Tag Archives: Mike Taylor

Elsevier distances itself from open-access article

The publisher Elsevier has disassociated itself from an article by a trade association it belongs to that condemns proposed open-access mandates in several US states.
See the comment by Mike Taylor beyond the article mentioned above and also see this blog post by Peter Suber, who will start as Harvard’s director of the Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) from July 1, 2013. Information Today reports on this topic as well, revealing the network behind it.

The opportunity cost of paywalled research

My eye was caught by this tweet: https://twitter.com/gvwilson/status/330747014340018177 And I found myself wondering how often this scenario plays out around the world every day. (…) How many thousands of valuable conversations never happen because you can’t idly browse at $15 a pop?
Mike Taylor on what potentials will be missed if science keeps being paywalled.

Business, Innovation and Skills Committee Inquiry into the Government’s Open Access Policy

Mike Taylor’s submission to the House of Commons inquiry on open access. He includes an executive summary and concludes:
It is not the job of government to concern itself with challenges faced by the publishing community at the expense of other stakeholders. This assertion does not arise from hostility to publishers, but from a simple recognition of who the government serves.

What does it cost to publish a Gold Open Access article?

What does it cost to publish a Gold Open Access article?

An emerging preference for Gold Open Access publishing has been stirring emotions. Mike Taylor highlights where the Finch Report goes wrong on cost and argues that academics should redirect their anger at publishers taking $1973 from academia in return for each paper they receive.

What would happen if I placed my manuscripts in the Public Domain?

What would happen if I placed my manuscripts in the Public Domain?

Mike Taylor, Computer programmer with Index Data, palaeontologist with the University of Bristol, and advocate for open access, open data and open source on the Copyright status of work by the U.S. government and its possible influence on scientific publishing towards open access:

So journals and publishers are already set up to deal with public domain works that have no copyright. And that made me wonder why this option should be restricted to U.S. Federal employees.

Open Access definitions and clarifications, part 1: what actually is Open Access?

Open Access definitions and clarifications, part 1: what actually is Open Access?

Mike Taylor, Computer programmer with Index Data and palaeontologist with the University of Bristol, gives a definition on Open Access and notes that 

the biggest issues that derails constructive discussion of the move to OA is that the term is used in different ways by different groups.

See also part 2: Open Access definitions and clarifications, part 2: Gold and Green.

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Publish means “make public”. Paywalls are the opposite of publishing

Publish means “make public”. Paywalls are the opposite of publishing

Mike Taylor, open access advocate and research associate at the department of earth sciences, University of Bristol says that preventing publication to make profit is wrong.

Nothing is wrong with publishers making a profit. (…)If you can make money by publishing research, that’s great. The issue is not publishers who make money. The issue is corporations that go by the title “publishers”, but which in fact make money by preventing publication.

What if we just post PDFs on the open web?

What if we just post PDFs on the open web?

Here is a conversation between Mike Taylor and Liz Smith (Director of Global Internal Communications at Elsevier). It’s a bit of a culture clash but worth reading.

In a long and interesting comment, Liz wrote (among much else):

This is where there seems to be deliberate obtuseness. Sticking a single PDF up online is easy. But there are millions of papers published every year. It takes a hell of a lot of people and resources to make that happen. You can’t just sling it online and hope somebody can find it. The internet doesn’t happen by magic.

And I replied:

Actually, you can and I do. That is exactly how the Internet works. I don’t have to do anything special to make sure my papers are found — Google and other search engines pick them up, just like they do everything. So to pick an example at random, if you search for brachiosaurus re-evaluation, the very first hit will be my self-hosted PDF of my 2009 JVP paper on that subject. [Correction: I now see that it’s the third hit; the PDF of the correction is top.] Similarly, search for xenoposeidon pdf and the top hit is — get ready for a shock! — my self-hosted PDF of my 2007 Palaeontology paper on that subject.