What system? Whose system?

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Richard Poynder

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Nov 20, 2017, 1:00:37 AM11/20/17
to Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, John.S...@utoledo.edu

I think your first sentence gets to the heart of the issue Glenn. What system are we really talking about, who are the “owners of the system”, and who *should* be the owners of the system? And that you framed it in the way you did may help to explain why Jack is disappointed with this group.

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Glenn Hampson
Sent: 19 November 2017 22:03
To: osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Notice of claimed infringement

 

All the more reason we need you to stay involved here and try to work with the owners of the system to improve it. For all the back and forth on this topic about what’s right and wrong, what authors should read but often don’t, what researchers need but can’t get, what the public deserves vs. what the law allows, what contracts mean vs. whether they’re enforceable, etc.---for all this talk, there is the reality that everyone on every side of this issue knows the outcomes aren’t perfect. We can work together to do better, but only if we work together and don’t walk away from the table pointing fingers. Every actor in this system shares responsibility, and it will take every actor to make things better.

 

So yes---the “old publisher profit motive school” is alive and well but so what? So is the “old moral argument for open” school and the old “researchers just want to research and don’t have time for all this nonsense” school. All of these arguments are just a piece of the larger puzzle. Profits are an incentive to do more and do it better, but profits with better customer engagement, competition, accountability and expectations can help attune these outcomes to better serve the needs of society. The moral argument is great but it needs a business plan to make it work (my favorite quote along these lines is from an American statesman in the early 20th century who said about ending WWI that countries would not simply lay down their arms because war is evil and women are the mothers of men). And the researchers-are-too-busy argument only works if researchers don’t mind being at the bottom of the food chain in this conversation. If they would rather control their futures than be controlled, the door is open for them to sit at the head of the table.

 

All aboard Jack!

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

osi-logo-2016-25-mail

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: Schultz, Jack [mailto:John.S...@UToledo.Edu]
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2017 1:05 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>; Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

I made the mistake of looking at my automatically deleted emails, and have to respond one more time.

 

When I signed the ACS agreement it didn’t matter to me that only ACS readers would see that paper. This is no longer true. In today’s world research needs to get beyond one’s academic club, even reaching the public. Academic researchers’ livelihoods are increasingly dependent on that. Publishers like ACS are blocking this. This is wrong, and "Just” is not an appropriate term here. This system does not serve the interests of any participants (including the taxpaying public) except publishers, and needs to change. 

 

The original reason I got involved in this group was to join a movement aimed at changing this situation. It’s increasingly clear that the old publisher-profit-motive school is alive and well here. 

 

So I’m emptying my ‘delete’ box. 

 

Jack Schultz

 

Jack C. Schultz

Sr. Executive Director of Research Development

University of Toledo

573-489-8753

@jackcschultz

https://schultzappel.wordpress.com

 

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 7:34 PM
To: Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

> But whether or not the law considers such a term term enforceable, I consider it unjust.

 

So do you think the ACS author agreement, which is what we’re talking about here, is unjust? If so, how? Which of its terms are so unreasonable that they should offend the conscience?

 

 

> My point is that these kinds of arrangements—ones where there is an imbalance in information, an imbalance in

> sophistication, an imbalance in bargaining power—lead systemically to imbalanced results (to further the

> technology contracting analogy, consider the fate of consumer data and privacy).

 

And I guess my point is that I disagree that this is the case when it comes to agreements between authors and journal publishers, at least generally speaking. (Could there be outlier exceptions? Sure.) In this particular case, when Jack signed an author agreement with an ACS journal, I don’t see any reason to believe that there was a significant imbalance in information (I’m sure Jack had plenty of opportunity to read and consider the terms of the agreement), or an imbalance in sophistication (Jack is a mature professional who knows what he’s doing, and author agreements are not typically highly technical documents), or an imbalance in bargaining power (there are plenty of other high-reputation chemistry journals to which Jack could have submitted his article if he didn’t like ACS’s terms and if ACS was unwilling to negotiate).

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 5:24 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

No, I very much doubt these kinds of terms would be found unconscionable. Indeed, there are a great many terms that fall short of that standard, and yet might nevertheless shock the conscience. The enforceability of class action waivers in contracts of adhesion, for instance, is a fraught topic, with uneven outcomes across state lines and between courts. But whether or not the law considers such a term term enforceable, I consider it unjust. Indeed, the law is frequently unjust. I  encourage you to discard the legal yardstick—it's a gauge that can only reinforce your commitment to the status quo.

 

My point is that these kinds of arrangements—ones where there is an imbalance in information, an imbalance in sophistication, an imbalance in bargaining power—lead systemically to imbalanced results (to further the technology contracting analogy, consider the fate of consumer data and privacy). That doesn't mean that they're unenforceable, but if we care about outcomes across the system as whole (which I assume we all do here?), then we should view standard contracting behaviors in the field a problem that drives the imbalances that, well, are responsible for the existence of this list.

 

There are any number of solutions. One could imagine (although I wouldn't put stock in) legal reforms. Today's copyright act already limits the means by which copyright can be transferred (there needs to be a signed agreement) precisely because the law already recognizes the author is frequently at a disadvantage. That provision is a helpful start, and it does a tremendous amount to mitigate abuses (imagine if Flickr could take ownership of your pictures by having you click "I agree" to their TOS—egads!). There are other ways the law could limit freedom of contract in the author's interest, but all of this is so unlikely as to not merit further discussion.

 

There are institutional solutions. Harvard-style policies are the leading example here, intervening early to carve out space for author sharing notwithstanding the predictable failure of authors to secure it. These could be strengthened further.

 

Or one could imagine solutions where institutions intervene to negotiate these terms on behalf of their employees. Quite a lot of author-oriented work can conceivably be done in the context of institutional licensing arrangements.

 

Obviously author education helps. But we have to be honest: it's hard to scale, and it's hard to communicate. And, besides, I'd rather we lived in a world where authors didn't have to be copyright experts to get their publishing agreements right.

 

But shrugging and saying, "they've agreed to it"? No, thank you.

 

 

 

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 3:48 PM, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

> The notion that "If you’re signing a contract, . . . you have a responsibility to read its terms and decide whether you can

> live with them" doesn't accord with lived experience, or with my personal commitments regarding justice.

 

So it’s your lived experience that people are not, in fact, responsible for the terms of contracts that they sign? You feel it’s unjust that parties to a valid contract be held responsible for the terms of that contract?

 

 

> Rick, have you read the iTunes terms and conditions? The Google Groups terms, which purport to govern your use of this

> listserv? These too are contracts and, while I reserve judgment on the enforceability of the Google Groups TOS, the iTunes

> agreement almost certainly is enforceable.

