Talat Chaudhri has asked me to post the essay below, written by him. There is much to agree with in this essay. I would add only that it is not at all evident that the direct "take-over" of peer review by university consortia that Talat envisions would be more practical or realistic than the Green OA mandates by universities and funders that are now gaining momentum worldwide.
I would add that self-archiving mandates are no more (or less) "coercive" than the publish-or-perish mandates of which they are merely a natural online-age extension: Indeed, two international, interdisciplinary surveys by Alma Swan have found that over 95% of researchers themselves, in all disciplines and all countries, report that they would comply with self-archiving mandates by their universities and funders (81% *willingly*, 14% "reluctantly" and only 5% not at all). And Arthur Sale's studies of implemented mandates confirm these compliance rates. (See the references Swan and Sale references that have been posted in this Forum so many times now that I don't think there's any need for me to post them yet again!) Stevan Harnad ---------- Forwarded message ---------- List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 12:57:10 +0100 From: "Talat Chaudhri [tac]" <tac -- aber.ac.uk> To: Stevan Harnad <harnad -- ecs.soton.ac.uk> Subject: some thoughts on a brave new world [Stevan, please post on the list. Thanks, Talat] I note that we *do* currently have "publish for free and read for free" as far as the author/reader is concerned, though presently limited by authors and publishers (in that order, I think) in its scope, i.e. Green OA. Naturally the publishing industry doesn't want to "downsize" just to operating peer review, since this is often partly paid for in terms of the staff time in academic departments where the academic reviewers are based and otherwise is only really an administrative job. Not a lot of money to be made there, and really academics don't need publishers to do it except for the fact that publishers are usually the inheritors of the prestige journal name brands that everyone wants to be in (except for instance University Presses, which are a halfway house). To "downsize" really means to remove the profitable part of their business: turkeys and Christmas comes to mind. I'm not convinced by the whole concept that publishers shoulder the "costs of peer review", which is a gross oversimplification and varies per discipline. They *do* however shoulder the costs of copy editing, which is quite another service entirely and should be distinguished. However, as Stevan remarks very often, the publishing industry is a service to academics, not vice versa. If horses are replaced by motorcars, horse breeders need to radically downsize their industry and won't be remotely happy about it. Unfortunately for them that is the accepted way things change in the marketplace. Clever horse breeders may find a new niche. It isn't much use arguing that we should stop people using motorcars. For OA the challenge is to persuade academics that repositories are as good compared to subscription journals as motorcars are to horses, or else make it inevitably so (via the mandate or some other means - but let's leave the discussion of means for the present). We have a free service that can potentially offer, by one means or another, whatever the traditional publishing industry can, if not more: inevitably better by virtue of freeing up our resources for other purposes and for better access to all. So who bears the "costs" if everything is "free"? Answer: academic departments, who already give their staff time for peer review. Who funds *them*? Universities, by whatever internal means of allocating funding they may have or develop in response to changing needs. Let's think back to the dawn of academic publishing. Effectively, "publishers" were only a little more than printers. They are a middle man who make their money from organising various parties and from copy-editing. I may note that the costs of type-setting have been effectively removed. Did the type setters complain when their technical skills handling hot metal were no longer required? Too right they did! Wouldn't you if it was your livelihood? All the same, in the real world it was nonetheless inevitable that change had to happen. The truth is that publishers are (and have always been) an umbrella business covering various different functions, but that is not to say that these functions can *necessarily* only be carried out by publishers. I would imagine that the future ought really to involve cross-university peer review bodies rather like those that have existed throughout the history of academic publishing: in my discipline, the Board of Celtic Studies of the former federal University of Wales comes to mind. I see only two minor blocks to this: (1) Many people actually prefer print journals. One practical reason that many people report is eye strain from reading long detailed documents on a screen. To illustrate, why are print books *still* so much more popular than e-books? And why do most people simple print out e-books and e-journals in order to read them. This is not an intractable problem (as solutions have already been found as described by individuals), and does provide some means for publishers to retain this additional printing and binding business, albeit "downsized" a great deal for a more limited old-fashioned market. (2) Currently, as mentioned, the prestige loci of publishing are the brand name journals. This