RE: [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Glenn Hampson
Most is annex material 😊 But I’ll send you the summary link when it’s available (hopefully next week).
In the interim, the Cliff Notes version is that the entire scholarly communication community, large and small, for-profit and non-profit recognizes many of the same fundamental interests and concerns about open, such as lowering costs and improving global access; and the importance of many of the same connected issues in this space such as impact factors and the culture of communication in academia. This community also shares a deep, common commitment to improving the future of research, and improving the contribution of research to society.
If all this still isn’t enough for you, read the paper (or skim it)---there’s a lot more. The key isn’t to find and focus on common ground on solutions right out of the gate (and inevitably end up arguing with each other about whose solution is best). It’s to recognize our common interests and concerns first, and only then start building out solutions and options, together. We’ve been skipping a necessary step in this process for far too long.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 12:05 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Thatcher, Sanford Gray <sg...@psu.edu>; Kathleen Shearer <m.kathlee...@gmail.com>; <richard...@btinternet.com> <richard...@btinternet.com>; <scho...@lists.ala.org> <scho...@lists.ala.org>; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Glenn,
It is 107 pages! In the interim, which may be long, here is a simple example. There is a sizable school of thought that says journals should not be published by commercial (for profit) publishers. Then there are the commercial publishers, who publish a sizable fraction of the journals.
What is the common ground between these two large groups?
David
On Apr 20, 2020, at 2:26 PM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:
Hi David,
I encourage you to read the paper and let me know what you think (on-list or direct): http://plan-a.world/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/OSI-policy-perspective-2-final.pdf. I apologize for the length of this---the summary version hasn’t been published yet.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 10:19 AM
To: Thatcher, Sanford Gray <sg...@psu.edu>
Cc: Kathleen Shearer <m.kathlee...@gmail.com>; richard...@btinternet.com; scho...@lists.ala.org; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
I suspect there are lots of limits to common ground. In fact the hypothesis that there is significant common ground strikes me as untested, much less proven, especially if one includes the more radical positions.
David Wojick
On Apr 20, 2020, at 1:54 PM, Thatcher, Sanford Gray <sg...@psu.edu> wrote:I have two brief comments to add to this thread.
1) On the question of translation, ir strikes me that automatic translation, however imperfect, could be satisfactory for certain scholarly purposes but not others. We don;t always need an elegant translation to get the gist of what is being said, and that may suffice for certain purposes, say, in background reading. On the other hand, I have always opposed the CC BY license as inadequate it deprives the author of control over quality in translation, which is VERY important to scholars at least in the HSS fields, if not in all. Once a poor translation is done, motivation (especially market-based) declines for doing a better one.
2) As for "common ground," of course there is common ground to be found amongst all types of publishers, but I see a fundamental "divide" between nonprofit and for-profit publishers in that at least one potentially key avenue toward open access, viz., endowment funding, is available to nonprofits in a way it is not to for-profit publishers. Both nonprofit and for-profit publishers can operate on the basis of having the market mechanism be that by which they fund their businesses, but only nonprofits have these nonmarket-based alternatives (which also include university subsidies to presses) to explore as well. That is a basic difference that will determine what the limits of "common ground" can be.
Sandy Thatcher
From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 10:05 AM
To: 'Kathleen Shearer' <m.kathlee...@gmail.com>; richard...@btinternet.com <richard...@btinternet.com>; scho...@lists.ala.org <scho...@lists.ala.org>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Hi Kathleen, Richard,
Can I suggest another way to look at these questions? First some background. As you know, the Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) is launching Plan A today (http://plan-a.world). Plan A is OSI’s 2020-25 action plan, representing five years of deep thinking that OSI participants have invested in the many questions related to the future of scholarly communication reform.
Plan A looks at the “bibliodiversity” challenge a little differently. For OSI, diversity has also meant inclusion---listening to everyone’s ideas (including publishers), valuing everyone’s input, trying to develop a complete understanding of the scholarly communication landscape, and trying to reach a point where we can work together on common ground toward goals that serve all of us.
We have found over the course of our work that most everyone in the scholarly communication community recognizes the same challenges on the road ahead, we all have the same needs, and we all suffer from the same inability to see the full picture ourselves and to make change by ourselves. Fulfilling the vision of bibliodiversity will mean valuing everyone’s perspective of and contribution to the scholarly communication system, and truly working together across our real and perceived divides to achieve, together, what is in the best interest of research and society.
OSI’s common ground paper provides a deeper look at this common ground and some of the approaches suggested by OSI participants. The summary version will be published soon by Emerald Open; for now, the full-length version is available under the resources tab of the Plan A website.
