[GOAL] Scholarly Publishing: Where is Plan B?

[Richard Poynder]

To the intense joy of OA advocates, Elsevier announced Monday that it has withdrawn its support for the controversial US Research Works Act.

 

One person who took particular note of the news was Claudio Aspesi, a senior research analyst at the sell-side research firm Sanford Bernstein. Aspesi tracks Elsevier for investors, so on Tuesday he published a new report on the company.

 

While welcoming Elsevier's decision, Aspesi concluded, “Consensus is still treating Elsevier’s problems as cyclical, in spite of the rising evidence the issues are deeper”.

 

More here: http://bit.ly/yf1hqf

 

 

[Stevan Harnad]

Plan C for Open Access: Flea Powder

I've said it before. Maybe the time is now approaching when people
will actually listen:

1. Research libraries cannot, need not and will not cancel journals
until all or almost all their contents are freely accessible to their
users by some other means.

2. Boycotting authors cannot, need not and will not stop publishing in
or reviewing for their best journals: It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

3. Researchers cannot, need not and will not stop serving on the
editorial boards of their best journals. It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

4. Research and researchers cannot, need not and will not abandon peer
review. It is neither necessary nor realistic. There are easier and
better ways to make those journals' contents freely accessible.

5. Journals cannot, need not and will not convert to Gold Open Access
publishing today: That would simply make OA as unaffordable as
subscription access (at current prices).

6. What those who are preoccupied with the journal pricing and
economics keep overlooking is that the one and only reason it matters
so much that journals are overpriced and unaffordable is that there is
no other way to access their contents.

7. Hence only one course of action is realistic, feasible and makes
sense: It will remedy the accessibility problem completely and it will
eventually drive down journal expenses and prices as well as induce a
conversion to Gold OA publishing at an affordable rate.

8. That course of action is for universities and research funders to
mandate Green OA self-archiving.

9. Once Green OA self-archiving becomes universal because it is
universally mandated, the research accessibility is solved.

10. Once the research accessibility problem is solved, journal
affordability is no longer a life-or-death matter: libraries can
cancel journals because their contents are freely accessible to their
users by some other means.

11. Once post-Green-OA cancellations make subscriptions unsustainable
for meeting publishing costs, publishers will downsize to just the
cost of peer review alone, offloading access provision and archiving
onto institutional OA repositories, and converting to Gold OA
publishing.

12. Universities will then have the funds to pay the much lower costs
of peer review alone out of their windfall subscription cancelation
savings.

(It is this optimal and inevitable outcome for research and
researchers that the publishers' lobby is doing its best to forestall
as long as it possibly can. But it's entirely up to the research
community how long they allow them to do it. As long as they do, it
amounts to allowing the flea on its tail to wag the research/dog…)

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged
Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the
Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B.
& Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15617/

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of
Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16
(7/8). http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/

Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton
Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus, 28 (1). pp. 55-59.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18514

Harnad, S. (2011) Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher
Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates. JEDEM Journal of
Democracy and Open Government 3 (1): 33-41.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22401/

Harnad, Stevan (2011) Open Access Is a Research Community Matter, Not
a Publishing Community Matter. Lifelong Learning in Europe.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/22403/

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[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Stevan Harnad <amsci...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 3:19 AM, Richard Poynder
<ri...@richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:
> To the intense joy of OA advocates, Elsevier announced Monday that it has
> withdrawn its support for the controversial US Research Works Act.

I find no joy in progressing from the presently unacceptable position to a worse one and then back to square one.

The only "progress" is to discover even more clearly that publishers are institutionally anti-academic and anti-reader so that the few of us who fight for basic rights have clearer evidence. I take no joy in the total silence of organised academia - not a squeak of comment and support from any major university or library leader.
 

>

2. Boycotting authors cannot, need not and will not stop publishing in
or reviewing for their best journals: It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

3. Researchers cannot, need not and will not stop serving on the
editorial boards of their best journals. It is neither necessary nor
realistic. There are easier and better ways to make those journals'
contents freely accessible.

