From: Jean-Claude Guédon <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2013 09:34:27 -0400

The Liblicense-L Discussion Forum should also know that Professor
Chartron works hand in hand with French publishers. She actually
chairs the "Groupe de travail" on open access for an association of
publishers named GFII (Groupement français de l'industrie de
l'information): see
http://www.gfii.fr/fr/groupe/open-access?symfony=1u8fcmchno037lb4fs31urcg87
.

In a somewhat hilarious manner, she recently and mistakenly released a
draft of the document proposed below to a French OA list
(accesouvert), allowing all readers to see that she consulted these
publishers to get their approval. She did this just after the Couperin
[French library consortium] meeting in Paris which was attended by a
number of OA advocates and by her. She was quite perturbed by the fact
- so she claimed - that publishers had not been given their due place
in the debates of the Couperin meeting.

A little later, another conference was organized, this time by
publishers, where she intervened in a prominent fashion. In her
intervention, which is available as a video (in French) on the
Internet (http://www.openaccess-shs.info/interventions-videos/), both
Stevan Harnad and myself had the honor of being called "extremists"...
In my case, I was even characterized as an "influential extremist"
which, If true, is actually quite flattering.

Essentially, she and her acolytes, the publishers, take the position
that publishers are at the center of the scientific communication
system, not researchers. In effect, so they would argue, research
works for publishers, not the reverse. For them, the mediation task is
of the essence!

I am sure many readers of this list will appreciate...

Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal


Le mercredi 20 mars 2013 à 19:24 -0400, LIBLICENSE a écrit :
From: Ghislaine Chartron <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:52:32 +0100

Open access: Scientific work and public debate in the Humanities and
Social  Sciences, threatened by measures recommended by the European
Commission

Open letter from the editors of French language journals in the
humanities and social sciences to the Minister of Higher Education and
Research, the Minister of Culture and Communication, the presidents of
universities and grandes écoles, and heads of major research
institutions

Motion and  List of the first 110 signatories (last updated on March 18, 2013) :

http://www.openaccess-shs.info/motion-en/