RE: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 19, 2017, 1:31:59 PM7/19/17
to Richard Poynder, scholcom...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi Everyone,

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite everyone in the scholcomm community to nominate individuals (self-nominations are welcome) to participate in this year’s efforts of the Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI). Here’s what we’re about (from a draft version of our preamble, which is being finalized this summer):

The principles and practices of scholarly communication are critical to the advancement of research and research knowledge.  OSI’s mission is to build a robust framework for communication, coordination and cooperation among all nations and stakeholders in order to improve scholarly communication, beginning with scholarly publishing—to find common understanding and just, achievable, sustainable, inclusive solutions, and to work toward these solutions together in order to increase the amount of research information available to the world, as well as the number of people everywhere who can access this information. The guiding principles of OSI are to involve the entire stakeholder community in a collaborative effort; to value all stakeholder voices and perspectives; to thoughtfully consider the consequences of all approaches; to coordinate and collaborate on developing joint solutions and efforts; and to pursue and continue refining solutions over time to ensure their implementation, effectiveness, and success.

OSI includes high-level decision makers from all stakeholder groups and many different countries. We would particularly appreciate being able to add more active researchers and authors to OSI this year, more university provosts, and more industry leaders, policy makers, funder reps and journalists. Increasing the number of voices from outside the US and EU is also a goal. There are currently about 375 leaders on the OSI listserv, representing 18 different stakeholder groups, 23 countries and 250 institutions. Of these individuals, about 50 represent research universities (in an official capacity), 40 are library or library group leaders, 35 represent commercial publishers, 30 represent government policy organizations, 30 represent open knowledge groups and “born open” publishers, and 20 represent scholarly societies. Nominations will be considered by the advisory group. OSI tries to maintain a balance in terms of the number of representatives from each stakeholder group.

I would also like to take this opportunity to correct the statement made by Richard Poynder in his piece yesterday about the influence of funding from scholarly publishers, at least with regard to OSI. Much as I don’t want to take up my time and yours by arguing these points, and much as I value Richard’s scholarship and analysis, I do have a responsibility to OSI and its supporters and members to not allow misstatements like these to linger (even if no one ends up reading this email, I have a responsibility to correct the record). As a general point, it has certainly been well-documented that research funding can influence research outcomes. “Soft” sponsorships are a much murkier case, however. We’re talking here about everything from television commercials to billboards to the ads that pop up alongside New York Times articles. Sponsors make it possible for programs and events to happen---not just in scholcomm but in medicine, sports, tech, news, on university campuses and in public parks. Right or wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at that. As far as OSI is concerned, we are grateful for the interest and support we’ve received from our sponsors to-date and we welcome support from all interested sources. Indeed, we would ideally like to see universities take over most of the funding responsibilities for this effort if only because scholcomm reform is such a university-centric set of issues (spread between 100 campuses, this wouldn’t amount to much at all), but until/unless this happens, UNESCO, foundations, publishers, and OSI members themselves will carry the load.

Here are the specific corrections to Richard’s article:

  1. “Membership of OSI is made up primarily of legacy publishers and US librarians.” This is incorrect. As noted above, about 10% of OSI members are commercial publishing reps and another 10% are librarians. However, most OSI reps wear several hats, so research university reps are often library heads and scholarly society reps may come from their publishing division. This may be a source of Richard’s misinterpretation. Even counting this overlap, though, the totals are far from “primarily.”
  2. “…as the funding provided for OSI by UNESCO has been falling, so the contributions of legacy publishers have been increasing.” OSI has an annual operating budget of only about US$150,000 at the moment. We’re not talking a lot of money here. And there have only been two years of funding, which is not enough to start drawing trendlines. In year one (for OSI2016), commercial publishers supplied $27,500 of funding for a program that cost $168,850. In year two they supplied $50,000 for a program that cost $134,300---more money for a cheaper program. In the same period, foundation support almost doubled from $25,000 to $45,000, UNESCO support fell by almost half (a temporary situation), participant registration fees were slashed from $58,000 to $13,500 and scholarship support grew from a few thousand dollars to over $20,000 this year. So what kind of story you want to write about these meager totals really depends on what kind of axe you’re looking to grind---UNESCO is down, foundations are up, etc. The bottom line is that we did more with less in 2017 and these budget numbers will change again next year when UNESCO will hopefully be able to contribute more. Also, we’ve never hidden these raw figures so there’s no need to interpret secondary source material. These numbers are in the OSI reports and website, and available on request:

OSI INCOME

OSI2016

OSI2017

UNESCO

$48,000

$25,000

Foundations

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

$0

$25,000

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

$20,000

$20,000

Laura & John Arnold Foundation

$5,000

$0

Commercial publishers

Elsevier

$7,500

$20,000

Taylor & Francis (Informa)

$0

$5,000

Nature Publishing Group (Macmillan)

$5,000

$10,000

Wiley

$7,500

$10,000

Sage Publications

$5,000

$5,000

Copyright Clearance Center

$2,000

$0

ResearchMedia

$500

$0

Universities

PressForward Institute (via Sloan)

$5,500

$0

George Mason University

$4,500

$0

Participant fees (@ $500 ea)

$58,000

$13,500

Private donations

$350

$800

Total income

$168,850

$134,300

  1. “the [OSI listserv] discussion frequently gets bogged down in bad-tempered, unproductive conversations (see here for instance). But since they hold the purse strings it is publishers who will likely determine the outcomes (as Prosser fears).” We haven’t surveyed OSI members about the list. Almost all of the feedback I receive is very positive but we do need to get a handle on what everyone thinks. What I can say is that there are 2,500 messages shared per year on this list and the vast majority of these are very thoughtful and informative. Also, we have heard from members who would like to see other ways to drive conversations off-list, and we’re looking into these solutions this year. It is true that there are occasions when some OSI members (including Richard) will occasionally protest the concept of OSI or including publishers in this conversation, and this results in a frustrating period of a few days when I need to remind folks that OSI is a diverse and inclusive group and that it’s important to treat each other with respect. But this is all part of the challenge of this diverse group. As far as determining outcomes, commercial publishers do very little speaking on the OSI list at the moment relative to much more vocal anti-publisher voices. They are not driving conversations on-list. As for off-list influence, there are no sponsorship quid pro quos from any OSI funders. Indeed, we are beholden to our foundation and UNESCO supporters to keep this effort open and balanced; our commercial publisher supporters have never requested anything (other than poster space). I assure you that there would never be a situation where we would accept any amount from any funder in exchange for twisting the truth---I don’t even know what that kind of scenario would look like Richard (“Hello, OSI? We’ll give you $100k if you promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?” Really? Can I keep $99k of that for my legal bills?)
  2. “Sponsored conversations can also lead to censorship. When in 2016, for instance, someone criticised a publisher on the OSI mailing list the moderator promptly deleted his comments, inaccurately portraying them as a “personal dispute”. In fact, as an advisor to the criticised publisher later pointed out, the criticism was justified and appropriate.” Correct. If I recall correctly, I thought this conversation had to do with someone’s sour grapes about their publishing contract and was therefore inappropriate for the OSI listserv (or any listserv for that matter). I was wrong, I apologized to the group, and I corrected my mistake. Indeed, the ensuing conversation helped clarify that there would never be any censorship on the OSI list, so this wasn’t a negative outcome but a positive. Censorship comes about in many ways Richard---take intolerance or social media bubbles, for instance---as I’m sure you’ll agree. Having someone you disagree with in a group conversation doesn’t lead to censorship. Shouting down that person’s right to speak or claiming their perspective isn’t legitimate are, however, both very powerful forms of censorship. Indeed, I would argue that in this particular context, the fear of getting ridiculed on social media by people who are unwilling to see your point of view or even acknowledge your right to co-exist in the scholcomm marketplace is a much more corrosive, much more pervasive influence in the scholcomm conversation than the soft power of sponsorships by people and organizations who are willing and able to help promote this dialogue.

I think those are the main points. As always, if you have any questions you are welcome to email me any time.

Thank you and best regards,

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
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: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of "Richard Poynder" (via scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 5:43 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Sponsorship in the research and library communities is pervasive today, and scholarly publishers are some of the most generous providers of it. While the benefits of this sponsorship to the research community at large are debatable, publishers gain a great deal of soft power from dispensing money in this way. And they use this soft power to help them contain, control and shape the changes scholarly communication is undergoing, often in ways that meet their needs more than the needs of science and of scientists.

 

This sponsorship also often takes place without adequate transparency.