 

I agree. And while you’re right in suspecting that I haven’t read either the iTunes terms or the Google Groups terms, I don’t believe that my failure to do so absolves me of the responsibility to abide by those terms to the degree that the contracts of adhesion they represent are legally valid. I agreed to them without reading them, and that means I’ve accepted the responsibility to abide by them. If I’m found to be in violation of those terms, that’s not iTunes’ fault or Google’s fault. It’s mine, and I accept that.

 

Now, if one of these contracts turns out to be legally unconscionable, then of course that would be a different situation and in that case I shouldn’t be expected to “suffer in silence.” But that brings us back to the topic at hand: are you saying that the ACS author agreement is unconscionable and therefore should be held legally invalid?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 3:49 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

I disagree, on a fundamental level, with Rick on the degree of choice available and the degree of author culpability. For instance, Rick writes:

 

Authors do have some responsibility here, and one of the things they’re responsible for is not letting their excitement lead them to make dumb publishing choices. If you’re signing a contract, no matter who you are or what the legal context is, you have a responsibility to read its terms and decide whether you can live with them. Your failure to do so is not an indictment of the system. The same goes for “just want(ing) to get this taken care of and move on with their work”—authors’ impatience isn’t an indictment of the system either. Authors are adults, and our system has to be built on the assumption that they’ll behave like adults.

 

The notion that "If you’re signing a contract, . . . you have a responsibility to read its terms and decide whether you can live with them" doesn't accord with lived experience, or with my personal commitments regarding justice. Rick, have you read the iTunes terms and conditions? The Google Groups terms, which purport to govern your use of this listserv? These too are contracts and, while I reserve judgment on the enforceability of the Google Groups TOS, the iTunes agreement almost certainly is enforceable. Of the hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of these contracts of adhesion to which you are no doubt bound, all of which may be jargon-filled, lengthy, and damn-near impossible to avoid, do you think your failure to read all of them means you should suffer in silence when some of them turn out to be grossly unfair? When they sign away your right to a jury trial? When they preclude your ability to find effective relief if you are wronged by a service provider? When they take rights to your intellectual property?

 

I hope you'd agree that of course you can't actually read all these agreements. And of course they can go too far. Which puts us on the same page, I think, at least insofar as of course people aren't always reading these agreements, where they are of course they aren't always understanding them, and of course it's possible for them to go too far.

 

Fundamentally, publishers have the time, resources, and understanding to craft agreements that are to their liking. They have legal counsel and business strategists and experience, and they don't have to draft these documents all that often. When they draft them, they understand the placement of every comma, the meaning of every term of art, and have carefully chosen the language used to effect the bargain they're looking for.

 

Academic authors publishing journal articles never have counsel. They have to sign these regularly, from a variety of different sources, each using slightly different terms, and, hell, each with the potential to be subject to the laws of a different country. Some of the terminology might be deliberately confusing, as when authors are told that they "keep the copyright" or will have the work "copyrighted in their name," while the publisher merely takes a perpetual exclusive license to all rights in copyright. And rather than a carefully-planned, one-off event, these agreements are unsupported regular occurrences. 

 

Your position might well be, "tough." Mine isn't. I don't know that this is a bridgeable gap.

 

 

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 1:35 PM, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

For the record, I’m not saying that there are no bad actors here. There certainly are publishers (and funders, and authors) whose practices I would consider bad. But we’re talking about the system as a whole.

 

> What if an author scores a career-trajectory changing opportunity to have their work published in Nature

> (picking on this journal---sorry), and the terms are what they are. Are they really going to choose between

> this opportunity and taking a stand by publishing somewhere else?

 

If the author’s work is strong enough that it’s a serious candidate for publication in Nature, then yes, absolutely. Nature is not the only top-tier journal in the life sciences. But just to be clear: I’m not saying that all journals exercise an exactly equal amount of market power; obviously, publishing in Nature is a more attractive option for an early-career professional than publishing in the Joe Bagadonuts Biomedical Journal. What I’m pushing back against is the idea that because some journals are more attractive venues than others, therefore authors have no choice. How much choice they have will vary greatly from situation to situation, but I think situations in which authors really have no effective agency are rare to nonexistent. Yes, they have to publish in order to remain employed as academics. No, that doesn’t mean they have to accept the publishing terms of [put the name of your least-favorite publisher here].

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 2:24 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Notice of claimed infringement

 

Thanks Rick. Your second section might fit well with this group’s upcoming culture of communication effort. Maybe part of this work should be improving copyright literacy, helping authors see their choices, helping them understand the broader impact of their choices, helping publishers do the same in academia, etc. No bad actors here, just a lot of inertia.

 

On the first part, though, what if an author scores a career-trajectory changing opportunity to have their work published in Nature (picking on this journal---sorry), and the terms are what they are. Are they really going to choose between this opportunity and taking a stand by publishing somewhere else? Probably not if they’re early career folks. The same is true for authors who only get one publishing offer and they want to take it, regardless of what it’s going to cost or what they have to give up. Are you saying that in your experience, it is rare for authors in academia to have no choice about where to sign and no power to negotiate a better contract? I think that’s what you’re saying but it seems to contradict Michael’s experience. Or are you saying that authors may perceive this to be the case but in fact they do have power and choice?

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2017 1:09 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

Those are good and sensible questions, Glenn, yes. Here’s my take:

 

 

> Do most academic authors actually have a choice?

 

Yes, I’d say so. The fact that you have to publish formally in order to get tenure doesn’t mean that you have to publish with ACS, or with Elsevier, or with PLOS. Authors who are publishing in order to get tenure really do, generally speaking, have meaningful choices to make between publishers. If there were only a single publisher in every discipline (or only a single publisher with a reputation strong enough to help you get tenure), then the situation might be different; then you’d be in a monopoly situation. But publishers really do meaningfully compete with each other for authors—some more successfully than others, obviously. And for authors who already have tenure, the options are even greater.

 

 

> On intimidation, I’ve found in my work anyway that most authors are excited

> to be getting published they’re not always focused on the details---it’s all good.

 

But here you’re drawing a straight line from “excitement to get published” to “intimidation.” I don’t think that works. Authors do have some responsibility here, and one of the things they’re responsible for is not letting their excitement lead them to make dumb publishing choices. If you’re signing a contract, no matter who you are or what the legal context is, you have a responsibility to read its terms and decide whether you can live with them. Your failure to do so is not an indictment of the system. The same goes for “just want(ing) to get this taken care of and move on with their work”—authors’ impatience isn’t an indictment of the system either. Authors are adults, and our system has to be built on the assumption that they’ll behave like adults.

