Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
On Thu, 27 Sep 2007, Sandy Thatcher wrote: > I wish I could share your optimism, Stevan, but we just published a book > about Rutgers (by an English professor there) that shows that the Rutgers > administration, pressured by the sports boosters on its board of trustees, > are quite happy to spend lots of money on upgrading the football stadium > and > ensuring that the team will rank in the top ten while the academic > infrastructure of the school, including classrooms, literally crumbles > into > disrepair. Is this "rational"? Not to my mind, but it is happening in many > places these days. "A lot of e-mails and phone calls" from not only their > faculty but students and alumni as well have had no effect on the > university's determination to sacrifice its academic reputation at the > altar > of big-time sports-so much for faculty power and the "dead-obvious > solution" > to the university's $34 million budget deficit. (1) Sandy is of course right about these occasional (or frequent) egregious failures in judgment on the part of some universities. (2) But if there were a general rule here, then Rutgers should *already* have diverted its library journal budget toward alleviating its budget deficits. (3) Research, like football, is a source of revenue for universities, generating research funding, attracting students and faculty, and inspiring alumni giving. (4) So if universities with big budget deficits do not deem it desirable to cancel journals and divert those savings toward lessening their deficits today, when journals cost money and research is published for free, it is not at all obvious that they would deem it desirable to divert the (hypothetical) savings from the (hypothetical) cancellations generated (hypothetically) by 100% Green OA self-archiving, at a (hypothetical) time when publication charges would replace subscriptions. (5) On the other hand, universities with or without budget deficits might be able to appreciate the (hypothetical) contingency that they would have to pay a lot less for publishing their own peer-reviewed research output than they are now paying for buying in one another's peer-reviewed research output, once it was all being self-archived in each university's own institutional repository, free for all, with journals only needing to charge for managing the service of peer review. (6) If the actual evidence of enhanced research usage and impact generated by self-archiving their own research is not enough to inspire researchers today to self-archive, and to inspire their institutions (and funders) to mandate that they self-archive, perhaps this added hypothetical prospect -- of overall net savings from the hypothetical transition from subscription fees to Gold OA fees -- will. But now lets put an end to speculation and second-guessing about what universities *would* do with the money, *if* -- and return to what they can and should do (and are already beginning to do, with success), at no expense, now: mandate Green OA self-archiving, and reap the benefits in terms of enhanced research impact. Stevan Harnad > Sandy Thatcher > Penn State University Press > > > > It seems a safe bet that since the logical brainwork in question is > > just a one-step deduction (which I think university administrators, > > even with their atrophied neurons, should still be capable of making, > > if they are still capable of getting up in the morning at all), the > > dance-step will be mastered: Faced with the question "Do we use the > > newfound windfall cancellation savings from our former publication > > buy-in to pay for the newfound publication costs of our research > > publication output, or for something else, letting our research > > output fend for itself?"they will -- under the pressure of logic, > > necessity,practicality, self-interest, and a lot of emails and phone > > calls from their research-publishing faculty -- find their way to > > the dead-obvious solution... > > > > Best wishes, > > > > Stevan Harnad > >
Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
On 25-Sep-07, at 9:50 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote: > it is not a matter of whether the STM business could be run > profitably with > NIH-type restrictions in place, but instead the expectations the > companies most invested in this business have about profit margins > and their willingness to continue in the business at a lower level > of profit when their funds might be redirected to more profitable > uses elsewhere. Money tends to go where the expectations for profits > are greatest. If some players (commercial or otherwise) eventually abandon the journal publishing game because of lowered prospects for profit, their titles and editorial boards will migrate, quite naturally, to other players (like PLoS or BMC or HIndawi) who are happy to stay in, or enter, the Gold OA arena (but we are again getting ahead of ourselves: it is Green OA, Green OA mandates and Institutional OA Repositories whose time is coming first, not Gold OA). Journal title migration itself is not hypothetical: it is happening all the time, irrespective of OA. (So is journal death, and birth.) A learned journal consists of its