 

These are the kinds of issues explored in this (pdf) document http://bit.ly/2taOuoL, which includes some examples of publisher sponsorship, and the associated problems of non-transparency that often go with it. In particular, there is a detailed case study of a series of interviews conducted by Library Journal with leading OA advocates that was sponsored by Dove Medical Press.

 

Amongst those interviewed was the de facto leader of the OA movement Peter Suber. Suber gave three separate interviews to LJ, but not once was he informed when invited that the interviews were sponsored, or that they would be flanked with ads for Dove – even though he made it clear after the first interview that he was not happy to be associated with the publisher in this way.

 

http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 19, 2017, 8:36:12 PM7/19/17
to David Prosser, Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci), The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi David,

 

Can you kindly post my reply to the GOAL list? Yes---contributions to OSI from legacy publishers increased year on year but so did our contributions from foundations. And in 2018, we hope that the contribution from UNESCO will be significantly larger than now. Indeed, our “fully-funded” budget for OSI means receiving significant funding from a very wide variety of sources (in which case publisher contributions will drop significantly as a percentage of the overall total). As a matter of principle, while we are very grateful for the interest and support from commercial publishers, we wouldn’t want their share of support to get much higher than now and we don’t think it will. The commercial publisher executives I’ve spoken with know this and agree with this as well---they also don’t want OSI to be seen as a tool of the publishers. Just as we don’t want the membership of OSI to become too homogenous, so too we don’t want the funding to become too lopsided from any one group. Again, though, the story here isn’t the increase---we’re a young and tiny group and we’re not talking about a pattern here or a lot of dollars---just a year on year change. I hope that if our funding from publishers drops next year as a percentage of the total you will also treat this as being newsworthy.

 

As for the 390-ish individual members of OSI, I’d need to do a hard count of bylines since we organize these folks by stakeholder and not institutional affiliations, but offhand I think you’re right---I think Elsevier probably has more individuals who are part of OSI (seven?) than any other institution (so we view these delegates as 7 of the 35 total commercial publisher reps). George Mason University has six (I think), George Washington University has five, the Smithsonian Institution has four OSI reps, Columbia University has three, etc.---point being that several of the 250 organizations represented in OSI have multiple delegates. But again, offhand, yes---I think Elsevier may be the winner. It’s important to note with this information, though, that having multiple delegates doesn’t translate into more voting power or more of a voice in conversations. As I mentioned previously, our commercial publisher colleagues have not been vocal participants in OSI listserv conversations to-date, nor have George Mason University staff and faculty said more than their fair share. Indeed, our top contributors to this list are widespread and include library leaders, open advocates, scholcomm experts (including Richard Poynder, who is a top contributor), and a wide variety of others, male and female, old (like me) and young, university-based and non-university, US and elsewhere.

 

I hope this helps. David---we would be honored to include you in this conversation. Just say the word.

 

Sincerely,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
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: David Prosser [mailto:david....@rluk.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 3:27 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] FW: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

OSI is very transparent about it’s funding and that transparency shows clearly what Richard has stated - that the contribution from commercial, legacy publishers has increased and now makes up a larger proportion of the total than it did previously.

 

Can I also confirm the the organisation with the most representatives within OSI is Elsevier (including its parent company RELX)?

 

Thanks

 

David

 

 

 

On 19 Jul 2017, at 20:11, Richard Poynder <richard...@cantab.net> wrote:

 

<image001.jpg>

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

 

 

From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of "Richard Poynder" (via scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 5:43 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Sponsorship in the research and library communities is pervasive today, and scholarly publishers are some of the most generous providers of it. While the benefits of this sponsorship to the research community at large are debatable, publishers gain a great deal of soft power from dispensing money in this way. And they use this soft power to help them contain, control and shape the changes scholarly communication is undergoing, often in ways that meet their needs more than the needs of science and of scientists. 

 

This sponsorship also often takes place without adequate transparency. 

 

These are the kinds of issues explored in this (pdf) document http://bit.ly/2taOuoL, which includes some examples of publisher sponsorship, and the associated problems of non-transparency that often go with it. In particular, there is a detailed case study of a series of interviews conducted by Library Journal with leading OA advocates that was sponsored by Dove Medical Press.

 

Amongst those interviewed was the de facto leader of the OA movement Peter Suber. Suber gave three separate interviews to LJ, but not once was he informed when invited that the interviews were sponsored, or that they would be flanked with ads for Dove – even though he made it clear after the first interview that he was not happy to be associated with the publisher in this way.

 

 

_______________________________________________
GOAL mailing list
GO...@eprints.org
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

 

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Richard Poynder

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Jul 20, 2017, 5:23:54 AM7/20/17
to The Open Scholarship Initiative

Dear Glenn,

 

I appreciate your taking the time to respond to the thoughts I posted on the theme of publisher sponsorship.

 

As you say, we don’t want to try people’s patience so I will just make a few comments in response.

 

  1. On sponsorship. I think we both agree that, as you put it, “Right or wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at that.” What separates us I think is that you believe that since it is the way things work nowadays, we should just accept it and make the most of it. I guess you also feel it is a good thing. My view is that (since it is corrosive and gives even more power to the powerful) we should resist it, and speak out against it.

 

You seem to be saying that since OSI’s budget is only about $150,000 a year then where the money comes from is less important. If so, I can only say that I disagree.

 

You go on to caricature my concern about publisher sponsorship in this way: “Hello, OSI? We’ll give you $100k if you promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?” Really? Can I keep $99k of that for my legal bills?” I would hope that a careful reading of my text would show that my argument is not really that simplistic. In fact, my comments about OSI were one small part of a larger argument, and I would invite people to read the whole text, which is available here: http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

  1. On OSI membership. I assume we are both working from the document you posted recently to the OSI list, which shows that there are 375 members of OSI. You rightly point out that establishing how to categorise people on the list is not always easy. However, by my reckoning the list includes 122 publishers (primary and secondary), of which 52 are commercial concerns. Of the latter, 13 appear to be employees of Elsevier/RELX (3.5% of the total membership of the list). And by my reckoning there are around 114 libraries (mainly from the US). By contrast I could find only 18 researchers, although again establishing these numbers cannot be a precise art given the nature of the data. 

 

  1. On conversations on the list. I think you are saying that the bad temper on the list is infrequent and short-lived, and that publishers do not generally contribute. It is true that publishers don’t generally post to the list, but I think it is also true that you see one of your tasks as being to contribute on their behalf after having off list conversations with them. Either way, that they are reluctant to speak might seem to support my assertion that it will be hard for OSI to arrive at meaningful consensus, or satisfactory conclusions about the future of scholarly communication. Indeed, one of the OSI member publishers wrote on Twitter, “The listserv is toxic and in no way moving anything forward.”

 

  1. On censorship. I think our memory of the incident is similar, except that it was not my understanding that it was mutually agreed that there would be no more censorship. My recollection is that I pointed out that it would not be practically possible to censor without deleting whole threads from the list.

 

As I say, I am grateful for your feedback. 

 

Richard Poynder

 

 

From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:gham...@nationalscience.org]

Sent: 19 July 2017 18:31
To: 'Richard Poynder' <richard...@btinternet.com>; scholcom...@lists.ala.org; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 20, 2017, 11:32:54 AM7/20/17
to David Prosser, Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci), The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi David,

 

If you could kindly forward this along again I’d appreciate it. I stand corrected. I searched my spreadsheet for Elsevier only and not RELX as well (as you asked in your email). Including RELX, I come up with 11 OSI reps. We do want to avoid having any one company overrepresented in OSI so I’ll bring this up with my advisory board this summer as we try to codify OSI’s governance structure. Given the size of Elsevier and RELX together, having more reps from this company probably makes sense in the same way that we should also have more reps from mega-funders like NSF and NIH (although we have only have 2-3 rep from each of these groups). This said, both for overrepresentation reasons and the sake of appearances, I don’t know offhand what the right limit should be. (But we’ll work on this, also taking into account that Elsevier is just a part of RELX. RELX itself, as you know, has many interests outside of Elsevier and scholarly publishing, so having good representation from both “units” may also be the appropriate solution here---from RELX the tech giant as well as Elsevier the commercial publishing unit).

 

In the meantime, I deeply apologize to our Elsevier and RELX colleagues for speaking so openly here about this quota question. This approach is distasteful and disrespectful---especially the suggestion that the individuals who contribute their time and expertise to OSI are “lobbying”---but since these questions were posed publicly, this approach is also, unfortunately, necessary for the honesty and integrity of the OSI effort.

