the biology in OA

Tried my hand at the Metadata and Query Format sessions during the morning got to realize very soon that this conversation was very much for those in the field. Even my coursework in Bibliographic Control at the Faculty of Information Studies didn't help me negotiate the technical jargon and complex systems (each presenter was exhibiting "streamed-down" versions) . . . yet the Q&A after each proved their were engaged listeners who were trying to hammer out their own solutions in their own environments and came, perhaps to gain a few clues from their peers. Strong human interests shared in the body collect of OA.

Lunch offered an opportunity to see a few "breaks in the skin" of the OA community, when Leslie Chan mentioned his reproof to John Willinsky in times past that Hindawi Publishing was not OA. John referenced in his morning talk the casual nature in which the librarian employing Hindawi disinterestedly announced "19,500 titles on-line" when asked how many journals they maintained. Remarkable, and allowing for unparalleled access in the region (though issues of technical infrastructure still need addressing, comments John) but for Leslie, the facts behind Hindawi are that they began as profitable business model that required no subscriber support to launch (something I had learned just the day before in the PKP workshop on OJS (Willinsky's very project!?!). But hey, I'm just a newbie to this whole ELPUB community and its hard to know how to sift issues of authority and truth. I admire the efforts of both Leslie and John.

So I was a little more peeked to hear Gunther Eysenbach question/comment in the early afternoon session during the Stranack session on OJS (my source for the Hindawi insights) when he came to the piece on Lemon8. This is a great little convertor that turns a Word doc into XML in minutes. In fact, in a later session Tarek Loubani of Open Medicine stated this one software "has changed everything for me" . . . in 5 minutes it turns anything into XML, and then O minutes (measurements in nanoseconds he boasts!) into a PDF other other formats . . . and generates HTML on the fly. "This should be at the top of the tool list for anyone and everyone in publishing." Back to Gunther's question, what does it mean to take something that was originally developed somewhere else and then to rebrand it as Lemon8 . . . and in of all places, at PKP. "Does this not undermine the expectations and intentions of OA?" Turns out the code was written by the developer while at the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) who is now over at PKP . . . launching this new sweetheart. The only reply Kevin could muster, being put on the spot in this way, was "you'll have to ask - - - who knows more about it." [Kevin is a great guy, I need to add, and his workshop walking us through OJS was excellent yesterday . . . and the quick presentation and highlights today were informative for the room, etc. etc.] How does OA handle issues of "attribution" which is really all that Gunther's question was pointing to (and JIMR is his brainchild, as PKP is Willinsky's). So "cracks in the skin."

I got a chance to speak with Tarek after his presentation and ask a bit about this Lemon8 situation (I've promoted this tool enough to flag some metrics crawler so I'll mention that Journal of Internet Medical Research is the leading OPEN ACCESS peer-reviewed transdisciplinary journal on health and health care in the Internet age and Gunther Eysenbach launched it as an intentional high level competitive OA journal to show the world this can be done ~it ranks 2nd in the field!! ~ just to level the bibliometrics if anyone counting). Tarek suggested there may simply be an instance of "forking," where OA software seems to be going in one direction and a developer sees other promises for it . . . thereby releasing an alternative expression. In fact, in some instances the forked paths might re-converge at some point down the line suggested Tarek at which point Rea Devakos of TSpace, overhearing my whole exploration of this theme, "the issue still is a simple expectation of attribution . . . and in fact if you do scroll to the bottom of the webpage of --8 you'll see something resembling this credit." But is it enough? and when I did try to look for the credit I couldn't find it! So no matter how much "public knowledge" is out there, no matter how much code is available OA and environments are accessible regardless the ability to pay (I use to get my health care at Cook County Hospital when I couldn't afford Insurance while a student-pastor . . .) we are still faced with the question of what it means to be human, to have feelings, to have attachments, and to presume standards of rightness. How do we negotiate toward those regions? I think there is room for a conference that explores these themes . . .