Scholarly Publishing Roundtable- Difference of opinion or chasm?
Spin is everything.
The result of the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable of key stakeholders charged on October 29th, 2009, by the U.S. House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), was released on January 12th, 2010, after reaching enough consensus to suggest something was accomplished.
The Science Magazine Blog optimistically stated that “A diverse group of scientific publishers, librarians, and university officials has come together to endorse a once-controversial idea: that all federal research agencies should require that papers published by the investigators they support be made freely available to the public as soon as possible.” This optimism was based on a consensus of 12 out of 14 representatives. Certainly a majority.
Of course, the two dissenting representatives are probably the most well-known polarized opposites within academic scholarship.
Y.S. Chi, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Global Academic and Customer Relations, Elsevier, issued a dissent that attempted to avoid confrontation and vaguely suggested a fundamental inability to agree with the proposal as a whole. He also felt it necessary to state, “I express all of my views consistent with my willingness to participate in the Roundtable as a knowledgeable and concerned citizen and not as a representative of my employer.” Huh? Too bad that no records were kept of the intense negotiations.
Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing, Public Library of Science (PLoS), also chose the path of dissent, stating that the final report “stops far short of recognizing and endorsing the opportunities to unleash the full potential of online communication to transform access to and use of scholarly literature.”
Concurrent with the Roundtable’s deliberations, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was also running a participatory Public Access Forum. Among the public comments received was a statement from Elsevier responding to the OSTP forum questions. In this case, Vice Chairman Chi co-signed the contribution on Elsevier letterhead. On record, speaking for Elsevier and not as a private citizen, the letter he co-authored with David Hansen stated, “There is no systematic quantitative evidence to show that access is an issue for researchers or the public. It is therefore unclear why the government would seek to implement any policy that pertains to the outputs of published research.”
Difference of opinion or chasm?