My short answer to your questions, Richard, about practical matters like how all this change is going to transpire and through what mechanisms, is that for us, this needs to be decided by Plan A signatories (and will be). This effort is designed to tie into UNESCO’s ongoing open science roadmap work (which OSI is helping with). UNESCO’s plan will be presented to the UN in late 2021. The longer answer is that the real value in this conversation will come as we “expand the pie.” This isn’t about looking for compromise positions between read-only access and read-reuse, or between zero and 6-month embargo periods. It’s about truly working together on common interests, and thinking through issues in a way we haven’t before as a community (in a large-scale, diverse, high level, policy-oriented sense).
I expect our efforts will cross paths in the years ahead, Kathleen. We would be honored to collaborate and contribute to your work.
Best regards to you both,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org> On Behalf Of Kathleen Shearer (via scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 6:12 AM
To: richard...@btinternet.com; scho...@lists.ala.org; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Hello Richard,
Yes, indeed, you are right, the coordinated actions required for bibliodiversity are similar to the efforts needed to deal with the covid19 pandemic.
For your second question, the way I am envisioning the collaborations taking place is as follows: much of the discussions across the different stakeholder communities will happen at the national and sometimes regional level, while the international coordination will take place, in parallel, within each different stakeholder community. Although not a perfect solution, because some countries are more cohesive than others, many communities already have fairly strong regional and international relationships with their peers, including scholarly societies, libraries, funders (e.g. the funders forum at RDA), governments, as well as publishers, and repositories.
1. Are translation technologies adequate to the task envisaged for them in the document?
I’m not an expert on translation technologies, but my colleagues tell me that for some languages the technologies are quite far along already and work well (e.g. Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese), for others it will take a bit longer. They are suggesting a timeline for most languages to have fairly good translation tools available within the next 5 years.
3. Might it be that the different interests and priorities of these stakeholders are such that joint action is not possible, certainly in a way that would satisfy all the stakeholders? After all, funders got involved with open access because after 20+ years the other stakeholders had failed to work together effectively. However, in doing so, these funders appear (certainly in Europe) to be pushing the world in a direction that the authors of this report deprecate. What, practically, can the movement do to achieve the aspirations of the document beyond making a call to action or further declarations?
The point of this call to action is to raise awareness with funders and others about this important issue. I’m not so cynical to think organizational perspectives can never change. Strategies can (and should) evolve as we gain a better understanding of the landscape, and adopt new ideas and principles. We hope that this call to action will have that type of impact.
And, yes of course not all interests will align, but we are already seeing more cohesiveness at the national level than in the past. In Canada, where I am based, for example, the funders, libraries and local Canadian publishers are now in regular dialogue and collaborating to work on common action items and to better align policies, funding and infrastructure. This is also happening in other jurisdictions such as France with its Committee for Open Science and Portugal where the national funder, universities (including libraries and university presses) and scholarly societies have created and maintain a national infrastructure for Open Access (hosting repositories and journals) and aligned policies.
All the best,
Kathleen
Kathleen Shearer
Executive Director
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
On Apr 16, 2020, at 1:31 AM, Richard Poynder <richard...@gmail.com> wrote:
“Designing a system that fosters bibliodiversity, while also supporting research at the international level is extremely challenging. It means achieving a careful balance between unity and diversity; international and local; and careful coordination across different stakeholder communities and regions in order to avoid a fragmented ecosystem.”
That seems to me to be a key paragraph in this document. And the pandemic — which requires that information is shared very quickly and broadly, and across borders — does certainly highlight the fact that the current scholarly communication system leaves a lot to be desired.
I have three questions:
1. Are translation technologies adequate to the task envisaged for them in the document?
2. How is it envisaged that researchers, policymakers, funders, service providers, universities and libraries from around the world will all work together, and by means of what forum? I know there are a number of organisations and initiatives focused on the different issues raised in the document (not least COAR) but how exactly, and by what means, will these different stakeholders coordinate and work together to achieve the stated aims? I know there are a number of library-led organisations (like COAR), but is not a more diverse forum (in terms of the different stakeholders) needed? How many members of COAR are also members of cOAlition S for instance?
3. Might it be that the different interests and priorities of these stakeholders are such that joint action is not possible, certainly in a way that would satisfy all the stakeholders? After all, funders got involved with open access because after 20+ years the other stakeholders had failed to work together effectively. However, in doing so, these funders appear (certainly in Europe) to be pushing the world in a direction that the authors of this report deprecate. What, practically, can the movement do to achieve the aspirations of the document beyond making a call to action or further declarations?
Richard Poynder
On Wed, 15 Apr 2020 at 15:53, Kathleen Shearer <scho...@lists.ala.org> wrote:
(Apologies for the cross posting)
Dear all,
Today, my colleagues and I are issuing a “Call for Action!”
With the publication of this paper, Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action, we are calling on the community to make concerted efforts to develop strong, community-governed infrastructures that support diversity in scholarly communications (referred to as bibliodiversity).
