From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 08:57:38 +0100


On 28 Oct 2012, at 23:07, Stevan Harnad wrote:

Giving up authors' preferred journals in favour of pure Gold OA
journals was what (I think) BMC's Vitek Tracz and Jan Velterop had
been lobbying for at the time

Stevan may think so, but that doesn't make it correct or accurate.
What we advocated (lobbied for in Stevan's words) at the time, and
what I still advocate now, is open access. Period. We argued that a
system of open access publishing at source is better than a
subscription system, and we realised that repositories would likely
play an important role in achieving open access. That's why BMC
offered assistance with establishing repositories, and the company
still does: http://www.openrepository.com

There is also an object lesson in Poynder's interview. For OA
advocates it is that they come together on open access per se,
irrespective of green, gold, gratis, libre, etc. Subscriptioneers are
as one, and their position is stronger as a result (even 'green' OA
supporters advocate subscriptions as the way to pay for science
publishing — "until all research is open access in repositories",
which, translated, means "till kingdom come").

Jan Velterop

Interview at:  http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-oa-interviews-ian-gibson-former.html