[Foundation-l] Black market science

Wed Jul 20 22:22:23 UTC 2011

On 07/20/11 12:47 AM, Andrea Zanni wrote:
> 2011/7/19 David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com
>> So. What can we do to help take out the proprietary journal system?
> 1. Openly support the OA movement, partecipating in conferences, making
> public statements, addressing the issue to the community. We discuss with
> them on the "interoperability" of the our movements, as to say we tell them
> using clear licenses (CC-BY) is *fundamental*.
> 2. Discuss about a technical framework for publicize OA papers in Wikipedia.

Much of this has already been ongoing for some years.  More important 
would be serious dialogue about the economic framework.  What is the 
benefit to the author of having his article behind a pay wall?

> Couldn't we harvest OA articles from institutional and subject repositories,
> and even from OA journals, covering both green and Gold Open access?
> Couldn't we show dynamic lists of OA articles in the Reference sections of
> our Wikipedia articles, generated by keyword and language? All OA articles
> have these metadata in Dublin Core, it would be easy to filter them and
> create those dynamic lists.
>
> (I'm not sure about a Wikipedia policy on "preferring" OA sources, it could
> conflict something else)

For the user the important thing is what articles are best for 
supporting his interests and research. Choices based on political 
preference do not accomplish that. If the most suitable articles are 
only available for a fee, it is better to let him know beforehand than 
to suppress those links. The fact of the paywall needs to be a part of 
the reference along with the retail price for downloading a single article.

> We could even bulk upload every article we find that is in CC-BY on Commons,
> to store it there (and when we find a solution for uploading them on
> Wikisource, we should do it too)(yes, we should need a metadata/OAI-PMH
> framework for us, but I don't think is such a big deal).

The subject is about Open Access, not about agrandizing Wikimedia.  The 
right of Wikimedia to include this material is one thing, but that does 
not mean that hosting all the stuff within our legal entitlements is 
beneficial. Even what is already clearly in the public domain in all 
jurisdictions would be overwhelming to try to host.

Undermining the relationships between authors and pay hosts would be a 
good beginning.  What is the nature of the contracts between authors and 
hosts?  That may require dealing directly with authors, and that is a 
lot of work. At other times it may require taking a stand and playing 
hardball in the face of legal threats. Don't wait for a larger 
organization (like Wikimedia) to accept your responsibility; that 
changes the dynamics far too much. Large organizations have too many 
other assets that can be put at risk by an ill-advised legal conflict.

Ray