Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 04:12:59 +0000 (GMT) From: "[iso-8859-1] Subbiah Arunachalam" <subbiah_a@yahoo.com> 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