Re: Harvesting open-access data as commercial add-ons

[Stevan Harnad]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Steve Hitchcock wrote:

> There is a saying in business, for those who want to try and
> divine the future, "follow the money". We want open archives, but we want
> them to be economically sustainable. The ability to make the self-archived
> peer-reviewed literature freely available to users is predicated on
> absorbing the costs of running these services. In arXiv's case it attracts
> funding because it is incredibly efficient, whether viewed in terms of
> presentation (cost per paper) or usage (cost per user). But it still costs
> something.

That is one of the many reasons why I favour distributed
instititutional archiving rather than central:

"Central vs. Distributed Archives"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0293.html

Count the reasons:

(1) Distributed institutional self-archiving distributes the archiving
load and cost. At the individual university level, the cost per paper
of permanently archiving (reliably and interoperably) all its annual
research output in OAI-compliant Eprint Archives will be a negligible
part of the university's existing annual network infrastructural costs:
so small as to be not worth talking about.

(2) Distributed institutional self-archiving focusses the
costs/benefits of the self-archiving of institutional research output
on the relevant natural entity that is involved: That entity is not the
"discipline" as a whole, which is no entity at all, nor the publisher,
who is a service-provider rather than a research stake-holder, but the
researcher's own institution, the one that shares with the researcher
the benefits of research impact, and the costs of its loss, because
of toll-based access barriers.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/nature4.htm
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/thes1.html

(3) Distributed institutional self-archiving is structured exactly along
the reciprocal "golden-rule" lines that are the most natural ones for
inducing researchers to self-archive: "Give in order to receive." In
exchange for providing open access to their own research output,
institutions all gain access to one another's research output.

(4) Central archiving got the ball rolling in physics, but it is
growing too slowly even in physics, and has not generalized across
disciplines. Research institutions (i.e., universities) cover all
disciplines.

(5) Central archiving encourages old, proprietary ways of thinking about
this anomalous, giveaway research literature, including misleading
analogies to publishing, which also happens to be a centralized concept.

> Institutional funding support may offer more options in future, or
> commercial companies may fund services.

This is far too vague. The scenario for institutional self-archiving
and its support is clear. How (and why) commercial companies will or
would cover archiving costs is another matter.

But even apart from that, there is the question of how to get the
peer-reviewed research archived in open access archives in the first
place. Distributed institutional self-archiving has both a natural
motivation and an existing means for doing this. How do the current
re-uses that are being made of what little open-access content has been
self-archived to date (the subject, after all, of Steve Hitchcock's
posting) connect with the matter of archiving costs at all (negligible
as they are, on the distributed model)?

Note that two forms of "parasitism" are latent in all this
discussion:

(i) the parasitism of self-archived peer-reviewed papers on the
peer review provided (and funded) by the journals publisher

"Clarification of "parasitism" and copyright"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1827.html

These costs are currently covered by the toll-access system
(subscription/license/pay-per-view) that still exists in parallel
with the nascent open-access system. The scenarios for the transition
to covering the essential costs in other ways, if/when it becomes
necessary, have already been discussed many times:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm

"The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0303.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"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1973.html

(ii) the parasitism of commercial re-use of self-archived papers by
commercial services

Here the parasitism is in the opposite direction, but irrelevant.

> But if I were to paint a scenario
> in 10 years in which the majority of open archives were managed or owned by
> a monolithic commercial entity, you would be concerned.

And that is one of the (many) reasons I am advocating distributed
institutional self-archiving rather than central. So stop worrying.
(And why paint needless scenarios?)

> In such a case you
> can be pretty

Re: Harvesting open-access data as commercial add-ons

[Steve Hitchcock]

At 12:33 18/04/02 +0100, Stevan Harnad wrote:

My own sense is that there is nothing whatsoever to worry about if
commercial publishers and providers are re-using Open Access
content and services to enhance their own products and services.

... [remainder below]

Stevan,   There is a saying in business, for those who want to try and
divine the future, "follow the money". We want open archives, but we want
them to be economically sustainable. The ability to make the self-archived
peer-reviewed literature freely available to users is predicated on
absorbing the costs of running these services. In arXiv's case it attracts
funding because it is incredibly efficient, whether viewed in terms of
presentation (cost per paper) or usage (cost per user). But it still costs
something.

