[Taxacom] FW: DEVELOPING WORLD TO RECEIVE ACCESS [etc]

[Doug Yanega]

Rod page wrote:

>For a slightly different perspective, I stumbled across an 
>interesting  essay by Christine Hine that asks some interesting 
>questions about the  irresistible move to Open Access. For the link 
>and some related  material, see 
>http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2006/11/politics-and-practice-of- 
>accessibility.html

Actually, I'm not so sure that Christine's essay is a different 
perspective, as it is talking about different forms of data. The 
essay focuses very heavily on sharing of specimen-based information 
and collection holdings via digital media. It is also quite nebulous, 
but that's not the point. I can't find anything in it whatsoever that 
talks about digital publication (e.g., of species descriptions) and 
what a shift to digital distribution would mean to traditional 
publishers. That, if I'm not mistaken, is what the SCOAP3 issue is 
all about; intellectual property rights versus commercial publishing. 
It is also one of the things that long-time taxacom readers know I 
have advocated on numerous occasions; the systematics community does 
not exist to support the publishing industry, we owe them no debt, no 
fealty, and if they are going to insist on copyrighting of species 
descriptions, then I see no reason we should not cut publishers from 
the loop so our science can progress without such restrictions. I 
suspect Donat and others agree, at least in principle, though perhaps 
not to the Draconian extent I envision (i.e., a single hybrid 
online/print journal for *all* zoological taxon descriptions).

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        /Dept. of Entomology         /Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California - Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521-0314
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82