Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences

Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences
Richard Fisher, Open and Shut?, 2017/12/21
In this post Richard Fisher argues that "polemical articles by Open Access enthusiasts claiming to know ‘what researchers want’ (when in reality what they mean is ‘what I and my immediate peer groups would find most helpful’) can be profoundly off-putting to those outside the circle of advocacy." There's a presumption of "universal acceptance of the principles behind Open Access" which leads him to "wonder which planet these agencies are inhabiting." Some examples: in STEM, research is used to create other products and services, which ultimately pay for the research, but in non-STEM fields the research output is the product. More...