Diversity is an essential characteristic of an optimal scholarly communications system. Diversity in services and platforms, funding mechanisms, and evaluation measures will allow the research communications to accommodate the different workflows, languages, publication outputs, and research topics that support the needs and epistemic pluralism of different research communities. In addition, diversity reduces the risk of vendor lock-in, which inevitably leads to monopoly, monoculture, and high prices.
We are living through unprecedented times, with a global pandemic sweeping the world, leading to illness, death, and unparalleled economic upheaval. Although our concerns about bibliodiversity have been growing for years, the current crisis has exposed the deficiencies in a system that is increasingly homogenous and prioritizes profits over the public good.
Stories abound about the urgent need for access to the research literature, as illustrated, for example, by this message by Peter Murray-Rust posted to the GOAL mailing list on March 31, 2020
“My colleague, a software developer, working for free on openVirus software, is spending most of his time working making masks in Cambridge Makespace to ship to Addenbrooke’s hospital. When he goes to the literature to find literature on masks, their efficacy and use and construction he finds paywall after paywall after paywall after paywall ….”
For those who were not in favour of open access before, this global crisis should settle the debate once and for all.
We must move away from a pay-to-read world in which researchers, practitioners and the public cannot afford to access critical research materials, or have to wait for embargo periods to lift before they can develop life saving techniques, methods and vaccines. Access to the research is simply too important. Yet, pay-to-publish, the open access model being advanced by many in the commercial sector, is also inappropriate as it places unacceptable financial barriers on researchers’ abilities to publish.
It is time to reassess some of the basic assumptions related to scholarly communications, including competition, prestige, and the role of commercial entities. The same values that underlie our research and education systems should also guide research communications.
To that end, we are calling on researchers, policy makers, funders, service providers, universities and libraries from around the world to work together to address the issue of bibliodiversity in scholarly communication.
The problems we encounter have never been more complex and urgent, nor has the need for solutions been greater. There is a real danger that new budget constraints and an increasing proportion of funds directed towards large commercial entities could lead to greater homogeneity and monopolization, further hampering the free flow of research needed to address the critical challenges we face.
Read the blog post here and full paper here
Kathleen Shearer
Executive Director
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
--
Richard Poynder
David Wojick
David
Most is annex material 😊 But I’ll send you the summary link when it’s available (hopefully next week).
In the interim, the Cliff Notes version is that the entire scholarly communication community, large and small, for-profit and non-profit recognizes many of the same fundamental interests and concerns about open, such as lowering costs and improving global access; and the importance of many of the same connected issues in this space such as impact factors and the culture of communication in academia. This community also shares a deep, common commitment to improving the future of research, and improving the contribution of research to society.
If all this still isn’t enough for you, read the paper (or skim it)---there’s a lot more. The key isn’t to find and focus on common ground on solutions right out of the gate (and inevitably end up arguing with each other about whose solution is best). It’s to recognize our common interests and concerns first, and only then start building out solutions and options, together. We’ve been skipping a necessary step in this process for far too long.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2020 12:05 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Thatcher, Sanford Gray <sg...@psu.edu>; Kathleen Shearer <m.kathlee...@gmail.com>; <richard...@btinternet.com> <richard...@btinternet.com>; <scho...@lists.ala.org> <scho...@lists.ala.org>; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Glenn,
It is 107 pages! In the interim, which may be long, here is a simple example. There is a sizable school of thought that says journals should not be published by commercial (for profit) publishers. Then there are the commercial publishers, who publish a sizable fraction of the journals.
What is the common ground between these two large groups?
David
On Apr 20, 2020, at 2:26 PM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:
Hi David,
I encourage you to read the paper and let me know what you think (on-list or direct): http://plan-a.world/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/OSI-policy-perspective-2-final.pdf. I apologize for the length of this---the summary version hasn’t been published yet.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
Glenn Hampson
Hi David,
In reply to your statement, “that people with fundamental disagreements can agree on general principles does nothing to resolve those disagreements,” I deeply disagree. To my knowledge and experience---which, granted, appears to differ from yours---agreeing on general principles is, in fact, a prerequisite to actually resolving disagreements as opposed to just papering over them. I would be happy to debate this with you off-list. I don’t want to exhaust the good will of our audience here (if we haven’t already).
But to elaborate, from page 18 of the paper (the long version): “….common ground is a unique, "expanded pie" state. It isn't a grand compromise where we manage to divide a static pie into smaller, less satisfying slices, but creating a larger pie where new value is available throughout the system. In this case, then, common ground doesn't mean seeking a compromise between embargoes and immediate release; or between APCs and subscriptions; or between publish or perish culture in academia and something a little kinder and gentler. It means thinking beyond, focusing not on picking specific solutions but on understanding how our interests overlap lest we get weighted down by too many solutions or too many solutions we don’t like. By identifying the broad contours of common ground that exist in this conversation we can build the guardrails and mileposts for our collaborative efforts and then allow the finer-grained details of community-developed plans more flexibility and guidance to evolve over time.”