Institutional funding support may offer more options in future, or
commercial companies may fund services. But if I were to paint a scenario
in 10 years in which the majority of open archives were managed or owned by
a monolithic commercial entity, you would be concerned. In such a case you
can be pretty sure that if the open access model was not serving the
business plan its future would be reconsidered.

The wider issue here - and I must admit, I didn't set out to address it on
this occasion, nor via all of these lists, but have been drawn in - is not
about "commercial-publisher-baiting" but debating the principle of who
funds open access, and about the implications of possibly surreptitious,
possibly not, incursions into open access archives by commercial interests.

As to the rest of the speculation, it wasn't mine.

Steve Hitchcock
Open Citation (OpCit) Project 
IAM Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton SO17 1BJ,  UK
Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel:  +44 (0)23 8059 3256 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865



On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Steve Hitchcock wrote:

> Re: From FOS Newsletter, 4/15/02:
> >http://www.mathematicsweb.org/mathematicsweb/show/
>
> The Mathematics Web portal is clearly Elsevier (if not
> overtly so, e.g. no logo). The preprint link takes you to the Mathematics
> Preprint Server. I've visited this site before and had no idea it was an
> Elsevier service
>
> This appears to be an example of Guedon's assertion with regard to 'open
> article archives' such as the Chemistry Preprint Server that: "I believe
> Elsevier is testing ways to reconstruct a firm grip on the evaluation
> process of science in the digital context". How significant is the low-key
> approach to this, I wonder?

...
Yes, they are trying to reposition themselves in the market, add value,
hold on to what they have, extend it, become more essential to the
evaluation process, etc. etc. That is all fine. They may or may not
be successful. It does not matter in the least. Nor does it matter
that it is "they" (i.e., the commercial publishers, the ones with the
high-priced journals) that are doing it.

What matters is getting the peer-reviewed content up there, with free
full-text access, OAI-compliant and in the (research) public eye. That
may well add value to toll-based products and services as a side-effect,
but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that (1) it is available for
free for all, at last, and that (2) it will in turn draw more of the
peer-reviewed content up there.

Please let us not forget that freeing all of this content online is our
first (and last!) goal. We are not dedicated to competing with, let
alone ruining, publishers, primary or secondary, commercial or
otherwise. What kind of a goal is that? We are dedicated to providing
open access to the peer reviewed literature.

As to what might be the eventual secondary effects of our efforts, over
and above reaching the goal of open access for the whole of this special
literature (at least 20,000 journals, 2 million articles annually), we
can speculate about what those effects might be, but it simply does not
matter.


http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm


Moreover, it would be a mistake to focus on these speculations,
because they distract us from our real goal -- and, in an odd way,
focussing on such irrelevant speculations (e.g., in the form of
"commercial-publisher-baiting") instead of our goal is and has been one
of the many things that have actually been holding us back from open
itself, as well as provoking needless opposition to open access from
publishers.

My own guess is that whereas now, while we are still in the era of
toll-access to most of this literature, the open-access archives and
services will (among other things) provide an added value to commercial
goods and services, they will also be providing (and irreversibly
converting use and users to) open access (our explicit goal). That means
that all users whose institutions cannot afford the toll-access, and
perhaps also those who can, will access this literature for free rather
than for fee, forev

Re: Harvesting open-access data as commercial add-ons

[Stevan Harnad]

On Thu, 18 Apr 2002, Steve Hitchcock wrote:

> Re: From FOS Newsletter, 4/15/02:
> >http://www.mathematicsweb.org/mathematicsweb/show/
>
> The Mathematics Web portal is clearly Elsevier (if not
> overtly so, e.g. no logo). The preprint link takes you to the Mathematics
> Preprint Server. I've visited this site before and had no idea it was an
> Elsevier service
>
> This appears to be an example of Guedon's assertion with regard to 'open
> article archives' such as the Chemistry Preprint Server that: "I believe
> Elsevier is testing ways to reconstruct a firm grip on the evaluation
> process of science in the digital context". How significant is the low-key
> approach to this, I wonder?

