[Taxacom] PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article in Nature Magazine

[Donat Agosti]

One more reason to get our acts together and make sure we institutionalize
open access in our field. Otherwise projects like the forthcoming
Biodiversity Heritage Library, Encyclopedia of Life and many of our own
taxon specific sites building on providing access to systematics work will
become easily rendered unreliable.

 

We can not became hijacked by the commercial publishers for their own
commercial interest at a time where we finally have the tools to disseminate
our vital information to the widest audience possible.

 

Donat

 

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Jennifer McLennan (ARL) points out the following article to appear in Nature
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445347a.html

 

Extracts below

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PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access

Jim Giles

Journal publishers lock horns with free-information movement.

The author of Nail 'Em! Confronting High-Profile Attacks on Celebrities and
Businesses is not the kind of figure normally associated with the relatively
sedate world of scientific publishing. Besides writing the odd novel, Eric
Dezenhall has made a name for himself helping companies and celebrities
protect their reputations, working for example with Jeffrey Skilling, the
former Enron chief now serving a 24-year jail term for fraud.

...

Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the
pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for
scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals,
which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and
public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of
Health's (NIH's) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.

>From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from
Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last
July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). A follow-up message in
which Dezenhall suggests a strategy for the publishers provides some insight
into the approach they are considering taking.

The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public
access equals government censorship". He hinted that the publishers should
attempt to equate traditional publishing models with peer review, and "paint
a picture of what the world would look like without peer-reviewed articles".

...

Dezenhall noted that if the other side is on the defensive, it doesn't
matter if they can discredit your statements, she added: "Media massaging is
not the same as intellectual debate.

 

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Les Carr