 

My concern is that we seem to be jumping from “I don’t like the terms I agreed to” to “The system is corrupt because I agreed to terms I don’t like and now I’m stuck with them.” If we’re serious about reforming the system, then we need to be more serious than that about our analysis of its problems.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 1:54 PM
To: "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Notice of claimed infringement

 

But to Michael’s point Rick (I think), do most academic authors actually have a choice? You’re saying yes, Michael saying no. Is this an accurate recap? Are there maybe differences by field, institution, era, etc. (where some fields/institutions have more options/choices than other fields/institutions)?

 

I’m also imagining the intimidation, incentive, and “just do it” factors here. On intimidation, I’ve found in my work anyway that most authors are excited to be getting published they’re not always focused on the details---it’s all good. On incentive, if a publishing agreement with a top-tier journal requires giving away copyright, who’s going to argue with this (it sets up a conflict between what’s in the author’s immediate best interest and what’s maybe in the best long-term interest of her research)? On “just do it,” I think it was Jack who was saying earlier here that most researchers in his experience just want to get this taken care of and move on with their work---so mulling over “esoteric” issue like open access isn’t really on their radar.

 

Does this make sense? I don’t want to interfere in a conversation between two experts here---just wondering if you’re both describing your unique experiences or if there is maybe a bigger picture to look at?

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2017 12:30 PM
To: Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Cc: Schultz, Jack <John.S...@utoledo.edu>; Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>; Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>; John W Warren <jwar...@gmu.edu>; Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>; Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

> Allow me to clarify then: what's "not right" is when a style of author agreement regularly and predictably

> disserves a substantial portion of the authors entering into the arrangement, and is out of line with their

> expectations of the bargain.

 

But shouldn’t the author’s expectations of the bargain be shaped by, you know, her reading of the contract? If the author doesn’t like the terms, and finds that the publisher is unwilling to budge on the undesirable terms, then she’s left with plenty of other options for disseminating her work. You may feel that authors are generally being ill served by their contracts with publishers, but are you sure most of them agree with you?

 

So I guess my follow-up question would be: if it’s not okay to have a system in which authors have the option of trading their copyright for publishing services, then should that choice be taken off the table so that trading copyright for services is no longer an option?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 1:16 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: "Schultz, Jack" <John.S...@utoledo.edu>, Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>, Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>, John W Warren <jwar...@gmu.edu>, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

Allow me to clarify then: what's "not right" is when a style of author agreement regularly and predictably disserves a substantial portion of the authors entering into the arrangement, and is out of line with their expectations of the bargain.

 

And sure, some author agreements are negotiable. My experiences has been that this is more true outside of the sciences, more true with smaller publishers, and more true outside the commercial context. It is, in my experience, absolutely the case that many are simply non-negotiable. 

 

 

 

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 11:56 AM, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

I didn’t actually advance an argument as such; I was asking a question, which I’ll repeat: What’s “not right” about authors having, among their many other options for disseminating their work, the option of exchanging their copyright prerogatives for publishing services? (My question is in response to Jack’s statement that the arrangement with ACS “isn’t right.”)

 

As for whether author agreements are examples of contracts of adhesion, I’ll rephrase: I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered an author agreement that I didn’t have the opportunity to negotiate. I’ve negotiated them (as an author), and I’ve seen others negotiate them. Publishers’ (and authors’) willingness to bend on terms varies, of course, but that’s true in every contract situation.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 12:49 PM


To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: "Schultz, Jack" <John.S...@utoledo.edu>, Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>, Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>, John W Warren <jwar...@gmu.edu>, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

Rick, forgive me, but I read your argument as defending the practice by virtue of the fact that it's entered into willingly. To my read, there's an understanding of the world (of economics, of contracts) implicit in that assertion, but YMMV.

 

And affirmative consent does not a contract of adhesion un-make. What makes it a contract of adhesion is that it's non-negotiable, not bargained for. Take it or leave it. Scholarly publishing agreements are almost universally contracts of adhesion.

 

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 11:34 AM, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

Michael, you’re reading far more into my argument than what I actually said.

 

The phrases “necessarily welfare maximizing” and “proof that the agreements are themselves good” are entirely yours and are foreign to my position. Every instance of an agreement doesn’t have to be “welfare maximizing” in order for the possibility of such agreements to be a good thing.

 

Furthermore, author agreements are (in my pretty extensive experience with them) rarely contracts of adhesion. They almost always require some kind of affirmative consent.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michael Wolfe <mrw...@ucdavis.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 12:31 PM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: "Schultz, Jack" <John.S...@utoledo.edu>, Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>, Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>, John W Warren <jwar...@gmu.edu>, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>


Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

Rick's argument proves far too much. 

 

Sure, if you believe that any mutually agreeable transaction is necessarily welfare maximizing, regardless of power or information inequalities, regardless of bargaining power, then the fact that authors enter into unfavorable agreements is proof in itself that the agreements are themselves good. But such a stance rationalizes most everything about the status quo, neutering the capacity for public policy intervention unless that intervention is to strengthen freedom of contract or through "disruptive" entrepreneurship. 

 

In practice, we know that contracts of adhesion can predictably and systematically reinforce the disadvantages of the disadvantaged. And, in practice, there are times where our courts refuse to enforce them, or refuse to enforce their most overreaching terms. Now, I would hardly ever expect to see such a result with a publishing agreement (academics, however uninformed about their rights, don't easily garner sympathy for their ignorance), but the relationship between the parties is such that we might expect to regularly see results that would not, in fact, be mutually agreeable, but only appear as such at the time of agreement due to a significant information imbalance between the actors. 

 

On Fri, Nov 17, 2017 at 11:02 AM, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

I’m not exactly clear on what it is that’s “not right” in this scenario. Certainly no one forced you to take advantage of the publishing services that ACS offers in exchange for copyright assignment. Certainly ACS didn’t hide the fact that copyright assignment was required. If you didn’t think the trade was a fair one, you had the option of making your work available in some other way – putting it up for free as a blog posting, for example, or just sending it straight to your local institutional repository. What’s “not right” about authors having, among their many other options for disseminating their work, the option of exchanging their copyright prerogatives for publishing services?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Schultz, Jack" <John.S...@UToledo.Edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 11:45 AM
To: Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>, Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>, 'John W Warren' <jwar...@gmu.edu>, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>
Cc: "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>


Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

You know what? I don’t care about the publishers or their profits. I did the work, the public paid for it, and we have the least access. 