My own sense is that there is nothing whatsoever to worry about if
commercial publishers and providers are re-using Open Access
content and services to enhance their own products and services.

Yes, they are trying to reposition themselves in the market, add value,
hold on to what they have, extend it, become more essential to the
evaluation process, etc. etc. That is all fine. They may or may not
be successful. It does not matter in the least. Nor does it matter
that it is "they" (i.e., the commercial publishers, the ones with the
high-priced journals) that are doing it.

What matters is getting the peer-reviewed content up there, with free
full-text access, OAI-compliant and in the (research) public eye. That
may well add value to toll-based products and services as a side-effect,
but that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that (1) it is available for
free for all, at last, and that (2) it will in turn draw more of the
peer-reviewed content up there.

Please let us not forget that freeing all of this content online is our
first (and last!) goal. We are not dedicated to competing with, let
alone ruining, publishers, primary or secondary, commercial or
otherwise. What kind of a goal is that? We are dedicated to providing
open access to the peer reviewed literature.

As to what might be the eventual secondary effects of our efforts, over
and above reaching the goal of open access for the whole of this special
literature (at least 20,000 journals, 2 million articles annually), we
can speculate about what those effects might be, but it simply does not
matter.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm

Moreover, it would be a mistake to focus on these speculations,
because they distract us from our real goal -- and, in an odd way,
focussing on such irrelevant speculations (e.g., in the form of
"commercial-publisher-baiting") instead of our goal is and has been one
of the many things that have actually been holding us back from open
itself, as well as provoking needless opposition to open access from
publishers.

My own guess is that whereas now, while we are still in the era of
toll-access to most of this literature, the open-access archives and
services will (among other things) provide an added value to commercial
goods and services, they will also be providing (and irreversibly
converting use and users to) open access (our explicit goal). That means
that all users whose institutions cannot afford the toll-access, and
perhaps also those who can, will access this literature for free rather
than for fee, forever.

Then what about services (search, citation-linking, evaluation, etc.)
on top of this open-access literature? Isn't the natural expectation
that the same thing will happen there? The commercial publishers,
primary and secondary, will continue to enhance their own services,
while the free open-archives services continue to enhance their own.
Our explicit goal was to free the peer-reviewed literature, not to free
all services on it. But if the literature is free and there are free
services on it (search, citation-linking, evaluation, etc.), why not
let the cards fall wherever they may?

Both toll-based access to this literature, and fee-based services on it
can and should continue for as long as there is a market for them, and
that should not concern us (except inasmuch as we also happen to be the
users, hence we will be making our own individual decisions as to what
it is that we use).

"Research Access, Impact and Assessment"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/thes1.html

Stevan Harnad

NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free
access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the
American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):

http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
or
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html

Discussion can be posted to:
american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org

See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess

and the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm

Harvesting open-access data as commercial add-ons

[Stevan Harnad]

> >Scirus.com, the web search engine for scientific information launched by
> >Elsevier Science last April, has now made 180.000 e-prints from arXiv.org
> >(formerly xxx.lanl.gov) available to its users. The e-prints of arXiv.org
> >were harvested using the Protocol for Metadata Harvesting of the Open
> >Archive Initiative. Scirus has just been voted Best Specialty Search Engine
> >in the prestigious Search Engine Awards 2001, and is planning to add
> >additional OAI sources to its index in the near future to broaden its
> >coverage further.

This is a very, very clever move by Elsevier -- but it does not affect
the Budapest Open Access Initiative one way or the other. It's in
strict keeping with Elsevier's (and others') "value-added" strategy for
trying to hold onto their cash cow (a trojan cow!).

It illustrates two things: (1) the value (once again) of the
self-archived literature and (2) the generality of "open access": For
if material is openly accessible and harvestable via OAI, including
even full-text material, there is nothing to prevent commercial
re-packagers from harvesting and using it, like any other user.
(Why not? They are welcome to do it!)

But it is not any sort of threat to open access efforts; on the
contrary, it encourages them. (And the trouble with hitching one's
fate to these value-added add-ons for a commercial product is that
one is always at risk from a non-commercial OAI service-provider --
such as http://citebase.eprints.org/ -- providing the same value, and
even more, for free! So it may not save the cash cow for long...)

Stevan Harnad