[GOAL] Re: Monographs
OK. Let's see where we've got to in the recent flurry over Gold option and monographs/books: --The UK is only one country, and things may be different elsewhere. No debate. I only referred to consequences in the UK. E.g., Canada (I'm a Canadian citizen living in the UK) may have provisions and costing models for Canadian journals that differ. But that doesn't invalidate the concerns about RCUK and the push for the Gold option in the UK. --RCUK doesn't require author-pays, but do push for the Gold option. Technically true, but somewhat beside the point. Of course it's down to what the journals' policies are as to whether they require author to pay or someone else. But the point is that they will require payment of some sort, and if not via subscription then front ended. And I repeat: The two major publishers that I've dealt with this year (Brill and OUP) both require author-pay, and each one ca. £2000+ per article. --That funding councils might come to allow inclusion of author charges in grants is a small encouragement. I'd estimate that ca. 90%+ of Humanities research is not done under a grant from a research council (whether in Canada or the UK, or the USA). So, if (as seems at least often to be the case), publishers will expect author-charges and of substantial sums, then there is reason for concern. I'm done on the subject, and will let anyone else have any further/last word. Larry Hurtado Quoting David Prosser david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 13:29:10 +: Hurtado appears to believe that 'Gold OA' and 'author pays' are synonymous. They are not, as Jean-Claude pointed out. A UK researcher who publishers their paper in one of the many open access journals that does not charge article processing fees will still be in compliance with the RCUK policy. It is manifestly false to say that it 'IS strictly true in the UK that the *Gold* option involves author-pays'. The RCUK policy acknowledges that for gold 'This may involve payment of an ?Article Processing Charge? (APC) to the publisher' and describes mechanisms by which funds are made available. But it is not true that APC-payment is a condition. It's all in the policy: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUKOpenAccessPolicy.pdf David On 30 Nov 2013, at 10:46, l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk wrote: Contra Prosser, it IS strictly true in the UK that the *Gold* option involves author-pays. The RCUK allows the Green approach *for the present time*, but with intonations that they'd really like everything to go Gold. I've read the consultation document. Larry Hurtado Quoting David Prosser david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk on Fri, 29 Nov 2013 20:29:14 +: Larry Hurtado wrote: --The gold approach here in the UK = author-pay, whatever it may mean elsewhere. This is not strictly true. RCUK have given funds to pay APC charges, but they do not require that publication is in an APC-charging journal. An author meets the RCUK conditions by either publishing in an open access journal - irrespective of its business model - or through green deposit. David On 29 Nov 2013, at 17:06, l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk wrote: A few responses to Guedon's comments: --The gold approach here in the UK = author-pay, whatever it may mean elsewhere. --If many journals offer free services to authors, that's because they have an income-stream to pay the people who provide the services, whether by some form of subsidy (and I don't know of many in my field) or by subscription fees. For these services to be provided will either require these income sources or the author-pay model. --We can extrapolate roughly what this would cost authors: It would be at least multiple(s) of the single-article charge being levied already by, e.g., OUP and Brill for gold option article publication (in each case £2000 or more for articles of ca. 20 pp. printed). --I fail to see how any sort of mandate would be of any comfort and assistance to authors, whether first-time or established. I repeat: Surely a fundamental rule should be that any convention should have the confidence and support of the constituency affected. The alternative is tyranny. Larry Hurtado Quoting Guédon Jean-Claude jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca on Fri, 29 Nov 2013 10:24:32 +: There a number of points to be made regarding Hurtado's message: 1. The horrid 'Gold' must refer to the author-pay gold. This is not the whole of gold, only a subset. Gold ciovers a wide variety of financing schemes. 2. The figures given for horrid gold - incidentally, I like this term applied to author-pay business models - are real, but not general. Thousands of journals offer gratis services to authors and free use by readers because, simply, they are subsidized in one fashion or another. 3. Even if the cost of £2000+ (Sterling) were accepted for articles, the cost of monographs could not be derived from a
[GOAL] Re: Monographs