I certainly will never publish in an ACS journal again, have dropped my membership, and try to avoid others that work this way. 

 

Yes, it is what it is, but that doesn’t make it right. STEM researchers have not paid attention in the past, but as more of them receive messages like this, they will become aware. Generally STEM researchers pay as little attention to ‘details’ as possible, but more and more are outraged. Circulation of. say, ACS journals is much narrower than RG, so there is significant disadvantage for researchers. Think about this: academic promotion and tenure depends increasingly on citations.  RG increases citations. Nobody in his right mind would restrict access to his/her work.  In fact, scientists typically look for the most-cited venues for their work. ACS would evidently prefer to have us limit access to a metric on which our livelihoods depend. 

 

That makes no sense. Income for ACS vs. public access and career advancement is no deal at all. 

 

Jack Schultz

 

Jack C. Schultz

Sr. Executive Director of Research Development

University of Toledo

573-489-8753

@jackcschultz

https://schultzappel.wordpress.com

 

 

From: Mel DeSart <des...@uw.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 1:30 PM
To: Jack Schultz <John.S...@UToledo.Edu>, Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>, 'John W Warren' <jwar...@gmu.edu>, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>
Cc: "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Notice of claimed infringement

 

But neither you nor “the public” owns the copyright on this paper, Jack, as you well know.  And in this case it probably does serve the (financial) interest of the copyright holder (ACS) to not have a copy of that paper openly accessible to anyone who wants to read it, when potentially ACS can sell copies of it instead.

 

I would be one of the first to jump on the “let’s change U.S. copyright law” bandwagon, but to paraphrase what someone mentioned earlier, currently the law is what it is, and people either know that law and knowingly give up their copyright to get published in a journal of a publisher that requires copyright transfer or are ignorant of the law and UNknowingly give up that copyright.  One obvious way to avoid that situation is of course to look at getting published in journals in the field that don’t require a transfer of copyright or that have more liberal sharing practices.

 

In this particular case, I think that RG should have some record of which of the co-authors put up the paper in the first place and should be sending the take down notice only to that co-author.  It’s THAT co-author who created the infringement, so it’s THAT author who should have to fix the situation.

 

Mel

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mel DeSart     (he/him/his)

Head, Engineering Library

Director, Branch Libraries

University of Washington                   des...@u.washington.edu

Box 352170                                         voice: 206-685-8369

Seattle, WA   98195-2170                   fax: 206-543-3305

 

“It is not written in the stars that I will always understand what is going

on -- a truism that I often find damnably annoying."

 

                              Robert A. Heinlein, from his novel "Friday"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Schultz, Jack
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2017 9:49 AM
To: Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>; 'John W Warren' <jwar...@gmu.edu>; Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>; Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>
Cc: osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

Keeping my work out of circulation does not serve either my interest or the public’s. 

 

Jack Schultz

 

Jack C. Schultz

Sr. Executive Director of Research Development

University of Toledo

573-489-8753

@jackcschultz

https://schultzappel.wordpress.com

 

 

From: Winston Tabb <wt...@jhu.edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 12:34 PM
To: 'John W Warren' <jwar...@gmu.edu>, Jack Schultz <John.S...@UToledo.Edu>, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>
Cc: "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Notice of claimed infringement

 

And of course copyright exists to serve the public interest as well

 

From:osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John W Warren
Sent: Friday, November 17, 2017 12:32 PM
To: Schultz, Jack; Mike Taylor; Todd Carpenter
Cc:
osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

 

I think we can all find problems and challenges with copyright law, the way it exists today. But I also think it’s important to remember that copyrights and copyright law exists as much or more to protect the interests of authors and creators as to protect the business interests of publishers. People often forget that.

It was not in the very distant past that US publishers would publish whatever they wanted without worrying about such niceties as compensating authors or other publishers.

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Schultz, Jack" <John.S...@UToledo.Edu>
Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 10:22 AM
To: Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>
Cc: Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Notice of claimed infringement

 

I am indeed an author (#5) and I did not post that article to Research Gate. 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone


On Nov 17, 2017, at 9:26 AM, Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com> wrote:

Here we are again with "You should have made yourself aware of the
exploitative contract you signed back in the day". It's true, but it
doesn't get is anywhere. The past it what it is. The question is what
moral authority to published have _now_ to prevent authors from
disseminating their work?

In the mean time, a pragmatic solution for Jack would be to replace
the copy of his article on ResearchGate with a short note containing a
link to where his paper can be obtained via Sci-Hub.

-- Mike.


On 17 November 2017 at 14:21, Todd Carpenter <tcarp...@niso.org> wrote:

Jack,

With all due respect, did you, in fact, have the rights to republish and

redistribute this material?  I don’t see your name listed as an author.  Was

this article published using a creative commons license or were you a

copyright owner on this article?  By what right or license do you claim the

right to republish this material?

 

I presume that you don’t walk into stores and walk out with merchandise that

does not belong to you and then walk down the street and give it away for

free.  Why do you presume that this is OK with intellectual property?

 

Authors could and should exert more control over the sharing of their

intellectual property.  We could change author behavior and the reward

system for publishing in journals.  We could do a lot to change our

environment.  Does the U. Toledo reward its faculty for publishing open

access over publishing in subscription based journals? Is tenure awarded on

the basis of where a scholar’s research is published or the actually quality

of those ideas regardless of where they are published?

 

You can object to the intellectual property system. You can fight against it

and try to change it. You can even try to break the laws. However,

complaining that once your caught breaking the law and that someone has

stopped you from continuing to break the law seems misplaced.

 

Todd

 

 

 

On Nov 17, 2017, at 8:19 AM, Schultz, Jack <John.S...@UToledo.Edu> wrote:

 

Nice. Love ACS.

 

Jack Schultz

 

Jack C. Schultz

Sr. Executive Director of Research Development

University of Toledo

573-489-8753

@jackcschultz

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fschultzappel.wordpress.com&data=02%7C01%7CJohn.Schultz%40UToledo.Edu%7C682d45564e0a4b42ca1308d52dc725b2%7C1d6b1707baa94a3da8f8deabfb3d467b%7C0%7C0%7C636465255707101191&sdata=zpbf7sK%2FXLquJRdUf%2BWtFqvXif%2FaG46bQpcucBz04OQ%3D&reserved=0

 

 

From: ResearchGate Community Support

<5a0e9249971d...@support.researchgate.net>

Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 2:41 AM

To: Me <schu...@missouri.edu>

Subject: Notice of claimed infringement

Resent-From: Me <schu...@missouri.edu>

Resent-Date: Friday, November 17, 2017 at 2:42 AM

 

Dear Jack,

We have disabled access to the following content you posted on ResearchGate

because we received a notice from a copyright owner, namely American

Chemical Society, stating that it infringes their copyright(s):

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F223981379_Adaptive_Two-Dimensional_Microgas_Chromatography&data=02%7C01%7CJohn.Schultz%40UToledo.Edu%7C87ec4e8d824d42ec0ffb08d52d8eb0ac%7C1d6b1707baa94a3da8f8deabfb3d467b%7C0%7C0%7C636465013236460352&sdata=WH1N%2FukhP%2BpgJJ2APGsdkjHYQ5Nf2bwKDR3rlAfjHqc%3D&reserved=0

If you believe that access to this content should not have been disabled, we

kindly ask you to contact us and provide proof of your right to display the

content on ResearchGate.

