[open-science] “After SSRN: Hallmarks of trust for subject repositories” - OpenAIRE blog post

Fri May 27 09:07:48 UTC 2016

On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 9:57 AM, Thomas Krichel <krichel at openlib.org> wrote:

>   Peter Murray-Rust writes
>
> > It seems like it's critical to immunize even organizations like CERN, EBI
> > and National Libraries and projects such as OpenAIRE.
>
>   I wonder how the immunization is supposed to be applied and be effective.
>

ContentMine has used legally valid additions to our articles of association
(the formal legal basis of the organization) that prevents it being bought
by a for-profit. This is common in Trusts, especially charitable ones -
which are legally immune from this and if they wish to be bought there is a
long and complex process which normally deters predators.

However sometimes organizations have a for-profit "underneath" a non-profit
(e.g. Wellcome before Glaxo bough the for-profit) and this can be good or
bad depending on the aims of the non-profit.

>
> > The danger comes from at least:
> > * well-meaning members of the projects who haven't looked ahead to
> dangers.
> > * political interference (e.g. neoliberal government privatisation of
> > services).
>
>   The real problem is the subscription model that has libraries
>   spending fast funds on publishers who are then able to buy any
>   innovative scholarly product supported by a centralized
>   infrastructure.
>

Completely agreed.

>
> > We must think the unthinkable and protect against it.
>
>   Political pronounciations and more open-access hypocrisy from libraries
>   won't change the economic fundamentals.
>

Agreed. Which is why we have to build this ourselves.

I think it's only a few years before libraries become completely pwned by
Holtzevier.

>
> --
>
>   Cheers,
>
>   Thomas Krichel                  http://openlib.org/home/krichel
>                                               skype:thomaskrichel
>

-- 
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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