In response to Dr. Morrison: If you're getting by with author-pay charges per journal article of $1000 (Canadian, I presume), count yourself lucky. The two articles I've had accepted this year, in journals published by OUP and by Brill, each would have cost me £2000-2500 (UK Pounds). (Now Emeritus, I don't have to comply with RCUK or REF mandates, but I sympathize with colleagues who still do.) Larry Hurtado Quoting Heather Morrison heather.morri...@uottawa.ca on Fri, 29 Nov 2013 15:47:42 +: The first-copy cost for monographs (the cost most relevant to producing open access monographs) is about $10 - $15,000. This figure comes from research by Greco Wharton, and confirmed by a series of interviews with senior people in scholarly monograph publishing that I did in 2010/11. Considering the difference in time investment for writing a monograph as compared to an article, funding for open access monographs should be just as feasible as funding open access scholarly journal articles. If one scholar produces 10 articles over a period of 3 years and is subsidized at $1,000 per article, it makes sense to subsidize another scholar's monograph written over the same period by about the same amount. Frances Pinter's Knowledge Unlatched is a program designed to help libraries shift from pay-to-purchase to pay-to-subsidize that combines free with premium versions (free on the web, pay for print or e-book special editions). My library at the University of Ottawa gives us new scholars a fund of $2,000 to develop collections in our area. I have directed the library to make use of a portion of my funds to support a Knowledge Unlatched pilot. While there are definite disadvantages to the article processing fee method - to me, it's inefficient, encourages commercialization, and makes equity for authors difficult - there are pluses as well. One potential advantage for us scholars is that pay-for-production of scholarly works introduces a disincentive to requiring a high volume of publications. This would give scholars more time to focus on quality rather than quantity of work! References Greco, A. N., Wharton, R. M. (2008). Should university presses adopt an open access [electronic publishing] business model for all of their scholarly books? Paper presented at the Open Scholarship: Authority, Community, and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing Held in Toronto, Canada 25-27 June 2008, Milan. pp. 149-164. Retrieved December 10, 2011 from http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?149_elpub2008 Morrison, H. (2012) Freedom for scholarship in the internet age. Doctoral dissertation. Chapter 6: the changing economic and technical environment for scholarly monograph publishing: views from the industry. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12537 Knowledge Unlatched (2013). An interview with Frances Pinter. http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/2013/01/an-interview-with-frances-pinter/ Morrison, H. (2013). Make my collection open access! The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/10/make-my-collection-open-access.html best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa 613-562-5800 ext. 7634 http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html heather.morri...@uottawa.camailto:heather.morri...@uottawa.ca On 2013-11-29, at 5:24 AM, Guédon Jean-Claude jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.camailto:jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: There a number of points to be made regarding Hurtado's message: 1. The horrid 'Gold' must refer to the author-pay gold. This is not the whole of gold, only a subset. Gold ciovers a wide variety of financing schemes. 2. The figures given for horrid gold - incidentally, I like this term applied to author-pay business models - are real, but not general. Thousands of journals offer gratis services to authors and free use by readers because, simply, they are subsidized in one fashion or another. 3. Even if the cost of £2000+ (Sterling) were accepted for articles, the cost of monographs could not be derived from a simplistic linear extrapolation based on page numbers. 4. Young scholars who may not enjoy Hurtado's stature in the world, would be delighted to have their first work published, if only electronically. Moreover, they would probably prefer open access to ensure maximum visibility and use, provided the evaluation process in force within their universities does not treat electronic publishing as inferior. 5. In many countries, e.g. in Canada, subsidies exist to support the publishing of monographs. This precedent opens the door to possible extensions to full OA-publishing support, for example for a young scholar's
[GOAL] Re: Monographs