ResearchGate is a platform designed to facilitate collaboration,

communication and sharing of information among researchers and scientists.

You are a valued member of our community. You should be aware, however, that

we respect the rights of both authors and copyright holders in works of

authorship. If a rights owner identifies content as copyright-infringing, we

remove this content.

ResearchGate complies with the notice and takedown procedures found in the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (United States) and the European eCommerce

Directive and other international laws, as may be applicable. It is our

policy to restrict or terminate accounts in the event of repeat

infringement, when appropriate. We encourage you to familiarize yourself

with the rights you may hold in any content before archiving, posting or

sharing it. For more information please visit our Intellectual Property

Policy page:

https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fapplication.IntellectualPropertyPolicy.html&data=02%7C01%7CJohn.Schultz%40UToledo.Edu%7C87ec4e8d824d42ec0ffb08d52d8eb0ac%7C1d6b1707baa94a3da8f8deabfb3d467b%7C0%7C0%7C636465013236460352&sdata=4beveMBnzMig%2FVZ3K0YCaPPkrOrK7%2FNXm90mYrZIy2I%3D&reserved=0.

Please note that, depending upon your rights, it may be permissible for you

to privately store the content (making in available only to you and your

co-authors), or publish a different version, such as an Accepted Manuscript.

Only you can make this determination.  Your starting point for clarifying

your rights is the agreement(s) you have with your publisher or other rights

owner.  Many publishers also provide helpful guidelines about how their

content can be used.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The ResearchGate Team

 

 

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image001.jpg

Rick Anderson

unread,
Nov 20, 2017, 10:52:48 AM11/20/17
to Richard Poynder, Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, John.S...@utoledo.edu

Richard, I understand Glenn’s phrase “the owners of the system” to mean “the huge and diverse constellation of people and organizations that control the various parts of the scholarly-communication ecology.” These would include authors, funders, universities, publishers, government agencies, etc.

 

Do you understand him to mean something different?

 

If you and I are understanding him the same way, then why do you think that framing might be disappointing to Jack (or anyone else)?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Richard Poynder <richard...@cantab.net>
Date: Sunday, November 19, 2017 at 11:00 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>, "John.S...@UToledo.Edu" <John.S...@UToledo.Edu>
Subject: What system? Whose system?

 

I think your first sentence gets to the heart of the issue Glenn. What system are we really talking about, who are the “owners of the system”, and who *should* be the owners of the system? And that you framed it in the way you did may help to explain why Jack is disappointed with this group.

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Glenn Hampson
Sent: 19 November 2017 22:03
To: osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Notice of claimed infringement

 

All the more reason we need you to stay involved here and try to work with the owners of the system to improve it. For all the back and forth on this topic about what’s right and wrong, what authors should read but often don’t, what researchers need but can’t get, what the public deserves vs. what the law allows, what contracts mean vs. whether they’re enforceable, etc.---for all this talk, there is the reality that everyone on every side of this issue knows the outcomes aren’t perfect. We can work together to do better, but only if we work together and don’t walk away from the table pointing fingers. Every actor in this system shares responsibility, and it will take every actor to make things better.

 

So yes---the “old publisher profit motive school” is alive and well but so what? So is the “old moral argument for open” school and the old “researchers just want to research and don’t have time for all this nonsense” school. All of these arguments are just a piece of the larger puzzle. Profits are an incentive to do more and do it better, but profits with better customer engagement, competition, accountability and expectations can help attune these outcomes to better serve the needs of society. The moral argument is great but it needs a business plan to make it work (my favorite quote along these lines is from an American statesman in the early 20th century who said about ending WWI that countries would not simply lay down their arms because war is evil and women are the mothers of men). And the researchers-are-too-busy argument only works if researchers don’t mind being at the bottom of the food chain in this conversation. If they would rather control their futures than be controlled, the door is open for them to sit at the head of the table.

 

All aboard Jack!

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

si-logo-2016-25-mail

Richard Poynder

unread,
Nov 20, 2017, 11:18:39 AM11/20/17
to Rick Anderson, Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, John.S...@utoledo.edu

Hi Rick,

 

Yes, I understood Glenn to mean something else. I understood him to mean that the publishers own the system. Maybe in retrospect he will say that he did not mean that but, in fact, when I think about he is right if he did mean that. As someone pointed out on Twitter this afternoon, “the scholarly communication system, its infrastructure is almost exclusively owned & governed by scholarly publishers.”

 

To me that is a problem, and it is not one that this 1/3 publisher-funded list is going to solve, however passionate some of the conversations way sometimes be.

 

But I am happy to agree to disagree with you on this. I just cannot help but notice (and occasionally remark) that meaningful consensus consistently escapes the “stakeholders” of scholarly communication.

 

Best wishes,

 

 

 

Richard Poynder

image001.jpg

Rick Anderson

unread,
Nov 20, 2017, 11:55:12 AM11/20/17
to Richard Poynder, Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, John.S...@utoledo.edu

Hi, Richard –

 

I completely agree with you about the elusiveness of meaningful consensus between members of the scholcomm ecosystem – too many people and organizations want mutually exclusive things for consensus to be a realistic goal, in my mind. I expect the future to be shaped by consensus in a very few very small areas, by compromise in more and larger areas, and by some people simply not getting what they want in other areas, while others do.

 

I disagree with you about who the “owners of the system” are, though. It may be that publishers own much of the infrastructure, but publishers only control as much of the content as authors are willing to give them – and  without the content, the infrastructure of publishing has no function. Ultimately, it’s the authors and their colleagues who will decide the future of scholarly communication (unless they are successfully coerced by governments and/or funders into accepting a system they don’t want): to the degree that authors retain the right to choose their publishing behavior, publishers will remain viable for exactly as long as authors remain willing to provide them with content to publish. The process that leads to that decision is informed by lots of things, obviously (including, maybe most significantly, the tenure and promotion system of academia), but almost all of those things are controlled by authors and their colleagues, not by publishers.

