Peter Suber goes philosophical:
Open access and the self-correction of knowledge:
Here's an epistemological argument for OA. It's not particularly new or novel. In fact, I trace it back to some arguments by John Stuart Mill in 1859. Nor is it very subtle or complicated. But it's important in its own right and it's importantly different from the moral and pragmatic arguments for OA we see more often.The thesis in a nutshell is that OA facilitates the testing and validation of knowledge claims. OA enhances the process by which science is self-correcting. OA improves the reliability of inquiry.
Science is fallible, but clearly that's not what makes it special. Science is special because it's self-correcting. It isn't self-correcting because individual scientists acknowledge their mistakes, accept correction, and change their minds. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Science is self-correcting because scientists eventually correct the errors of other scientists, and find the evidence to persuade their colleagues to accept the correction, even if the new professional consensus takes more than a generation. In fact, it's precisely because individuals find it difficult to correct themselves, or precisely because they benefit from the perspectives of others, that we should employ means of correction that harness public scrutiny and open access.
I draw on two propositions from John Stuart Mill. It may seem odd that they don't come from his philosophy of science, but his short treatise on the freedom of expression, _On Liberty_ (1859). Mill made a powerful argument that freedom of expression is essential to truth-seeking, and in elaborating it pointed out the essential role of opening discussion as widely as possible. Here's how the two propositions look in their natural habitat:
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Comments
I'm a fan of OA, for a rather naive intuition of the same good argument that Suber puts forth that 'more readers is better'. But in reading his arguments I realized that OA is really only half the goal.
The goal as Mills states is to rectify mistakes by presenting theories to open challenge. This only works if there is a true dialog between the two challengers where both can present ideas and evidence. OA gets the message out to the masses, but if we are just considering OA alone, they are more or less mute masses. Those who are unable to afford journal subscriptions are most likely also unable to afford the price of carrying out experiments to the current standards of scientific rigor, which is needed before a challenging theory is taken seriously by the scientific community as a whole.
There will of course be anecdotal exceptions, and we are all quite happy for those, but it seems to me that on the large scale OA hits a bottle neck set by the amount of funds available to do science, and can't provide any large benefits respective to a certain funding level.
You could have programs, (and I'd be surprised if PLoS didn't) which subsidize the cost of publication, but the same benefits could be gained by subsidizing the cost of access in pay-journals. Again it is more the amount of effort/money/interest devoted to science that is the true controlling factor.
So, maybe the best benefit of OA is not in making the scientific process more efficient, but rather in it's ability to fuel scientific interest. Knowledge has a bit of a positive-feedback, in that knowledge lets you see the value of knowledge and often leads one to want to know more. Therefore, maybe a little bit more access can lead to a lot more interest....
That said, I still hope to publish in PLoS someday soon, both for is excellent reputation and OA ideals.
Posted by: Kevin H | June 2, 2008 11:38 PM
hmm, I'm rethinking my comment about subsidies, OA pub-subsidies would be taken only by those who contribute to scientific knowledge, whereas access-subsidies would cost the subsidizer irrespective of if the recipient is able to contribute, so they might very well be more efficient.
Still on a large scale it seems to me that money/interest rather than scientific access is the limiting factor. I'm certainly open to challenges to that idea however =)
Posted by: Kevin H | June 2, 2008 11:59 PM
I think the incident in March, where physicists requested license to post portions of their paper on Wikipedia, is relevant here. Wikipedia holds so much information for the masses, it would be a great starting point to create such conversations to allow for self-correction of scientific ideas. Even better would be a blog-type forum, where one can comment on scientific work to really uphold Mills' philosophy. Of course, the question is, who would comment in enough depth on the papers to create such self-correction? I know that one journal (I forget which one) experimented with open peer review, allowing comments on papers being considered for publication, and aborted the experiment because no useful comments were made.
You can see my own blog post on open access here:
http://sciencegeekgirl.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/e-mcshared/
Posted by: Stephanie | June 4, 2008 3:38 PM
I wonder whether OA can be achieved in near future. Even the book reviews and news analysis in so-called high impact journals are not under OA. I think Harvard has declared support for OA.
Posted by: Jay | June 15, 2008 11:43 AM