Contra Prosser, it IS strictly true in the UK that the *Gold* option involves author-pays. The RCUK allows the Green approach *for the present time*, but with intonations that they'd really like everything to go Gold. I've read the consultation document. Larry Hurtado Quoting David Prosser david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk on Fri, 29 Nov 2013 20:29:14 +: Larry Hurtado wrote: --The gold approach here in the UK = author-pay, whatever it may mean elsewhere. This is not strictly true. RCUK have given funds to pay APC charges, but they do not require that publication is in an APC-charging journal. An author meets the RCUK conditions by either publishing in an open access journal - irrespective of its business model - or through green deposit. David On 29 Nov 2013, at 17:06, l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk wrote: A few responses to Guedon's comments: --The gold approach here in the UK = author-pay, whatever it may mean elsewhere. --If many journals offer free services to authors, that's because they have an income-stream to pay the people who provide the services, whether by some form of subsidy (and I don't know of many in my field) or by subscription fees. For these services to be provided will either require these income sources or the author-pay model. --We can extrapolate roughly what this would cost authors: It would be at least multiple(s) of the single-article charge being levied already by, e.g., OUP and Brill for gold option article publication (in each case £2000 or more for articles of ca. 20 pp. printed). --I fail to see how any sort of mandate would be of any comfort and assistance to authors, whether first-time or established. I repeat: Surely a fundamental rule should be that any convention should have the confidence and support of the constituency affected. The alternative is tyranny. Larry Hurtado Quoting Guédon Jean-Claude jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca on Fri, 29 Nov 2013 10:24:32 +: There a number of points to be made regarding Hurtado's message: 1. The horrid 'Gold' must refer to the author-pay gold. This is not the whole of gold, only a subset. Gold ciovers a wide variety of financing schemes. 2. The figures given for horrid gold - incidentally, I like this term applied to author-pay business models - are real, but not general. Thousands of journals offer gratis services to authors and free use by readers because, simply, they are subsidized in one fashion or another. 3. Even if the cost of £2000+ (Sterling) were accepted for articles, the cost of monographs could not be derived from a simplistic linear extrapolation based on page numbers. 4. Young scholars who may not enjoy Hurtado's stature in the world, would be delighted to have their first work published, if only electronically. Moreover, they would probably prefer open access to ensure maximum visibility and use, provided the evaluation process in force within their universities does not treat electronic publishing as inferior. 5. In many countries, e.g. in Canada, subsidies exist to support the publishing of monographs. This precedent opens the door to possible extensions to full OA-publishing support, for example for a young scholar's first book. Jean-Claude Guédon De : goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] de la part de l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk [l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk] Envoyé : jeudi 28 novembre 2013 05:40 À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Objet : [GOAL] Re: Monographs Further to Steven's comment, as a scholar in the Humanities, in which the book/monograph is still THE major medium for high-impact research-publication, mandating a major change such as OA (even Green, to say nothing of the horrid Gold), would be opposed by at least the overwhelming majority (and perhaps even unanimously) in the disciplines concerned. And the reasons aren't primarily author-income that might accrue from traditional print-book publication. For many European-type small-print-run monographs, sold almost entirely to libraries, often no royalty accrues to author. Even serious books intended primarily for other scholars in the field and published by university presses and/or reputable trade publishers, the royalties will still be modest in comparison with, e.g., popular fiction works. My best-selling book, sold ca. 5,000 hardback and has sold now over another 3000 in paperback. Several thousand in royalties, but, seriously, my main aim in writing books has been to get them into the hands of as many fellow scholars in my field as possible, and also then into the hands of advanced students and other serious readers. I've typically gone with a highly-respected and well-established trade publisher, mainly because they combine excellent editing, marketing, and a readiness to price the books affordably (e.g., a 700 page hardback at $55 USD, because they committed to a 5000 copy initial
[GOAL] Re: Harnad Comments on Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access Mandate