Please note that examples of common ground perspectives from OSI’s five years of work are included on report pages 19-26, and also in Annex 1 (pages 39-53).
Regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
Glenn Hampson
Hi Sam, Peter,
Thanks so much for your emails. I’m sorry for the delay in responding---we’re a half a world apart and I’m just getting my morning coffee 😊
You ask a number of important questions. I’ll try to respond concisely, and then just please let me know (directly or on-list) if you need more information:
High level: OSI’s purpose was (and remains) to bring together leaders in the scholarly communication space to share perspectives. A good number of the OSI participants (plus alumni and observers) have been executive directors of nonprofits, vice-presidents of universities, vice-presidents of publishing companies, library deans, directors of research institutes, journal editors, and so on. Also represented are leaders in the open space, and leaders of “born open” journals and efforts who are household names in this space. You can see a rather outdated (sorry) list of OSI partcipants, alumni and observers at http://osiglobal.org/osi-participants/; a graphic is also pasted here (which may or may not survive the emailing). About 18 different stakeholder groups are represented in all---covering 250+ institutions and 28 countries---on a quota system that gives the most weight to university representation.
The intent here was not at all to bypass grassroots activism. Quite to the contrary, the intent was to cut to the chase---to bring together the leaders in this space who could speak most knowledgably about the issues and challenges at hand, and work together directly (instead of through intermediaries) to find common ground. We are always adding people to the group. If you’re interested in participating, please just say the word.
- Going forward: OSI’s work has been rich and fascinating. But OSI may not end up being in charge of Plan A---tbd. This plan represents the best thinking and recommendations of OSI, but whether these recommendations go anywhere is going to depend on Plan A signatories. You’re right---no plan, however well-intended, can be foisted on the rest of the world unless it is truly inclusive. That’s been a primary concern of everyone in OSI since day 1---that even though this is a remarkably diverse group, it simply isn’t set up to be a policy making body and inclusive as it is, still doesn’t include enough representation from researchers and from all parts of the globe. It’s a wonderful deliberative body, but we can’t decide anything amongst ourselves, which is alternately enlightening and frustrating. It’s going to take a different deliberative mechanism to create common ground policy (which is why we’re also supporting UNESCO with their roadmap effort---they have the tools and minister-level involvement to make policy). Our hope is that Plan A signatories will lead this effort---we’ll know more in the coming months about whether we have enough signatories to do this, whether we have the budget, etc. The “financial” tab on the Plan A site describes what we’ll be able to do with various levels of funding.
That’s my short answer. Does this help? I’m happy to elaborate---probably off-list unless there’s a groundswell of support for having me send another 5000 word email to the list 😊
Thanks again for your interest and best regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 3:21 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; scholcomm <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 10:48 AM Samuel Moore <samuel....@gmail.com> wrote:
I share Sam's concerns.
I’d be interested to hear more on the 'high-level' focus of your group and whether you see it as antagonistic to non-high-level approaches. Put another way, are you not simply looking for common ground between the groups who are already in charge of scholarly communication (policymakers, commercial publishers, senior figures, etc.) to the exclusion of those operating at the margins?
I agree,
I am concerned about several demographics:
* citizens outside academia
* young people
* the Global South.
I am an old white anglophone male so I cannot speak other that to P.urge that the initiative is taken by different demographics.
I also think the effect of the capitalist publishing industry, whether closed or Open Access has been hugely detrimental. To the extent that I can carry the views of others , I believe these views are shared by many.
P.
--
"I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same".
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
Hi Glenn,
Thanks for sharing this report with the list. I may need to read this again in more detail, but one thing I don’t quite understand is the focus on ‘high-level experts’. You write:
‘There has never been an inclusive, global effort to bring everyone together first—broadly, at scale and at a high, policy-making level—to identify common ground needs and interests, then collectively brainstorm options, and only then design specific policies and solutions that work within this globally operational and sustainable framework’
I’ve always felt that one of the more exciting things about open access has been the influence of grassroots and activist strands of advocacy, or those that specifically foreground local and diverse contexts instead of broad-scale, top-down and policy-based approaches. Are you able to say a bit more about what ‘high-level’ means here and how your approach would preserve these contexts without imposing your common-ground solutions onto them?
The reason I’m asking this is because your report mentions my work on openness as a ‘boundary object’, which is a term developed by Star and Griesemer to describe concepts that have both a shared flexible meaning and a nuanced local meaning that allow the possibility of cooperation between local groups. I argued that open access is one such boundary object because it means many things to different people but is broadly recognisable across contexts. However, the problem with introducing boundary objects into the policy sphere is that they become regulated and homogenised, simply because it is difficult to preserve local contexts in a global setting. This kind of homogenisation tends to benefit those with more power (in this case large commercial publishers operating at scale) at the expense of the bibliodiversity that Kathleen is arguing in favour of nurturing.
