Here’s a clip from a documentary film by Frances Pinter and David Percy about business models in the publishing world that use Creative Commons licenses where Timo Hannay of Nature is talking about open content (not sure how open content differs from open access when it comes to peer-reviewed journal articles, but for the purposes of this post I’ll treat them as equivalent).
It’s nice to hear Timo Hannay’s view of open content (actually rather refreshing after reading Declan Butler’s tantrum piece). I am a bit puzzled, however. Does Hannay’s views represent the view of the Nature Publishing Group as a whole or do they represent only his own views? And, how does all of this fits in with the Nature vs. PLoS runaway train of Declan Butler that has been whipping up a storm in the blogosphere over the last few days (see Bora’s post for a succinct summary). The pieces by Declan Butler (he actually has two stories, the second and the first) unequivocally give a impression that Nature is (as Timo puts it in the clip) one of those “hostile” and “reactionary” publishers that are in a “defensive mode” towards the Open Access publishing model that “give the whole industry a disservice”.
Hat tip: Open Access News
