Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
[ The following text is in the utf-8 character set. ] [ Your display is set for the iso-8859-1 character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Interesting text from Stevan harnad. let me comment as follows: Le dimanche 15 novembre 2009 à 20:31 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : 1. First paragraph. Two separate ideas. A need for mandate first, and we all agree on this. A claim that presently the promotion of gold OA is premature, and the further claim that this promotion of Gold OA distracts and confuses. This is speculation at best. 2. Second paragraph. It largely reiterates the distracting and confusing speculative theory above. What we could agree on is that, under certain conditions, and for certain objectives, mandated green OA is the fastest and surest way to OA. But this is not a universal truth. Furthermore, the so-called cross-talk would greatly diminish if criticisms against Gold OA did not accompany the promotion of Green OA. As for the kind of zero-sum game that institutions are presented as playing, once again, I would like concrete evidence for it. My own experience is that mandating self-archiving and supporting gold OA, including some unfortunate moves in this regard (I tend to agree with Stevan Harnad on a number of these cases), tend to be quite separate. 3. Third paragraph. Interesting paragraph in that it shows a confusion between the less-than-optimal and the counter-productive. As we do not know what the ideal form of the optimal really is, does this eman we all are condemned to being counter-productive? As for the fantasy about magical powers, it is quite revealing in itself... But I do not subscribe to the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams. :-) 4. Gold OA is conflated once more with the author-pay approach. In my own view, the author-pay approach is flawed for a number of reasons. My own optimal vision of the Gold Road is free for everybody and external sources of support, probably governmental and my main model is SciELO. It would be nice, for once, not to reduce Gold OA to author-pay models, or SCOAP-like models. This said, it is the paragraph I feel closest to of the four presented below. Jean-Claude Guédon [snip] What limits the success of repositories is the failure of (85% of) researchers to deposit unless deposit is mandated by their institutions and/or funders. So Green OA self-archiving mandates are needed, from all institutions and funders. What slows the adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates is distraction and confusion from the premature promotion of Gold OA (or copyright reform, or publishing reform, or publisher boycott threats), often as if OA were synonymous with Gold OA. So the disagreement *is* about speed and probability: If we agree that (mandated) Green OA self-archiving is the fastest and surest way to reach 100% OA, then the speed/probability factor comes down to the distraction and confusion from the promotion of Gold OA that are slowing the promotion and adoption of Green OA mandates. It would just be harmless Green/Gold parallelism if there weren't this persistent cross-talk, but there is. Institutions wrongly imagine that they are doing their bit for OA if they sign COPE and pledge some of their scarce resources to pay for Gold OA -- without first mandating Green OA (because they're already doing their bit for OA) (Individuals of course have the right to pursue any course they like. No one is talking about depriving anyone of rights. I am simply giving the reasons it is counterproductive -- if 100% OA, as quickly and surely as possible is the goal -- to promote Gold OA without first mandating Green OA. [My goodness, if I had that sort of magical power that could determine what people had a right to do, I would use it to conjure up universal Green OA mandates on the part of the planet's researchers institutions and funders: I certainly wouldn't waste it on hexing those who insist on chasing after iron pyrite today...] (Pursuing and paying Gold OA today also locks in the current costs of doing journal publishing the way it is being done today. Green OA will eventually lower those costs substantially, but I do not invoke this as a reason against pursuing and promoting Gold OA today -- *if* Green OA has first been mandated. Otherwise, however, it is not only dysfunctional but downright foolish.) Stevan Harnad Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD Publisher/Editor in Chief Information Research InformationR.net e-mail: t.d.wil...@shef.ac.uk Web site: http://InformationR.net/ ___ Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: TW: Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals are another. My position is not against the former, it is simply that one approach alone is not