I’d be interested to hear more on the 'high-level' focus of your group and whether you see it as antagonistic to non-high-level approaches. Put another way, are you not simply looking for common ground between the groups who are already in charge of scholarly communication (policymakers, commercial publishers, senior figures, etc.) to the exclusion of those operating at the margins?
Thanks!
Sam
--
Dr. Samuel A. Moore
Research Fellow
Centre for Postdigital Cultures
Coventry University
https://www.samuelmoore.org/
Kathleen Shearer
On Apr 21, 2020, at 11:14 AM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:
Hi Sam, Peter,Thanks so much for your emails. I’m sorry for the delay in responding---we’re a half a world apart and I’m just getting my morning coffee 😊You ask a number of important questions. I’ll try to respond concisely, and then just please let me know (directly or on-list) if you need more information:
- <image005.jpg>High level: OSI’s purpose was (and remains) to bring together leaders in the scholarly communication space to share perspectives. A good number of the OSI participants (plus alumni and observers) have been executive directors of nonprofits, vice-presidents of universities, vice-presidents of publishing companies, library deans, directors of research institutes, journal editors, and so on. Also represented are leaders in the open space, and leaders of “born open” journals and efforts who are household names in this space. You can see a rather outdated (sorry) list of OSI partcipants, alumni and observers at http://osiglobal.org/osi-participants/; a graphic is also pasted here (which may or may not survive the emailing). About 18 different stakeholder groups are represented in all---covering 250+ institutions and 28 countries---on a quota system that gives the most weight to university representation.
The intent here was not at all to bypass grassroots activism. Quite to the contrary, the intent was to cut to the chase---to bring together the leaders in this space who could speak most knowledgably about the issues and challenges at hand, and work together directly (instead of through intermediaries) to find common ground. We are always adding people to the group. If you’re interested in participating, please just say the word.
- Going forward: OSI’s work has been rich and fascinating. But OSI may not end up being in charge of Plan A---tbd. This plan represents the best thinking and recommendations of OSI, but whether these recommendations go anywhere is going to depend on Plan A signatories. You’re right---no plan, however well-intended, can be foisted on the rest of the world unless it is truly inclusive. That’s been a primary concern of everyone in OSI since day 1---that even though this is a remarkably diverse group, it simply isn’t set up to be a policy making body and inclusive as it is, still doesn’t include enough representation from researchers and from all parts of the globe. It’s a wonderful deliberative body, but we can’t decide anything amongst ourselves, which is alternately enlightening and frustrating. It’s going to take a different deliberative mechanism to create common ground policy (which is why we’re also supporting UNESCO with their roadmap effort---they have the tools and minister-level involvement to make policy). Our hope is that Plan A signatories will lead this effort---we’ll know more in the coming months about whether we have enough signatories to do this, whether we have the budget, etc. The “financial” tab on the Plan A site describes what we’ll be able to do with various levels of funding.
That’s my short answer. Does this help? I’m happy to elaborate---probably off-list unless there’s a groundswell of support for having me send another 5000 word email to the list 😊Thanks again for your interest and best regards,GlennGlenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
Glenn Hampson
Hi Kathleen,
It’s definitely a challenge to try to relay the lessons of experience from OSI while at the same time trying to make clear that there are a wide variety of opinions inside this group. I’ve deliberately tried to avoid making statements like “OSI believes” in our reports. I apologize if/when these slip through my emails and less formal communications.
I’ll go ahead and remove your name from the OSI website right now---a few others have requested this over the years as well (as noted on the site). Thanks for the notice.
Best regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Kathleen Shearer
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 9:13 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
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Glenn Hampson
Interesting idea Sandy. With regard to STM, I don’t have the exact numbers off-hand (I’ll look for them) but the general idea is that most STM research is conducted outside of academia, while most STM publishing happens in academia. I’m not sure what this means (maybe someone else here does)---that the type of research is different, or the communication approach is different (with more reliance on white papers in industry), neither, or both.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org> On Behalf Of Thatcher, Sanford Gray
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 9:05 AM
To: 'Peter Murray-Rust' <pm...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>; samuel....@gmail.com; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'scholcomm' <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] [GOAL] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
I have a simple question (whose answer may, however, be complicated) perhaps relevant to defining what "common ground" means, and it is this: does anyone know how many researchers who publish regularly work outside of institutions of higher education in STEM fields compared with HSS fields? My wild guess would be 30% or more for STEM compared with 5% or less for HSS. For the latter there would be places like the Institute for Advanced Study, which included among its permanent faculty such stellar scholars as Albert Hirschman and Michael Walzer, although most people in residence at the Institute have been visiting scholars whose home bases are usually universities. Everybody knows that there are a huge number of researchers active in private industry.
The reason I ask the question is that, in theory, higher education might itself be able to take care of all publishing in HSS fields through university presses or affiliated scholarly societies. It is perhaps no accident that only about 20% of the publishing university presses do is in STEM fields (and only a handful of presses do most of it), where publishing has been dominated by large commercial publishers at least since WWII.