Thanks to Steven Harnad for giving us his enthusiastic view on the HEFCE prooposd policy for REF and OA. Among my concerns that he doesn't address, however, is one that will be shared by many/all in the Humanities (almost always the Cinderella at the OA ball): What about books? Though scientists especially use journal articles as THE mode of publication of original research, the nature of work in the Humanities (which is often more integrative and discoursive, involving/requiring extended analysis and argumentation) often requires a book-length treatment. Indeed, in Humanities field, typically the most high-impact work appears as/in single-author books. Moreover, these include often (perhaps dominantly), not only technical monographs (which are often revised PhD theses), but (especially among more seasoned scholars) free-standing books, and these published by various university presses but also trade publishers. Many of these aren't based in the UK. It will be difficult (and unlikely) to get all these publishers to allow the immediate deposit of the page-proofs in an OA desository. So, will this mean that what has been heretofore the most respected form of research-publication in the Humanities will be disallowed in the next REF? There is a short paragraph on monographs in the HEFCE consultation paper, but it only reflects the inadequate understanding of the place of *books* in the Humanities. We urgently need HEFCE to bring Humanities scholars more into the magic circle of policy/practice makers. Larry Hurtado Quoting Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com on Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:40:12 -0400: On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:12 AM, Andy Powell andy.pow...@eduserv.org.ukwrote: Supposing this Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access Mandate leads to a situation where we achieve 100% immediate deposit of the final peer-reviewed draft of journal articles to an institutional repository but where we also see a ?publisher norm? emerging of a 12-month embargo period? ** ** Firstly, is that an unrealistic expectation of where this policy might get us? ** ** If so, would we consider this situation to have significantly advanced the OA cause? ** ** I agree that the separation of ?immediate deposit? from ?embargo period? is important but I also worry that doing so effectively becomes a way for publishers to stifle progress towards true OA but setting lengthy embargo periods? Further, there seems to be nothing in this policy that mitigates against this happening? ** ** Or am I misunderstanding the situation? Please read the comments, not just the Executive Summary, as they explicitly answer your question. Meanwhile, here is the answer to your question, put in a different way, in response to: *RCUK fails to end ?green? embargo confusion*http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/rcuk-fails-to-end-green-embargo-confusion/2002538.article *THE* 14 March 2013: * KEYSTROKE MANDATES * What a mess! With publishers eagerly pawing at the Golden Door, and RCUK hopelessly waffling at Green embargo limits and their enforcement. But relief is on the way! HEFCE has meanwhile quietly and gently proposed a solution that will moot all this relentless cupidity and stupidity. HEFCE has proposed to mandate that in order to be eligible for the Research Excellence Framework (REF)http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2013/open_access_letter.pdf, the final, peer-reviewed drafts of all papers published as of 2014 will have to be deposited in the author's institutional repositoryhttp://roar.eprints.org/ immediately upon publication: no delays, no embargoes, no exceptions -- irrespective of whether the paper is published in a Gold OA journal or a subscription journal, and irrespective of the allowable length of the embargo on making the deposit OA: The deposit itself must be immediate. This has the immense benefit that while the haggling continues about how much will be paid for Gold OA and how long Green OA may be embargoed, all papers will be faithfully deposited -- and deposited in institutional repositories, which means that all UK universities will thereby be recruited, as of 2014, to monitor and ensure that the deposits are made, and made immediately. (Institutions have an excellent track record for making sure that everything necessary for REF is done, and done reliably, because a lot of money and prestige is at stake for them.) And one of the ingenious features of the proposed HEFCE/REF Green OA mandate is the stipulation that deposit may not be delayed: Authors cannot wait till just before the next REF, six years later, to do it. If the deposit was not immediate, the paper is ineligible for REF. And, most brilliant stroke of all, this ensures that it is not just the 4 papers that are ultimately chosen for submission to REF that are deposited immediately -- for that choice is always a
[GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access
Webster concisely articulates the concerns that I briefly mooted a few days ago. Larry Hurtado Quoting Omega Alpha Open Access oa.openacc...@gmail.com on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:03:30 -0400: Hat Tip: Let’s not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access http://wp.me/p20y83-no Nice article this morning by Peter Webster on the Research Fortnight website entitled Humanities left behind in the dash for open access. http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_newstemplate=rr_2colview=articlearticleId=1214091 Check it out. Webster observes that much of the current conversation around the growth of open access focuses on the sciences and use of an “author-pays” business model. He feels inadequate attention in the conversation has been given to the unique needs of humanities scholarship, and why it may be harder for humanist scholars to embrace open access based on the “author-pays” model. There is no Public Library of History to match the phenomenally successful Public Library of Science. … Your comments are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal L. W. Hurtado, PhD, FRSE Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature Theology Honorary Professorial Fellow New College (School of Divinity) University of Edinburgh Mound Place Edinburgh, UK. EH1 2LX Office Phone: (0)131 650 8920. FAX: (0)131 650 7952 www.ed.ac.uk/divinity -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Finding a business model for a growing Open AccessJournal
