Comrade OpenAccessProf, you surprise me.
February 4, 2012
but you are nevertheless absolutely straight on target with:
And the way that we do this is not by telling one of these poor fuckes not to send their beautiful work to a particular prominent journal for political reasons. Rather, we fight tooth and nail on hiring, tenure/promotion, and grant review committees against the abdication of responsibility for judging the importance and interest of particular lines of research to non-scientist editors at legacy “high-impact” journals.
DrugMonkey 
February 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
But CPP is the one that loves to drop inflammatory comments about that’s all he every looks at on committees- you mean he was just playing a role there?
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February 5, 2012 at 9:53 am
CPP’s comment is a cop out, because the loop is too long and too long a circle (between hiring/tenure/promotion & the effect on the journal & its eventual effect on open access). Too many steps in that feedback loop means it is effectively a method of not doing anything (i.e. the two faculty who get hired/tenured/promoted in spite of not having published a paper in one of the “right” journals impacting the choice of journal for a new scientists to impacting the practices of that journal). “Arguing tooth and nail” for evaluating work in decision making about other scientists is a good thing, but it will have no effect on journal publishing practices.
Not sending the papers immediately disrupts the journal’s practices. Not reviewing for journals immediately disrupts the journal’s practices. The excuse against not doing those things is that everyone else won’t do them. The right solution is for the less vulnerable to take the stand and *then* fight tooth and nail against the use of articles those journals for evaluating scientists.
If you are a funded, tenured scientist (and, yes, I know that funded tenured scientists are still vulnerable) and you’re not doing something *personal*, well as they say, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. It’s an excuse to do nothing because the status quo works for you.
That explanation is in fact a good one for why lots of things never change in science, but the press to roll back the PubMed repository rules of NIH is the last straw, as far as I’m concerned. I think that scientists who still send papers/review for publishers who are supporting the RWA are the problem. I have to agree with the past thread that we can’t boycott information based on where it’s published, but we can shame the scientists who still chose to play into Elsevier’s hands (mind you, Elsevier is being targeted, but my beef is with all the organizations that support the RWA, including any not for profits that are still on that list).
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February 5, 2012 at 1:57 pm
On another list, someone sent links to publishers who are NOT supporting RWA (as a starting point in this discussion):
Springer: http://www.springer.com/open+access/authors+rights?SGWID=0-176704-6-1337021-0 (do not support RWA)
MIT Press: Opposes the bill
Cambridge UP: Opposes the Bill
Nature Group & Digital Science: http://www.nature.com/press_releases/rwa-statement.html (Does not support the RWA)
ITHAKA (behind JSTOR) apparently also tweeted non-support of the RWA.
I don’t know about Oxford UP, Wiley, SAGE, or Blackwell.
Elsevier is a a big gun in support, though, and scientists have the power to extract a price from them, if they choose.
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