I’m swamped, but two quick points:
1. I’m not going to try to keep up with reactions to PRISM here, unless I think I have something potentially useful to add. If you want a news stream, read OAN or watch my PRISM tag on Simpy — I’ll grab everything I notice.
2. Peter Murray-Rust is blogging up a storm on publisher policies, copyright and Open Access:
- OUP wants me to pay for my own Open Access article – September 3rd, 2007
- OUP: Thank you for the response – September 4th, 2007
- Ingenta: It gets even worse; corrupt and resell – September 4th, 2007
- Access to WHO? – September 5th, 2007
- Copyright paralysis from the British Library – September 5th, 2007
- Copyright paralysis from the British Library – update – September 5th, 2007
- Ingenta: more comment – September 5th, 2007
There is a great deal of confusion regarding publisher policies and the rights of readers, scholars, institutions &c. I hope that publishers will agree with me that Peter MR is doing a sterling job of getting these issues out into the open, where they can be clarified — to everyone’s benefit.
I don’t have an immense readership on my blog, but I do think this is a fantastically important issue: how do your results get out to other researchers? Will we have a choice in the future about how to publish? Why don’t those believers in the PRISM coalition propose that our e-mails to one another, our forum participations, our coffee breaks also get taxed – a little information might be circulating without anyone paying for it a third time around!
So, I discussed this in my blog here:
http://humans.scienceboard.net/archives/2007/09/05/320/
as did Richard Grant in his here: http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/labrats/2007/09/money_1.html
and I’ll be harassing others as much as I can to make them take notice.
Alethea, that’s wonderful. As Peter MR has said in a later blog post, you and Richard may be the beginning of a wave of mass action, which could push through some much needed changes.