The only point on which we differ is whether it will be easy or difficult
for Scirus users to figure out how to get free access to the articles in
the search results which are in fact freely available elsewhere. I suspect
it will be difficult. Users like you who know that much of this literature
is already free and know how to find it will know what alternatives to try
when you hit a financial barrier. But I suspect that most Scirus users
will hit the financial barrier and either pay, ask their institutions to
pay, or turn away frustrated.
I agree that when Scirus users are authors of open-access articles, they
will see the unjustified financial barrier between their articles and
readers. But for the ordinary Scirus user, simply looking for research on
a given topic, Scirus will successfully give the impression that all the
articles in a return set are pay-per-view. This may frustrate users, and
build demand for FOS, but it can't lead many users to look for free
editions when most users have no reason to believe that free editions even
exist.
Just one clarification of earlier point. Google is (and deserves to be)
the tool of first choice for most searching needs. For that reason, users
have come to rely on it. To the extent of this reliance, what isn't in
Google isn't visible. My speculation was that Scirus is trying to become
the Google of science. I don't think it has succeeded, but I do believe
that its success would be harmful to FOS, especially if most users can't
see past the Scirus toll-gate. Hence, we should not help it succeed by
letting it index open-access texts, become more comprehensive, and hence
more useful and inviting to users.
Peter
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Harnad, S. (1997) How to Fast-Forward Serials to the Inevitable and the
Optimal for Scholars and Scientists. Serials Librarian 30: 73-81.
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/95/index.html
Harnad, S. (2001) The Self-Archiving Initiative. Nature 410: 1024-1025
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/42/index.html
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free
access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the
American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html
or
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Discussion can be posted to:
september98-forum at amsci-forum.amsci.org
See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess
and the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