 

David, with regard to the CPIP report you mention, I invite you to review the OSI listserv conversations on this (our conversations are open for viewing at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/osi2016-25). This report was roundly ridiculed by many OSI members and in fact people were asking why we couldn’t directly question the authors about this. So I did, in fact, reach out to Dr. Viswanathan and he graciously agreed to take questions from the OSI list about his report, but I’ve been too busy with OSI2017 follow-up matters to get this particular thread started----I hope to find the right moment soon to reintroduce this topic. I hope that was the extent of your inference---that RELX support of this paper affected Dr. Viswanathan’s analysis (spoiler alert: Dr. Viswanathan is not a scholcomm expert and he is, in fact, interested in learning from the OSI community). I certainly hope you aren’t also impugning the integrity of George Mason University here as well (I can’t tell if this was your intent---I can only hope that it wasn’t).

 

Does this address your questions? I see I have an email from Richard to answer as well this morning---more coffee 😊

 

Thank you and best regards,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
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: David Prosser [mailto:david....@rluk.ac.uk]
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 1:21 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] FW: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Please find below a response from Glenn where he kindly confirms that Elsevier/RELX is the single largest contributor of delegates to OSI.  Glenn thinks 7 out of almost 400, the list I’ve seen suggests 12.  But rather than quibble about figures we can agree that, for whatever reason, Elsevier clearly considers OSI a valuable forum to spend it’s lobbying effort - both in time and money.

 

Glenn also mentions the commitment of George Mason University and that reminded me of another interesting sponsorship ‘event' that Richard didn’t mention.  I’m sure that people will recall the recent thought piece on ‘Open-Access Mandates and the Seductively False Promise of “Free”' (https://cpip.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2014/04/Viswanathan-Mossoff-Open-Access-Mandates-and-the-Seductively-False-Promise-of-Free.pdf) from the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property at George Mason.  The argument was that government-mandated open access policies were wrong in principle and an infringement of publishers’ rights.  Through what I assume was an oversight the paper failed to mention that the Center is funded in part by the RELX Group. Of course, the Center is at pains to confirm that such sponsorship in no way influences what they publish as thought pieces or the stance they take.

 

David

 

 

 

 

On 20 Jul 2017, at 01:35, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

 

Hi David,

 

Can you kindly post my reply to the GOAL list? Yes---contributions to OSI from legacy publishers increased year on year but so did our contributions from foundations. And in 2018, we hope that the contribution from UNESCO will be significantly larger than now. Indeed, our “fully-funded” budget for OSI means receiving significant funding from a very wide variety of sources (in which case publisher contributions will drop significantly as a percentage of the overall total). As a matter of principle, while we are very grateful for the interest and support from commercial publishers, we wouldn’t want their share of support to get much higher than now and we don’t think it will. The commercial publisher executives I’ve spoken with know this and agree with this as well---they also don’t want OSI to be seen as a tool of the publishers. Just as we don’t want the membership of OSI to become too homogenous, so too we don’t want the funding to become too lopsided from any one group. Again, though, the story here isn’t the increase---we’re a young and tiny group and we’re not talking about a pattern here or a lot of dollars---just a year on year change. I hope that if our funding from publishers drops next year as a percentage of the total you will also treat this as being newsworthy.

 

As for the 390-ish individual members of OSI, I’d need to do a hard count of bylines since we organize these folks by stakeholder and not institutional affiliations, but offhand I think you’re right---I think Elsevier probably has more individuals who are part of OSI (seven?) than any other institution (so we view these delegates as 7 of the 35 total commercial publisher reps). George Mason University has six (I think), George Washington University has five, the Smithsonian Institution has four OSI reps, Columbia University has three, etc.---point being that several of the 250 organizations represented in OSI have multiple delegates. But again, offhand, yes---I think Elsevier may be the winner. It’s important to note with this information, though, that having multiple delegates doesn’t translate into more voting power or more of a voice in conversations. As I mentioned previously, our commercial publisher colleagues have not been vocal participants in OSI listserv conversations to-date, nor have George Mason University staff and faculty said more than their fair share. Indeed, our top contributors to this list are widespread and include library leaders, open advocates, scholcomm experts (including Richard Poynder, who is a top contributor), and a wide variety of others, male and female, old (like me) and young, university-based and non-university, US and elsewhere.

 

I hope this helps. David---we would be honored to include you in this conversation. Just say the word.

 

Sincerely,

 

Glenn

 

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

<image001.jpg>

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Glenn Hampson

unread,
Jul 20, 2017, 12:09:51 PM7/20/17
to Richard Poynder, go...@eprints.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi Richard (and please, could you post my reply to the GOAL list?),

I’ll just respond publicly to the questions of fact here---your point number 2. I would be happy to discuss these other matters with you via Skype or email. I certainly don’t want to argue with you publicly about this. You and I have been discussing OSI since late 2014 and you are more than entitled to your right to suggest changes that will make this effort stronger (and as always, I welcome and value your input).

With regard to the OSI membership question, as you know, we set out quotas for each stakeholder group. This is a moving target---we identify people who we think should be part of this effort, reach out to them, and hope they’ll say yes. As it turns out, more librarians have an interest in this topic than do active researchers (for example)---and indeed, when university chancellors and provosts appoint people to represent their institutions, they almost invariably appoint the library dean to fill this role. So what you’re seeing on this list are 4-5 dozen official university representatives (tasked by their provosts) who also happen to be library heads. And with regard to publisher counts, as I mentioned, you’re including society publishers, university presses, etc. in your total. Here’s the current target breakdown by stakeholder group (which has changed from day one and may change more as the year goes on---indeed, as was pointed out at OSI2017, many of these groups are more alike than unalike, so maybe our goal of getting a broad array of perspectives involved here should be met by some other means than stakeholder divisions):

1.         Research universities (35%)

2.         Commercial publishers (10%)

3.         Scholarly societies and society publishers (5%)

4.         Non-university research institutions and publishers (5%)

5.         Open knowledge groups and “born-open” publishers (5%)

6.         University presses and library publishers (5%)

7.         Government policy organizations (5%)

8.         Funders, public and private (5%)

9.         Scholarly libraries and library groups (5%)

10.      Broad faculty and education groups (5%)

11.      Tech industry (5%)       

12.      Scholarly research infrastructure groups (5%)

13.      Other universities and colleges (5%)

14.      Scholarly communications and publishing industry experts (up to 20 per meeting)

15.      Active researchers and academic authors (up to 20 per meeting)

16.      Scholarly journal editors (up to 10 per meeting)

17.      Journalists (up to 10 per meeting)

18.      Elected officials (up to 10 per meeting)

Best,

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
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: Richard Poynder [mailto:richard...@cantab.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 2:06 AM
To: go...@eprints.org; 'Glenn Hampson' <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Dear Glenn,

 

I appreciate your taking the time to respond to the thoughts I posted on the theme of publisher sponsorship.

 

As you say, we don’t want to try people’s patience so I will just make a few comments in response.

 

  1. On sponsorship. I think we both agree that, as you put it, “Right or wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at that.” What separates us I think is that you believe that since it is the way things work nowadays, we should just accept it and make the most of it. I guess you also feel it is a good thing. My view is that (since it is corrosive and gives even more power to the powerful) we should resist it, and speak out against it.

 

You seem to be saying that since OSI’s budget is only about $150,000 a year then where the money comes from is less important. If so, I can only say that I disagree.

 

You go on to caricature my concern about publisher sponsorship in this way: “Hello, OSI? We’ll give you $100k if you promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?” Really? Can I keep $99k of that for my legal bills?” I would hope that a careful reading of my text would show that my argument is not really that simplistic. In fact, my comments about OSI were one small part of a larger argument, and I would invite people to read the whole text, which is available here: http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

  1. On OSI membership. I assume we are both working from the document you posted recently to the OSI list, which shows that there are 375 members of OSI. You rightly point out that establishing how to categorise people on the list is not always easy. However, by my reckoning the list includes 122 publishers (primary and secondary), of which 52 are commercial concerns. Of the latter, 13 appear to be employees of Elsevier/RELX (3.5% of the total membership of the list). And by my reckoning there are around 114 libraries (mainly from the US). By contrast I could find only 18 researchers, although again establishing these numbers cannot be a precise art given the nature of the data. 

 

  1. On conversations on the list. I think you are saying that the bad temper on the list is infrequent and short-lived, and that publishers do not generally contribute. It is true that publishers don’t generally post to the list, but I think it is also true that you see one of your tasks as being to contribute on their behalf after having off list conversations with them. Either way, that they are reluctant to speak might seem to support my assertion that it will be hard for OSI to arrive at meaningful consensus, or satisfactory conclusions about the future of scholarly communication. Indeed, one of the OSI member publishers wrote on Twitter, “The listserv is toxic and in no way moving anything forward.”