If this hypothesis were to prove correct, it suggests that "common ground" could mean mission-driven nonprofit publishing for HSS fields whereas for STEM fields the interests of commercial publishers would play a much greater role in determining what that common ground is.
A subhypothesis might separate out SS fields from H fields because many more commercial publishers are invested in social sciences than in the humanities.
Sandy Thatcher
Glenn Hampson
Hi Peter,
Sorry. The web list can be hard to parse because it’s alphabetical by first name and not sortable by stakeholder group, plus it hasn’t been updated in a while. But there are actually around a dozen active researchers in OSI (actually more---that’s just their “primary” designation for “accounting” purposes but they can also be a the head of a research organization and an active researcher at the same time), several medical doctors (but again, this isn’t a stakeholder group---these folks may instead be categorized as a journal editor or university official), and representatives from 28 countries in all regions of the world. Most of our current and former OSIers are from the US and Europe, but broadening our international representation is something we’ve been working on for a while.
In the common ground report you’ll find a table showing the most recent count of current participants and their stakeholder “designations” (it’s more detailed than the pie chart from before). This said, as Kathleen has noted, one shouldn’t read into this that x% of the conversation on the OSI list comes from library officials, or y% from commercial publishers. I would say that most of the ongoing deliberation on the list is between scholarly communication analysts and library leaders who really live and breathe these issues on a daily basis.
Stakeholder group | Number of participants (Dec 2019) | Percent of OSI group |
Research universities | 56 | 14% |
Libraries & library groups | 51 | 13% |
Commercial publishers | 39 | 10% |
Open groups and publishers | 37 | 9% |
Industry analysts | 36 | 9% |
Government policy groups | 35 | 9% |
Non-university research institutions | 21 | 5% |
Scholcomm experts | 20 | 5% |
Scholarly societies | 19 | 5% |
Faculty groups | 16 | 4% |
University publishers | 16 | 4% |
Funders | 14 | 4% |
Active researchers | 9 | 2% |
Editors | 8 | 2% |
Journalists | 6 | 2% |
Tech industry | 5 | 1% |
Infrastructure groups | 3 | 1% |
Other universities | 2 | 1% |
Elected officials | 1 | 0% |
TOTAL | 394 | 100% |
I hope this helps.
Best regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 9:23 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <go...@eprints.org>; Samuel Moore <samuel....@gmail.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; scholcomm <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Thanks for outlining this. There are 300-400 people on the OSI list. I could not find:
* any researchers
* any doctors/medics
* anyone from the Global South
But there are 9 directors from Elsevier.
And everyone else is director of this, chief of that, CEO of the other.
In the early days of OA in UK The https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-open-up-publicly-funded-research Finch Report invited the closed access publishers to help reform publishing. For many of us this was a a complete betrayal of the radicalism required. No wonder there has been to progress. That articles are priced at 3500 Euro. That 80% of the social distancing literature is behind a paywall.
This mega committee is a repeat. It cannot reform. It will legitimise the next digital landgrab by the vested interests.
There are publishers who create documents (Read Cube) that are specifically designed to make it impossible to re-use knowledge. And no one except a few of us care.
m.
The business model of megapublishers is to make it as hard as possible to read science. And then collect rent. In software the world works towards interoperable solutions ; in "publishing" we have 100+ competing groups who try as hard as possible to make universal knowledge available.
In the coronavirus pandemic we need global knowledge. The person who does this without publisher control will be sued and possibly jailed. The only person who has liberated science will be jailed if she sets foot in USA.
This is not fantasy. I have seen graduate students careers destroyed by publishers, with no support from their institutions. I myself have had pushback for text and data mining; I have had no practical support from anyone in the Academic system. Although they got the law changed to allow TDM, no Universities in UK dare do anything the publishers might frown on.
I've been on and seen initiative after initiative. I've launched one (Panton Principles) - it probably actually made some difference to protect data before the publishers thought of grabbing it. But most inituiatives achieve nothing. And if they are stuffed with publishers all they do is increase the prices they charge for OA (like DEAL, PlanS and the rest). OA is just a way of milking the taxpayer.
The only thing that will change this is building a better system with a fresh start, almost certainly with young radical people. And Coronavirus might just do that when citizens realize how badly they've been robbed.
P.
Heather Piwowar
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Glenn Hampson
Good point Heather---which precisely why we’ve been trying to get more active researchers into the group. “Researchers” are a highly diverse group, though, with needs varying by field, institution, region, career stage, etc. It’s going to take a unique effort to understand these needs better (part of what Plan A hopes to address).
Best regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
David Wojick
David Wojick
Google does more R&D than NSF or DOE, somewhere around ten billion a year, but I doubt much is published. Might be fun to see how much.