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Glenn Hampson

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Nov 20, 2017, 12:17:41 PM11/20/17
to Richard Poynder, Rick Anderson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, John.S...@utoledo.edu

Hi Richard, Rick,

 

It’s still early here on the Pacific coast. Sorry for the delay in responding!

 

Rick is correct---I meant to suggest that everyone owns this system. But with the way I phrased it, Richard, I also meant to suggest that everyone except researchers like Jack own this system: that grant makers set the requirements, universities set the expectations, publishers manage a large part of the system, and researchers do what they’re told and what needs to be done to survive. It’s all backwards. If Jack and other researchers (and I can’t speak for him, of course) are upset and want to change this relationship, they need to engage with the owners. Again, I can’t speak for Jack, but I wouldn’t be upset with OSI just yet. I would be a little peeved that there aren’t more researchers involved in this effort yet and that he needs to carry the load of speaking out on behalf of researchers (along with Kim, Joann, Susan, Jeff, and other OSI researchers). Our goal has been to involve more voices from research and this is going to happen as we move forward, but for now, we rely on our few researcher colleagues to remind us how researchers feel and I’m sure they’d appreciate some help with this task.

 

As for the 1/3 publisher funded issue, I really don’t want to swing at this pitch in the dirt but you use this phrase pejoratively so I need to defend our publisher colleagues. We’ve discussed the need to diversify our support base and I’ve worked exceptionally hard to do so this year, but so far to no avail. Scholarly societies, universities, foundations, government agencies, private funders, tech businesses and OSI participants have all been invited to help support OSI, both on this list and directly off-list. We are very grateful for the groups who have agreed to continue funding OSI. In all fairness, Richard, you might want to encourage more people and institutions to support this effort instead of criticizing those who are. I’ve been working for free since September, OSI needs funds to finance the remainder of it’s 2017 to-do list, and we have 3-4 international meetings in the offing for 2018. If this community wants OSI to fulfill it’s promise, then this community needs to pitch in together to help support this effort financially as well as through participation. Our current 2018 sponsors (names withheld because commitments don’t become contributions until the check arrives) understand this and I’m grateful that with their support we’ll be able to take a running start at 2018, but we could use a lot more help.

 

Speaking of 2018, I’ll pile on here for a moment and fill you in on what’s been happening off-list. The OSI steering group has been talking a lot this past month about where to go with our Spring summit meeting and the summit group’s direction in general. Scott Plutchak has been leading this conversation and we hope to report out soon to the full group. We’ve also been discussing how to better summarize the culture of communication work currently on the front burner. Here’s the most recent elevator pitch (as of last night)---comments welcome (and you can join in this conversation on Slack #cultureofcommunication):

 

OSI is a UN-backed, global, multi-stakeholder effort to improve a broad range of scholarly communication issues, improve the openness of research outputs, and improve opportunities for researchers everywhere to engage in the global research community and for countries and people everywhere to benefit from this engagement. We've taken two years to get the right people on board and lay the groundwork for reform, and are now ready to start rolling out reform efforts. OSI's first actions will be to clarify and simplify the messaging in open access (in order to reduce confusion and increase buy-in), and also create a resource hub for best practices, lessons of experience, and stories of reach, engagement and impact. As part of this effort, OSI will begin to leverage change through partnerships and collaborations, and catalyze an environment that gets people and institutions out of their silos to start working together on reform. Working together, we can we build an improved system of global scholarly communication where researchers everywhere have greater opportunity to advance knowledge, people everywhere have greater opportunity to access this knowledge, and all countries and peoples everywhere can benefit.

 

Sincerely,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

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2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Richard Poynder
Sent: Monday, November 20, 2017 8:18 AM
To: 'Rick Anderson' <rick.a...@utah.edu>; 'Glenn Hampson' <gham...@nationalscience.org>; osi20...@googlegroups.com; John.S...@UToledo.Edu
Subject: RE: What system? Whose system?

 

Hi Rick,

image001.jpg
image002.jpg

Plutchak, T Scott

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Nov 21, 2017, 6:39:59 PM11/21/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com

Perhaps meaningful consensus has so far eluded the stakeholders because there have been few serious efforts to actually engage all the stakeholders to see where the potential areas of consensus might be. 

 

Certainly for those who believe that the only acceptable scholarly communication system is one in which there are no commercial players, consensus among all stakeholders isn’t possible.  And some of the people who take this view are engaged in serious efforts to try to design and implement pieces of such systems.  I wish them well, but I don’t see them having much of a chance for success.

 

If, on the other hand, the goal is a system in which financial barriers to access to research outputs are removed, then not only can there be a role for publishers, but their participation is essential. Those are the people who have the expertise and investment potential that is necessary.  This does not mean that some of their business models won’t change, or that what some see as inequitable imbalances of control in how the system operates won’t shift.  It doesn’t mean there aren’t strong disagreements that will have to be confronted or that there won’t always exist difficult tensions among some of the players.  But the OSI effort is predicated on the notion that substantial improvements and reforms can be achieved if sufficient effort is put into finding where there is common ground and then building on those commonalities.

 

Richard is certainly correct that this list isn’t going to solve the problems, but that’s because email discussion lists are ineffective tools for the kinds of engagement that will make a difference.  I’ve been encouraged by observing that in many of the working group discussions at the two OSI conferences so far, the discussions were far more detailed, analytical and substantive than anything we’ve seen on the list, and many people were willing to listen, to learn, and even to bend a bit to find areas of common ground.  But as I said at the 2017 closing session, annual conferences aren’t enough.  So we’re looking at the possibility of doing some smaller regional meetings and making better use of communication technologies like slack and web conferencing to bring people together more often.

 

For those who believe that the involvement by publishers is the problem to be solved, none of this will be sufficient, of course.  But I continue to believe that constructive engagement among all the players is the only way to achieve the kinds of reforms and innovation that are in society’s best interest.

 

Scott

 

 

 

T Scott Plutchak

Librarian

Epistemologist

Birmingham, Alabama

splu...@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-5233

http://tscott.typepad.com

 

 

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Richard Poynder <richard...@cantab.net>
Date: Monday, November 20, 2017 at 10:18 AM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>, "John.S...@UToledo.Edu" <John.S...@UToledo.Edu>
Subject: RE: What system? Whose system?

 

Hi Rick,

David Wojick

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Nov 22, 2017, 8:47:47 AM11/22/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com
There seems to be a grand confusion of very different systems here, ranging from commercial journals, through all journals, to all formal scholarly communication, and on to all scholarly communication.

But given that commercial publishers probably publish less that 20% of the journals and articles, possibly well less, a focus on them seems misplaced. If they disappeared little would change.

David
--

Eric L Olson

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Nov 22, 2017, 10:14:32 AM11/22/17
to David Wojick, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Perhaps it is only 20%, but aren't these typically the most visible and sought after citations in many disciplines?  Whatever happens with these, I imagine the effects would be felt.  Perhaps trends cause that 20% to slip further down in terms of prominence and importance for P&T, but isn't this a tidal wave of culture change, more funder support behind this change, and a decade from manifesting?


I do agree that distinguishing what we mean when we use the term "scholarly communication" in a given context is important.  We've circled this idea of some kind of concentration on definitions and nomenclature before, or at least collecting what is already out there doing this.


Eric



--
Eric Olson
Membership Specialist, North America, ORCID



From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 8:48:22 AM
To: osi20...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: What system? Whose system?

Rick Anderson

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Nov 22, 2017, 10:29:37 AM11/22/17
to Eric L Olson, David Wojick, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Before we accept that 20% figure and start using it as a basis for further discussion and analysis, I’d like to know where it comes from. David, can you substantiate it?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

David Wojick

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Nov 22, 2017, 10:59:12 AM11/22/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com
If Elsevier et al went bankrupt these journals would not disappear. They are prime properties so most would be sold, including to nonprofit societies. At the journal level little would change.

There are multiple scenarios here, which need to be considered separately.

David

Glenn Hampson

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:01:41 AM11/22/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com

According to Mark Ware’s annual STM report, commercial publishers (including publishing for societies) account for about 64% of all journals; society publishers 30%; university presses 4%; and other publishers 2 percent. By market size, the top five publishers (all commercial) publish 35% of journals, the top 10 publish 46% and the top 100 publish 67% of all journals. I can’t find a breakdown of articles by publisher off the top of my head---maybe someone else has this info?

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson

Rick Anderson

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:05:29 AM11/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Glenn, do you know whether Mark counts PLOS as a commercial publisher? It’s a nonprofit (technically), but it’s also not a society, so I wonder where it would fall in the rubric.

 

One of the problems we tend to run into in this conversation, I find, is that people don’t always mean the same thing by “commercial.” Sometimes people use it as a synonym for “for-profit,” and sometimes they use it to mean “toll access.”

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

Martin G. Hicks

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:07:02 AM11/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Try this:

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

Vincent Larivière , Stefanie Haustein, Philippe Mongeon

Published: June 10, 2015

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

 

Best, Martin Hicks

Michael Eisen

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:09:59 AM11/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, Rick Anderson, osi20...@googlegroups.com
Rick-

Why the snide “technically”? PLOS is a non-profit.

-Mike
--
Michael Eisen, Ph.D.
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
University of California, Berkeley

Rick Anderson

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:18:55 AM11/22/17
to Michael Eisen, Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

I didn’t intend it to be snide, but PLOS has always had a pretty healthy bottom line for a non-profit. I understand that its surplus in 2014 was just under $5 milion. Not sure what it’s been since then.

 

That’s not a criticism, by the way. Just an observation.

 

And my question remains: I still wonder how Mark Ware defined “commercial” for the STM report.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

Glenn Hampson

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:21:18 AM11/22/17
to Rick Anderson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, Mark Ware

Good question Rick. For these particular numbers, PLOS is not included. I don’t want to speak for Mark and unwillingly drag him into this conversation (again!) but I don’t want to misrepresent the facts either so I’m cc’ing him here for clarification if possible (Mark---referencing the data on page 45, table 3 of your report, 4 ed.).

Glenn Hampson

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:29:01 AM11/22/17
to Martin G. Hicks, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Exactly what we were looking for---thanks Martin! Here’s a fun summary graph from this paper showing the percentage of papers published by field by just the top five publishers:

 

 

\

 

 

Fig 3. Percentage of papers published by the five major publishers, by discipline in the Natural and Medical Sciences, 1973–2013.

image001.png

Michael Eisen

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Nov 22, 2017, 11:42:45 AM11/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, Rick Anderson, osi20...@googlegroups.com
I just think this narrative is misplaced. Many society publishers have similar margins as PLOS. ACS is sitting on a cash reserve of over $1b.

Now I actually have always thought this distinction between commercial and non-profit publishers was silly, since most non-profit publishers are indistinguishable in their business practices from their for-profit cousins. This is why I don’t think it’s reasonable to single PLOS out as somehow out of line with the behavior of non-profit publishers.

Rick Anderson

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Nov 22, 2017, 12:27:05 PM11/22/17
to Michael Eisen, Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Agreed. And ACS is indeed another example of a putatively non-profit publisher that realizes significant surpluses while enjoying non-profit status. And of course there are others as well – but you can’t cover everything in every message. PLOS happened to be the one that came to my mind in the moment, but there are plenty of other examples. Oxford UP would be another one.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

Glenn Hampson

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Nov 22, 2017, 12:29:24 PM11/22/17
to Rick Anderson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, Mark Ware

Retracting my question for Mark---sorry. Looking this over again, Mark’s STM report data describes the global count of journals by publisher, so of course PLOS isn’t going to make it into the top five since it’s just a handful of journals (compared to thousands of journals for each of the top publishers).

 

Anyway, if you want to have fun with numbers, check out the SCImago website where you can view, sort and download data all weekend long while your relatives are watching football and arguing about politics:

 

http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?order=item&ord=desc

 

By this accounting, PLOS One is still the world’s largest megajournal (followed closely now by Scientific Reports), accounting for 22,159 articles in 2016---close to 1% of the total (if that’s somewhere around 2.5 million articles). Also note that they’re working on cataloging SciELO journals (in progress)---cool!

 

From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:gham...@nationalscience.org]
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2017 8:21 AM
To: 'Rick Anderson' <rick.a...@utah.edu>; 'osi20...@googlegroups.com' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'Mark Ware' <ma...@markwareconsulting.com>
Subject: RE: What system? Whose system?

 

Good question Rick. For these particular numbers, PLOS is not included. I don’t want to speak for Mark and unwillingly drag him into this conversation (again!) but I don’t want to misrepresent the facts either so I’m cc’ing him here for clarification if possible (Mark---referencing the data on page 45, table 3 of your report, 4 ed.).