 

  1. On censorship. I think our memory of the incident is similar, except that it was not my understanding that it was mutually agreed that there would be no more censorship. My recollection is that I pointed out that it would not be practically possible to censor without deleting whole threads from the list.

 

As I say, I am grateful for your feedback. 

 

Richard Poynder

 

 

From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:gham...@nationalscience.org]

Sent: 19 July 2017 18:31
To: 'Richard Poynder' <richard...@btinternet.com>; scholcom...@lists.ala.org; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

image001.jpg

Glenn Hampson

unread,
Jul 20, 2017, 1:02:58 PM7/20/17
to Jean-Claude Guédon, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi Jean-Claude,

 

I’m afraid that conference planners everywhere are shuddering at your mere suggestion--- conferences just won’t happen without support unless attendees (i.e., most often the governments and institutions that pay to send them) are willing to pay 5x their current registration fees to attend. Joyce is absolutely right that accepting support for events with reason and discretion is essential. Here’s a very short list of conferences and their sponsors in this space alone:

 

Open Repositories 2017 (https://or2017.net/sponsors/): Atmire, Ebssco, ExLibris, 4Science, Digital Science, Elsevier, and more (exhibitors and supporters)

Force11 (https://www.force11.org/meetings/force2017/sponsors): Moore, PLOS, CrossRef, Hindawi, F1000, Facts, ORCID, Digital Science

COASP (https://oaspa.org/conference/): Hindawi, Arpha, CCC, SpringerNature, Copernicus, Sage, Frontiers, MDPI, T&F, Crossref, Karger, eLife

OpenCon (http://www.opencon2017.org/sponsors): Max Planck, PLOS, Copernicus, more

 

 

Not to pick on any of these events or sponsors---to the contrary, thank you. This is all just by way of illustration.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Jean-Claude Guédon
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 8:37 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

I deeply disagree with Joyce Ogburn. While funding may not "equate" with influence, neither can it be totally dissociated from it, and any level of overlapping between funding and influence is simply unacceptable.

 

Jean-Claude Guédon

 

Le jeudi 20 juillet 2017 à 11:16 -0400, Joyce Ogburn a écrit :

I don't want to wade into deep waters here, but I think I should challenge the assumption that monetary support for conferences or projects leads to undue influence on the outcomes by the funding party . Beginning my career as an acquisitions librarian, I learned early on about the ethics of working with vendors and publishers that were sensitive to the issues of influence and impropriety. Doing business with or receiving support from a publisher or vendor does not and should not lead to undue influence in business decisions. 

 

It is wise to be mindful and even vigilant about this issue but it should not be assumed that funding equates with influence.

 

Joyce


Joyce L. Ogburn

Appalachian State University

218 College Street

Boone NC 28608-2026

 

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

 

On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 8:26 AM, "Richard Poynder" <scho...@lists.ala.org> wrote:

Dear Glenn,

 

I appreciate your taking the time to respond to the thoughts I posted on the theme of publisher sponsorship.

 

As you say, we don’t want to try people’s patience so I will just make a few comments in response.

 

  1. On sponsorship. I think we both agree that, as you put it, “Right or wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at that.” What separates us I think is that you believe that since it is the way things work nowadays, we should just accept it and make the most of it. I guess you also feel it is a good thing. My view is that (since it is corrosive and gives even more power to the powerful) we should resist it, and speak out against it.

 

You seem to be saying that since OSI’s budget is only about $150,000 a year then where the money comes from is less important. If so, I can only say that I disagree.

 

You go on to caricature my concern about publisher sponsorship in this way: “Hello, OSI? We’ll give you $100k if you promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?” Really? Can I keep $99k of that for my legal bills?” I would hope that a careful reading of my text would show that my argument is not really that simplistic. In fact, my comments about OSI were one small part of a larger argument, and I would invite people to read the whole text, which is available here: http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

  1. On OSI membership. I assume we are both working from the document you posted recently to the OSI list, which shows that there are 375 members of OSI. You rightly point out that establishing how to categorise people on the list is not always easy. However, by my reckoning the list includes 122 publishers (primary and secondary), of which 52 are commercial concerns. Of the latter, 13 appear to be employees of Elsevier/RELX (3.5% of the total membership of the list). And by my reckoning there are around 114 librarians (mainly from the US). By contrast I could find only 18 researchers, although again establishing these numbers cannot be a precise art given the nature of the data. 

 

  1. On conversations on the list. I think you are saying that the bad temper on the list is infrequent and short-lived, and that publishers do not generally contribute. It is true that publishers don’t generally post to the list, but I think it is also true that you see one of your tasks as being to contribute on their behalf after having off list conversations with them. Either way, that they are reluctant to speak might seem to support my assertion that it will be hard for OSI to arrive at meaningful consensus, or satisfactory conclusions about the future of scholarly communication. Indeed, one of the OSI member publishers wrote on Twitter, “The listserv is toxic and in no way moving anything forward.”

 

  1. On censorship. I think our memory of the incident is similar, except that it was not my understanding that it was mutually agreed that there would be no more censorship. My recollection is that I pointed out that it would not be practically possible to censor without deleting whole threads from the list.

 

As I say, I am grateful for your feedback. 

 

 

Richard Poynder

 

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Joyce Ogburn

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Jul 20, 2017, 1:35:04 PM7/20/17
to Glenn Hampson, Jean-Claude Guédon, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative
Small correction - I did not say accepting support was essential, just that we should not assume that this kind of support necessarily leads to undue influence. Joyce 

Joyce L. Ogburn
Appalachian State University
218 College Street
Boone NC 28608-2026

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 20, 2017, 1:35:28 PM7/20/17
to Sandy Thatcher, Jean-Claude Guédon, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative

I’m piling on here Sandy---sorry---but as you’re probably aware, every foundation also has its own particular perspective with regard to open. The program manager at Mellon has a perspective on open that is different than the program manager at RWJ, Sloan, Gates, Keck, Hewlett, and other foundations that have helped advance the open conversation. So I would say that it’s not necessarily the corporate interests that bleed through here, but the perspectives of the program managers and their staffs as well. “Influence” isn’t necessarily an evil corporate thing---it’s also a very normal human thing.

 

From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 9:51 AM
To: Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.clau...@umontreal.ca>; scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Do your strictures apply to foundations like Mellon, Ford, Rockefeller, etc., which after all represent corporate interests in their origins?  Would you, e.g., want to give up Project Muse because it was funded by Mellon, or Gutenberg-e and the ACLS Humanities Ebook projects, also funded by Mellon? Where, then, would untainted money come from?

 

Sandy Thatcher

 

 

At 11:36 AM -0400 7/20/17, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:

I deeply disagree with Joyce Ogburn. While funding may not "equate" with influence, neither can it be totally dissociated from it, and any level of overlapping between funding and influence is simply unacceptable.

 

Jean-Claude Guédon

 

Le jeudi 20 juillet 2017 à 11:16 -0400, Joyce Ogburn a écrit :

I don't want to wade into deep waters here, but I think I should challenge the assumption that monetary support for conferences or projects leads to undue influence on the outcomes by the funding party . Beginning my career as an acquisitions librarian, I learned early on about the ethics of working with vendors and publishers that were sensitive to the issues of influence and impropriety. Doing business with or receiving support from a publisher or vendor does not and should not lead to undue influence in business decisions.

 

It is wise to be mindful and even vigilant about this issue but it should not be assumed that funding equates with influence.

 

Joyce

 

Joyce L. Ogburn

Appalachian State University

218 College Street

Boone NC 28608-2026

 

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

 

On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 8:26 AM, "Richard Poynder" <scho...@lists.ala.org> wrote:

Dear Glenn,

 

I appreciate your taking the time to respond to the thoughts I posted on the theme of publisher sponsorship.

 

As you say, we don't want to try people's patience so I will just make a few comments in response.

 

1.      On sponsorship. I think we both agree that, as you put it, "Right or wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at that." What separates us I think is that you believe that since it is the way things work nowadays, we should just accept it and make the most of it. I guess you also feel it is a good thing. My view is that (since it is corrosive and gives even more power to the powerful) we should resist it, and speak out against it.

 

You seem to be saying that since OSI's budget is only about $150,000 a year then where the money comes from is less important. If so, I can only say that I disagree.

