Re: [GOAL] Open Access: "Plan S" Needs to Drop "Option B"

[Thomas Krichel]

  Peter Murray-Rust writes

> The situation with all commercial publishers (including many scholarly
> societies) is now unacceptable.

  It seems perfectly acceptable to libraries who continue to pay vast
  amounts for subscription journals with most of the contents receiving
  very little use. The average academic reads one hour a week. Now you
  take all the academic in the institution, you count 56 weeks a year
  and divide your annual subscription cost by that number ... it turns
  out to be a very very expensive hour I am sure.

> Yes. I am now appalled at the scale of OA APC charges. I have outlined
> these in
> 
> https://www.slideshare.net/petermurrayrust/scientific-search-for-everyone
> slides 3-11
> 
> where I contend that probably >1000 USD of an APCs goes to shareholder
> profits and corporate branding and gross inefficiency.

  It is easy to be outraged at the riches of others, but clearly
  some people think it worth to pay that sort of amount. As long
  as they do, publishers can charge it. We should not be angry
  at those who charge but those who let them get away with it.  

> The effect of APCs on the Global  South is appalling

  People can still publish. If the research is good, it will
  eventually make it to become known.

  Stevan writes

> The only thing that is and has been sustaining the paywalls on research
> has been publishers' lobbying of governments on funder OA policy and their
> manipulation of institutional OA policy with "Big Deals" on extortionate
> library licensing fees to ensure that OA policies always include Option B.

  If I recall correctly, "paywalls" usually, in this group's
  discussion, refers to limit access papers to those who pay for
  it. It is library subscriptions that keep paywalls running.  I said
  this years ago. Stevan kept on dismissing my call to cancel
  subscription saying we need to wait until full green OA is achieved
  to start cancelling subscriptions.

  I agree fully that APCs as charged by commercial publishers are too
  high. But you can't blame publishers for wanting to charge them. You
  have to address the willingness to pay them.  If institutions were
  to pay them fully, a race to spend more on APCs to demonstrate
  research quality will raise the cost of scholarly communication
  intemediation, potentially making OA more expensive than subscriptions.

  But I am not worried yet, because Plan S would only cover funded
  research, and it calls for a cap.

-- 

  Cheers,

  Thomas Krichel  http://openlib.org/home/krichel
  skype:thomaskrichel
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Re: [GOAL] Open Access: "Plan S" Needs to Drop "Option B"

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I am in agreement with Stefan.

The situation with all commercial publishers (including many scholarly
societies) is now unacceptable. I see very little value for the citizens of
the world, who either cannot read Northern Science or can't be authors.
Closed Access Means People Die, and so do outrageous APCs.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 1:33 PM Stevan Harnad  wrote:

> To combine Peter Suber's
> post with George
> Monbiot
> 's:
> The only true cost (and service) provided by peer-reviewed research journal
> publishers is the management and umpiring of peer review, and this costs an
> order of magnitude less that the publishers extortionate fees and profits
> today.
>
Yes. I am now appalled at the scale of OA APC charges. I have outlined
these in

https://www.slideshare.net/petermurrayrust/scientific-search-for-everyone
slides 3-11

where I contend that probably >1000 USD of an APCs goes to shareholder
profits and corporate branding and gross inefficiency. The (failed)
Springer IPO effectively argued that they would use the flotation to invest
in brands so they could charge higher prices. The effect of APCs on the
Global  South is appalling (one publisher make no discount for anyone - see
my slides).

I believe the true cost of publishing and hosting a peer-reviewed scholarly
article is less than 200 USD. It's probably true that in some regulated
fields (e.g. clinical trials) reviewing needs more input but that's the
sort of amount that it costs for a single review cycle, no typesetting (the
publishers cost ca 200 USD and it destroys information) and hosting on a
public site. Of course many journals do it for zero.

The actual transaction costs of preprint servers are about 8 USD.




> The researchers and peer-reviewers conduct and report the research as well
> as the peer reviewing for free (or rather, funded by their institutions and
> research grants, which are, in turn, funded mostly by tax-payers).
>
Yes

> Peer-reviewed research journal publishers are making among the biggest
> profit margins on the planet through almost 100% pure parasitism.
>
Totally agreed.

> Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub is
> one woman's noble attempt to fix this.
>
> But the culprits for the prohibitive pay-walling are not just the
> publishers: They are also the researchers, their institutions and their
> research grant funders -- for not requiring all peer-reviewed research to
> be  made Open Access (OA) immediately upon acceptance for publication
> through researcher self-archiving intheir own institutional open access
> repositories.
>
Yes, this is what I refer to as the Publisher-Academic complex

> Instead the OA policy of the EC ("Plan S
> ")
> and other institutional and funder OA policies worldwide are allowing
> publishers to continue their parasitism by offering researcher' the choice
> between Option A (self-archiving their published research) or Option B
> (paying to publish it in an OA journal where publishers simply name their
> price and the parasitism continues in another key).
>
> I agree. I approve of the motivation of PlanS to reassert control, but I
doubtb it will lower pricess to the real cost (200 USD)

> Unlike Alexandra Elbakyan, researchers are freeing their very own research
> OA when they deposit it in their institutional OA repository.
>
Agreed. It's a pity that in some countries the repositories are scattered
and incredibly difficult for machines to search . We need central
aggregations like Core, Dare, HAL

> Publishers try to stop them by demanding copyright, imposing OA embargoes,
> and threating individual researchers and their institutions with
> Alexandra-Elbakyan-style lawsuits.
>
> Such lawsuits against researchers or their institutions would obviously
> cause huge public outrage globally -- an even better protection than hiding
> in Kazakhstan.
>
> And many researchers are ignoring the embargoes and spontaneously
> self-archiving their published papers -- and have been doing it,
> inclreasingly  for almost 30 years now (without a single lawsuit).
>
> But spontaneous self-archiving is growing far too slowly: it requires
> systematic mandates from institutions and funders in order to break out of
> the paywalls.
>
> The only thing that is and has been sustaining the paywalls on research
> has been publishers' lobbying of governments on funder OA policy and their
> manipulation of institutional OA policy with "Big Deals" on extortionate
> library licensing fees to ensure that OA policies always include Option B.
>
> The solution is ever so simple: OA policies must drop Option B.
>
I think there is a synergistic