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
References: efa24dc50910210535u2b929f10pb1a42a19e91d5...@mail.gmail.com EMEW3|e21c41065dd1d93c5a3a33f4c806f395l9KNn212boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton. ac.uk|10210535u2b929f10pb1a42a19e91d5...@mail.gmail.com a5ac397410a98e489ec2937920b8020103b88d9...@iu-mssg-mbx05.ads.iu.edu EMEW3|f0e7f908d9fc01fe0ab5836fe7b534ecl9YJRk12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton. ac.uk|a98e489ec2937920b8020103b88d9...@iu-mssg-mbx05.ads.iu.edu 1257005105.4aec6031e8...@webmail.shef.ac.uk blu0-smtp9aee03ef6b0828c44f6a8a1...@phx.gbl EMEW3|5f8523bbb81d4d08c1b9b7fec4121884lA08Od12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton. ac.uk|aee03ef6b0828c44f6a8a1...@phx.gbl 1257088861.4aeda75d3b...@webmail.shef.ac.uk blu0-smtp148233222fa37d23b97ff3a1...@phx.gbl EMEW3|a7cbb46bb4a9d61b9b4e75cf20e848a0lA5JCn12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton. ac.uk|48233222fa37d23b97ff3a1...@phx.gbl 1257692455.4af6dd278b...@webmail.shef.ac.uk blu0-smtp19f51ee12fa6173abbdaeea1...@phx.gbl EMEW3|637cf2654c76a1a32bbc17c119a7163elA98Ux12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton. ac.uk|9f51ee12fa6173abbdaeea1...@phx.gbl 1258319657.4b006f29d4...@webmail.shef.ac.uk X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.936) X-OriginalArrivalTime: 16 Nov 2009 01:31:13.0977 (UTC) FILETIME=[7C2C1A90:01CA665C] On 15-Nov-09, at 4:14 PM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: I think the crux of our disagreement is not about the speed with which OA can be accomplished or the probability of success, but about the possibility of pursuing more than one goal simultaneously. I see nothing wrong in this and, in fact, this is what is happening: repositories are being established and mandated, free OA journals are being established and surviving and new modes of university press publishing, involving OA plus print-on-demand, are being created. This all seems very healthy to me. Given a number of things, such as any individual's right to pursue whatever course seems appropriate with regard to scholarly communication and, on the other hand, the inertia that limits the success of repositories, no one method is going to answer the OA problem completely. What limits the success of repositories is the failure of (85% of) researchers to deposit unless deposit is mandated by their institutions and/or funders. So Green OA self-archiving mandates are needed, from all institutions and funders. What slows the adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates is distraction and confusion from the premature promotion of Gold OA (or copyright reform, or publishing reform, or publisher boycott threats), often as if OA were synonymous with Gold OA. So the disagreement *is* about speed and probability: If we agree that (mandated) Green OA self-archiving is the fastest and surest way to reach 100% OA, then the speed/probability factor comes down to the distraction and confusion from the promotion of Gold OA that are slowing the promotion and adoption of Green OA mandates. It would just be harmless Green/Gold parallelism if there weren't this persistent cross-talk, but there is. Institutions wrongly imagine that they are doing their bit for OA if they sign COPE and pledge some of their scarce resources to pay for Gold OA -- without first mandating Green OA (because they're already doing their bit for OA) (Individuals of course have the right to pursue any course they like. No one is talking about depriving anyone of rights. I am simply giving the reasons it is counterproductive -- if 100% OA, as quickly and surely as possible is the goal -- to promote Gold OA without first mandating Green OA. [My goodness, if I had that sort of magical power that could determine what people had a right to do, I would use it to conjure up universal Green OA mandates on the part of the planet's researchers institutions and funders: I certainly wouldn't waste it on hexing those who insist on chasing after iron pyrite today...] (Pursuing and paying Gold OA today also locks in the current costs of doing journal publishing the way it is being done today. Green OA will eventually lower those costs substantially, but I do not invoke this as a reason against pursuing and promoting Gold OA today -- *if* Green OA has first been mandated. Otherwise, however, it is not only dysfunctional but downright foolish.) Stevan Harnad Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD Publisher/Editor in Chief Information Research InformationR.net e-mail: t.d.wil...@shef.ac.uk Web site: http://InformationR.net/ ___ Quoting Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk: On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: TW: Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals are another. My position is not against the former, it is simply that one approach alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, subsidised OA journals bring the maximum social benefit. The crux of our disagreement concerns speed, probability, and the limited attention (and action) span of the scholarly community. Subsidized OA journals would
