[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

[Daniel Leo Gustafsson]

"Groups of amateurs, generally speaking, want field guides and things, not
primary taxonomic literature, and even then only for a few selected taxa. A
field guide to avian lice, for example, is unlikely to make the New York
Bestsellers List!"

I will certainly admit that my lice are not very popular, whether on avian
or mammalian hosts (however, every time I post pictures of lice in the
insect facebook groups I'm in they are very popular).

Nevertheless, with groups of organisms that can actually be observed more
easily, there is a lot of sharing or taxonomic papers between experts and
amateurs in groups that I am part of. This mainly concerns revisions and
anything that has keys, but species descriptions without these parts are
also shared occasionally. This is even more the case in paleontology than
in entomology, where there's a huge amount (relatively speaking) of
paleoartists and other people who monitor new discoveries and want to and
are capable of reading the actual descriptions. Easy access to this kind of
thing can even spur interest, as seen by the enormous increase in small
dipterans and other less colourful or striking insect groups in my homeland
following the publication of the National Keys.

Cheers,
Leo

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 6:49 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> Leo,
>
> Groups of amateurs, generally speaking, want field guides and things, not
> primary taxonomic literature, and even then only for a few selected taxa. A
> field guide to avian lice, for example, is unlikely to make the New York
> Bestsellers List!
>
> >I don't give a damn about the copyright issue, though, and gladly
> download things I have access to and send to people who want or need it,
> whether or not I've ever been involved in the production of that paper at
> any stage, and will continue doing so as long as I am affiliated with a
> university<
>
> Ever heard of Aaron Swartz?
>
> As I keep saying, the issues here are very complex.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stephen
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Mon, 18/1/16, Daniel Leo Gustafsson <kotatsu.no.leo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit
>  To: "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
>  Cc: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Fred
> Schueler" <bckcdb at istar.ca>
>  Received: Monday, 18 January, 2016, 2:37 PM
>
>  Given how many groups of amateurs
>  interested in insects I am part of (facebook and elsewhere),
>  and how many bird/butterfly/dragonfly/whatever-watchers I
>  know offline who are indeed very interested in obtaining
>  published taxonomic papers for this or that group (sadly
>  VERY few people I know are interested in lice...), I do
>  agree with the face-value of "the public has the right
>  to free access to the results of research funded by the
>  public purse". Evidently my assessment of how much in
>  demand taxonomic papers (especially revisions) are differs
>  substantially from yours.
>
>  I don't give a damn about the copyright
>  issue, though, and gladly download things I have access to
>  and send to people who want or need it, whether or not
>  I've ever been involved in the production of that paper
>  at any stage, and will continue doing so as long as I am
>  affiliated with a university. That is a non-issue to me.
>  Things like scratchpads and the various paleontological
>  initiatives I've seen are phenomenal for this, achieving
>  precisely the results I want (the people who want the papers
>  or data get the papers or data) without anyone having to pay
>  the publishing companies more than library fees and whatever
>  else is necessary to keep them afloat (I don't think
>  I've ever paid for open access, and don't intend to
>  either, as anything I publish becomes open access on the
>  scratchpad...).
>
>  So yeah, in general I suppose I both
>  agree and disagree with you. I am all for open access, but
>  will not pay for it. I will just do what I can to realise
>  the ideal of open access whether this is in the interest of
>  the publisher or not. Obviously they can survive without
>  being paid for open access, so any claim that they need to
>  be reimbursed for publishing something open access is bogus
>  from the outset.
>
>  Cheers,
>  Leo
>