New US open access policy
Glenn Hampson
David Wojick
As a public and publicly-funded effort, the conversations on this list can be viewed by the public and are archived. To read this group's complete listserv policy (including disclaimer and reuse information), please visit http://osinitiative.org/osi-listservs.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Open Scholarship Initiative" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to osi2016-25+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/33365AB5-E775-427E-89F6-012B80594942%40nationalscience.org.
David Wojick
Danny Kingsley
On 26 Aug 2022, at 11:11 pm, David Wojick <dwo...@craigellachie.us> wrote:
Now we see what the publishers do. They might sue, given that the embargo was the compromise that kept them from suing last time. Or they might decide that this program is harmless. I am sure they are discussing it.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/BD133911-8A1A-481F-BD11-5DD65772C6F9%40craigellachie.us.
JJE Esposito
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/543CF087-85E3-4BE4-8503-BE0D6F0A04EB%40gmail.com.
Lisa Hinchliffe
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/543CF087-85E3-4BE4-8503-BE0D6F0A04EB%40gmail.com.
David Wojick
Glenn Hampson
Hi All,
Looking through the policy again just now (12 hours opposite Danny), it’s intriguingly vague. The overriding goal is “to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release.” To reach this goal, every federal agency that funds research will need to come up with their own mechanisms. I don’t disagree that the net effect over time might be to push the US toward a gold rush, but in the short term, there may also be a whole lot of KISS (keep it simple stupid) solutions that dot the horizon, such as:
- Green, baby. A massive infusion of green content along with a massive upgrade to what green repositories can do (connectedness, discoverability, etc.) would be fantastic outcome for research (remember the All-Scholarship Repository?), providing that the incentives get aligned. Will researchers see the prestige in this route? Will overlay journals pop up that curate the best-of-green and sell it by subscription? Will peer review mechanisms keep pace such that these repositories will be well-regarded and not just junk heaps?
- What about subscription journals? The kicker here, as Michael noted, is that there’s comparatively little prestige in green, so “open” may mean gold. Even still, the overwhelming majority of prestigious journals are subscription based. Researchers publish in these venues and cite articles in these venues for a reason---not because they’re vain, but because these venues are generally older and more established, and the articles in them are reliably vetted, high quality, and relevant. It doesn’t seem likely---economically---that all these journals will be able to flip to gold in a hurry (and this flip will need to be very fast in order to meet the 2025 deadline). So, this policy will either be extended to give journals more time to flip, or, it will be softened at the edges such that subscription journals can qualify for inclusion by becoming hybrid (wherein the research supported by federal funding is gold but the rest of the journal stays subscription). By this thinking, the next wave of growth will be flips to hybrid, not gold.
- Parsing “publicly accessible.” CC-BY isn’t a requirement (yet). The lowest common denominator of publicly accessible is free to read, and PubMedCentral already does this, so no new wheels will need to be invented for researchers. Personally, I like this vagueness. Data should be CC-0 and but text can be searched/summarized without being CC-BY (even though the majority of new articles being deposited to PMC carry some version of a CC-BY license).
- Fallout from “on their free and public release.” What does this mean? There are two competing forces at work here. Pulling in one direction, researchers need to publish asap to register their discovery. Pulling in the other direction, many researchers are compelled (often legally, by partnership agreements with the private firms they are partnering with---think pharma and biotech research) to sit on their data long enough to eke out maximum value before making it public. To satisfy the first need, we may see a rise in use of “discovery registration” as a precursor to publishing---not a full-on pre-print or journal article, but a public notice that entity x has made discovery y (because you may not want to publish your work right away, but you still need to announce your discovery). To satisfy the second need, researchers will be instructed to build more time into their research timelines---to extend their federal funding requests 6-12 months such that they’re sitting on the data for a while longer (meaning that the pace of science communication and discovery will slow, not accelerate). I’m not disagreeing with Danny about embargos---just noting that they serve a purpose in the incentive system so those so incentivized will invent workarounds, and the end result will be a new world of unintended consequences.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/543CF087-85E3-4BE4-8503-BE0D6F0A04EB%40gmail.com.
T Scott
As we noted in our recent paper describing the impact of the Roundtable on the 2013 Holdren memo, it was clear that the only policy issue undecided by OSTP in the spring of 2012 was what to do about the embargo (that the policy wasn't announced for nearly another year had to do with politics, not policy). They wanted real evidence for the impact of embargoes of whatever length and despite all of the rhetoric from all sides, there was none. All that could be said at the time was that the scattering of 12-month embargoes had had no demonstrable impact on subscriptions. We recommended using the 12-months as a starting point while encouraging the agencies to work closely with their disciplinary communities to examine the impact and develop evidence for longer or shorter embargoes on an agency by agency basis. Language to that effect made it into the final OSTP guidance, but I'm not aware of any real efforts in that direction (I'm not sure if we were naive or merely hopeful in suggesting that there should be). What is clear a decade later is that the scholarly publishing enterprise remains as healthy as it was prior to 2013, so it's not surprising that OSTP finally decided to go ahead with eliminating the embargoes altogether. I have a note from Fred Dylla this morning in which he laments the lack of significant broad stakeholder engagement and suggests it's unlikely the agencies will be able to deliver their plans within the timeframe required. He also notes that analysis from Howard Ratner at CHORUS and David Weinreich at STM will provide some clues as to how publishers may be likely to respond.
