Dear Stevan,

Although I do not necessarily (dis)agree with you, your comment reminded me of a quote from "Thom Friedmans The World is Flat"(ed. 2006) where he talks about the industrialisation of agriculture: "Hey, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars"(p. 268).
Maybe librarians should take the lead here and not the researchers. We librarians wish to promote global access to knowledge; individual researchers might have individual goals.

Michel Wesseling

-----Original Message-----
From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 8:26 PM
To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: [SERIALST] Follow up of EC-commissioned "Study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe" (fwd)

    ** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

Below is the (so far still rather wishy-washy) synthesis of the responses to
the European Commission's (EC's) research-access related recommendations.

One rather worrying thing is that the EC's February follow-up conference
in Brussels looks as if it will consist largely of librarians and
publishers, rather than the principal stakeholders, namely, the research
community: researchers, their institutions, and their funders.

One hopes that the EC will not lose sight of the fact that researchers
(and their institutions and funders) are both the *providers* of research
and the *users* of research (in generating further research, as well as
applications for the tax-paying public that funds the research).

Research is not done, or funded, in order to support the publishing industry.

And although librarians have their hearts in the right place, they are
not the research-providers either, so all they can do it help implement
what the researchers, their institutions and their funders elect to
implement.

Recommendation A1 was for an Open Access Self-Archiving Mandate. That is a matter for
the European Research Community to decide. Librarians can help. Publishers can either
help, or they can adapt. But it would be a huge strategic mistake to let the publishing
industry decide what the research community does in order to maximize the European
tax-paying public's return on the euros it invests in supporting research. They are not
in vesting in the publishing industry, and far, far more is at stake that the
publishing industry's concerns about possible risks to its revenue streams.

Stevan Harnad

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 18:45:15 +0200
From: RTD-SCIENTIFIC-PUBLICATION@CEC.EU.INT
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Follow up of EC-commissioned "Study on the economic and technical
                evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe"

Dear colleagues,

As some of you know, the European Commission's Research Directorate-General
recently commissioned a "Study on the economic and technical evolution of
the scientific publication markets in Europe"
(http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-stu
dy_en.pdf). This Study by the Universit� libre de Bruxelles and the
Universit� des Sciences Sociales (Toulouse) was published in early 2006
and led to a public consultation, to which many of you contributed.

Today, I am happy to be able to inform you that the synthesis of the
responses to the consultation and the individual contributions received are
available online:

Synthesis of contributions:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/synthesis-consultation_en.pdf

Individual contributions:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/

The next steps planned by the European Commission are a Communication on
scientific information issues (late 2006)and a conference to be held on
15-16 February 2007 in Brussels. Please check our pages on scientific
publication over the next weeks for further information on these activities:
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/page_en.cfm?id=3184

Best regards,

Celina Ramjou�
European Commission, Research Directorate-General
Science, Economy and Society Directorate - Governance and Ethics Unit
celina.ramjoue@ec.europa.eu