Fear, uncertainty, and doubt
Data Conversion Labs’ newsletter offers this timid piece on open-access scholarship. What caught my attention was the breathless way it was presented, as though it had just made the radar.
Come on, DCL. Where have you guys been all this time?
I mean, I know the answer to that question. They’ve been listening to their customers, the publishers. And now that the publishers are finally starting to see that open access isn’t going away just because they sling mud at it, they’re getting scared. The mud’s gotten stinkier and stinkier the past few weeks with the NIH thing hanging in the balance; I don’t think even they believe the crap they’re flinging any more. Hasn’t made any difference, since this just makes too much sense to too many people. If DCL is betting any significant portion of its business on the publishing magnates winning this one, DCL is in trouble.
Hey, DCL. I speak to you as a soon-to-be librarian, highly likely (in my opinion) to become a librarian-publisher in the new open-access world. You can wake up and start talking to librarians, figuring out how to serve us—or you can get the hell out of our way.
We can eat your lunch. By and large we don’t know it yet, but we can.