From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2015 11:31:44 +0100

Thanks for commenting Ann. Two points:

First, it is possible that Tracz’s position is not quite as
straightforward as your anecdote suggests. It’s true he sometimes
describes himself as just "a publisher and a businessman”. At other
times, however, he presents himself in a somewhat different light.
Speaking to me in in 2005 he said that while it is nice to be wealthy,
he is “perfectly happy not to have money”. What motivates him, he told
me, is undertaking projects that are “difficult to do and
complicated”.

In 2002, in an interview with Daryl Rayner, Tracz said that he doesn't
even know how to interpret a balance sheet. And speaking to me in the
wake of the sale of BMC he said, “I took horrendous risks, and I was
not at all sure that it would ever make financial sense. It was an
ethical issue, and I was intrigued by the complexities of it.”

That said, the real puzzle is why Tracz’s business concerns appear to
be so complex, with his various ventures enveloped in a web of
interlocked companies, many of which seem ultimately to lead to
concerns based in places like Switzerland and Cyprus.

Second, I am struck at your implication that OA advocates don’t value
smart, strategic business innovators, or that they see a fundamental
contradiction between open access and business motivations. Is that
your view, or am I misunderstanding what you said?

Richard


On 25 September 2015 at 02:14, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2015 21:10:50 -0400
>
> Agree with Jean-Claude but for a different reason.  Early in the last
> decade, I was part of a librarian focus group invited to London to
> meet with Tracz to talk about about BioMed Central.  There may have
> been 15-20 of us in the room, and a number were passionate open access
> advocates.  When asked if he were pursuing this idea because of a
> powerful conviction/passion for open access, Tracz said clearly that
> he is a publisher and businessman, one who sees in open access a solid
> business opportunity -- which would also help on the access side.
> Many hearts fell and many spirits sagged, for indeed there had been an
> expectation of meeting an open access "hero," but here instead was a
> smart, strategic business innovator.
>
> Ann Okerson/CRL
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 7:04 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > From: "Guédon Jean-Claude" <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Thu, 24 Sep 2015 10:20:42 +0000
> >
> > I am not so sure that Vitek Tracz is such a "hero" of the open access
> > movement by inventing (or is it Jan Velterop?) APC's..
> >
> > APCs have proved to be very problematic indeed::
> >
> > 1. They create inequalities at the author level that never existed before
> > (including between disciplines, between rich and poor countries, between
> > rich and poor institutions);
> >
> > 2. They have given rise to a horror story called hybrid journals;
> >
> > 3. The have opened the door to an even worse story called deceptive (or
> > predatory, as some say) journals.
> >
> > Hard to be a hero after that.
> >
> > jcg