 

You go on to caricature my concern about publisher sponsorship in this way: "Hello, OSI? We'll give you $100k if you promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?" Really? Can I keep $99k of that for my legal bills?" I would hope that a careful reading of my text would show that my argument is not really that simplistic. In fact, my comments about OSI were one small part of a larger argument, and I would invite people to read the whole text, which is available here: http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

2.      On OSI membership. I assume we are both working from the document you posted recently to the OSI list, which shows that there are 375 members of OSI. You rightly point out that establishing how to categorise people on the list is not always easy. However, by my reckoning the list includes 122 publishers (primary and secondary), of which 52 are commercial concerns. Of the latter, 13 appear to be employees of Elsevier/RELX (3.5% of the total membership of the list). And by my reckoning there are around 114 librarians (mainly from the US). By contrast I could find only 18 researchers, although again establishing these numbers cannot be a precise art given the nature of the data.

 

3.      On conversations on the list. I think you are saying that the bad temper on the list is infrequent and short-lived, and that publishers do not generally contribute. It is true that publishers don't generally post to the list, but I think it is also true that you see one of your tasks as being to contribute on their behalf after having off list conversations with them. Either way, that they are reluctant to speak might seem to support my assertion that it will be hard for OSI to arrive at meaningful consensus, or satisfactory conclusions about the future of scholarly communication. Indeed, one of the OSI member publishers wrote on Twitter, "The listserv is toxic and in no way moving anything forward."

 

 

4.      On censorship. I think our memory of the incident is similar, except that it was not my understanding that it was mutually agreed that there would be no more censorship. My recollection is that I pointed out that it would not be practically possible to censor without deleting whole threads from the list.

 

As I say, I am grateful for your feedback.

 

 

Richard Poynder

 


From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: 19 July 2017 at 18:31

Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access
To: Richard Poynder <richard...@btinternet.com>, scholcom...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to take this opportunity to invite everyone in the scholcomm community to nominate individuals (self-nominations are welcome) to participate in this year's efforts of the Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI). Here's what we're about (from a draft version of our preamble, which is being finalized this summer):

The principles and practices of scholarly communication are critical to the advancement of research and research knowledge.  OSI's mission is to build a robust framework for communication, coordination and cooperation among all nations and stakeholders in order to improve scholarly communication, beginning with scholarly publishing-to find common understanding and just, achievable, sustainable, inclusive solutions, and to work toward these solutions together in order to increase the amount of research information available to the world, as well as the number of people everywhere who can access this information. The guiding principles of OSI are to involve the entire stakeholder community in a collaborative effort; to value all stakeholder voices and perspectives; to thoughtfully consider the consequences of all approaches; to coordinate and collaborate on developing joint solutions and efforts; and to pursue and continue refining solutions over time to ensure their implementation, effectiveness, and success.

OSI includes high-level decision makers from all stakeholder groups and many different countries. We would particularly appreciate being able to add more active researchers and authors to OSI this year, more university provosts, and more industry leaders, policy makers, funder reps and journalists. Increasing the number of voices from outside the US and EU is also a goal. There are currently about 375 leaders on the OSI listserv, representing 18 different stakeholder groups, 23 countries and 250 institutions. Of these individuals, about 50 represent research universities (in an official capacity), 40 are library or library group leaders, 35 represent commercial publishers, 30 represent government policy organizations, 30 represent open knowledge groups and "born open" publishers, and 20 represent scholarly societies. Nominations will be considered by the advisory group. OSI tries to maintain a balance in terms of the number of representatives from each stakeholder group.

I would also like to take this opportunity to correct the statement made by Richard Poynder in his piece yesterday about the influence of funding from scholarly publishers, at least with regard to OSI. Much as I don't want to take up my time and yours by arguing these points, and much as I value Richard's scholarship and analysis, I do have a responsibility to OSI and its supporters and members to not allow misstatements like these to linger (even if no one ends up reading this email, I have a responsibility to correct the record). As a general point, it has certainly been well-documented that research funding can influence research outcomes. "Soft" sponsorships are a much murkier case, however. We're talking here about everything from television commercials to billboards to the ads that pop up alongside New York Times articles. Sponsors make it possible for programs and events to happen---not just in scholcomm but in medicine, sports, tech, news, on university campuses and in public parks. Right or wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at that. As far as OSI is concerned, we are grateful for the interest and support we've received from our sponsors to-date and we welcome support from all interested sources. Indeed, we would ideally like to see universities take over most of the funding responsibilities for this effort if only because scholcomm reform is such a university-centric set of issues (spread between 100 campuses, this wouldn't amount to much at all), but until/unless this happens, UNESCO, foundations, publishers, and OSI members themselves will carry the load.

 

Here are the specific corrections to Richard's article:

1.      "Membership of OSI is made up primarily of legacy publishers and US librarians." This is incorrect. As noted above, about 10% of OSI members are commercial publishing reps and another 10% are librarians. However, most OSI reps wear several hats, so research university reps are often library heads and scholarly society reps may come from their publishing division. This may be a source of Richard's misinterpretation. Even counting this overlap, though, the totals are far from "primarily."

2.      "Šas the funding provided for OSI by UNESCO has been falling, so the contributions of legacy publishers have been increasing." OSI has an annual operating budget of only about US$150,000 at the moment. We're not talking a lot of money here. And there have only been two years of funding, which is not enough to start drawing trendlines. In year one (for OSI2016), commercial publishers supplied $27,500 of funding for a program that cost $168,850. In year two they supplied $50,000 for a program that cost $134,300---more money for a cheaper program. In the same period, foundation support almost doubled from $25,000 to $45,000, UNESCO support fell by almost half (a temporary situation), participant registration fees were slashed from $58,000 to $13,500 and scholarship support grew from a few thousand dollars to over $20,000 this year. So what kind of story you want to write about these meager totals really depends on what kind of axe you're looking to grind---UNESCO is down, foundations are up, etc. The bottom line is that we did more with less in 2017 and these budget numbers will change again next year when UNESCO will hopefully be able to contribute more. Also, we've never hidden these raw figures so there's no need to interpret secondary source material. These numbers are in the OSI reports and website, and available on request:

$134,300

3.      "the [OSI listserv] discussion frequently gets bogged down in bad-tempered, unproductive conversations (see here for instance). But since they hold the purse strings it is publishers who will likely determine the outcomes (as Prosser fears)." We haven't surveyed OSI members about the list. Almost all of the feedback I receive is very positive but we do need to get a handle on what everyone thinks. What I can say is that there are 2,500 messages shared per year on this list and the vast majority of these are very thoughtful and informative. Also, we have heard from members who would like to see other ways to drive conversations off-list, and we're looking into these solutions this year. It is true that there are occasions when some OSI members (including Richard) will occasionally protest the concept of OSI or including publishers in this conversation, and this results in a frustrating period of a few days when I need to remind folks that OSI is a diverse and inclusive group and that it's important to treat each other with respect. But this is all part of the challenge of this diverse group. As far as determining outcomes, commercial publishers do very little speaking on the OSI list at the moment relative to much more vocal anti-publisher voices. They are not driving conversations on-list. As for off-list influence, there are no sponsorship quid pro quos from any OSI funders. Indeed, we are beholden to our foundation and UNESCO supporters to keep this effort open and balanced; our commercial publisher supporters have never requested anything (other than poster space). I assure you that there would never be a situation where we would accept any amount from any funder in exchange for twisting the truth---I don't even know what that kind of scenario would look like Richard ("Hello, OSI? We'll give you $100k if you promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?" Really? Can I keep $99k of that for my legal bills?)

4.      "Sponsored conversations can also lead to censorship. When in 2016, for instance, someone criticised a publisher on the OSI mailing list the moderator promptly deleted his comments, inaccurately portraying them as a "personal dispute". In fact, as an advisor to the criticised publisher later pointed out, the criticism was justified and appropriate." Correct. If I recall correctly, I thought this conversation had to do with someone's sour grapes about their publishing contract and was therefore inappropriate for the OSI listserv (or any listserv for that matter). I was wrong, I apologized to the group, and I corrected my mistake. Indeed, the ensuing conversation helped clarify that there would never be any censorship on the OSI list, so this wasn't a negative outcome but a positive. Censorship comes about in many ways Richard---take intolerance or social media bubbles, for instance---as I'm sure you'll agree. Having someone you disagree with in a group conversation doesn't lead to censorship. Shouting down that person's right to speak or claiming their perspective isn't legitimate are, however, both very powerful forms of censorship. Indeed, I would argue that in this particular context, the fear of getting ridiculed on social media by people who are unwilling to see your point of view or even acknowledge your right to co-exist in the scholcomm marketplace is a much more corrosive, much more pervasive influence in the scholcomm conversation than the soft power of sponsorships by people and organizations who are willing and able to help promote this dialogue.

