[Foundation-l] FYI: Wikipedia, Open Access and Cognitive Virology

[Klaus Graf]

Stevan Harnad in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

On Sat, 15 May 2010, Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for
Development] wrote:

What is very confusing about [the SAGE survey's] call for feedback is
the title ["Open Access Publishing"].
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/soap_survey_a

I do not understand the phrase 'Open Access Publishing'. Open access is
about 'access'. It is not a publishing process. The title should refer to
'open access journals'. The use of the phrase 'OA publishing' reinforces the
idea that OA is about publishing and this is one reason why 'OA repositories'
are often left out of the equation. With the title provided it is unlikely
that anyone will think it is about OA repositories.

Those I respect in the OA world tell me I am being pedantic, but it is
little things like this that cause confusion to newcomers to the debate. I
make a plea that we stop using the phrase 'open access publishing' and use
'open access journals' or 'the publishing of open access journals' instead!

Dear Barbara, you are in no way being pedantic!

You are quite right that the relentless (and mindless) tendency to
refer to (and think of) OA itself as "OA Publishing" instead of just OA
(thereby completely conflating and confusing Green OA self-archiving
with Gold OA publishing) has been an endless source of misunderstanding,
misdirection and, worst of all, delay in the progress of OA.

A high-profile accomplice in the perpetuation of this constant canard is
the entry for "Open Access" in Wikipedia, Google's ubiquitous "top hit"
(hence always the top hit for "Open Access" queries).

Originally the Wikipedia entry was entitled "Open Access," as it should
be. But then some of the self-appointed vigilantes ("trolls") in the
bowels of Wikipedia -- mostly anonymous individuals with plenty of
time on their hands who accrue the "power" to adjudicate and legislate
Wikipedia items and disputes not through expertise in the subject
matter but "recursively," through cumulative air-time in adjudicating and
legislating! -- decided to rename the entry "Open Access (publishing)." So
there you are.

Why did they do it? It's Wikipedia's usual fetish, which is that
"notability" -- perhaps "notoriety" is a better descriptor -- always
trumps truth (or expertise): The tendency to see OA as synonymous with
OA publishing is in the air. So, by the air-time criterion, instead of
clearing the air, Wikipedia just compounds the error, by canonizing it.

Wikipedia could have disambiguated the various different senses of "Open
Access" helpfully by using something like "Open Access (Research)" but
-- against all attempts (including by myself) not to have the entry for
"Open Access" re-named "Open Access (Publishing)" -- it has been so
re-named for several years now. (The history of the "debate" is still
in the entrails of Wikipedia, for the intrepid to read, but I'm afraid
the error is now too entrenched by troll-power to correct. Like
politicians, trolls tend to dig into their misjudgments and misdeeds,
not dig out of them.)

Wikipedia itself (notably, hence notoriously) is in many ways the
"alternative" to OA in (too) many people's minds. Wikipedia is not
only anonymous and not peer-reviewed, it is (aside from some recent
ambivalence on this score) "ideologically" opposed to peer review
(adjudication by qualified experts). In contrast, OA's primary target
content is peer-reviewed research papers. ("Peer Review" is another
descriptor that has been excised from the Wikipedia definition of OA's
target content, despite repeated corrections: The trolls will not abide
anything like that!)

So there we are: OA's biggest canard and nemesis, being daily,
cumulatively, canonized and amplified by Wikipedia, riding the recursive
tide of its own notability and notoriety (as an infectious virus,
cheerfully propagated by the denizens of Wikipedia).

I expect that this posting will elicit stout defenses by Wiki-Warriors,
but be forewarned that this Forum is devoted to Open Access (Sic),
and discussion on Wikipedia ideology rather than OA pragmatics will be
foreclosed, as such digressions tend to drive off the mainstay of this
Forum who have been faithfully following the evolution of OA since 1998...

Stevan Harnad