I'm President of my UK learned society, and have had no contact about the Finch project or anything connected with scholarly publishing. So, I'm not confident that the scholarly community has been involved adequately in the Finch process (though I stand to be corrected). From what little I've learned thus far of the Gold OA proposal, I'm worried, particularly for two constituencies: --The models all seem heavily driven by the problems and practices of the sciences, with little regard for the Humanities. We don't (never have) paid page charges. Our journals aren't typically expensive at all (an expensive journal might cost a univ library a few hundred quid at most, and that would be rare). We don't typically have research grants to pay page charges (the govts typically don't see Humanities research as important enough to fund it in any measure other than token). --There are a number of private scholars in the Humanities who don't hold Univ posts but produce high-quality work. Who will pay their page charges? In short, once again, the Humanities seem to have been left largely out of the thinking about consequences of the various models. Larry Hurtado Quoting Hélène.Bosc hbosc-tcher...@orange.fr on Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:13:57 +0200: See also this study : BJÖRK, B.C. A Study of Innovative Features in Scholarly Open Access Journals. Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 13 (4), 2011. http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e115/ Hélène Bosc Open access to Scientific Communication http://open-access.infodocs.eu/tiki-index.php - Original Message - From: Peter Suber To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2012 3:01 PM Subject: [GOAL] Re: Finding a business model for a growing Open AccessJournal See the list of OA journal business models at the Open Access Directory. http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models Peter Peter Suber gplus.to/petersuber On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk wrote: I am forwarding a message from the OKFN's open-access list (http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access which uses the term strictly to mean BOAI-compliant). The poster Katie runs a successful OA journal and asks how she can scale up without APCs. She raises the idea of a SCOAP3-like model for cancer. There must be a number of other people with the same question: * they don't want closed access * they don't want author-side fees * they recognize the money has to come from somewhere. Katie (and I) would be interested to know of possible models and possible nuclei of like-minded groups. This seems to me one of the key problems of the current time of transition. -- Forwarded message -- From: Katie Foxall ka...@ecancer.org Date: Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 10:53 AM Subject: Re: [Open-access] SCOAP3 To: open-acc...@lists.okfn.org Hello all I haven't posted [on OKFN open-access] before but have been following the discussions with much interest and have founds the info and links provided by various people really useful. I run an open access cancer journal http://ecancer.org/ecms which has no author fees - we are currently mainly supported by charity funding but the journal has been growing at a great rate this year so I'm looking into accessing any funding that might be out there to support open access publishing. The reality is that we will have to start charging author fees at some point if we can't get more funding and we really don't want to do that as providing a free service for the oncology community is very important to us. So does anyone know whether there is anything like SCOAP3 in the field of medical publishing? Thanks in advance for any help or advice anyone might be able to give me, Katie Foxall -Original Message- From: open-access-boun...@lists.okfn.org [mailto:open-access-boun...@lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of c...@cameronneylon.net Sent: 18 July 2012 15:50 To: open-acc...@lists.okfn.org Subject: [Open-access] SCOAP3 Not got so much press as the big announcements this week but this is a big deal. Communities can just decide unilaterally to move to OA. http://scoap3.org/news/news94.html ___ open-access mailing list open-acc...@lists.okfn.org http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access ___ open-access mailing list open-acc...@lists.okfn.org http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK
