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Re: The Value of OA
This is just wrong. The proposition that is being put forth here
is between fully open access material and fully closed access
material, a contrast that does not exist on the Internet, where
materials are found through Web-exposed indexes, published
keywords, linking arrangements, abstracts and summaries,
hot-linked citations, and various (and evolving) algorithmic
methods. There is an entire industry that has grown up around
thise called "search-engine and site optimization"; and like any
industry, it has its share of cheaters and scam artists. Google
"SEO" and take a look.
This industry also has serious and ethical players (who are
expensive), who redesign content for maximum Web "findability"
and can greatly and legitimately increase the prominence of
research materials. This costs money: it requires well-designed
Web presences, superior marketing personnel, and extensive
attention to Web analytics. It also requires sophisticated
software platforms to manage all of this, something that is
apparently entirely lacking in the OA universe, where "cheap" is
a synonym for "good." This is why commercial and well-run
not-for-profit research publishers have always provided, continue
to provide, and will provide in the future the best vehicle for
researchers who publish. There are very good reasons to want to
publish in Nature and Science, just as there are very good
reasons to want to send your kid to Harvard or Yale.
The basic problem here is the insistence that Web findability and
access are somehow one and the same. It just ain't true. You
can put up anything you want on a Web server and you may even get
lucky and have Google and some other search engines index it.
And this is where advocates of OA start and end the discussion.
The problem is that findability is a function of many, many
things, including how content is "pitched" to search engines and
the network of Web relationships surrounding content. You can
build it, but they may not come.
But even this doesn't speak to the biggest issue of all, which is
not how you find or access something, but what puts those
keywords into a researcher's head in the first place. OA is
useless here; it can only fulfill demand that has been generated
elsewhere. The OA advocates are doing an enormous disservice to
authors by telling them that they can all be stars in a Hollywood
movie. Where oh where are the tort lawyers when you need them?
Of course, the vanity of authors is endless and many listen and
believe. Successful and prominent OA publishers understand the
importance of generating demand. Wouldn't every commercial
publisher like to have a marketing budget the size of PLoS's?
Joe Esposito
On 4/7/07, Alma Swan <a.p.swan@talk21.com> wrote:
Joe Esposito wrote:
There is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Internet
works in this post. OA is contrasted with hardcopy and Web
1.0 applications. Everything that is listed here for OA can be
done (and done better) with proprietary services.
There is no misunderstanding, fundamental or otherwise. OA is
contrasted with CA (closed access) on the Web (I must confess I
hadn't given much thought to print: a rather quaint concept in
the context of obtaining scientific information). Authors
cannot cite articles they don't know about, they certainly
cannot cite early any articles they don't know about, semantic
technologies cannot get at closed access articles to work on
them, proprietory services do not construct one research space,
and researchers whose work requires them to reach out into
other fields cannot find articles that are not in their library
(and the concept of 'new fields' frequently means that their
library does not provide the materials they need). Indeed, this
whole area of servicing the demands of collaborative and pooled
research is a major issue that research libraries are now
having to start facing up to (as will be clear from the report
to be published next week by RIN).
Alma Swan
Key Perspectives Ltd
Truro, UK