Rick Anderson

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Nov 22, 2017, 12:35:34 PM11/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com, Mark Ware

At some point I think it would be interesting to have a conversation about how we should think about the difference between, on the one hand, a non-profit journal that realizes large surpluses by charging for access to its publishing services, and on the other hand, a non-profit journal that operates at a loss or barely breaks even by charging for access to its content. Questions might include:

 

1. Why do we call only one of these a “toll-access” journal? (Don’t both of them have access tolls in place, one between the author and the service, and one between the reader and the content?)

 

2. Which of these would we call a “commercial” journal? (Both? Neither?)

 

Of course, there are also journals that barely break even by charging for access to their services, and journals that realize significant surpluses by charging for access to their content. But the difference between those two kinds of journals doesn’t pose particularly interesting questions.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

Mel DeSart

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Nov 22, 2017, 2:54:53 PM11/22/17
to Michael Eisen, Glenn Hampson, Rick Anderson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

Maybe many non-profits have much the same business practices as their for-profit counterparts, but their pricing, at least when it comes to journal publishing, is markedly different.  See http://www.journalprices.com/2013_FinalSummaryForWeb.xlsx.  The researchers that compiled these data are both economists by trade - one who is still at UC-Santa Barbara and the other was at Caltech when their research started and it now the Chief Economist and Corporate VP at Microsoft.  These data are a little dated at this point, but the authors of the study ran these numbers six different times, every two years from 2003 through 2013.  Doesn’t much matter which year’s/years’ data you choose to look at, because the results don’t vary much across the six data sets.  Short version – whether measured by mean or median journal price, mean or median price per article, or mean or median price per citation, journals published by for-profit publishers are roughly three times more expensive than those published by not-for-profit publishers.

 

So if business practices really ARE that similar across those two large categories of publishers, why is the cost discrepancy so large???  Obviously profit on one side is where some of that extra money goes, but I can’t believe that’s where all of it ends up, especially when Michael and others are correct, that many non-profits still maintain significant surpluses each year.  So why is there THAT degree of difference in pricing/cost – are non-profits hugely more efficient than their for-profit brethren or . . . . . ?

 

Mel

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mel DeSart     (he/him/his)

Head, Engineering Library

Director, Branch Libraries

University of Washington                   des...@u.washington.edu

Box 352170                                         voice: 206-685-8369

Seattle, WA   98195-2170                   fax: 206-543-3305

 

“It is not written in the stars that I will always understand what is going

on -- a truism that I often find damnably annoying."

 

                              Robert A. Heinlein, from his novel "Friday"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

David Wojick

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Nov 22, 2017, 4:09:00 PM11/22/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com
Did they control for the number of articles per journal and the rejection rate? Those are the primary cost drivers. Innovation is another.

David

Glenn Hampson

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Nov 22, 2017, 4:25:30 PM11/22/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com

Not to throw cold water on this Mel---it sounds interesting---but if you go to Ted Bergstrom’s website (journalprices.com) and download the full dataset, it looks like the classification of who’s “for-profit” and who’s “non-profit” is a real hodgepodge. Wiley, Sage, Oxford, Springer, T&F and others are all listed as non-profits in places and for-profits in others. So, can/do different journals owned by the same publisher have different for-profit / non-profit status?---maybe one of our publisher colleagues can clarify this?

 

This kind of big question aside, I can tell you that from an operational standpoint (speaking as a nonprofit director), nonprofits by definition exist to fulfill one of the purposes recognized by federal law: charitable, educational, scientific, or literary (see sites like nolo and blueavocado for a deeper dive on this). They can and do make profits but are required by law to serve the needs of society first and foremost, which means being incentivized to focus on selling goods at closer to the cost of production---which may mean having less money left over for reinvesting in new products, paying better salaries, investing in products unrelated to the core nonprofit aspect of the business, etc. (plus there’s no need to please investors and/or pay dividends). So, while nonprofits aren’t compelled to try to do better on price, they have fewer reasons not to do so, none having anything to do with being inherently more efficient or some such.

Mel DeSart

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Nov 22, 2017, 4:58:49 PM11/22/17
to David Wojick, osi20...@googlegroups.com

I can’t speak to their exact methodology, David.  I’m pretty sure they had no data on rejection rate.  As for controlling for articles per journal, that’s at the very least irrelevant for the mean and median cost per article numbers.  If you know a journal’s annual cost and you know how many articles were published in that journal in a given year, then the mean and median cost per article numbers are solid, regardless of whether a given journal published 100 article or a thousand.  Whether they tried to control for that in cost per journal or per citation I don’t know.

 

mel

Glenn Hampson

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Nov 22, 2017, 5:06:06 PM11/22/17
to osi20...@googlegroups.com

Interesting hypotheses though David if you can find some numbers to back this up---that for-profits get far more submissions (on average) than their nonprofit counterparts and therefore spend far more time evaluating and rejecting articles and therefore have higher costs per article (because the evaluation process is the primary cost driver). Is this what you’re suggesting? But again, numbers please----I’m sure they’re out there somewhere!

Mel DeSart

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Nov 22, 2017, 5:19:35 PM11/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

I would have to contact either Ted Bergstrom or Preston McAfee to be sure, but I believe they based their for-profit or not-for-profit judgment on who _owned_ a journal.  For instance, Wiley, in particular after their purchase of Blackwell, publishes a LOT of journals on behalf of societies.  I believe those were counted as non-profit, since the society still _owned_ the journal and it was being published for that society by a for-profit publisher.  The titles that were not being published on behalf of a non-profit entity were counted as for-profit.  The focus of their analysis was on the status of the owner of each journal, not on who happened to publish it.  I haven’t gone through and looked at every title in their 10,101 line spreadsheet, but in doing a little sampling that definition seems to hold up.  If there’s interest, I can try to confirm that with Bergstrom and/or McAfee.

 

As for Oxford University Press, they are a department of the University of Oxford, so based on that affiliation they _should_ be considered non-profit.  Per the Wikipedia entry for OUP,

 

OUP was first exempted from United States corporation tax in 1972 and from United Kingdom corporation tax in 1978. As a department of a charity, OUP is exempt from income tax and corporate tax in most countries, but may pay sales and other commercial taxes on its products. The OUP today transfers 30% of its annual surplus to the rest of the university, with a commitment to a minimum transfer of £12 million per annum.

 

Whether OUP _acts_ like a non-profit is another question, but legally they are one.

 

mel

Anthony Watkinson

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Nov 22, 2017, 5:54:28 PM11/22/17
to Mel DeSart, Glenn Hampson, osi20...@googlegroups.com

This is the way I see it too. Of course you could argue that who determines the pricing is central – society or publishing partner. To establish that one would have to access to the contract between the society and the publisher – not realistic.

Anthony

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