From: Amy Schuler <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 10:28:03 -0400

"For some reason it seems to be singularly difficult for some
librarians to grasp..."

Oh Stevan, seriously!  Sometimes "some librarians" get tired of the
nit-picking, the hyper-academicizing (YES!), and the pretentious tone
that sometimes pervades this listserv.  I do believe that ultimately,
Janice was trying to bring the conversation back to the trenches.  You
may call this "dumbing down" if you like, but please keep in mind some
of us actually ARE in the trenches, and we have to think in very real
and immediate terms about what our budgets can, or should, support.

I would also like to add that as much as I think an ongoing dialogue
about OA is important, necessary, and increasingly relevant, picking
over details sometimes gets us nowhere.  How many messages will there
be about Green OA?  I have nearly forgotten what that even means,
because it is buried under a morass of useless statistics - and the
propensity for some members of the listserv to be contrarians even
when they are ultimately in agreement with each other.

A couple messages back, Kevin (?) of Duke University made some
excellent points.  I have to agree with him -- even with my strapped
budget (small non-profit research library), I have found myself paying
for certain key journals in two forms - as part of a collection, and
individually. This is because of value-added reasons mentioned by
Kevin.  So, in my opinion, simply being OA (green or otherwise!) will
not mean that those journals will be cancelled.

Tangent:  Has anyone been keeping up on the (US) Office of Science and
Technology Policy memo of Feb 2013, and its pursuant executive order,
and the Open Data Policy, http://project-open-data.github.io/ ?  If US
gov agencies are expected to set up data sites (see Public Data
Listing section on site above -- slash data catalog requirements) --
at what point will, for instance, NSF's data catalog also allow for
publications alongside the data?  We already see commercial and
society publishers encouraging authors to submit data along with
publications.  If agencies have to set up data sites anyway, I wonder
if the papers will naturally accompany that data?  This is all
conjecture but I think many of us have been wondering to what degree
the Open Data and Open Access movements will affect each other.  I
would be interested in anyone's feedback on this -- feel free to
rename the subject for that thread!

Thanks,

Amy Schuler
Director of Information Services & Library
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
Millbrook, NY
http://www.caryinstitute.org


On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 7:48 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:53:59 -0400
>
> **************
>
> From: "Pilch, Janice T" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 03:16:50 +0000
>
> Why shame? Isn't it rational not to pay for something if you can get
> it for free? Why have such persistent efforts been made to make
> journals free if the goal is still to pay for them?
>
> **************
>
> For some reason it seems to be singularly difficult for some librarians
> to grasp the difference between whether the articles in a journal are
> all or mostly Green OA (which is not what we are discussing) and
> whether the publisher does not embargo Green OA (which does not imply
> that all or most of its articles are Green OA).
>
> In fact, over 60% of publishers (and an even greater percentage of
> journals) do not embargo Green OA, yet only about 20-30% of
> articles are Green OA (and no one has even shown whether more
> of these come from journals that do not embargo Green OA).
>
> So what were you saying about its being rational not to pay for something
> you can get for free? And what has it to do with the point under
> discussion, which is cancelling journals because they do not embargo
> Green OA?
>
> Stevan Harnad