editorship, peer-reviewership, authorship, and reputation (including its impact metrics), not its publisher. We know (and value) journals by their individual titles and track- records, not their publishers. > One would hope, Stevan, that "logic" would apply, of all places, > within academic institutions. But I have been writing now for two > decades providing "evidence" of ways in which higher education does > not act according to logic, or norms of rationality, that one would > expect from it. You are certainly right, Sandy, that universities sometimes (often?) act irrationally, sometimes even with respect to their own best interests: not only universities, but corporations, and even people, individual and multiple, betimes obtund. But reality eventually exerts a pressure (if the stakes and consequences are nontrivial) and adaptation occurs. Not necessarily for the best, in ethical and humanistic terms, but at least for the better in terms of "interests". And the competition of interests in the question of what universities will do with their hypothetical windfall journal- cancellation savings (if/when Green OA mandates ever generate the -- likewise hypothetical -- unsustainable subscription cancellations) is a competition between (1) the other things universities could do with those newfound windfall savings -- e.g., (1) buying more books for the library, or withdrawing them from the library budget altogether and spending them on something else -- versus (2) using them to pay for the university's newfound research publicaton costs (which, on the very same hypothesis, will emerge pari passu with the university's windfall cancellation savings). It seems a safe bet that since the logical brainwork in question is just a one-step deduction (which I think university adminstrators, even with their atrophied neurons, should still be capable of making, if they are still capable of getting up in the morning at all), the dance-step will be mastered: Faced with the question "Do we use the newfound windfall cancellation savings from our former publication buy-in to pay for the newfound publication costs of our research publication output, or for something else, letting our research output fend for itself?" they will -- under the pressure of logic, necessity, practicality, self-interest, and a lot of emails and phone calls from their research-publishing faculty -- find their way to the dead-obvious solution... Best wishes, Stevan Harnad On 25-Sep-07, at 9:50 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote: > > > > > > > > The factual part is fact. If wise men have privileged access to the > > > future, so be it. I have none. I have only the available evidence, > > > and logic. (And logic tells me that where there's a will, there's a > > > way, especially if/when the hypothetical cancellation windfall > > > savings that no one has yet seen should ever materialize. Till > > > then, I'll just go with the evidence-based four -- self-archiving, > > > self-archiving mandates, OA, and their already demonstrated > > > feasibility and benefits -- leaving the speculation to those who > > > prefer that sort of thing.) > > One would hope, Stevan, that "logic" would apply, of all places, > within academic institutions. But I have been writing now for two > decades providing "evidence" of ways in which higher education does > not act according to logic, or norms of rationality, that one would > expect from it. For a recent example, see my article in the April > issue of Against the Grain about the illogic of the way revised > dissertations, and the fates of junior faculty tied to them, are > handled in the academy now. Another example is the promotion of > aggressive application of "fair use" within academia, which has the > by-product of undercutting the economic base of university press > publishing. This kind of "evidence" of pervaise irrationality i
Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Sandy Thatcher wrote: > You make it all sound so simple, Stevan, but there is nothing simple about > a > transition from Green OA to Gold OA, including the redirection of savings > from journal subscriptions to funding Gold OA journals, because as many > wise > people like Jim O'Donnell have pointed out on this list, universities > don't > work that way. I make no wishes, wise or unwise. And I make no conjectures -- only, when forced, counter-conjectures, to counter others' conjectures. The actual empirical evidence (neither wish nor conjecture) is that self-archiving is (1) feasible, (2) being done, (3) beneficial, and (4) being mandated. Whether and when it ever goes on to generate cancellations and transitions and redirections is all pure speculation, based on no empirical evidence one way or the other (except that it hasn't happened yet, even in fields that reached 100% OA years ago). But if you insist on asking a hypothetical "what if?" question just the same, I respond with an equally hypothetical "then..." answer. The factual part is fact. If wise men have privileged access to the future, so be it. I have none. I have only the available evidence, and logic. (And logic tells me that where there's a will, there's a way, especially if/when the hypothetical cancellation windfall savings that no one has yet seen