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
- Original Message - From: Couture Marc To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 10:37 PM Subject: Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself Marc Couture wrote : I was speaking on general terms: I see (but it may be highly subjective) more progress on the general front of Gold OA with, for instance, successes like PLoS, two journals appearing every day in DOAJ, etc. Marc, The number of OA journals appearing in DOAJ is not a criteria of good health of Gold OA ! It is exactly the same as Archives. OA periodicals appear, yes, but they can stay empty. It was the case of some BioMed Central Journals when Sally Morris conducted her survey on OA periodicals in 2005. The good criteria is the number of researchers publishing in them. I can give the example of the 65 researchers of the lab of PRC at INRA in France who publish about 100 articles a year. Go to the database PUBLICAT where you can find the metadata of 7226 publications of the lab (thesis, reports, articles, etc) since 1963. http://wcentre.tours.inra.fr/prc/internet/texto/index.php Since 2003 our researchers publish in OA periodicals (essentially BMC periodicals). Ask a research in PUBLICAT with the key-word BMC and you will see that only 10 publications appear in the answer. Perhaps you could add one or two other OA titles as key-words but I don't think that it would really change the result. 1 in 2003 1 in 2004 1 in 2005 1 in 2006 1 in 2007 3 in 2008 2 in 2009 Looking at the references you will find that the researchers publish in the same 4 BMC periodicals . In accordance with a survey conducted in my lab in 1994, our researchers published their results in 98 different periodicals (for the period 1983- 1992). There were also many other periodicals used only once that are not included in the 98. The diversity offered by BioMed Central (our main OA periodicals for publishing in biology) is not enough for our researchers. Yes, we progress in Gold OA, but is not yet the Eldorado! But I must admit that we see also interesting advances on the Green-OA front, with mandates piling up, albeit at a modest pace. By the way, I saw recently that at Université de Liège's, which adopted a mandate, the repository ORBi went from 178 full-text documents in July 2008 to... no less than 15 000 documents (mostly articles) 15 months later (source: http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/stats). Now that's some success... The progress of 15000 OA articles in 15 months (at the level of an university) seem to me more stricking than 10 OA articles offered in 7 years (at the level of a lab) Hélène Bosc
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
Hélène Bosc wrote : I can give the example of the 65 researchers of the lab of PRC at INRA in France who publish about 100 articles a year. Since 2003 our researchers publish in OA periodicals (essentially BMC periodicals). [...] 3 in 2008 As an exercise, I cross-checked with DOAJ's list the 89 articles published in 2008 (in 50 journals) from the INRA database (PUBLICAT), and found 5 more articles published in four different OA Journals (including PLoS Biology). Yet, this total of 8 articles, or 9% of the total INRA article output, is quite unimpressive. Nevertheless - and noting that this excludes articles which may have been published with optional (fee-based) or delayed OA - it is comparable to what obtains with spontaneous (i.e. unmandated and unsupported) self-archiving. A (maximum) rate of 15% is often quoted; my rule-of-thumb estimate of the self-archiving (unmandated and unsupported) rate at my university (UQAM) is less than 5%. Returning again to Université de Liège's extraordinary success (15 000 deposits in 15 months), further examination of the information on the site of the archive suggests that it is the result of both an institutional mandate and various types of technical support offered to, to paraphrase Stevan Harnad, further reduce the number of keystrokes between now and a 100%-OA world. I suggest to everyone involved in IR development to have a look, and maybe get some ideas... http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/project?locale=enid=106 Marc Couture