David
One would expect that industry researchers are doing applied science almost exclusively while academic researchers include many who do theoretical science. I can't imagine that any industry researchers are investigating string theory or parallel universes!
From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 11:40 AM
To: Thatcher, Sanford Gray <sg...@psu.edu>; 'Peter Murray-Rust' <pm...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>; samuel....@gmail.com <samuel....@gmail.com>
Cc: 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'scholcomm' <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] [GOAL] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Interesting idea Sandy. With regard to STM, I don’t have the exact numbers off-hand (I’ll look for them) but the general idea is that most STM research is conducted outside of academia, while most STM publishing happens in academia. I’m not sure what this means (maybe someone else here does)---that the type of research is different, or the communication approach is different (with more reliance on white papers in industry), neither, or both.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org> On Behalf Of Thatcher, Sanford Gray
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 9:05 AM
To: 'Peter Murray-Rust' <pm...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>; samuel....@gmail.com; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'scholcomm' <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] [GOAL] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
I have a simple question (whose answer may, however, be complicated) perhaps relevant to defining what "common ground" means, and it is this: does anyone know how many researchers who publish regularly work outside of institutions of higher education in STEM fields compared with HSS fields? My wild guess would be 30% or more for STEM compared with 5% or less for HSS. For the latter there would be places like the Institute for Advanced Study, which included among its permanent faculty such stellar scholars as Albert Hirschman and Michael Walzer, although most people in residence at the Institute have been visiting scholars whose home bases are usually universities. Everybody knows that there are a huge number of researchers active in private industry.
The reason I ask the question is that, in theory, higher education might itself be able to take care of all publishing in HSS fields through university presses or affiliated scholarly societies. It is perhaps no accident that only about 20% of the publishing university presses do is in STEM fields (and only a handful of presses do most of it), where publishing has been dominated by large commercial publishers at least since WWII.
If this hypothesis were to prove correct, it suggests that "common ground" could mean mission-driven nonprofit publishing for HSS fields whereas for STEM fields the interests of commercial publishers would play a much greater role in determining what that common ground is.
A subhypothesis might separate out SS fields from H fields because many more commercial publishers are invested in social sciences than in the humanities.
Sandy Thatcher
From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 10:14 AM
To: 'Peter Murray-Rust' <pm...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>; samuel....@gmail.com <samuel....@gmail.com>
Cc: 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'scholcomm' <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] [GOAL] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Hi Sam, Peter,
Thanks so much for your emails. I’m sorry for the delay in responding---we’re a half a world apart and I’m just getting my morning coffee 😊
You ask a number of important questions. I’ll try to respond concisely, and then just please let me know (directly or on-list) if you need more information:
- <image006.jpg>High level: OSI’s purpose was (and remains) to bring together leaders in the scholarly communication space to share perspectives. A good number of the OSI participants (plus alumni and observers) have been executive directors of nonprofits, vice-presidents of universities, vice-presidents of publishing companies, library deans, directors of research institutes, journal editors, and so on. Also represented are leaders in the open space, and leaders of “born open” journals and efforts who are household names in this space. You can see a rather outdated (sorry) list of OSI partcipants, alumni and observers at http://osiglobal.org/osi-participants/; a graphic is also pasted here (which may or may not survive the emailing). About 18 different stakeholder groups are represented in all---covering 250+ institutions and 28 countries---on a quota system that gives the most weight to university representation.
Shelley Allen
Hi Sandy,
This is a delayed response due to technical difficulties with my email address but I thought I’d still share.
I recently looked at the proportion of Emerald’s content that comes from practice when assessing the impact of APCs on unfunded authors etc. If you’re not aware, Emerald publishes mostly SSH research.
There was high variation but some of our journals publish more than 20% contributions from researchers outside of traditional academic settings. I haven’t yet dived into the detail, but the journals with the most practitioner content for us are in the fields
of Health and Social Care and Business and Management (mostly strategy).
Not to reject your hypothesis, but just to confirm that the picture looked more mixed (at least for Emerald) when I had a look at our author base.
Shelley
Shelley Allen
Head of Open Research | Emerald Publishing
Tel: +44 (0)1274 515633
Mob: +44 (0) 78542 84211
sal...@emerald.com | emeraldpublishing.com | emeraldinsight.com
Emerald Publishing Limited, Registered Office: Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley, BD16 1WA United Kingdom. Registered in England No. 3080506, VAT No. GB 665 3593 06
From:
scholcom...@lists.ala.org
<scholcom...@lists.ala.org>
On Behalf Of Thatcher, Sanford Gray
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 9:05 AM
To: 'Peter Murray-Rust' <pm...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>;
samuel....@gmail.com; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'scholcomm' <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: Re: [SCHOLCOMM] [GOAL] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
I have a simple question (whose answer may, however, be complicated) perhaps relevant to defining what "common ground" means, and it is this: does anyone know how many researchers who publish regularly work outside of institutions of higher education in STEM fields compared with HSS fields? My wild guess would be 30% or more for STEM compared with 5% or less for HSS. For the latter there would be places like the Institute for Advanced Study, which included among its permanent faculty such stellar scholars as Albert Hirschman and Michael Walzer, although most people in residence at the Institute have been visiting scholars whose home bases are usually universities. Everybody knows that there are a huge number of researchers active in private industry.
