their country will produce all (the good science).

I don't think anyone really supports this notion. It's a bit of a
straw-horse that people sometimes throw in for rhetorical purposes.
Even Kent Anderson can't actually believe that's a good way to go
(even if it was possible, which it's not).

-- Mike.