would need to change, which is unlikely to happen overnight. As I said, the publishers, who own them, have the above reasons not to co-operate. Authors have good reasons (like the RAE in Britain or its equivalent elsewhere, or even just their own career development as an academic) to continue to publish in these journals. Herein lies the source of the whole problem that we face. The current tool of choice to break the impasse is the mandate. It isn't necessarily popular with academics because it comes across, as they commonly report to repository managers, as university interference in the copyright that they have traditional enjoyed the right to keep and exploit themselves (even if they in fact squander it by signing it away for no commercial gain to publishers, as they in fact usually do). They like the control, even if it actually delivers no benefits to them in practice and, on the contrary, adds to the publishers' monopolistic exploitation of library budgets that could be better spent on other resources for their departments' research and teaching activities. As Stevan and others have demonstrated, though, nobody has demonstrated a better tested solution than the mandate thus far. I suggest that a return to the old federated peer review boards drawn from across universities may be a useful step. I wonder if we really need a new era of new journals to overthrow the old order. Prestige is not a fixed commodity and must follow the ebbs and flows of academic history. Those prestige names that adapt will survive. In this we need the co-operation of academics to regain control of the levers of scholarly dissemination for themselves. I do not mean to suggest this instead of the mandate, which I agree is a necessary evil in present circumstances (I say "evil" because I'd prefer not to use coercive methods if there were an option - but there currently isn't any). I suggest that it might very well speed up what the mandate is trying to achieve by breaking down the practical barriers that frustrate the proven concept of repositories in open access. Cross-university boards have university interests in mind, as well as access to the necessary expertise for proper and reliable peer review. (As far as copy-editing expertise is concerned, presumably those who have previously been employed by the former publishers will be in the jobs market.) To repeat: for "publish for free and read for free" it is obvious that ultimately the public pocket must fund universities to provide the very cheap peer-review and repository services that are a necessary replacement for the old and expensive (thus superseded) traditional print and electronic subscription publishing model. In the case of private universities, their teaching income will have to provide, or else the public grant model will do so generally for all types of institution based on the merit of their applications for whatever purposes. I will defer to those who have studied scholarly communication in greater depth than myself, so I merely put forward here what I deem to be useful thoughts and one possible method to speed up the transition to OA and break the impasse. It does have the merit of some historical precedent as a publishing method with real academic prestige. I also suspect that present publishers would, under changed market conditions, find ways to emulate this model and compete with it, which is essentially the same as saying that they would make new contractual arrangements with federated groups of universities (rather like a farmers' co-op!). I accept that Gold OA is a problem because academics in the developing world cannot afford the page costs. However, public educational institutions, even in those countries, stand a better chance, especially where the current monopoly were broken and the exorbitant subscription prices are made a thing of the past. Simply put, I am arguing that Green OA, not Gold OA, is the future, but we need to find as many tools to get to it as we can, whether old or new, and use them all. We can supplement the mandate and the IR and speed up their work. Talat ----- Dr Talat Chaudhri, Ymgynghorydd Cadwrfa / Repository Advisor Tîm Cynorthwywyr Pwnc ac E-Lyfrgell / Subject Support and E-Library Team Gwasanaethau Gwybodaeth / Information Services Prifysgol Aberystwyth / Aberystwyth University Llyfrgell Hugh Owen Library, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion. SY23 3DZ E-bost / E-mail: tac -- aber.ac.uk Ffôn / Tel (Hugh Owen): (62)2396 Ffôn / Tel (Llandinam): (62)8724 Ffacs / Fax: (01970) (62)2404 CADAIR: http://cadair.aber.ac.uk Cadwrfa ymchwil ar-lein Prifysgol Aberystwyth Aberystwyth University's online research repository Ymholiadau / Enquiries: cadair -- aber.ac.uk -----Original Message----- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM -- LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of N. Miradon Sent: 22 May 2008 06:35 To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM -- LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG Subject: Open-access does more harm than good in developing world The current issue of Nature has correspondence from Dr Raghavendra Gadagkar. The abstract of his letter (available at [1]) compares and contrasts 'publish for free and pay to read' with 'pay to publish and read for free'. To read the letter in full will cost you USD 18. N Miradon [1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html Nature 453, 450 (22 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/453450c; Published online 21 May 2008