The only essential cost in peer-reviewed research publication in the online (PostGutenberg) era is the cost of managing peer review.
Harnad, S (2014) The only way to make inflated journal subscriptions unsustainable: Mandate Green Open Access <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/> . *LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog **4/28 * http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/ Harnad, S. (2014) Crowd-Sourced Peer Review: Substitute or supplement for the current outdated system? <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/21/crowd-sourced-peer-review-substitute-or-supplement/> *LSE Impact Blog* 8/21 August 21 2014 http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/21/crowd-sourced-peer-review-substitute-or-supplement/ Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/>. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8) <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html>. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/ On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 10:04 PM, Éric Archambault < eric.archamba...@science-metrix.com> wrote: > Heather > > I think using the term "toll" when what we mean is "subscription" is quite > limiting. There is always a toll charged or taken whatever the model used > to diffuse scientific knowledge. The important question is not about toll > or profit, it is about seeking an effective knowledge delivery system that > is as close as possible to universal access to academic and scientific > knowledge, while doing this relatively efficiently at the system level. > Like anything else in our money-mediated society, there is a cost > associated with achieving this objective. Several models are available, all > with their own tolls. > > PLoS charges tolls at the entry point in the form of Article Processing > Charge while Elsevier charges tolls in the form of subscription. Both limit > access at one end of the communication pipeline (to publish, or to read), > both charge money. Hence, Elsevier and PLoS both are toll access publishers. > > Everything being equal, between the two, the APC model is inherently more > efficient as it more largely unleashes the $450 billion spent annually by > governments the world over to support public research. However, it presents > its own problems of equal access (that is, equal access to the capacity to > publish equal quality papers) and is likely to perpetuate the North-South > divide if no steps are taken. > > Gold with no APC is certainly also associated with large tolls, including > resource allocation inefficiencies, and lack of sustainability which > reduces the value of the published output (it takes a long time to build a > reputation for a publication venue and papers in abandoned journals are > less likely to be read over time). Individuals in the top 5% income bracket > (e.g. university professors) producing journals is not a model of efficient > allocation of public money. Finding long term sustainable income to pay for > the rest of the personnel involved in APC-less gold also present some > definitive challenges, sustainability being the toughest. > > Hybrid, à la pièce, gold probably present the worse of all worlds as it is > expensive, paid twice for, and very difficult to discover considering that > publishers are packaging these papers among the restricted access material. > These should be duplicated on separate parts of the publishers' website and > their metadata freely harvestable by anyone, and the papers themselves mass > downloadable. This would increase their value, and facilitate oversight. > > Green alas does not seem to save it all. On the Southampton repository, > there are only some 7000-8000 peer-reviewed published papers which are > available for download out of about 57,000 claimed peer-reviewed papers in > the repository. For most of these 57,000 items, there is only fairly > unequal quality and often incomplete metadata (what is the purpose of > putting varying quality metadata in a repo if no associated paper is > available is something I still have to understand), and frequently, when > there is a paper, access is restricted to Southampton. Postscript files > (.ps) are nice for technically inclined users but most ordinary users do > not what to do with them and having PDF presenting only a cover page is > only a loss of time. Sifting through this is time consuming, presents a > huge toll in time, as the signal to noise ratio really is poor. This model > takes its toll on the those who depose, and on those who are audacious > enough to search in there. In my opinion, for what it's worth, Green in > institutional repositories needs to be re-loaded with clean, curated, and > useful documents, as currently it is mostly a mess that hides too few gems. > > If we had proper economic models, we would probably find that the social > optimum at the moment for green is in the form of central "repositories" > such as arXiv, CiteSeerX, PubMedCentral and Scielo. If we had hard data, we > would certainly find that they cost very little to operate per available > paper. These are smart models as they present considerable economies of > scale, reasonable user friendliness and good discoverability, in addition > to making their metadata available and making papers fairly convenient to > retrieve. This model of access is great. > > Getting closer to universal access to public knowledge is not a simple > question of tolls - it comprises subscription costs, publications costs, > production costs, distribution cost, opportunity costs. > > Eric Archambault > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On > Behalf Of Heather Morrison > Sent: April-29-15 8:42 PM > To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > Subject: [GOAL] Elsevier (and other traditional publishers) and PLOS > > Elsevier has much in common with Public Library of Science: both are > scholarly publishing organizations, focused on science, and in my opinion > both aggressively advocate sometimes for the best interests of scholarship, > but often primarily for their own business interests. > > If policy-makers are aiming to help traditional publishers like Elsevier > survive in an open access environment (a goal I am not sure we all agree > on), then in formulating policies it is important to keep in mind some very > basic differences. > > PLOS was born digital and open access and with a full commitment to open > access. Traditional publishers like Elsevier have a legacy of works under > copyright and a business model that involves selling rights to these works > and integrated search services (rather a lot of money at that). In the case > of Elsevier, this involves millions of works over a long period of time. > Even if every single article Elsevier publishes from today on were open > access, this would not impact previously published works. Unless I am > missing something there is no business model for Elsevier to provide access > to these previously published works free-of-charge. This means that > traditional publishers like Elsevier are very likely to have to continue > with a toll access business model even if they move forward with open > access publishing. This is an essentially different environment from that > of a full open access publisher like PLOS. It is not realistic to assume > that a traditional publisher that must maintain a toll access environment > will behave in the same way that born open access publishers do. PLOS was > started from a commitment to providing works free-of-charge. Elsevier and > publishers like Elsevier have thrived in a toll access environment, and > will have to maintain a toll access environment. There will be far more > pressure and incentive to revert to toll access for traditional publishers > than for PLOS. This is why arguments along the lines that PLOS has been > around for a while, therefore there are no problems with CC-BY, don't > necessarily apply to a publisher like Elsevier. > > Elsevier, unlike PLOS, does have its own suite of value-added services > such as Science Direct and Scopus. When friends of PLOS say there is no > reason not to grant blanket commercial rights to anyone downstream, I think > it is important to remember that this represents the perspective of one > type of publisher. Other journals and publishers either provide value added > services themselves, or receive revenue from providers of such services, > e.g. payments from journal aggregators. > > Note that while Elsevier has no incentive to provide access to previously > published works free-of-charge, they are a green publisher and so authors > from recent years can make their works published with Elsevier freely > available through institutional archives. This is one thing green open > access can achieve right now that gold OA cannot. I'd like to acknowledge > that Stevan Harnad has been right on this point for many, many years. > > I'm still signed on for the Elsevier boycott, in case anyone is wondering: > http://thecostofknowledge.com/ > > best, > > -- > Dr. Heather Morrison > Assistant Professor > École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies > University of Ottawa > http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html > Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ > heather.morri...@uottawa.ca > > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > ----- > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2015.0.5863 / Virus Database: 4331/9577 - Release Date: 04/19/15 > Internal Virus Database is out of date. > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal >
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