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

[phoebe ayers]

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 6:22 AM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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).

I certainly have respect for Steven Harnad's work in this area. But I
have also had the open access articles watchlisted for some years now,
and they are one of those surprisingly controversial mini-areas in
Wikipedia. Since it's also an area that isn't very well defined *in
the field itself* (I say, as someone writing up some materials about
open access for my library as we speak), I'm not surprised that
[[user:harnad]] is frustrated.

It looks to me like a straightforward disambiguation on [[open
access]], and the argument is over what to put in the parenthesis for
the article about the type of open access that is associated with both
research and publishing.

I am reminded (perhaps inexplicably) of RMS's discursions on the
GNU/Linux articles last wikimania....

-- phoebe

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