On Aug 26, 2022, at 9:31 AM, Lisa Hinchliffe <lisali...@gmail.com> wrote:
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CAKjLim2YAnkk4ejutEmz%3Ddnb1TGAGqK_p_-oQ0_ym-au1OMQMQ%40mail.gmail.com.
Glenn Hampson
Ooh. Please explain---how/where do you read/interpret this?
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of David Wojick
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2022 9:06 AM
To: JJE Esposito <jjoh...@gmail.com>
Cc: osi2016-25-googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: New US open access policy
Joe, the embargo has only been eliminated on the federal posting of the accepted manuscript by the agency repositories. Authors can still publish in any journal they choose, including subscription journals that never make the VOR articles OA. So there is no mandate to publish OA.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/3203DB3F-8232-4D67-A75E-EBDBB84710B9%40craigellachie.us.
David Wojick
Hi All,
Looking through the policy again just now (12 hours opposite Danny), it’s intriguingly vague. The overriding goal is “to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release.” To reach this goal, every federal agency that funds research will need to come up with their own mechanisms. I don’t disagree that the net effect over time might be to push the US toward a gold rush, but in the short term, there may also be a whole lot of KISS (keep it simple stupid) solutions that dot the horizon, such as:
- Green, baby. A massive infusion of green content along with a massive upgrade to what green repositories can do (connectedness, discoverability, etc.) would be fantastic outcome for research (remember the All-Scholarship Repository?), providing that the incentives get aligned. Will researchers see the prestige in this route? Will overlay journals pop up that curate the best-of-green and sell it by subscription? Will peer review mechanisms keep pace such that these repositories will be well-regarded and not just junk heaps?
- What about subscription journals? The kicker here, as Michael noted, is that there’s comparatively little prestige in green, so “open” may mean gold. Even still, the overwhelming majority of prestigious journals are subscription based. Researchers publish in these venues and cite articles in these venues for a reason---not because they’re vain, but because these venues are generally older and more established, and the articles in them are reliably vetted, high quality, and relevant. It doesn’t seem likely---economically---that all these journals will be able to flip to gold in a hurry (and this flip will need to be very fast in order to meet the 2025 deadline). So, this policy will either be extended to give journals more time to flip, or, it will be softened at the edges such that subscription journals can qualify for inclusion by becoming hybrid (wherein the research supported by federal funding is gold but the rest of the journal stays subscription). By this thinking, the next wave of growth will be flips to hybrid, not gold.
- Parsing “publicly accessible.” CC-BY isn’t a requirement (yet). The lowest common denominator of publicly accessible is free to read, and PubMedCentral already does this, so no new wheels will need to be invented for researchers. Personally, I like this vagueness. Data should be CC-0 and but text can be searched/summarized without being CC-BY (even though the majority of new articles being deposited to PMC carry some version of a CC-BY license).
- Fallout from “on their free and public release.” What does this mean? There are two competing forces at work here. Pulling in one direction, researchers need to publish asap to register their discovery. Pulling in the other direction, many researchers are compelled (often legally, by partnership agreements with the private firms they are partnering with---think pharma and biotech research) to sit on their data long enough to eke out maximum value before making it public. To satisfy the first need, we may see a rise in use of “discovery registration” as a precursor to publishing---not a full-on pre-print or journal article, but a public notice that entity x has made discovery y (because you may not want to publish your work right away, but you still need to announce your discovery). To satisfy the second need, researchers will be instructed to build more time into their research timelines---to extend their federal funding requests 6-12 months such that they’re sitting on the data for a while longer (meaning that the pace of science communication and discovery will slow, not accelerate). I’m not disagreeing with Danny about embargos---just noting that they serve a purpose in the incentive system so those so incentivized will invent workarounds, and the end result will be a new world of unintended consequences.
Best,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
JJE Esposito
Michael Clarke
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CABcSf%2BhZtBbX8dwBR_nCsBKe6iZnT5VAcMWQ6j1QoeYBm564NA%40mail.gmail.com.
David Wojick
Lisa Hinchliffe
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/B3794F33-CB25-4314-9E35-6D47619F680A%40gmail.com.
David Wojick
Glenn Hampson
David---interesting if true, but I think your interpretation is at odds with the specificity of section 3a: that articles “are made freely available and publicly accessible by default in agency-designated repositories without any embargo or delay after publication.” So, yes, a researcher COULD publish in a subscription journal, but only if that journal made the article free to read (at minimum) immediately upon publishing.