I think those are the main points. As always, if you have any questions you are welcome to email me any time.

Thank you and best regards,

Glenn

 

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

image001 457.jpg

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

 

 

From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of "Richard Poynder" (via scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 5:43 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Sponsorship in the research and library communities is pervasive today, and scholarly publishers are some of the most generous providers of it. While the benefits of this sponsorship to the research community at large are debatable, publishers gain a great deal of soft power from dispensing money in this way. And they use this soft power to help them contain, control and shape the changes scholarly communication is undergoing, often in ways that meet their needs more than the needs of science and of scientists.

 

This sponsorship also often takes place without adequate transparency.

 

These are the kinds of issues explored in this (pdf) document http://bit.ly/2taOuoL, which includes some examples of publisher sponsorship, and the associated problems of non-transparency that often go with it. In particular, there is a detailed case study of a series of interviews conducted by Library Journal with leading OA advocates that was sponsored by Dove Medical Press.

 

Amongst those interviewed was the de facto leader of the OA movement Peter Suber. Suber gave three separate interviews to LJ, but not once was he informed when invited that the interviews were sponsored, or that they would be flanked with ads for Dove - even though he made it clear after the first interview that he was not happy to be associated with the publisher in this way.

 

http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

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Richard Poynder
www.richardpoynder.co.uk

 

 

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Sanford G. Thatcher
Frisco, TX  75034-5514
https://scholarsphere.psu.edu

 
"If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865)

"The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853)

"Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding."-Ambrose Bierce (1906)

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Glenn Hampson

unread,
Jul 20, 2017, 3:12:18 PM7/20/17
to Amy Buckland, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi Amy,

 

This certainly is an interesting issue and all this talk about bias and solutions to bias is also interesting. I’m sorry if my question here strays into the weeds and folks can tune this out as needed, but whose job it is it anyway interpret attendee values and who is or isn’t a “true partner”? It sounds to me like this concern about bias coming from sponsors (or from the people who represent the interests of these sponsors) might have more to it that we thought---that maybe we should also be worried about bias from conference organizers as well.

 

I’m just pulling at threads here, but let’s say you’re putting together a conference for your university on the future of open access. And let’s say you decide that only companies a, b and c align with your “values” regarding open---so only these three get to be sponsors (assuming you have the luxury of having too many sponsorship offers, of course, which is generally an unlikely problem to have). Do you tell companies d, e, and f thanks but no thanks if they have a perspective on open that is not shared by you (for the sake of argument, let’s just say these three are commercial publishers)? What if their perspective aligns with the perspective of researchers at your university (or even your university’s leadership) but not you (or maybe your library)? What if d, e, and f are part of the community you serve but just not part of the community you agree with?

 

Are you really holding a conference on open access at that point or just a conference on like-minded perspectives on open access? Should your university be associated with the conference at that point if it’s clear that this really isn’t a full exploration of the topic but just one side of the topic? We do, after all, rely on our universities to give us a full exploration of truth and solutions---don’t we? I guess you could argue in response that a conference on climate change shouldn’t also feature climate change deniers but I don’t think that would be a fair extension of this argument---although I accept that some skeptics will say this is precisely the right analogy, and this perspective has been a problem for this conversation.

 

Anyway, to my point, in the interest of being truly open and transparent, I do think we need to be very thoughtful when we talk about bias---it comes in many forms.

 

Best regards,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
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: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Amy Buckland
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2017 10:42 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

I’m not convinced folks that run those conferences are “shuddering” at the suggestion. I think it’s something that conference organizers wrestle with regularly, and increasingly they are making the decision to work with sponsors that represent similar values to those held by attendees. It’s all part of a larger discussion in libraryland around working with organizations/corporations that are true partners. Recently I have noticed these discussions taking place in a more open and transparent way. It’s great.

 

amy

 

 

-- 

Amy Buckland

Head, Research & Scholarship

University of Guelph Library

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From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of "Richard Poynder" (via scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 5:43 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Sponsorship in the research and library communities is pervasive today, and scholarly publishers are some of the most generous providers of it. While the benefits of this sponsorship to the research community at large are debatable, publishers gain a great deal of soft power from dispensing money in this way. And they use this soft power to help them contain, control and shape the changes scholarly communication is undergoing, often in ways that meet their needs more than the needs of science and of scientists.

 

This sponsorship also often takes place without adequate transparency.

 

These are the kinds of issues explored in this (pdf) document http://bit.ly/2taOuoL, which includes some examples of publisher sponsorship, and the associated problems of non-transparency that often go with it. In particular, there is a detailed case study of a series of interviews conducted by Library Journal with leading OA advocates that was sponsored by Dove Medical Press.

 

Amongst those interviewed was the de facto leader of the OA movement Peter Suber. Suber gave three separate interviews to LJ, but not once was he informed when invited that the interviews were sponsored, or that they would be flanked with ads for Dove – even though he made it clear after the first interview that he was not happy to be associated with the publisher in this way.

 

http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

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David Wojick

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Jul 21, 2017, 7:17:37 AM7/21/17
to scho...@lists.ala.org, osi20...@googlegroups.com
Given that OSI is the topic of this thread, it seems appropriate to cc them. What Glenn is doing here is attempting to articulate and clarify an important OA issue that has emerged via a complex discussion. This is really what OSI is all about.

Funding induced bias is actually a large research area (including my own), so this is not a simple issue. But let us suppose, as has been argued earlier here, that all funding can create bias. This would suggest that, in the case of a many-sided issue, the way to minimize bias is to get funding from all sides. This is just what OSI does.

Note too that commercial publishers are not against OA. They may be against that school of OA that seeks to eliminate commercial publishers, but that school does not define OA; it is just part of the complex OA movement. 

OSI is taking a broad view of OA, in hopes of finding a workable way forward. In my view as an analyst this is very sensible.

David

David Wojick, Ph.D.
http://insidepublicaccess.com/

On Jul 20, 2017, at 9:01 PM, Amy Buckland <buck...@uoguelph.ca> wrote:

Hi Glenn,

I know what bias is, so please don’t explain it to me.

Defaulting to calling sponsors “partners” is not accurate. A financial relationship is not a partnership. A partner shares your values and wants you to succeed independently of their own success. So yes, I would decline the offer of sponsorship from some companies, transparently and openly, and in consultation with my community.

And I actually do think discussing OA is similar to discussing climate change. Deniers need to join the real world.

Also, I’m not thrilled with being cc’d onto another listserv (of which I’m not a member), so please don’t add OSI again. Folks can join Scholcomm-L to join the party if they are interested!

 

amy

 

 

From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Thursday, July 20, 2017 at 3:11 PM
To: Amy Buckland <buck...@uoguelph.ca>, "scho...@lists.ala.org" <scho...@lists.ala.org>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Hi Amy,

 

This certainly is an interesting issue and all this talk about bias and solutions to bias is also interesting. I’m sorry if my question here strays into the weeds and folks can tune this out as needed, but whose job it is it anyway interpret attendee values and who is or isn’t a “true partner”? It sounds to me like this concern about bias coming from sponsors (or from the people who represent the interests of these sponsors) might have more to it that we thought---that maybe we should also be worried about bias from conference organizers as well.

 

I’m just pulling at threads here, but let’s say you’re putting together a conference for your university on the future of open access. And let’s say you decide that only companies a, b and c align with your “values” regarding open---so only these three get to be sponsors (assuming you have the luxury of having too many sponsorship offers, of course, which is generally an unlikely problem to have). Do you tell companies d, e, and f thanks but no thanks if they have a perspective on open that is not shared by you (for the sake of argument, let’s just say these three are commercial publishers)? What if their perspective aligns with the perspective of researchers at your university (or even your university’s leadership) but not you (or maybe your library)? What if d, e, and f are part of the community you serve but just not part of the community you agree with?

 

Are you really holding a conference on open access at that point or just a conference on like-minded perspectives on open access? Should your university be associated with the conference at that point if it’s clear that this really isn’t a full exploration of the topic but just one side of the topic? We do, after all, rely on our universities to give us a full exploration of truth and solutions---don’t we? I guess you could argue in response that a conference on climate change shouldn’t also feature climate change deniers but I don’t think that would be a fair extension of this argument---although I accept that some skeptics will say this is precisely the right analogy, and this perspective has been a problem for this conversation.

