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/