I didn't mean it to be a mental exercise. The point was to
determine if
we all agree that OA is desirable. In the past, on this
list and
elsewhere, people have made the argument that it is not
needed -- we have
all the information we need, or the general public would be
hurt by too
much information;we need to edit for them., etc. It has
struck me and
others, that these didn't make sense, or were compromised
by conflicts of
interest. I asked originally whether any of these arguments
made sense
except for people who stood to gain from maintaining the
current system
and what argument against OA's desirability. The idea is
that you can't
ask about feasibility, unless you know whether you want to
do it.
It thought it was pretty simple idea. Should we build an
atomic bomb,
should we have the bathroom redone, etc.? Once you know
whether you want
to do it, you can ask how much it costs or how hard it is to
do or whether
it is even possible, but first you have to know if you want
to do it. A
what if question, if you like,or as Nietzsche put it: we can
do with any
how if we have a why. The fact that hardly anybody wanted to
play and
insisted that I cannot even pose the question, and that it
is in the
ballpark with world peace and end to world hunger, suggests
we all agree
it is desirable to have OA. So, I will take if for a yes.
Now we can go
on to Q.2
Q. 2. Richard Roberts, among others, has suggested that the
money
currently spent on publishing only needs to be re-directed
towards OA.
Now, since everybody seems to agree that author-pays means
largely
author's grant-pays and since NIH is most accessible and
major funder in
biomedicinee:
2a. Is it possible to find out how what per centage of the
NIH research
grants go for author page charges, subscriptions, if anybody
still buys
reprints and other costs that are directed to publishing?
Richard D. Feinman, Professor of Biochemistry
(718) 871-1374
FAX: (718) 270-3316
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