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

[Stevan Harnad]

David Goodman gives a very fair and accurate summary of our interactions in
the AmSci Forum (though I would not have said that some were unfriendly --
just impatient, on my part; and if anything, I'm even more impatient now
that another half-decade has gone by and we still don't have universal OA!).

Regarding the Wikipedia entry for OA, I would add only that the proof is in
the outcome: Yes, I had no choice but to let things take their natural
course with the "Open Access" entry, as David and Peter urged. And yes, it
did become "Open Access (publishing)." But, the result is that now the
widespread misconception that "Open Access" means "Open Access Publishing"
-- it does not -- is all the more widespread and entrenched, thanks to that
natural "echo-amplification" outcome in Wikipedia.

If someone considers that to be some sort of a triumph or vindication on
behalf of something or other, I have no idea what that something is!
Wikipedia has simply served as a megaphone for amplifying misinformation in
this case.

So much for conflating OA with OA publishing.

I would say it's not at all accurate to say that I oppose OA publishing
("Gold OA"): I don't. (In fact I am pretty sure it will eventually prevail,
and have been saying so since the very beginning.) I simply assign it a
different priority, in time, importance, urgency, causality and potential,
relative to OA self-archiving ("Green OA") at this time, for very specific,
concrete, practical, evidence-based reasons (which I will not rehearse
here).

I also don't, didn't, and never aspired to "own" the OA entry in Wikipedia.
It was written by many people long before I knew about it, and before I
contributed portions to a few of its subsections (the ones on Green OA and
Institutional Repositories). I occasionally look at those sections still,
but I largely stopped trying to fix them any more when my edits were
repeatedly over-ruled on several points in which I felt that the Wikipedia
outcome was just plain wrong.

But nothing about OA is rocket science, and the only thing hanging in the
balance is more lost time... The outcome itself is obvious, optimal and
inevitable -- just long overdue.

Yours impatiently,

Stevan Harnad
http://openaccess.eprints.org/
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html


On Sat May 15 23:06:14 David Goodman wrote:

Some background:


> When I was a librarian open access was one of the principal things I

worked on. Stevan has been for over 10 years an acknowledged leader

in this field, and his propaganda for open access has been a key

factor for the considerable success it has had--by now all major US

and UK granting agencies require it or are about to do so. All of

us who use academic material are very much indebted to him, for I do

not think it would have happened to anywhere near this extent without

him.


> But Stevan is very much set on his own preferred way of doing this.

His way is good, but he thinks  that only  his way is good--to the

extent that  he has often tried to argue against other ways, even

though they differ only in detail, and most of his activism in the last

few years has been against other open access advocates. (I am, as you

gather, one of the people who thinks other ways are at least as good

or possibly better, and I have had many public & private discussions

about this with him over the years, not all of them friendly. ).


> There are two basic methods:


> One is known as "Gold" open access, publishing by open access

publishers in journals that are free to the reader, the costs being

paid through some form of direct or indirect subsidy from the author,

his institution, his granting agency, or other financing arrangement.

(Familar examples of this are PLOS or BMC).


> The other  is known as "Green" open access, publishing in journals in

the conventional way, but also putting the articles, or at least

unedited drafts of the manuscript, into a repository. There are two

types: using a centralized repository , either on a nationwide or

subject-wide basis (the familiar examples of which are PubMed Central

in biomedicine and arXiv in physics), or alternatively on an

institution-wide basis (good examples are Harvard's DASH or Stevan's

own repository at Southampton, ECS )


> The only form Stevan supports is institutional repositories.  (For

reasons, I refer you to his many long postings on  American Scientist

Open Access Forum , which he moderates in accord with his own views.)

He opposes the term open access publishing because it suggests "Gold"

Open Access publishers.


> When I joined WP three years ago, I found that  Stevan was exercising

OWNership over the WP article on open access, which almost totally

focussed on institution-based repositories and referenced a great

number of his own writings.  When I and other made changes, Stevan

always reverted them.


> Stevan attempted to get his form of the article fixed by personal

intervention with an eminent open access supporter very close to his

own views who was a member of the WMF Advisory Board, and I believe

also with Jimbo.  I am also a professional acquaintance of that

supporter, an extraordinarily fair-minded person trusted by everyone

dealing with the subject at all, and between us in personal discussion

with Stevan we were able to convince Stevan to let community processes

deal with the article.


> As phoebe says, the current wording is reasonable.


> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG