Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
Stevan- Your definition of open access OA means FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE leaves out a crucial component - namely the rights of reuse and redistribution. This is clearly spelled out in the BOAI definition: By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. I completely agree with Mike that all freely-accessible full-text journal articles should be counted, but I don't think it is giving them their proper due to decline to count them as truly OA! Unless, of course, they fail to meet the full OA definition: FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE [snip] But there is also an important logical point which Mike seems to have overlooked: If a journal provides the following for *all* of its articles: FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE on its own journal website or PubMed Central's, then that is OA journal publishing (gold), not OA self-archiving (green)! The self in self-archiving is the author (and the author's institution). It does not help us provide clarity and understanding to conflate the two components of the unified OA provision strategy by failing to distinguish OA provision by the journal (OA publishing, gold) from OA provision by the author/institution (OA-self-archiving, green). I think it is Mike's spurious free/open distinction that allows him to fail to make this absolutely fundamental distinction between the two complementary components of the unified OA strategy. You may think this is free/open distinction is spurious, but in doing so you have to acknowledge you are redfining open access in contrast to the way it is definied in BOAI, Bethesda, Berlin, etc... And you are at odds with many open access supporters who feel that reuse and redistribution are as, if not more, important than free access. There rights are a critical part of open access - otherwise we would just call it free access. So, I would like us to use a more accurate definitions: Free Access (FA) means FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE OA means FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE AND THE RIGHT TO REDISTRIBUTE AND REUSE WORKS LIMITED ONLY BY PROPER ATTRIBUTION This is not simply a semantic distinction. I would also like to point out that this has some ramifications for how we think about self-archived content. Placing something on in an institutional archive may make it freely available, but it doesn't make it OA. In most cases copyright on the self-archived work remains with the authors and/or journal, and permission must be obtained to reuse or redistribute the works. I in no way mean this to be an argument against self-archiving - just a recognition that the way we define OA is important, and that self-archiving is not sufficient to provide OA unless the copyright holders also grant potential users redistribution and reuse rights. Maybe we need to distinguish self-archiving as currently practiced from open-access self-archiving in which works are placed in self-archives AND the copyright holders license them with the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/). -Mike - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 6:46 AM Subject: Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Open Access Michael Eisen's point is fundamental enough to be worth considering very explicitly and with considerable attentiveness. I hope many voices will make themselves heard on this, because what is at issue goes to the heart of open access provision itself and what can be done to provide maximum open access right now. (Please note the right now because it is at the heart of the issue, open access being already long overdue.) There is nothing hard to understand here, but there are several things that need to be kept clearly and explicitly in mind, in order to avoid needless misunderstandings (and the lost opportunities for open access provision that results from them). In what follows, OA = Open Access TA = Toll Access and OA means: FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
I've changed the subject thread because the focus seems to have returned to the free vs open access distinction, which I will argue is both spurious and a retardant on progress toward free/open access. The point is extremely simple. According to Mike Eisen, my definition of open access as FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE supposedly misses three things: (1) right to reuse (2) right to redistribute (3) licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/). What is meant by reuse that being able to freely find, search, read, download, process computationally online or offline, store, and print off -- anywhere in the world, any time -- does not already cover? For that is what FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE means. That is what we can do with any freely accessible text on the web. And what is meant by redistribute when the text is already distributed all over the planet on the web, and freely available to anyone who may wish to find, search, read, download, process computationally online or offline, and print off anywhere in the world, any time? Could this reuse and redistribute right perhaps be a spurious holdover from another medium -- the Gutenberg medium, print-on-paper -- where re-use of a printed text meant re-use in *another* printed text (i.e., republication), and redistribution meant the distribution of that other printed text? But why on earth would anyone want to bother doing that in the PostGutenberg era, when *everyone* already has access to the text, and each can print it off directly for himself? Collected works? That's just a list of URLs in the PostGutenberg era. And that's where it stops. My text is not like data or software, to be modified, built upon, and then redistributed (perhaps as your own). You may use its content, but you may not alter it and then distribute the altered version, online or on-paper. But that protection from text-corruption -- along with protection from plagiarism or nonattribution -- is already inherent in conventional copyright, whether the author retains copyright or assigns it to the publisher. So a no new Creative Commons License is needed either. Just ordinary copyright assertion (whether retained or assigned) -- plus open (sic) access provision through self-archiving. (The publisher's blessing on the self-archiving is welcome, but not necessary either: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#copyright1 ). Now some comments: On Sun, 14 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote: Your definition of open access sh OA means sh FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE leaves out a crucial component - namely the rights of reuse and redistribution. This is clearly spelled out in the BOAI definition: By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess As I said, the reuse and redistribution capability is already inherent in the free online access to the full text. The BOAI definition -- which I signed on to, just as you did -- spells out these redundant capabilities in order to make explicit all the benefits inherent in toll-free online full-text access. (I do agree that gerrymandered ebrary-style http://www.ebrary.com/ access -- in which software tricks see to it that you can only view the text onscreen and cannot download, store, print or process it -- would not be open access. But such tricks are irrelevant here, as self-archiving is something that authors do for themselves, and they are not interested in imposing ebrary-style restrictions on the usage of their work: It's for the sake of freeing their work -- and hence its potential uptake, usage and impact -- from such restrictions that they are providing the open-access version in the first place!) sh I think it is Mike's spurious free/open distinction that allows him to sh fail to make [the] absolutely fundamental distinction between the two sh complementary components of the unified OA strategy [OA provision through sh OA journal-publishing vs. OA provision through OA self-archiving of TA sh articles] You may think this is free/open distinction is spurious, but in doing so you have to acknowledge you are redefining open
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
Stevan Harnad wrote: And what is meant by redistribute when the text is already distributed all over the planet on the web, and freely available to anyone who may wish to find, search, read, download, process computationally online or offline, and print off anywhere in the world, any time? This sounds like the beginning of the free-as-beer or free-as-speech discussion from the GNU project all over again, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Redistribute means the permission to copy the article and republish it on another website or on another medium. Some say that this right is necessary to assure that the contents will be permanently available, because you cannot trust any one institution to be around for ever. Most eloquently put, Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it. (http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds) The crucial question is then: Do you allow the world to mirror it? The conference paper that I have on http://aronsson.se/wikipaper.html is available for all to read free of charge, but you cannot copy-and-republish because I own the copyright, and I don't allow free copying and redistribution. If I find that you store a copy of it on your openly available website, I will ask you to take it down. But free software such as Linux is free to download, republish at your own website, sell on CDROM or redistribute in *almost* any way. This is not to say that it is in the public domain, which it is not. It is owned by its creators and licensed to you under the conditions set forth in the GNU General Public License. -- Lars Aronsson (l...@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Lars Aronsson wrote: Stevan Harnad wrote: sh And what is meant by redistribute when the text is already distributed sh all over the planet on the web, and freely available to anyone who may sh wish to find, search, read, download, process computationally online or sh offline, and print off anywhere in the world, any time? This sounds like the beginning of the free-as-beer or free-as-speech discussion from the GNU project all over again, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html Please see this prior item on this same Amsci subject-thread: On the Deep Disanalogy Between Text and Software and Between Text and Data Insofar as Free/Open Access is Concerned http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2967.html Here is am excerpt: MC: The open source software community [uses] the shorthand 'free, as in beer' The open/free distinction in software is based on the modifiability of the code. This is irrelevant to refereed-article full-text. (And the beer analogy was silly and uninformative in both cases! Lots of laughs, but little light cast.) Redistribute means the permission to copy the article and republish it on another website or on another medium. Some say that this right is necessary to assure that the contents will be permanently available, because you cannot trust any one institution to be around for ever. Are we now transmuting the free/open red herring into the preservation red herring? http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#1.Preservation Most eloquently put, Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it. (http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds) The crucial question is then: Do you allow the world to mirror it? Short answer: While the canonical version of the toll-access journal literature is being bought and sold via access-tolls to institutional subscribers/licensees, the preservation burden is *entirely* in the hands of the toll-access providers and clients (i.e., publishers and libraries). The self-archived version is merely a secondary supplement, to provide open access for those whose institutions cannot afford the primary toll-access version. It is not a substitute for the toll-access version. It hence has no primary preservation burden (yet it has been successfully surviving since at least 1991, thank you very much). The analogy between free/open software and free/open access to the refereed journal literature is a disanalogy and a misleading distraction. The conference paper that I have on http://aronsson.se/wikipaper.html is available for all to read free of charge, but you cannot copy-and-republish because I own the copyright, and I don't allow free copying and redistribution. If I find that you store a copy of it on your openly available website, I will ask you to take it down. Why would I store a paper on my own website that is freely and permanently available on another website? If I need to use it, I download and use it from your website. If I need to refer to it, I cite it and link the URL. On the permanence and preservation of *your* website, see above. We are talking about secondary access-provision (to published articles) through self-archiving here, not about self-publication: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.4 About hypothetical future transitions in which the archiving/access/preservation burden of the primary corpus is off-loaded onto the secondary corpus: Let's talk about crossing that bridge if and when it looks as if it's coming close. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm Till then what is needed isn't worries about preserving this still secondary (and sparse) corpus, but positive measures to hasten its growth. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0022.gif But free software such as Linux is free to download, republish at your own website, sell on CDROM or redistribute in *almost* any way. This is not to say that it is in the public domain, which it is not. It is owned by its creators and licensed to you under the conditions set forth in the GNU General Public License. Irrelevant to the open access movement's goal of attaining toll-free full-text access online to the 2,500,000 annual articles in the 24,000 peer-reviewed journals for those of its would-be users whose institutions cannot afford the tolls to access the journal's proprietary canonical version. No need to republish anything. All that's needed is: FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE. That's what the author's self-archived version -- in his own institution's open-access archive for its own research output -- is intended to provide. And that is what open-access provision is about. Stevan Harnad NOTE: A
Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Op en Access
For the record, I *never* said, suggested, or implied under the same roof. Jan Velterop -Original Message- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: 14 December 2003 15:01 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Open Access [cut] Regarding Richard's view on whether the existing 600 open-access journals http://www.doaj.org/ (not all or even most of them biomedical journals) are indeed enough for most biomedical research output today, it would be helpful if Richard could consider and reply to the points made by Helene Bosc http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3269.html both on the number of suitable journals of various kinds, and on the very important question of consanguinity: Should there be many independent, competing journals, as now, or a few under the same roof, a possibility Jan Velterop of BioMedCentral has suggested? (Why not just 250?) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3272.html This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information on a proactive email security service working around the clock, around the globe, visit http://www.messagelabs.com
Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Open Access
In response to:
sh it would be helpful if Richard could consider
sh and reply to the points made by Helene Bosc
sh http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3269.html both
sh on the number of suitable journals of various kinds, and on the very
sh important question of consanguinity: Should there be many independent,
sh competing journals, as now, or a few under the same roof, a possibility
sh Jan Velterop of BioMedCentral has suggested? (Why not just 250?)
sh http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3272.html
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Jan Velterop replied:
jv For the record, I *never* said, suggested, or implied under the same
roof.
It would be very helpful if Jan could describe the topology of fitting
the 2,500,000 annual articles (which currently appear under 24,000
different roofs) under 250 roofs instead, while not fitting any subset
of them under the same roof? (Full context for the above quote follows:)
jvI fully agree with what Mike and Sally say. 'Numbers of journals'
jvis a bad metric, as their sizes differ so dramatically. But
jvwhat Mike brings up is very important. It's not the number of
jvjournals that count but the range of options to publish with
jvopen access. Why would the current universe of 25,000 toll access
jvjournals have to be replaced by 25,000 open access journals? Why
jvnot just 250? Or why not 50,000? It is the proportion of the
jvliterature that is available with open access that counts. Small
jvnow, but growing fast, and likely to reach a 'tipping point'
jvin the foreseeable future.
I would also like to ask where Jan sees the fast growth that is taking us
to the impending tipping point: Open-access self-archiving is providing
at least three times as much open access (7.5%) as open-access publishing
today (2.5%), and growing faster too, but both are still growing far, far
too slowly, with self-archiving being the more under-utilized resource,
because it has the far greater immediate growth potential.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif
If the advocates of the open-access publishing component (1) of the
unified (gold/green) open-access provision strategy:
(1) Publish your article in an open-access journal if a suitable one
exists ('gold'), (2) otherwise publish your article in a suitable
toll-access
journal and also self-archive it ('green').
were always as conscientious about promoting *both* components of the
unified strategy as they are about promoting their own component in it,
then perhaps the advocates of (2) would not have to spend so much time
reminding open-access enthusiasts and the press that open access does
not equal open-access publishing -- and open-access provision might
actually start that growth burst toward the tipping point in the
foreseeable future! The undeniable recent growth spurt in open-access
consciousness (arising mainly from the efforts and recent successes of
advocates of (1), gold) needs to be mobilized and channeled. Right now
it is all still too much inclined toward passive petition-signing and
Waiting for Gold -- instead of toward also taking the easy and obvious
self-help steps ((2), green) open to all researchers and their
institutions, as open-access providers for their own research output,
today.
Stevan Harnad
PS Jan, I truly believe that the BioMedCentral journals have as much to
gain from accelerating the growth of author/institution self-archiving
of toll-access articles as open access itself does. Nothing will incline
authors more toward submitting their papers to OA journals than the growth
of OA itself, both for authors and users. It is addictive; it wears its
benefits on its sleeve; it is optimal for research and researchers;
it is inevitable. Let us not delay or constrain it by
promoting only our own local component in it. BMC suggests
a universal open-access label on all open-access articles?
http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/editorials/?issue=10
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3223.html
Far more useful would be a universal trailer of the unified open-access
strategy (gold/green) on all BMC articles and promotion. OAI-tags and the
refereed journal name will take care of the rest.
Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
BOAI-1 (green): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
It would be helpful if self-archiving enthusiasts would see and present self-archiving as an important step towards achieving open access at the root of scholarly communication, by eventually having all peer-reviewed research articles published with full open access from the outset. It is fully acknowledged that publishing new open access journals is not likely to change science publishing overnight (although the momentum is growing fast), and self-archiving can potentially be a very important and effective catalyst. For that, focus needs to be on commonalities rather than on differences. To describe self-archiving and open access publishing as somehow opposite solutions to the debilitating effects of toll-access to both the optimal dissemination of research results and the (related) budget crises in libraries, is not doing the movement any good. It should not be free VERSUS open, but free AND open or at the very least free AS A MOVE TOWARDS open. Jan -Original Message- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: 15 December 2003 03:23 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Free Access vs. Open Access I've changed the subject thread because the focus seems to have returned to the free vs open access distinction, which I will argue is both spurious and a retardant on progress toward free/open access. The point is extremely simple. According to Mike Eisen, my definition of open access as FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE supposedly misses three things: (1) right to reuse (2) right to redistribute (3) licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/). What is meant by reuse that being able to freely find, search, read, download, process computationally online or offline, store, and print off -- anywhere in the world, any time -- does not already cover? For that is what FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE means. That is what we can do with any freely accessible text on the web. And what is meant by redistribute when the text is already distributed all over the planet on the web, and freely available to anyone who may wish to find, search, read, download, process computationally online or offline, and print off anywhere in the world, any time? Could this reuse and redistribute right perhaps be a spurious holdover from another medium -- the Gutenberg medium, print-on-paper -- where re-use of a printed text meant re-use in *another* printed text (i.e., republication), and redistribution meant the distribution of that other printed text? But why on earth would anyone want to bother doing that in the PostGutenberg era, when *everyone* already has access to the text, and each can print it off directly for himself? Collected works? That's just a list of URLs in the PostGutenberg era. And that's where it stops. My text is not like data or software, to be modified, built upon, and then redistributed (perhaps as your own). You may use its content, but you may not alter it and then distribute the altered version, online or on-paper. But that protection from text-corruption -- along with protection from plagiarism or nonattribution -- is already inherent in conventional copyright, whether the author retains copyright or assigns it to the publisher. So a no new Creative Commons License is needed either. Just ordinary copyright assertion (whether retained or assigned) -- plus open (sic) access provision through self-archiving. (The publisher's blessing on the self-archiving is welcome, but not necessary either: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#copyright1 ). Now some comments: On Sun, 14 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote: Your definition of open access sh OA means sh FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE leaves out a crucial component - namely the rights of reuse and redistribution. This is clearly spelled out in the BOAI definition: By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess As I said, the reuse and redistribution capability is already inherent in the free online
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
I think Jan Velterop might have misinterpreted the content of the Free Access vs. Open Access thread. This thread is not in fact opposing two rival forms of access. It is questioning the coherence and content of the open vs. free access distinction itself. On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Jan Velterop wrote: It would be helpful if self-archiving enthusiasts would see and present self-archiving as an important step towards achieving open access at the root of scholarly communication, by eventually having all peer-reviewed research articles published with full open access from the outset. I'm afraid that the incorrect and misleading distinction between full and non-full open access (just as spurious as the distinction between free access and open access, and the counterproductive implication that open access equals open access publishing) permeates the very premise of Jan's suggestion here. The promotors of open-access provision through author/institution self-archiving of their toll-access articles are promoting *open access*, not an important step toward achieving open access. Open access. Toll-free, immediate, permanent online access to the full-texts of all those articles. Open access. Yes, I too believe that the eventual outcome of all this is likely to be all journals becoming open access journals. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm But I know (not believe: know) that we first have to get there from here. And I also know (because it has been successfully demonstrated already, with hundreds of thousands of articles) that open access can be provided *right now* to as many of the 2,500,000 annual articles in the 24,000 existing peer-reviewed journals as we choose to provide it for. I am not a self-archiving enthusiast but an open-access enthusiast who has seen that self-archiving is the fastest and surest road to open access today. It is also a road (green) that is still vastly underutilized. The golden road is underutilized too, but not nearly as underutilized, proportionately, as the green road, because the green road can already today bear virtually 100% of the traffic -- if only the research community can be persuaded to take make use of it! I have been writing articles and postings for years about what the likely sequel to universal open-access provision via self-archiving will be: a universal transition to open-access journal publishing (an economic model I described and have been advocating for years as the stable end-game of open-access provision). But that eventual outcome is hypothetical, and the endgame is nowhere in sight, whereas the feasibility and benefits of immediate open-access provision through self-archiving are demonstrated and certain. So, far more useful than confusing authors who are neither publishing in open access journals today nor self-archiving today -- by presenting open-access self-archiving to them as a step toward open-access journal-publishing -- is presenting open-access self-archiving to them as the immediate open-access provision that it really is: done, not for the sake of eventual open-access publishing, but for the sake of immediate open access to their own work, today. Open access. That is what it is all about, and for. Not possible eventual transition to universal open-access publishing (even though I, like you, believe that that is where it indeed leads). Besides, what I always present is the unified dual open-access provision strategy. (Does BMC always present this unified dual open-access provision strategy too?): (1) Publish your article in an OA journal if a suitable one exists, (2) otherwise publish your article in a suitable TA journal and also self-archive it. That rightly presents OA journal-publishing and OA self-archiving as complementary means to the same end: open access. It would not help to misrepresent OA self-archiving as instead being merely a means to OA journal publishing as the end! OA does not equal OA journal-publishing. It is fully acknowledged that publishing new open access journals is not likely to change science publishing overnight (although the momentum is growing fast), This is not about changing science publishing, it is about providing open access (preferably overnight!). How fast is open access journal momentum (gold) growing in terms of articles, relative to the total number of annual articles in journals (2,500,000 in 24,000)? And how fast relative to the rate at which open-access through self-archiving (green) is growing? Those are the figures needed to make a rational strategic judgment here! http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0043.gif http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0023.gif Both gold and green growth will be found to be lower than they could be, but self-archiving will be found to be providing at least
Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Open Access
On 15 Dec, 2003, at 12:24, Stevan Harnad wrote: In response to: sh it would be helpful if Richard could consider sh and reply to the points made by Helene Bosc sh http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3269.html both sh on the number of suitable journals of various kinds, and on the very sh important question of consanguinity: Should there be many independent, sh competing journals, as now, or a few under the same roof, a possibility sh Jan Velterop of BioMedCentral has suggested? (Why not just 250?) sh http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3272.html On Mon, 15 Dec 2003, Jan Velterop replied: jv For the record, I *never* said, suggested, or implied jv under the same roof. It would be very helpful if Jan could describe the topology of fitting the 2,500,000 annual articles (which currently appear under 24,000 different roofs) under 250 roofs instead, while not fitting any subset of them under the same roof? (Full context for the above quote follows [at end]:) A subset under the same roof? Sure. But that's not the same as the either/or proposition you put in my mouth of many independent, competing journals, as now, or a few under the same roof jv I fully agree with what Mike and Sally say. 'Numbers of journals' jv is a bad metric, as their sizes differ so dramatically. But jv what Mike brings up is very important. It's not the number of jv journals that count but the range of options to publish with jv open access. Why would the current universe of 25,000 toll access jv journals have to be replaced by 25,000 open access journals? Why jv not just 250? Or why not 50,000? It is the proportion of the jv literature that is available with open access that counts. Small jv now, but growing fast, and likely to reach a 'tipping point' jv in the foreseeable future.
Re: The True Cost of the Essentials
hi, if you look at the ARL statistics and expenditures for serials of law faculties in particular, 76 law libraries spend $63,607,619 US http://www.arl.org/stats/pubpdf/law02.pdf) on (individual) access to 272 journals (http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Products_and_Publications/Periodicals/American_Libraries/Selected_articles/7law.htm) which is about $235 000 US available per annum per journal. of course, this is an oversimplification (e.g. some contribute more than others; cost structures depend on the individual discipline...), but the figures show that there is a lot of money out there which could be invested in a much more productive way (i.e. resulting in a much higher research impact). if onlythe investment is co-ordinated (channeled) in a better way - i.e. by funding higher level digital property (i.e. publishers who add non-digital value) rather than individual access to this digital property - research impact could be much higher at perhaps even lower costs. No groundbreaking news. but apart from the organization of this funding scheme, plain economics need to be taken into account and could be a problem. so, how much does it actually cost to run an e journal? with shared facilities (and therefore no costs to the publishers), a 1998 PWC study estimates costs for a law journal to be around 100 000 (http: //www.dlib.org/dlib/november98/11roes.html), Odlyzko generally mentions a $300-$1000 figure per paper (http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_8/odlyzko/), fytton simlarly mentions $400 US for a 10 page paper at a rejection rate of 50% http://iris.ingentaselect.com/vl=8918111/cl=103/fm=docpdf/nw=1/rpsv/cw/alpsp/09531513/v15n4/s2and JHEP flatly states that their actual costs are around $200,000 US (http://jhep.sissa.it/IoPP_SISSA2.html). Since the latter is an actual cost figure and comes from insiders who definitely should know about this issue, I think the 200 000 is a useful indicator. (in this respect, $235,000 is more than $200,000). it doesnt take a lawyer ;-) to come up with the idea to compose a questionnaire about the cost structure and use the doaj.org listing as a basis to make a quick overview of actual costs of journals throughout various disciplines. I guess everyone in here will agree that duplification of work is rather annoying and often a waste of time; so, is someone else already working on such a questionnaire/study? (ive been going through the 2003 postings quite thoroughly, but didnt find a posting in that respect). If so, when can we expect results? are there any preliminary results that can be shared at this stage (i'm writing a paper on a similar topic and would like to include cost figures)? if no one else is currently working on the implementation of such a study i could write a draft and post it for improvements. in the (very?!) long run, perhaps such a benchmark study could be a useful basis for making a monetary offer to publishers to change their business models. abracos, Markus --- Prior Threads on This Topic: Savings from Converting to On-Line-Only: 30%- or 70%+ ? http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0002.html 2.0K vs. 0.2K http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0228.html Online Self-Archiving: Distinguishing the Optimal from the Optional http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0248.html Separating Quality-Control Service-Providing from Document-Providing http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0466.html Distinguishing the Essentials from the Optional Add-Ons http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1437.html The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0303.html The True Cost of the Essentials http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1973.html Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review - NOT!) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1966.html Journal expenses and publication costs http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2589 Re: Scientific publishing is not just about administering peer-review http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3069.html