should ever materialize. Till then, I'll just go with the evidence-based four -- self-archiving, self-archiving mandates, OA, and their already demonstrated feasibility and benefits -- leaving the speculation to those who prefer that sort of thing.) > Wishing it were so does not make it so. And by talking about > peer review only, you oversimplify what is involved in journal publishing, > which requires skills that go beyond simply conducting peer review and > that > are not most economically carried out by faculty, who are not trained for > such tasks and whose dedication of time to them detracts from the exercise > of > their main talents as researchers. Well, I could invoke my quarter century as founder and editor in chief of a major peer-reviewed journal as evidence that I know what I am talking about. But I'd rather just point out that the conjecture about journal publishing downsizing to just peer-review service-provision is part of the hypothetical conditional that I only invoke if someone insists on playing the speculation game. It is neither a wish nor a whim. I am content with 100% Green OA. Full stop. Apart from that, I'll stick with the empirical facts of self-archiving, self-archiving mandates, OA, and their benefits, and abstain from the hypothesizing. > You are also wrong in interpreting PRISM as just another repetition > of the same old tired anti-OA rhetoric. As a member of the publishing > community whose press is a member of the PSP (but not an endorser of > PRISM), I can tell you that this is not just more of the same. If PRISM is making any new points -- empirical or logical -- I would be very grateful if you point out to me exactly what those new points are. For all I have seen has been a repetition of the very few and very familiar old points I and others have rebutted many, many times before. (You seem to have overlooked the linked list if 21 references I included as evidence that these points have all been voiced, and rebutted, many times before. If you send me a list of new ones, it would be helpful if you first check that list to see whether they are indeed new. The list is also archived at: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/297-guid.html ) > Whether we are getting close to a "tipping point" is of course a matter > of conjecture, but then so is the overall benefit from Green OA, which you > always state as though it were an established fact rather than a > hypothesis > with some evidence in support of it yet hardly overwhelming evidence at > this > point in time. Since we are talking about wishful thinking, I know full well that the OA self-archiving advantage in terms of citations and downloads is something that the publishing lobby dearly wish were nonexistent, or merely a methodological artifact of some kind. I'm quite happy to continue conducting actual empirical studies and analyses confirming the OA advantage, and demonstrating that it is not just an artifact (of either early access or self-selection bias for quality). That ongoing question is at least substantive and empirical, hence new (especially when the challenges come from those with no vested interests in the outcome). The doomsday prophecies and the hype about government control and censorship are not. "Where There's No Access Problem There's No Open Access Advantage" http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/289-guid.html (I expect that the tobacco industry did more than its share of wishing that the health benefits of not smoking would turn out to be nonexistent or a self-selection artifact too: When money is at stake, interpretations
Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
You make it all sound so simple, Stevan, but there is nothing simple about a transition from Green OA to Gold OA, including the redirection of savings from journal subscriptions to funding Gold OA journals, because as many wise people like Jim O'Donnell have pointed out on this list, universities don't work that way. Wishing it were so does not make it so. And by talking about peer review only, you oversimplify what is involved in journal publishing, which requires skills that go beyond simply conducting peer review and that are not most economically carried out by faculty, who are not trained for such tasks and whose dedication of time to them detracts from the exercise of their main talents as researchers. You are also wrong in interpreting PRISM as just another repetition of the same old tired anti-OA rhetoric. As a member of the publishing community whose press is a member of the PSP (but not an endorser of PRISM), I can tell you that this is not just more of the same. Whether we are getting close to a "tipping point" is of course a matter of conjecture, but then so is the overall benefit from Green OA, which you always state as though it were an established fact rather than a hypothesis with some evidence in support of it yet hardly overwhelming evidence at this point in time. Sandy Thatcher Penn State University Press > On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, Sandy Thatcher wrote: > > > Ah, yes, and if you'll remember our prior discussion about open > > access, Stevan, I warned that just this "success" might be the > > "tipping point" to drive