Michael Clarke
Lisa Hinchliffe
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/127BDB57-DAB7-4E12-94BE-48427717EB23%40craigellachie.us.
David Wojick
David Wojick
David Wojick
Lisa Hinchliffe
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/40E1C014-AF1F-470E-9A93-AAA8FBC64F73%40craigellachie.us.
Michael Clarke
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/CAKjLim0SP-1xBUA1cC8NcU-VuAWwsiQS1xpKY19R-gn2j9%2BJwQ%40mail.gmail.com.
T Scott
On Aug 26, 2022, at 10:25 AM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:
David Wojick
David Wojick
Glenn Hampson
Interesting angle---thanks David, Scott.
Do you really think libraries will unsubscribe, Scott? Much of the world’s research will still be in subscription format, and subscribers will no doubt be increasingly enticed with more and more value-added---high functioning data warehouses, for instance. So, even if embargoes are dropped and the US government starts paying APC fees to publishers, won’t this be IN ADDITION to subscription funds (for overlay journals, China journals, etc.)?
Either way, it seems like we’re heading for a massive payday for publishers, who have demonstrated they aren’t likely to go quietly into the night.
Still, as the smoke clears, even will all this spinning of the wheels, this dreamed about benefit from open access/data doesn’t materialize unless the info/data is truly integrated and interoperable, which is a massive undertaking unto itself (and one that hasn’t been executed anywhere at scale---it’s a truly complex task well beyond the scope of anything anyone in the open community has discussed). Massive open initiatives without purpose or focus (beyond just making things open) aren’t likely to deliver on the promise of open. As we posited long ago in this group, open should be a means to an end, not the end itself.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/8355CB8B-4B36-4ACB-9457-78C7CFE7A949%40gmail.com.
T Scott
On Aug 26, 2022, at 11:40 AM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:
Mel DeSart
Libraries are already unsubscribing, and not because of anything of note to do with the original OSTP directive from 2013. Rather, put crudely, at least SOME libraries have finally grown a pair and have started pushing back against the packaging, pricing, and license terms of content, particularly from commercial publishers. The University of Washington isn’t cutting edge on this front in the least, but we reduced our spend with Wiley last year, we’re working to reduce our spend with Elsevier this year, and we’ll be looking to reduce our spend with Springer-Nature next year. The timing on those is tied entirely to when existing multi-year deals are expiring or have expired. Doing that frees up collections money to invest in other publishing ventures that we feel are worthy of support without having to go to the Provost to ask for additional funding to be able to make those investments.
We’d like to believe that the stronger stance that we and other libraries are taking in these negotiations also sends a message to at least some of those publishers that we’ve finally realized that we have some power and leverage in our journal negotiations with those publishers AND that we’re going to start exercising some of it. Our ILL and document delivery systems are well-enough developed that we can get a scan of an article for a researcher in just a day or two (and sometimes within just a few hours). And while faculty may have initially objected to losing _immediate_ access to content from a particular journal, most have been happy enough that we’ve been able to get them a copy of an article they need in relatively short order that the long-term grousing is pretty minimal.
Some library systems have realized (and more are beginning to) that while publishers control their content, academic libraries control the money that pays for that content, so they DO have more leverage in package negotiations than they realized they had. And because these kinds of situations are no longer isolated, but rather are happening at libraries all over the U.S. (and likely more broadly, although I’m not as well acquainted with journal negotiations of institutions in other countries), commercial publishers are recognizing that libraries reducing their spend is leaning toward becoming the norm rather than an occasional isolated instance. Publishers obviously don’t like to see subscription cuts, and NOT just for financial reasons. Part of publishers’ power is the number of titles they’re able to publish and the reputation of their journals portfolio. When enough libraries start cutting journals from a particular publisher, that begins to impact the prestige of that publisher as well as its bottom line. Based on what I am hearing from colleagues, as well as a publisher rep or two, at least some commercial publishers are resigning themselves to the fact that libraries ARE going to cut titles from their current packages and that those publishers are more looking to limit the degree of cuts rather than to try to stop them altogether.
In the short term, I don’t think the updated directive from OSTP will have much of any impact on subscriptions. There are core journals from every publisher that libraries will continue to want to subscribe to because their user community publishes in those journals and wants to read the work that others publish in those journals. Whether the new directive emboldens more libraries to push back against publisher offers to try to gain more control over their spend (and their negotiations with those publishers) or whether it makes libraries that have already pushed back push even harder the next time they enter into negotiations with a particular publisher remains to be seen.
Mel
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/BN6PR1701MB17324AB10C92D11F90566895C5759%40BN6PR1701MB1732.namprd17.prod.outlook.com.
Lisa Hinchliffe
T Scott
On Aug 26, 2022, at 9:44 PM, Lisa Hinchliffe <lisali...@gmail.com> wrote: