Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 04:12:59 +0000 (GMT)
From: "[iso-8859-1] Subbiah Arunachalam"
Friends:
Working with ICT and development, and specifically
with refereed research literature, we strongly
support Stevan Harnad's message regarding the
imbalance between OAPub ["gold"] and
OAArch ["green"],both in the debates in discussion
lists and in the general media coverage of OA.
[BOAI-2 ("OAPub" "gold"): Publish your article
in a suitable open-access journal whenever one
exists.
BOAI-1 ("OAArch" "green"): Otherwise, publish
your article in a suitable toll-access journal and
also self-archive it.]
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0027.gif
Of course, ALL OA support is greatly welcomed, but
OAPub will take some
time to achieve. For those in the developing world
who cannot wait, we
are doing all we can to raise awareness about the
opportunities offered
by OAArch, by writing, talking, organising workshops
for establishing
archives .... Bioline International is doing
sterling work showing the
way by archiving all the 24 developing country
journals it currently
distributes -- http://bioline.utsc.utoronto.ca --.
But more help is needed
from the international scientific community.
We would like to call on all those commited to the
OA movement to
redress the balance in your promotional activities
by explaining to all
that with OAArch nothing else need change. All
organisations, including
developing country institutes, can archive their
refereed published
research as soon as they have set up their own
archives or, even easier,
can use one of the other interoperable archives
already established. At
a stroke, the S to N, N to S and S to S knowledge
gaps can begin to
close. No need to worry about the fate of
established journals, no need
to worry about economic models, no need to worry
about
costs/workload/quality/ - no need to change anything
else atall.
Scholarly publishing continues in its well known and
reliable path.
Perhaps the other argument that will most pursuade
researchers in the
developed world is that the 'missing' research is
essential for their
own research too. They think they know it all, but
search for 'gene',
say, through the yet embryonic Bioline archive and
the results will
show that they do not. Search for 'malaria' in the
main Bioline
site -- http://www.bioline.org.br -- and a wealth of
important data emerges. Developing country knowledge
is essential for us all. The other most pursuasive
argument to encourage archiving by
scientists and their institutes in the developed
world is the greatly
increased impact of everyone's archived research --
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php
--.
This is what all scientists, and every institute
funding their work,
most want. Why hide their achievements when
institutional archiving is
available to all?
The OAPub route will progress and the economic
debate will be resolved
over time, but the OAArch can happen now and we owe
it to our scientific
colleagues in the less priviledged countries - and
to ourselves - to
'just do it'. Ideas as to how to speed up this
reform would be very
welcome from subscribers to this list.
Subbiah Arunachalam, Trustee EPT, MS Swaminathan
Institute, Chennai
Leslie Chan, Trustee EPT, University of Toronto
Barbara Kirsop, Secretary EPT, UK
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
http://www.epublishingtrust.org
On the Need to Take Both Roads to Open Access
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2995.html
The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged
Transition
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html
The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3147.html