Tell me how to do it for the American Chemical Society.  The issue has been fought for 10 years with zero progress. Simply restating "press for Green" makes no difference.

7. Hence only one course of action is realistic, feasible and makes
sense: It will remedy the accessibility problem completely and it will
eventually drive down journal expenses and prices as well as induce a
conversion to Gold OA publishing at an affordable rate.

8. That course of action is for universities and research funders to
mandate Green OA self-archiving.

Unless I am told different I assume the following about "Green".
 * there is no ,legal basis for it that can be used to force a publisher such as the ACS to become green
 * there is no contractual agreement between any publishers and "the academic system". Publishers have not committed formally to providing Green indefinitely. Green practice is formally rescindable by the publisher. (Maybe the boycott hass show this might be a poor decision, but large institutions are out of touch and make many bad decisions. I doubt that the universities, unlike the NIH, would have enough courage to challenge an ex-green publisher effecively)

9. Once Green OA self-archiving becomes universal because it is
universally mandated, the research accessibility is solved.

I strongly believe that will never happen. Some publishers like ACS will resist to the end. An organisation which 2 years ago lost 40 million USD in pointless lawsuits will die rather than be forced to change. I also believe that if Greenness started to reach a significant proportion of publications the publishers would rescind it, put other restrictions in its use or marginalise it through other practices. So, for me, the idea that we get 100% green, the publishers drop prices and we then redesign the publishing system is unrealistic. (It might have some hope if Institutional Repositories actually provided some added value rather than being impossible to navigate, hopeless to search automatically, and highly laborious to populate. If Universities actually built a BETTER system we might have some progress - the 2000+ person years spent on IRs is of no value to me and my colleagues.

10. Once the research accessibility problem is solved, journal
affordability is no longer a life-or-death matter: libraries can
cancel journals because their contents are freely accessible to their
users by some other means.

11. Once post-Green-OA cancellations make subscriptions unsustainable
for meeting publishing costs, publishers will downsize to just the
cost of peer review alone, offloading access provision and archiving
onto institutional OA repositories, and converting to Gold OA
publishing.

12. Universities will then have the funds to pay the much lower costs
of peer review alone out of their windfall subscription cancelation
savings.

(It is this optimal and inevitable outcome for research and
researchers that the publishers' lobby is doing its best to forestall
as long as it possibly can. But it's entirely up to the research
community how long they allow them to do it. As long as they do, it
amounts to allowing the flea on its tail to wag the research/dog…)

And the research community shows zero sign of any progress and I therefore challenge the word "inevitable" - I take an opposite view. We've had 10 years of advocacy for Green deposition. I challenge this list to answer the following question:

* Provide me with a list of all the chemistry articles in IRs. (I can do it myself for parts of Pubmed - the parts I am legally allowed to access).

I predict that no-one can answer it. Even if they can I predict that the percentage of current articles is less than 5% and probably less than 1%.

P.
 

--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069

[Stevan Harnad]

I can only repeat, by way of reply to Peter Murray-Rusts concerns,
what I have already replied to him multiple times in the past. I fully
understand Peter's frustration and impatience, but:

(1) What Peter seeks will come once Green OA is universally mandated.

(2) Green OA cannot be universally mandated if we insist on more than
what is within immediate reach.

(3) What is within immediate reach is to mandate immediate Open Access
self-archiving of the authors' refereed final drafts (for over 60% of
journals).

(4) For the remaining 40% (including the ACS journals) what is within
immediate reach is to mandate immediate Closed Access self-archiving
plus the semi-automatic email-eprint-request button (and to put a cap
on allowable the length of the embargo period).

(5) Yes, the American Chemical Society will be the very last of the
publishers to endorse immediate Green OA self-archiving -- but they
too will do it.

(6) Hence the only realistic strategy is to fulminate less for the
unreachable and to grasp the reachable: green OA mandates by both
institutions and funders, worldwide.

