THE LIBRARY COMMUNITY, THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY AND OPEN ACCESS
Stevan Harnad This is a reply to David Goodman's posting. I think the pattern emerging is clear: The library community, pressed by its journal budget crisis, is far less interested in Open Access than in re-forming the journal publishing system. The research community, in contrast is (or would be if it were informed about the facts of access and impact, as it will be) far more interested in immediate Open Access than in re-forming the journal publishing system. This substantial difference in priorities is what is behind the differences in perceptions and strategies. Immediate Open Access will not come about through the efforts of the library community, apparently, as their interest is simply not in that. Helene Bosc is entirely right that the OA movement needs to focus on the needs of researchers now, particularly as the means of providing immediate OA are in researchers' hands. Meanwhile the library community can proceed in parallel in their efforts to re-form the publishing system. The Berlin Declaration, however, and its implementation, is another matter. It cannot be allowed to provide only, or even primarily, for the objectives of the library community (publishing reform). OA is primarily for research and researchers, as Helene Bosc (a librarian!) clearly noted; it is provided by and for researchers, and the primary means of providing it is self-archiving. David may be satisfied with the current size (5%) and growth rate (not yet known) of OA via OA journal publishing, but research and researchers certainly should not be. The Schloegl/Velden Roadmap, in its current form, does not reflect the need of the research community for immediate OA; it reflects only the desire of the library community for eventual OA publishing. This needs to be remedied. Moreover, the Roadmap, which is meant to be a concrete implementation of the abstract principles in the Berlin Declaration, is nothing of the sort. It just consists of more vague principles, and aimed mostly at eventual publishing re-form, not at immediate OA provision. This needs to be corrected, with a concrete Roadmap for the provision of OA, by and for researchers, not just the possible/eventual re-form of publishing in the direction of OA publishing. Here are some comments: On Tue, 25 May 2004, David Goodman wrote: > Helene asks why she perceived an emphasis on OA journals [in the > [Schloegl/Velden Roadmap for implementing the Berlin Declaration] > I think the emphasis on OA journals is due to 2 factors: > > 1. The probability of OA journals succeeding is perceived to be much > greater than most people would have said a year ago. Yes, but has anyone looked at the actual evidence, rather than the perceptions? First, the current 1097 OA journals listed by DOAJ http://www.doaj.org/ were not created or converted in the past year; it just took DOAJ a year to catch up with them. OA journals have been created/converted (and unconverted and terminated) continuously for the past 15 years. What has changed in the past several years is OA *consciousness* -- plus the gathering and cataloguing of OA journals (in DOAJ). It would be very interesting to see the true figures on the current growth rate of OA journals (i.e., new creations/conversions), and to see it charted and extrapolated across time. For only such data will give us a realistic idea of how far away 100% OA actually lies along this "golden" road of OA journal publishing. We will soon be compiling these figures. And comparing them with the OA growth rate via the "green" road of self-archiving articles published in non-OA journals: Both the percentage of OA and the growth rate there are known, and I am pretty sure that both are considerably higher than the percentage of OA and growth rate via the golden road (as reckoned in terms of number of OA articles). http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=analysis My guess is that the current annual percentages of OA via green and gold are, respectively, 20% and 5%. But far more important than the much higher actual annual number of OA articles via the green road compared to the gold road is the fact that the green road has the *immediate* potential to provide 100% OA (or 83% if you want to consider only the journals that have already given author self-archiving their official green light). http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html It is this potential for immediate OA provision that research and researchers will be interested in, even if it does not interest those who are concerned only about eventual publishing reform, via the golden road. > 2. The repository model (self-archiving) has now been understood. > I suggest (though Stevan will strongly disagree) that it is best suited > for a secondary position. David is suggesting that self-archiving, even though it already provides more annual OA, and is immediately capable of providing 100% OA, is secondary: Secondary to what? and for what? It is certainly secondary for publication reform, but it is just as certainly primary for immediate OA provision. The rest is simply about whether it is the needs of research and researchers that one regards as primary, insofar as OA is concerned, or something else. > If the publication system is able to shift > to OA journals and if the relatively small costs savings is sufficient, > then they are probably far superior for at least the immediate future. If I succeed in following David here, he seems to be saying that *if* publishing is able (and willing, presumably) to switch to OA publishing in the immediate future, then that is better than not. But is this a realistic expectation, for the immediate future? and one that we are justified in waiting for? and justified in neglecting immediate self-archiving for? > The reason for the superiority is not necessary their intrinsic merits, but > their familiarity: everyone already knows how the citation, archiving, > refereeing, and tenure systems work with journals. Here I cannot follow