While the world is moving towards an Open Science model of exchange of scientific information, there are, as expected, forces that are trying to oppose it. Whenever there is a movement to change any kind of system, those most likely to lose will make a last-ditch and nasty effort to temporarily derail the progress. So, in this case, the Big Science Publishers have decided, instead of joining the new world of Open Science and using their brand names, their know-how and their infrastructure to become the leaders in the new system, and instead opted to go all mean and nasty. Once they finally lose, they’ll lose for good and it will not be pretty:
PR’s ‘pit bull’ takes on open access:
Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.
From e-mails passed to Nature, it seems Dezenhall spoke to employees from Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society at a meeting arranged last July by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). A follow-up message in which Dezenhall suggests a strategy for the publishers provides some insight into the approach they are considering taking.
And since they have no healthy arguments to put forth, they will use the trickery with language in their efforts to slander the Open Source and Open Science organizations and online journals, taking their cues from the Frank Luntz textbook of Republican War On Meaning.