The reason I ask the question is that, in theory, higher education might itself be able to take care of all publishing in HSS fields through university presses or affiliated scholarly societies. It is perhaps no accident that only about 20% of the publishing university presses do is in STEM fields (and only a handful of presses do most of it), where publishing has been dominated by large commercial publishers at least since WWII.
If this hypothesis were to prove correct, it suggests that "common ground" could mean mission-driven nonprofit publishing for HSS fields whereas for STEM fields the interests of commercial publishers would play a much greater role in determining what that common ground is.
A subhypothesis might separate out SS fields from H fields because many more commercial publishers are invested in social sciences than in the humanities.
Sandy Thatcher
From:
scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org>
on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 10:14 AM
To: 'Peter Murray-Rust' <pm...@cam.ac.uk>; 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' <go...@eprints.org>;
samuel....@gmail.com <samuel....@gmail.com>
Cc: 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>; 'scholcomm' <scho...@lists.ala.org>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] [GOAL] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
Hi Sam, Peter,
Thanks so much for your emails. I’m sorry for the delay in responding---we’re a half a world apart and I’m just getting my morning coffee 😊
You ask a number of important questions. I’ll try to respond concisely, and then just please let me know (directly or on-list) if you need more information:
1.
High
level: OSI’s purpose was (and remains) to bring together leaders in the scholarly communication space to share perspectives. A good number of the OSI participants (plus alumni and observers) have been executive directors of
nonprofits, vice-presidents of universities, vice-presidents of publishing companies, library deans, directors of research institutes, journal editors, and so on. Also represented are leaders in the open space, and leaders of “born open” journals and efforts
who are household names in this space. You can see a rather outdated (sorry) list of OSI partcipants, alumni and observers at
http://osiglobal.org/osi-participants/;
a graphic is also pasted here (which may or may not survive the emailing). About 18 different stakeholder groups are represented in all---covering 250+ institutions and 28 countries---on a quota system that gives the most weight to university representation.
The intent here was not at all to bypass grassroots activism. Quite to the contrary, the intent was to cut to the chase---to bring together the leaders in this space who could speak most knowledgably about the issues and challenges at hand, and work together directly (instead of through intermediaries) to find common ground. We are always adding people to the group. If you’re interested in participating, please just say the word.
2. Going forward: OSI’s work has been rich and fascinating. But OSI may not end up being in charge of Plan A---tbd. This plan represents the best thinking and recommendations of OSI, but whether these recommendations go anywhere is going to depend on Plan A signatories. You’re right---no plan, however well-intended, can be foisted on the rest of the world unless it is truly inclusive. That’s been a primary concern of everyone in OSI since day 1---that even though this is a remarkably diverse group, it simply isn’t set up to be a policy making body and inclusive as it is, still doesn’t include enough representation from researchers and from all parts of the globe. It’s a wonderful deliberative body, but we can’t decide anything amongst ourselves, which is alternately enlightening and frustrating. It’s going to take a different deliberative mechanism to create common ground policy (which is why we’re also supporting UNESCO with their roadmap effort---they have the tools and minister-level involvement to make policy). Our hope is that Plan A signatories will lead this effort---we’ll know more in the coming months about whether we have enough signatories to do this, whether we have the budget, etc. The “financial” tab on the Plan A site describes what we’ll be able to do with various levels of funding.
That’s my short answer. Does this help? I’m happy to elaborate---probably off-list unless there’s a groundswell of support for having me send another 5000 word email to the list 😊
Thanks again for your interest and best regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science
Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open
Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
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Shelley Allen
And I just realised my original message did post, and people did reply – which shows just how on top of my emails I am not. That’s embarrassing! #lockdownfail.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/DB6PR0102MB2822E7A914B49377682CF346DAD30%40DB6PR0102MB2822.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com.
Glenn Hampson
Hi Everyone,
I’m pleased to announce that the summary (and eminently more readable) version of OSI’s Common Ground paper is now available on the Emerald Open platform at https://emeraldopenresearch.com/documents/2-18. We welcome your feedback (emailing me directly is fine). If you have a lot of time on your hands and prefer the full-length version, it’s on the Mason Publishing Group website at https://journals.gmu.edu/index.php/osi/article/view/2725 and also on the Plan A website.
Also, I’m pleased to report that the OSI participants page has been updated to address the recent concerns that were expressed. Thank you for your help us improve our transparency and accountability---this was a valuable exercise.
With best regards,