 

Anyway, to my point, in the interest of being truly open and transparent, I do think we need to be very thoughtful when we talk about bias---it comes in many forms.

 

Best regards,

 

Glenn

 

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

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2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
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From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of "Richard Poynder" (via scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 5:43 AM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Sponsorship in the research and library communities is pervasive today, and scholarly publishers are some of the most generous providers of it. While the benefits of this sponsorship to the research community at large are debatable, publishers gain a great deal of soft power from dispensing money in this way. And they use this soft power to help them contain, control and shape the changes scholarly communication is undergoing, often in ways that meet their needs more than the needs of science and of scientists.

 

This sponsorship also often takes place without adequate transparency.

 

These are the kinds of issues explored in this (pdf) document http://bit.ly/2taOuoL, which includes some examples of publisher sponsorship, and the associated problems of non-transparency that often go with it. In particular, there is a detailed case study of a series of interviews conducted by Library Journal with leading OA advocates that was sponsored by Dove Medical Press.

 

Amongst those interviewed was the de facto leader of the OA movement Peter Suber. Suber gave three separate interviews to LJ, but not once was he informed when invited that the interviews were sponsored, or that they would be flanked with ads for Dove – even though he made it clear after the first interview that he was not happy to be associated with the publisher in this way.

 

http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

 

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Bryan Alexander

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Jul 21, 2017, 11:48:17 AM7/21/17
to David Wojick, osi20...@googlegroups.com
I'd like to add my perspective, based on personal experience with the OSI project.
I've been involved with both OSI conferences, and have participated in the listserv discussions throughout.  In both f2f events I was active in work groups.

I have yet to experience pro-Elsevier influence, or undue influence from any other major for-profit publisher.

Instead, I have enjoyed the kind of discussions OSI is supposed to support, and that Glenn calls for.  Conversations have included a wide range of sometimes contradictory positions and stakeholders, from RELX stalwarts to OA paladins.  At no time have I seen a skew towards Elsevier etc., not as a participant, nor as a presenter, nor as a facilitator and very dilatory organizational helper.

For my work, I find this very useful.  It's a rare space.

Now, I'm neither a publisher nor a librarian.  I am an author and producer of other media, so perhaps my situation renders me an outlier.  If that's too marginal a standpoint, please disregard.

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 21, 2017, 11:53:36 AM7/21/17
to Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen), Joyce Ogburn, Jean-Claude Guédon, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative

Hi Jeroen,

 

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I agree with all your points in a general sense. But since we’ve strayed so far into the weeds at this point (how did this conversation start?), I wonder if it might help to turn this around and ask what sponsors are looking for in events. Maybe there are some sponsoring folks on this list who can help out. Putting myself in their shoes---based on what I’ve seen anyway---their decision process goes something like this (not necessarily in this order):

 

  1. How much are you asking for? I can give you $500 even if you’re from a different planet. Anything more is going to require a very good explanation.
  2. Who else is sponsoring? I don’t want to be the only one, and I don’t want to be associated with Jim’s Junk Store (no offense Jim) or The Committee for More Coal Burning..
  3. What’s the event anyway? It needs to be meaningful. The March to Get Me a New Lexus isn’t going to get funded.
  4. How many people will be there? Make it worth my time and money.
  5. Is this a “legitimate” event? That is, is it going to be a backyard BBQ or a conference with a real agenda? Corporate accountants won’t look kindly on funding a BBQ.
  6. Is this a “reasonable” event? The Hawaii junket and all-you-can-eat shrimp fest are nonstarters here. Sponsors don’t need to know what you’re serving for lunch, but they do need to know if you’re going to spend their money wisely.
  7. Why are you even asking me? Am I part of this community? Are the people attending this event my customers? Many sponsors have big tent concerns--ending poverty, improving childhood education, and so on---so a funding pitch needs to describe how your event aligns with these concerns. Other sponsors might be less philosophical and more willing to support events that are happening in their community---their regional area, their customer base, or their area of focus (outdoors, sports, STEM, or whatever).
  8. What’s in this for me? Do I get signs? Recognition? Influence peddling, in my experience, has never, never, never happened. Now, it’s being argued that this influence doesn’t need to be overt to be real. That’s absolutely true. My previous email was attempting to argue that influence is seeping in from everywhere, though---from the delegates, to the agenda, to the speakers, to the sponsors we don’t invite, to the way we write our press releases (and the subsequent public feedback loop on our thinking and planning) and more. You can’t clinically separate these things and say that removing this particular influence (or potential influence) is going to create this particular outcome. Humans are just way more complicated than that.
  9. Is my contribution tax deductible? This can be a biggie and is almost always a necessity for foundation sponsorships.
  10. We expect you to keep good records. A follow-up report is always required. Sponsors need to be confident you can provide this for their records.

 

Does this seem complete to those of you who have been down this road before?

 

I mention all this, Jeroen, because this whole sponsorship discussion is just much more “real” and less hypothetical than it’s being made out to be. Here are my top reasons for thinking this:

 

  1. I would argue that ALL conferences above a certain size require sponsorship of some sort. These things cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (and more) to put on, and seeking sponsors is just a time-honored, normal, reasonable way to pull these events off.
  2. Event organizers seek out far more sponsors than they actually get. OSI seeks out funding from schools, governments, foundations, industry, stakeholder groups (including publishers) and more. In the end, it’s the people who “get” this issue who step up and help, and we’re grateful for this engagement and connection. We can lament the fact that this group and that group weren’t convinced that funding this enterprise was worth their time, or we can move forward with the team we have. Every event is the same way: The sponsors you see listed are those who were willing to step up, not necessarily the only ones that the organizers approached.
  3. The whole influence peddling angle is overblown. Look honestly at the events in scholcomm community and tell me who is putting on a major conference without sponsors. Then look honestly at these events and describe how Hindawi will bias the outcome of the upcoming Force11 meeting or SpringerNature will bias the outcome of COASP? More broadly, look at mega events like BookExpo with umpteen hundred sponsors and exhibitors and explain how all these interested parties are somehow warping the conference. They aren’t. They ARE the conference---this is their community.
  4. Is this community really so committed to the mantra that publishers are evil that we’re willing to cut off our nose to spite our face? Are we really telling the sponsors in our community who have been so willing to finance our meetings that we no longer want their support? Or even that we’re not that excited about having them participate? Go back to point 8. If a sponsor thinks they’re going to get booed and that delegates will throw their company-branded tote bags in the trash as a sign of protest, forget it---they’ll spend their money elsewhere. Good luck to all of us in funding our 2018 meetings.

 

I do think this is a worthwhile conversation which is why I’m pushing back on this. At the heart of the matter---as I think many of you will agree---is this whole us vs. them mentality that has fractured this community. It’s a complicated and disheartening situation, but I’m glad we’re discussing it in some quarters at least and trying to find a way forward.

 

Best regards,

 

Glenn

 

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

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(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen)
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2017 2:57 AM
To: Joyce Ogburn <ogbu...@appstate.edu>; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.clau...@umontreal.ca>; scho...@lists.ala.org; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Hi Joyce and others,

 

Though sponsorship may not directly influence policies of the sponsored organizations or initiatives, I think it is always influencing what is going on. The money provided ensures that:

 

1) Initiatives that align with the sponsor's ideals and interests take place while those left without sponsor money have a harder time, if you accept that sponsor money is always essential to get things done. This means that by deciding what to sponsor and what not, (commercial) sponsors are very influential in what happens what doesn't.

 

2) Organizations needing money will make sure to be attractive for (certain types of) sponsors. And the may be careful not to radically change policies in a way deterring existing and new sponsors. If OSI would only organize workshops looking for ways to organize scholcomm without publishers it would loose half its funding.

 

3) Sponsoring organizations and sponsored initiatives attach their names to each other and to each other's ideas and policies. It means they accept each other's role in the process. I am not saying that is always a bad thing, but is is real and influential.

 

4) Sponsoring organizations will almost always get something in return: simply mentioning their names means support and in combination with my third point, recognition of their role.

 

BTW I think it is perfectly possible to organize conferences without big sponsor money. It just won't be in Hawaii, won't have bags of junk, won't have a free boat tour and salmon lunches. But it may be just as valuable and perhaps even more fun.