a host of commercial and society > > publishers out of the business of journal publishing. One "tipping > > point" causes another? Witness, as partial proof, the reaction of > > STM publishers represented by the PRISM initiative. I read that as > > a warning that, if the government forces a change in their business > > model, they may just walk away from the business. I assume you > > wouldn't consider that a bad thing at all, but my question would be > > what kind of structure will take its place and what expectations > > will universities have of their presses to pick up the slack? > > What is remarkable, Sandy, is how actual empirical facts (very few) > are being freely admixed, willy-nilly, with fact-free speculations > for which there is, and continues to be zero empirical evidence, > and, in many cases, decisive and familiar counterevidence, both > empirical and logical. > > Nothing has changed since our prior discussions except that there > have (happily) been some more Green OA mandates (total adopted: 32, > plus 8 more further proposed mandates). > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ > > There has been no "tipping point." Just *talk* about tipping points, > and that talk about tipping points has been going on for years. > > There has been no one driven out of business, nor any empirical > evidence of a trend toward being driven out of business. Just *talk* > of being driven out of business, and that talk about being driven > out of business has been going on for years. > > And as to the "partial proof" in the form of the STM/PRISM > "reaction" -- that very same reaction (with the very same false, > alarmist arguments) has been voiced, verbatim, by the very same > publisher groups (STM, AAP, ALPSP), over and over, for over a decade > now. And they have been debunked just as often (see long list of > links below). But that certainly hasn't been enough to make the > publishers' anti-OA lobby cease and desist. Do you consider the > relentless repetition, at louder and louder volume, of exactly the > same specious and evidence-free claims, to be "proof" of anything, > partial or otherwise? > > And the phrase "the government forces a change in their business > model" is just as false a description of what is actually going on > when it is spoken in your own well-meaning words as when it is > voiced by PRISM and Eric Dezenhall: The government is *not* forcing > a change in a business model. The funders of tax-payer-funded > research -- and, increasingly, universities, who are not "the > government" at all! -- are insisting that the researchers they fund > and employ make their peer-reviewed research freely available to all > would-be users online, in line with the purpose of conducting and > funding and publishing research in the first place. > > This quite natural (and overdue) adaptation to the online age on the > part of the research community -- Green OA -- may or may not lead to > a transition to Gold OA publishing: no one knows whether, or when it > will. But what is already known is that OA itself, whether Green or > Gold, is enormously beneficial to research, researchers, their > institutions and funders, the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying > public that funds research and for whose benefit it is funded, > conducted and published. (OA is also a secondary benefit to > education and the developing world.) > > So the "tipping point" for Green
Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
On Wed, 19 Sep 2007, Sandy Thatcher wrote: > Ah, yes, and if you'll remember our prior discussion about open access, > Stevan, I warned that just this "success" might be the "tipping point" to > drive a host of commercial and society publishers out of the business of > journal publishing. One "tipping point" causes another? Witness, as > partial > proof, the reaction of STM publishers represented by the PRISM initiative. > I > read that as a warning that, if the government forces a change in their > business model, they may just walk away from the business. I assume you > wouldn't consider that a bad thing at all, but my question would be what > kind > of structure will take its place and what expectations will universities > have > of their presses to pick up the slack? What is remarkable, Sandy, is how actual empirical facts (very few) are being freely admixed, willy-nilly, with fact-free speculations for which there is, and continues to be zero empirical evidence, and, in many cases, decisive and familiar counterevidence, both empirical and logical. Nothing has changed since our prior discussions except that there have (happily) been some more Green OA mandates (total adopted: 32, plus 8 more further proposed mandates). http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ There has been no "tipping point." Just *talk* about tipping points, and that talk about tipping points has been going on for years. There has been no one driven out of business, nor any empirical evidence of a trend toward being driven out of business. Just *talk* of being driven out of business, and that talk about being driven out of business has been going on for years. And as to the "partial proof" in the form of the STM/PRISM "reaction" -- that very same