Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Non Open Access publishers getting desperate

Well, this kind of made my day. Nature is reporting that a group of non open access publishers have hired Eric Dezenhall to help them with public relations. Eric Dezenhall is a crisis management consultant (as well as a fiction author) who many may demonize but he certainly seems to be good at what he does. The article at Nature is worth checking out and points to the desperation of these publishers when they see the writing on the wall regarding Open Access. For example, Nature reports a person at AAP the Association of American Publishers says:

"We're like any firm under siege," says Barbara Meredith, a vice-president at the organization. "It's common to hire a PR firm when you're under siege."
Keep up the siege everyone. Their ship is sinking and they are grabbing at the last little pieces of wood they can find.

3 comments:

  1. I just looked him up and this is a summary of one of Eric's novels: "Set entirely at the Jersey Shore and around the region, the book traces the adventures of a disgraced Republican pollster recruited by the boss of the Atlantic City mob who wants to improve his image in order to get a casino license. Money Wanders is a gonzo tour through alleys of damage control at the millennium."

    Glad to see that the closed access publishers realize that they are on the level of Mafia sleaze and need similar damage control.

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  2. Kinda ironic for Nature to be breaking this story. They haven't exactly been in the forefront of open access publishing.
    It's like the recording industry, the writing has been on the wall for a decade already... Attention: your business model is out of date.

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  3. I decided not to comment about Nature writing the article --- since I am not sure what it means.

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