 

Best,

Jeroen Bosman

Utrecht University Library

 

 

 

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Joyce Ogburn <ogbu...@appstate.edu>

Date: 20/07/2017 19:36 (GMT+01:00)

To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>

Cc: Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.clau...@umontreal.ca>, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Small correction - I did not say accepting support was essential, just that we should not assume that this kind of support necessarily leads to undue influence. Joyce 

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 21, 2017, 12:50:48 PM7/21/17
to Jennifer Beamer, Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen), Joyce Ogburn, The Open Scholarship Initiative, scho...@lists.ala.org, Jean-Claude Guédon

Oh wow---I’m sorry Jennifer---I was using your state as a punchline wasn’t I? Sorry about that. Yes---we’ve run into that situation with UNESCO being in Paris. Much as they’d be willing to host the next OSI conference there, it’s expensive to travel to Paris and most accounting departments wouldn’t agree to the appearance of impropriety in any case---a luxury destination isn’t as easy to sell as a utilitarian one. Or a central one. I live in Seattle, so getting people to fly all the way out here can also be a hard sell, which is why we’ve settled on the East coast as being the easiest middle point for now (between Africa, Europe, South America and the Western US---disadvantaged are our colleagues in Asia and the Pacific). So, some day if we are better funded, Hawaii might be an ideal location to give the “other” half of the world an easier chance to participate. Fingers crossed 😊

 

Sorry again and thank you for pointing this out.

 

Best regards,

 

Glenn

 

From: Jennifer Beamer [mailto:jbe...@hawaii.edu]
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2017 9:32 AM
To: Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen) <j.bo...@uu.nl>; Joyce Ogburn <ogbu...@appstate.edu>; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; scho...@lists.ala.org; Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.clau...@umontreal.ca>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Sorry to to jump in here with a fine point but, Jeroen and Glenn, 

 

I’d like to take a minute to tell you a little bit about Open Access in Hawaii. Since you seem to think we are just a vacation destination :) 

 

-"the Hawaii junket” 

 

-"BTW I think it is perfectly possible to organize conferences without big sponsor money. It just won't be in Hawaii, won't have bags of junk, won't have a free boat tour and salmon lunches. But it may be just as valuable and perhaps even more fun.

 

University of Hawaii is a Carnegie Research One Institution. Some our faculty at the University of Hawaii part of the original OA movement, CNI, COAPI.  We at the University of Hawaii (and the seven community colleges) are a very active large group of faculty working hard everyday in OA, and OER. We have had an OA policy for the past 8 years, two IRs, etc...

 

Most of our conferences here are not well supported, because frankly its just to far and expensive for most of you to come, an therefore not a good investment for the large publishers and vendors. 

 

Likewise we don’t get to attend your conferences because most conferences get held in Europe the Central and East side the US, and tend to exclude the Pacific Rim Area in general, and cost us personally to attend (since we only get funded maybe if the budget allows one time per year).

 

If you’d like more info on actual scholarly information, open access and Hawaii please let me know, I’d be happy to send more. 

Bests, 

Jennifer 

 


Jennifer E. Beamer M.LISc., M.Sc., B.A., B.Sc.
Digital Initiatives and Information Technology Librarian 
orcid.org/0000-0001-6887-6568 


University of Hawai’i at Manoa Library 
2550 McCarthy Mall Honolulu, HI 96822

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Glenn Hampson

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Jul 21, 2017, 2:27:09 PM7/21/17
to Vika Zafrin, Jennifer Beamer, Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen), Joyce Ogburn, The Open Scholarship Initiative, scho...@lists.ala.org, Jean-Claude Guédon

Hi Vika,

 

One of my OSI colleagues has raised an important point offline and agreed to let me share it here. It kind of aligns with what you’re asking. In their experience, “the dynamics between sponsors and organizers can be problematic.” “For example,” they write, “I am aware of conferences that offer everything from the ability for a sponsor to send emails to conference attendees to the ability to program a no-conflict lunchtime plenary session.”

 

I think this insight provides a real and interesting bridge between those who are concerned about influence and those who dismiss it---maybe we’re just not talking about the same thing and there are real cases of influence peddling that do in fact happen. It might be helpful for the community to learn more about this. If I can just speak to my own experience here, UNESCO really wants us to do more to draw in the Global South. We’re trying, but it’s difficult due to travel costs. This is influencing our outreach efforts and budget. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has a specific interest in knowing how all this work we’re doing will improve access to medical knowledge. We’re trying to build this case anyway, but are more aware of this focus because of this funding. And operationally, we need to tailor how many workshops we can support at our meetings based on how much space our host is willing and able to rent or provide. So all of this is influence, but just the type of influence you deal with in tailoring a program (or a business, or whatever) to fit in with reality. For our program, all our delegates receive a list of everyone’s email addresses (in their conference programs), and we wouldn’t approve a no-conflict lunchtime plenary by a delegate group with a stake in the outcome---this would clearly be inappropriate and antithetical to the point of the conference.

 

So, maybe there are specific, tangible sponsorship concerns here that the community wants to identify and discuss? Or maybe a code of ethics regarding conference sponsorship already exists somewhere? Certainly, as you point out, corporate sponsorships aren’t the only issue---there are probably broader lessons we can learn and apply.

 

Anyway, I’ll sign off on this topic---thanks for the perspective. Interesting stuff.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org [mailto:scholcom...@lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of Vika Zafrin
Sent: Friday, July 21, 2017 9:53 AM
To: Jennifer Beamer <jbe...@hawaii.edu>
Cc: Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen) <j.bo...@uu.nl>; Joyce Ogburn <ogbu...@appstate.edu>; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; scho...@lists.ala.org; Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.clau...@umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

 

Thank you for this, Jennifer.

I do think that money is power, and sponsorship means influence, in the sense that aligns with Joyce, Amy, and Charlotte's responses to the discussion of undue influence of sponsors upon conference planners. In the same way as the observer's gaze changes the thing observed, the association of a sponsor's name changes the thing being sponsored. Most ongoing events I've witnessed in my intersecting fields are very aware of it.

The small scholarly society I help run, Association for Computers and the Humanities, sometimes contributes money to events. We don't have a lot, but we do contribute to the communities we're part of. We and the entities we contribute to are pretty transparent about it.

To Glenn's questions (here I do not speak for ACH, these are my personal impressions of what we do): his number 3 is our number 1. We don't really care about numbers 2 or 9, that I know of. Number 6, probably because of the scale at which we operate, hasn't come up.

But: how does the conversation about sponsorship change when it's taken beyond corporate sponsorship?

--

Vika Zafrin, PhD
Digital Scholarship Librarian
Boston University
+1 617.358.6370 | bu.edu/disc



Jennifer Beamer wrote:

Sorry to to jump in here with a fine point but, Jeroen and Glenn, 

 

I’d like to take a minute to tell you a little bit about Open Access in Hawaii. Since you seem to think we are just a vacation destination :) 

 

-"the Hawaii junket” 

 

-"BTW I think it is perfectly possible to organize conferences without big sponsor money. It just won't be in Hawaii, won't have bags of junk, won't have a free boat tour and salmon lunches. But it may be just as valuable and perhaps even more fun.

 

University of Hawaii is a Carnegie Research One Institution. Some our faculty at the University of Hawaii part of the original OA movement, CNI, COAPI.  We at the University of Hawaii (and the seven community colleges) are a very active large group of faculty working hard everyday in OA, and OER. We have had an OA policy for the past 8 years, two IRs, etc...

 

Most of our conferences here are not well supported, because frankly its just to far and expensive for most of you to come, an therefore not a good investment for the large publishers and vendors. 

 

Likewise we don’t get to attend your conferences because most conferences get held in Europe the Central and East side the US, and tend to exclude the Pacific Rim Area in general, and cost us personally to attend (since we only get funded maybe if the budget allows one time per year).

 

If you’d like more info on actual scholarly information, open access and Hawaii please let me know, I’d be happy to send more. 

Bests, 

Jennifer 

 


Jennifer E. Beamer M.LISc., M.Sc., B.A., B.Sc.
Digital Initiatives and Information Technology Librarian 
orcid.org/0000-0001-6887-6568 


University of Hawai’i at Manoa Library 
2550 McCarthy Mall Honolulu, HI 96822

 

On July 21, 2017 at 5:54:10 AM, Glenn Hampson (gham...@nationalscience.org) wrote:

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Jo De

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Jul 22, 2017, 11:26:16 AM7/22/17
to Glenn Hampson, Jennifer Beamer, Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen), Joyce Ogburn, The Open Scholarship Initiative, scho...@lists.ala.org, Jean-Claude Guédon
Great to hear from you Jennifer.  Would love to know more about open access and Hawaii. Do you have a five-year plan or other institutional planning document?  Can you share the highlights with us?  While it may be impractical to meet up in person, we can do a lot of exchange online.
Joann

Cc: Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.claude.guedon@umontreal.ca>, scho...@lists.ala.org, The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>

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