at all: It sounded above as if David was speculating that the remaining 23,000 of the 24,000 peer-reviewed journal would convert to OA publishing in the immediate future. This already takes a lot of imagination, and has no evidence to back it up. But what further reforms does David have in mind? And when does he imagine them happening? And why? And what do they have to do with OA? > 2A. The repository model has one immense advantage: it costs much > less. If it turns out that the OA alternative cannot be widely or > universally adopted because of financial consideration, we have an > excellent alternative. One has to do considerable work to decode this passage: What is the "repository model"? Self-archiving is not a rival "model": It is another means of providing OA to the articles published according to the existing publishing model! And what costs are being compared here? Publishing costs and archiving costs? But that's like comparing transportation costs and hitch-hiking costs! Self-archiving is merely an author's way of providing supplementary, toll-free access to his published articles, for all would-be users whose institutions may not be able to pay the access-tolls for the journal's version. David is so fixated on OA as publication reform that he does not seem to be able to recognize Open Access as Open Access! He thinks that "the OA alternative" is OA publishing, and OA publishing alone, and that self-archiving is just some sort of fall-back position, should OA publishing fail! David: Open Access means researchers can access the full texts of published journal articles toll-free. That's all it means. The rest is just a conflation with publication-reform speculations. > 2B. Although I have no doubt whatsoever that we will soon work out all > the problems of citation, archiving, refereeing, and tenure systems > for self-archiving, it is still premature to claim that we have already > done this. I am lost again. Self-archiving is merely providing Open Access to the 95% of articles that are published in non-OA journals. What on earth needs to be "worked out" regarding citation, refereeing and tenure systems for self-archiving -- apart from the fact that the OA will substantially enhance the number of citations? David is again so fixated on publishing reform that he does not seem able to grasp that Open Access just means Open Access: Open Access to what there is *now*; not to or in some hypothetical future publication or evaluation system. > In particular, I at least (and possibly a few other people) regard > self-archiving on individual servers as intrinsically unreliable, > since it is based on the active human lifespan. Once all universities > have suitable archives, and all people use them, it will be another > matter. But, once more, we aren't quite there yet. Here again, the library community seems incapable of conceiving of self-archiving as anything but an alternative storage medium: David, that is not the point! To self-archive an article is to provide a *supplementary means of access to it, for those who cannot afford the toll-access version*! Stop worrying about the intrinsic unreliability of servers and the human lifespan. Think instead of the impact that is being lost by research and living but mortal researchers as we spend all this time discussing preservation instead of self-archiving our articles, as the physicists have been doing since 1991 -- with their articles still as openly accessible today as they were 13 years ago! What is missing is not archives. There are already plenty of archives: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse What is missing is *articles* in those archives: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?page=all And one reason (not the sole reason, but a big one) why those articles are missing is because the institutions that created them do not have a self-archiving policy: http://software.eprints.org/handbook/departments.php And the main reason institutions do not have a self-archiving policy is because so many so-called OA proponents are merely proponents of publishing re-form and OA publishing, rather than proponents of OA itself: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php > 2C. AND this one I think Stevan will agree with: > > While we are working out the details and getting the supporters for > better eventual systems of either sort, > > ALL researchers should use what we have now, and get their friends and > colleagues to do the same. No, the rationale for self-archiving is not merely as a place-holder or stage-setter for publishing re-form! That's no way to encourage researchers to self-archive. The rationale for self-archiving is to provide OA! And the rationale for providing OA is to maximize research access so as to maximize research impact. http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html > Only a few of us really want to work on improving the publishing system > as a primary activity--most researchers would much rather work in their > subject, and publish as effectively as possible. For those who do want > to work--as I do-- on the publishing system primarily, there are three > equally desirable routes: > > 1. To persuade everyone working in any field of scholarship to archive > immediately, as best and as fast as possible > > 2. To further develop the repository (self-archiving) system in any of > its aspects. > > 3. To persuade publishers of the advantage of converting to OA > journals--or starting new ones. > > I seem to have chosen no.3; Stevan no.1. There's a lot of work ahead > for all. I do not see the Roadmap as concentrating excessively on any > one of them. David has chosen publishing re-form, I have chosen immediate OA provision. But the Schloegl/Velden Roadmap, apart from being exceedingly vague and saying nothing concrete about implementation (except that it would be a good idea to subsidize authors' OA journal publishing costs) is, like David, focussed exclusively on 3, and ignoring 1 entirely. (There is no "2": Archives don't need developing: they need filling!) Stevan Harnad