Re: Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate: A Deposit Mandate

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I feel obliged to state the obvious:  Stevan Harnad's comment in 
this thread about "that rare, lucky author" is an admission that 
OA has little impact. That author is rare and lucky because he or 
she has so many requests for copies of articles that are 
otherwise not available to other researchers. Most authors, of 
course, will not be troubled much with requests because the 
articles are indeed available to most researchers through 
institutional subscriptions.

Whatever one feels about the legality of the NIH policy, the 
conclusion is inescapable (citing Harnad as above) that OA is a 
small idea.  How it has come to dominate discourse concerning 
scholarly communications is a marvel, comparable in its way to 
the sudden interest of the popular media in hunting moose.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "atanu garai" <atanugarai.lists@gmail.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2008 1:54 PM
Subject: Re: Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate: A Deposit Mandate

> Dear Stevan:
>
> 2008/9/17 Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com>
>
>> Don't worry! That rare, lucky author will manage (and with a
>> smile on his face)...
>>
>> And once Deposit Mandates are universal, this is the sort of
>> thing that will help ensure the natural transition to universal
>> OA.
>
> It is indeed difficult to design and recommend systems that
> depend on individual decisions (such as actions and reactions by
> authors and users) such as this. This needs to be corroborated by
> empirical studies that authors are willing and give the users
> content as per their demand. As a matter of general practice this
> should be avoided because this kind of service provision can not
> be guaranteed by institutions managing large scale content,
> authors and users. It appears that the request button is designed
> to bypass the existing copyright laws but it does not take into
> account service delivery for the authors and users.
>
> Atanu Garai