Stevan Harnad

PS It is worse than ineffectual not to grasp what is within immediate
reach on the hypothesis that if one reached it might be pulled away!

[Peter Suber]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 3:51 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk> wrote:

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 4:46 AM, Stevan Harnad <amsci...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 3:19 AM, Richard Poynder <ri...@richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:

To the intense joy of OA advocates, Elsevier announced Monday that it has
withdrawn its support for the controversial US Research Works Act.

[...]

I take no joy in the total silence of organised academia - not a squeak of comment and support from any major university or library leader.

Sorry, I can't let this pass. Far from "total silence", an admirable number of universities, libraries, and organizations representing academia publicly opposed the Research Works Act. See my list, which includes links to their public statements.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Notes_on_the_Research_Works_Act

Here's a breakdown of the academic institutions by category:

Among universities:  Arizona State University, University of Arkansas, Auburn University, Brown University, University of California System, University of Central Florida, University of Cincinnati, Clemson University, University of Colorado - Boulder, Columbia University, University of Connecticut, Cornell University, Dakota State University, Florida State University, Georgia State University, Harvard University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Indiana University, University of Iowa, Johns Hopkins University, University of Kansas, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, University of Maryland, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina - Greensboro, North Carolina State University, Northern Illinois University, Ohio State University, University of Oregon, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania State University, University of Pittsburgh, Portland State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, South Dakota State University, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale, Stanford University, State University of New York - Albany, State University of New York - Buffalo, State University of New York - Stony Brook, University of South Dakota, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, Washington University - St. Louis, Wayne State University, the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Among libraries and library associations:  American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Greater Western Library Alliance, Progressive Librarians Guild, Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Society of American Archivists, State University of New York Council of Library Directors, and the William A. Wise Law Library at the University of Colorado Law School.

Among other organizations representing academia:  American Association of State Colleges and Universities, American Association of University Professors, American Medical Student Association, Association of American Universities, Association of Independent Research Institutes, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and Universities Allied for Essential Medicines.

     Peter

Peter Suber

gplus.to/petersuber 

[Dana Roth]

One would hope that knowledgeable contributors would please refrain from criticizing  ‘publishers’ as a group ... as though there were no differences in their policies towards academics.  

 

The stark contrast between the  policies of the American Physical Society, for example, and many  commercial publishers is so transparently obvious that I need say no more.

 

 

Dana L. Roth
Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32
1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125
626-395-6423  fax 626-792-7540
dzr...@library.caltech.edu
http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 7:32 PM, Dana Roth <dzr...@library.caltech.edu> wrote:

One would hope that knowledgeable contributors would please refrain from criticizing  ‘publishers’ as a group ... as though there were no differences in their policies towards academics.  

 

The stark contrast between the  policies of the American Physical Society, for example, and many  commercial publishers is so transparently obvious that I need say no more.

I agree that  there are a few publishers who do not fit into the broad category I have suggested. This is true of all industries. There are companies in the pharmaceutical industry that do not deserve the criticism that many have for the major companies. But if we have to write "the pharmaceutical industry excepting A, B, C" or "except those that don't do X" discourse becomes impossible. It's a crude generalisation and polarizes debate but it is necessary for those who feel the whole system is completely flawed.

The RWA action was taken through the Association of American Publishers and these account for a very significant  volume of published scholarly articles. Actions are taken which are broadly seen as coming from the industry rather than individual members. This has come up before with PRISM where publishers collaborated to discredit the Open Access movement. . There is then public criticism and a few members distance themselves, the fuss dies down and the publishers remain with the association. This has also happened with RWA. Members of the association are judged by the actions of their communal organization.

There is no sign that the publishing industry per se - apart perhaps from PLoS and a very few other small publishers is actively trying to change the current model - most of the others use traditional subscription models and are bound into the practice of the dominant model.

[Peter Murray-Rust]

My apologies to these institutions and thanks for their efforts. It wasn't what I intended to say.

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