On 14 May 2012, at 23:59, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) wrote:
Hi all,
[cut]
Â
Jan â thank you for the constructive suggestion to make all the journal
material available with delayed open access (CC-BY, fully re-usable and
mine-able) after a reasonable embargo period. Why do you suppose it is
that more publishers have not done just this, and are there any ways to
offer reassurance or otherwise help to overcome any real or perceived
barriers?
Hi Alicia,
The ideal situation in my view is immediate BOAI-compliant open access (CC-BY)
whereby the peer-reviewed published version of an article, the version of
record, is made available, with full re-use and mining rights, immediately upon
publication, in both XML/HTML and PDF formats.
That means 'gold' open access, and that in turn means, in practice, author-side
paid CC-BY open access, as offered by e.g. PLoS and BMC. There are few
exceptions to the 'author-side paid' element, though sometimes they take the
form of behind-the-scenes subsidies (charities, etc.), either direct or
indirect. Note the 'author-side paid' as opposed to 'author-paid'.Â
When publishers offer author-side paid open access, it makes no sense not to
cover the resulting publications with a CC-BY (or equivalent) licence, and
retain some kind of 'control', such as an NC clause, which I've described as
'profit-spite' as it is neither logical nor reasonable. Btw, not only publishers
display these visceral 'control' reactions; some authors do as well. The control
culture of © is perhaps debit to that.
Some publishers, however, are simply not able to offer such author-side paid
open access and at the same time sustain their profit levels, as the amount of
revenue they make per article published is such that it would translate into an
open access 'article processing fee' that is beyond what authors â and, more
to
the point, funding bodies â would recognise as reasonable and therefore
potentially acceptable. I suspect Elsevier falls in this category. (In contrast,
Springer, for example, could offer open access to all its journals â the
hybrid
option â because it made only in the order of half the average revenue per
article that Elsevier made at the time, and so Springer would run no risks of
losing revenues in the hypothetical event of every author all of a sudden
choosing the open access option at the article processing fee levels deemed
acceptable by major funders.
How to reconcile the legitimate desire â need even â of academia for
immediate
full (CC-BY) open access, with the desire â and need in the capitalist system
we
live in â of publishers to protect their revenue and profit levels?
We can't. So what's the next best solution?Â
Serious concessions have already been made to the ideal situation of immediate
CC-BY open access. The full open access as described in the BOAI (CC-BY is the
best representation of it) has already been watered down to 'ocular access'
only, a.k.a. 'gratis OA', just human-readable. Another concession has been the
quiet dropping of the call for immediacy. In many institutional mandates there
is a provision for an embargo.
Instead of reacting with fear to demands from the scientific community, Elsevier
could proact and take a lead in seeing these concessions as an opportunity.
Asking why other publishers haven't done this is really below the dignity of the
largest publisher, who should, and could, show leadership instead of meek
followship.Â
One step could be to promote self-archiving instead of reluctantly allowing it
and then only under certain circumstances. But given that immediacy is obviously
not considered the most important feature of OA by many of its advocates (vide
many mandates), and immediacy is perhaps the most understandable of the
publishers' fears, there is an opportunity for Elsevier to make all the journal
material it publishes available with full open access, CC-BY, after a reasonable
embargo of a year, maybe two years in less fast-moving disciplines.Â
It is highly unlikely that revenue levels would be materially affected (to the
chagrin of some, no-doubt, but that's another discussion), and yet the
usefulness of the published literature to the world at large would increase
spectacularly, so here is a potential coup for Elsevier. And a chance to reclaim
a leadership role in scientific publishing.
There will be fears about 'slippery slopes' in the company, of course (what if
academics demand a shorter embargo?; what if librarians cancel because they
believe their patrons can wait a year for access?), but they cut little ice and
can be characterised as 'cold water fears'. Unintended consequences and customer
demands are a fact of life in any scenario, and the slippery slope of retentive
policies (academic/author resentment, boycotts, atrocious PR, etc.) may be far
more slippery and ultimately destructive.
Your call.
Best,
Jan
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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