[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

Fri Jan 15 13:53:54 CST 2016

Yes, finally John you have said something sensible (on this thread, I mean!)

Another big drawback of open access publishing is that it favours authors with greater funding, creating a gap between the haves and have nots. Funny how it is mostly the "haves" who are lobbying most vocally for open access! Authors with the most funding will not necessarily publish the best work. Authors who might be able to publish better work should not be oppressed by those with greater economic power.

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 16/1/16, John Grehan <calabar.john at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit
 To: "Roderic Page" <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
 Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Saturday, 16 January, 2016, 5:32 AM

 Getting access to papers
 is less a problem that the pay to play wall that
 is being created for authors who do not have
 the funds. So one one side,
 access to papers
 may be getting better, on the other access to publication
 for some appears to be getting worse.

 John Grehan

 On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 7:25
 AM, Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
 wrote:

 > Hi
 Scott,
 >
 > If you can
 get the papers you want through your connections (in
 other
 > words a peer-to-peer network
 > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_peer-to-peer_processes
 ) then that
 > works for you.
 >
 > I would argue that
 reliance on such network, while meeting local needs
 ("I
 > can find my papers, what’s
 the problem?”), doesn’t work at a global level.
 > I work with hundreds of thousands of
 papers and millions of names, and
 >
 anything which makes papers discoverable and accessible is
 vital. The
 > approach you describe is
 simply untenable at this scale.
 >
 > If all you have is peer-to-peer networks
 then taxonomy will remain
 > discipline of
 small clusters. Maybe that’s all taxonomists want.
 >
 > But other
 disciplines, such as biomedicine and genomics realised
 pretty
 > early on that they needed to
 centralise this, hence we have PubMed and now
 > its open access cousin PubMed Central.
 People doing all sorts of studies
 >
 access these, download content and do extraordinary things
 with them. I,
 > for one, would like
 taxonomy to be able to do the same. Open access is a
 > big part of that vision.
 >
 > Regards
 >
 > Rod
 >
 >
 ---------------------------------------------------------
 > Roderic Page
 >
 Professor of Taxonomy
 > Institute of
 Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
 > College of Medical, Veterinary and Life
 Sciences
 > Graham Kerr Building
 > University of Glasgow
 >
 Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
 >
 > Email:  Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk<mailto:Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
 > Tel:  +44 141 330 4778
 > Skype:  rdmpage
 >
 Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/rdmpage
 > LinkedIn:  http://uk.linkedin.com/in/rdmpage
 > Twitter:  http://twitter.com/rdmpage
 > Blog:  http://iphylo.blogspot.com
 > ORCID:  http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7101-9767
 > Citations:  http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?hl=en&user=4Z5WABAAAAAJ
 > ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roderic_Page
 >
 >
 >
 On 15 Jan 2016, at 11:08, Scott Thomson <scott.thomson321 at gmail.com
 > <mailto:scott.thomson321 at gmail.com>>
 wrote:
 >
 > I get the
 point on the open access argument but think that in
 general
 > whether behind a paywall or not
 most papers are relatively easy to get. for
 > paywalled papers people have numerous
 options, writing to the author
 >
 obviously is one and that is not difficult, continuing with
 the Zootaxa
 > example in their online
 preview of papers the corresponding authors contact
 > details are included. For myself I always
 try to immediately respond to
 > these.
 Second is ResearchGate where many authors upload their
 papers
 > irrespective of the paywall
 issue, if they dont but include the reference
 > the clicking of Request full text, button
 is there. Many libraries also do
 > still
 carry access to papers and the more specialised ones such as
 our
 > field can often be obtained through
 any University library. Lastly of
 >
 course are list serves like this where i can write a post
 saying does
 > anyone have .... and it
 will be emailed to me by someone, we tend to share.
 >
 > For people not in
 science who want to be, eg the truckie example mentioned
 > earlier, well part of wanting to be in any
 field is learning how to get the
 >
 information you want. They only have to learn how to access
 the
 > information. If the desire is there
 it does not take long to learn these
 >
 basics.
 >
 > In all
 honesty the only papers I have found very difficult to get
 are
 > obscure journals with limited runs,
 generally older articles.
 >
 > As to the concern of public funding being
 used for publishing, I agree
 > that in
 any grant I have seen or been a part of the publishing of
 the
 > findings is an accepted and
 expected cost within the grant. Considering how
 > much these grants are often for, the few
 hundred in publishing is
 > negligible, it
 is also of benefit to the granting agency as it is a
 > demonstration and justification of the
 spending. Hence in most of my grants
 >
 copies of all publications were submitted to the agency in
 the final
 > reports.
 >
 > cheers Scott
 >
 >
 >
 --
 > Scott Thomson
 >
 Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de São Paulo
 > Divisão de Vertebrados (Herpetologia)
 > Avenida Nazaré, 481, Ipiranga
 > 04263-000, São Paulo, SP, Brasil
 > http://www.carettochelys.com<http://www.carettochelys.com/>
 > ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1279-2722
 > Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/0323517916624728<
 > https://wwws.cnpq.br/cvlattesweb/PKG_MENU.menu?f_cod=1E409F4BF37BFC4AD13FD58CDB7AA5FD#
 > >
 > Skype:
 Faendalimas
 > Mobile Phone: +55 11 974 74
 9095
 >
 >
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 >
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 Celebrating 29 years of
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