reaction (with the very same false, alarmist arguments) has been voiced, verbatim, by the very same publisher groups (STM, AAP, ALPSP), over and over, for over a decade now. And they have been debunked just as often (see long list of links below). But that certainly hasn't been enough to make the publishers' anti-OA lobby cease and desist. Do you consider the relentless repetition, at louder and louder volume, of exactly the same specious and evidence-free claims, to be "proof" of anything, partial or otherwise? And the phrase "the government forces a change in their business model" is just as false a description of what is actually going on when it is spoken in your own well-meaning words as when it is voiced by PRISM and Eric Dezenhall: The government is *not* forcing a change in a business model. The funders of tax-payer-funded research -- and, increasingly, universities, who are not "the government" at all! -- are insisting that the researchers they fund and employ make their peer-reviewed research freely available to all would-be users online, in line with the purpose of conducting and funding and publishing research in the first place. This quite natural (and overdue) adaptation to the online age on the part of the research community -- Green OA -- may or may not lead to a transition to Gold OA publishing: no one knows whether, or when it will. But what is already known is that OA itself, whether Green or Gold, is enormously beneficial to research, researchers, their institutions and funders, the vast R&D industry, and the tax-paying public that funds research and for whose benefit it is funded, conducted and published. (OA is also a secondary benefit to education and the developing world.) So the "tipping point" for Green OA itself is an unalloyed benefit for everyone but the peer-reviewed journal publishing industry, whether or not it leads to a second tipping point and a transition to Gold OA. Reality today, to repeat, is a growth in Green OA mandates, not a tipping point (let alone two), not a subscription decline, not publishers going out of business, not government pressure toward another publishing model. You ask "what kind of structure will take its place and what expectations will universities have of their presses to pick up the slack?" I presume you are referring to the multiple hypothetical conditional: *if* Green OA mandates reach the tipping point that generates 100% Green OA, and *if* that in turn generates journal cancellations that reach the tipping point that generates a transition to Gold OA? The answer (which I have provided many times before) is simple: The "structure" will be Gold OA, funded out of (a part of) the institutional cancellation savings. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399w e152.htm And this is not about publishing in general, commercial, society, university, or otherwise. It is only about peer-reviewed journal publishing, and their hypothetical transition to Gold OA under cancellation pressure from mandated Green OA. Stevan Harnad Harnad, S. (2005) Critique of ALPSP'S 1st Response to RCUK's Open Access Self-Archiving Proposal. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11132/ (2005
Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
** Cross-Posted ** Thomas, Chuck & McDonald, Robert H. (2007) Measuring and Comparing Participation Patterns in Digital Repositories: Repositories by the Numbers, Part 1. D-lib Magazine 13 (9/10) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september07/mcdonald/09mcdonald.html doi:10.1045/september2007-mcdonald EXCERPT: "As for mandatory-deposit repositories, the limited available data indicate authors represented in such repositories tend to contribute more of their intellectual output. Sale (2006) predicted institutions establishing deposit mandates were likely to see such results within three years of implementing these policies... This study's findings only reinforce such predictions and arguments favoring institutional mandates. As the data in this article show, a mandate is arguably the "tipping point" described by Gladwell (2000) that can make depositing behavior among scholars not just widespread, but also more of an ingrained and complete behavior."
Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth
** Cross-Posted ** Thomas, Chuck & McDonald, Robert H. (2007) Measuring and Comparing Participation Patterns in Digital Repositories: Repositories by the Numbers, Part 1. D-lib Magazine 13 (9/10) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september07/mcdonald/09mcdonald.html doi:10.1045/september2007-mcdonald EXCERPT: "As for mandatory-deposit repositories, the limited available data indicate authors represented in such repositories tend to contribute more of their intellectual output. Sale (2006) predicted institutions establishing deposit mandates were likely to see such results within three years of implementing these policies... This study's findings only reinforce such predictions and arguments favoring institutional mandates. As the data in this article show, a mandate is arguably the "tipping point" described by Gladwell (2000) that can make depositing behavior among scholars not just widespread, but also more of an ingrained and complete behavior."
