[Vwoolf] R: Open Access

[Francesca]

Dear professor Hussey,

 

I dare answer your question even though I do not belong to the academic
world; I just have a degree (I wrote a dissertation about The Voyage Out)
and a PhD (again about travel literature) but I am a librarian who works in
Italy, at the Library System of the University of Trento.

 

One of my professional tasks is related to Open Access. I will not bother
you all advocating for OA (there are a lot of reliable websites you can read
in order to get the information you may be interested in) but I will just
add some words about your remark:

 

>> journals that give their content away for nothing

 

OA journals are peer-reviewed journals which do not give away *their*
content for nothing (I am highlighting “their” because the content’s rights
should not be considered as “the publisher’s”, but should be retained by the
author
). 

These journals are just based on a different economic model. 

 

Research outputs (articles) should not be financed more than once by public
money. There is no reason whatsoever for publicly financing a research
project at the begining, then selling the output to a commercial publisher,
which must be re-paid again by libraries (subscriptions) to enable
researchers and students access the article.

 

In OA, Universities and researchers pay just once (with research grants) for
a paper to be published. After that, nothing more is due to the publisher;
the paper goes through the journal's normal peer review process and the
article is then freely and openly available because it has already been
paid.

 

It is so sad that after eleven years from the Berlin Declaration there
should be still so many misunderstandings and biases about Open Access. I do
not ask you to adhere to OA movement of course, but I would consider myself
professionally satisfied if an unbiased knowledge of OA principles were
slowly achieved.

 

Sincecerly yours (and apologizing for my English),

Francesca Valentini

 

   

 

  _____  

Da: Vwoolf [mailto:vwoolf-bounces+frvln=hotmail.com at lists.osu.edu] Per conto
di Mark Hussey
Inviato: lunedì 24 novembre 2014 22.53
A: VWOOLF at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Oggetto: [Vwoolf] Open Access

 

Do those of you likely to publish in US-based journals (such as, for
example, Woolf Studies Annual!) have any concerns about the UK government’s
forthcoming requirement that to be counted you may only publish in journals
that give their content away for nothing?  

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osu.edu/pipermail/vwoolf/attachments/20141124/2d5bc58d/attachment-0001.html>