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On November 9, 2009, 18:22, Stevan Harnad wrote: I'm not criticizing the pursuit of other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without first doing the doable, and already long overdue. As one who has worked (and devoted much time) on both Green- and Gold-OA in the last few years (though on a definitely smaller scale than the global crusade of Stevan's, but the changes must come from both global and local actions) I can't really accept his seemingly inescapable conclusion. It's not obvious to me that stopping my work on gold-OA issues (or, if I follow Stevan's line of thought, delaying it until nearly 100% green-OA has been attained through mandates) would have improved the results of my green-OA actions. I don't think there is something like a total amount of time and efforts available, and that these can be directly linked to definite related results, so as one result suffers in direct proportion to the time/efforts devoted to pursue others. Furthermore, not being particularly stubborn, I fear that, had I limited my actions to green-OA, I wouldn't have found the will to keep trying, in view of the disappointing results on the green-OA front. So maybe in the end, I put more efforts on green-OA because I see more immediate, if not overreaching, results in gold-OA. It reminds me of the struggle against poverty: Should we stop for a while working/ fighting/ devoting time or money to help reduce poverty (or illness, or illiteracy) in rich countries, because the same efforts or resources could save or improve many more lives in the developing world? So, I would have agreed completely to the following opinion, instead of the one quoted above: I'm not criticizing the pursuit of other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without **also** doing the doable, and already long overdue. The difference lies in one small word. Marc Couture
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
My colleague and comrade-at-arms, Marc Couture, has done the doable: He has worked long and hard for the creation of an Institutional Repository (IR), Archipel http://archipel.uqam.ca (named by him!) at our institution, UQAM; he has deposited all his own papers therein; and since then he has worked long and hard (though so far, alas, unsuccessfully) for the adoption of a self-archiving mandate at UQAM (and elsewhere). Having done all that for Green OA, Marc can hardly be described as not having done the doable! The origin of this discussion thread (on giving the wrong advice on OA) was a posting, in celebration of OA week, advising that researchers should boycott commercial journals (as 33,000 biomedical signatories of the PLoS petition threatened to do in 2000, if their journals did not become Gold OA -- without the slightest mention of the Green OA self-archiving they could have done, in exchange for roughly the same number of keystrokes). That boycott threat failed, of course, and should not be repeated. Nor should the failure to self-archive, or the failure to work, as Marc has done, for Green OA self-archiving mandates. Nor should institutions or funders provide funds for paying Gold OA fees without first having mandated Green OA self-archiving: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/651-guid.html I certainly was not suggesting that individuals (especially those who have self-archived, and worked for Green OA self-archiving mandates!) should not publish in, referee for, or read Gold OA journals! Free choice of which journal to publish in is as important as providing free access to its contents. So, so far I think there is nothing that Marc and I would disagree about. The one point on which we may not see quite eye to eye is whether an individual who (unlike Marc) has not self-archived, nor promoted Green OA self-archiving for the sake of OA, should promote Gold OA publishing (or journal boycotting) for the sake of OA. With so many still unaware (or incomprehending) of the need, or the power, or even the possibility of Green OA self-archiving and Green OA self-archiving mandates, I do think it slows OA progress to promote Gold OA without at least coupling it with the promotion of Green OA, and its promotion as the far greater priority at this time. Marc notes that he is disappoint[ed with] results on the green-OA front. So am I. But I have also suggested a reason -- actually, at least 34 of them: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries -- as to why these results are still so disappointing, despite the fact that 100% Green OA is fully within reach with a but a few keystrokes. And pre-emptive Gold Fever -- the belief that Gold OA is the only way to OA, or the fastest, or the surest, and the promotion of Gold OA without assigning clear priority and urgency to Green OA -- is one (indeed several) of those 34 reasons: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ Marc has all the right priorities, both in principle and in practice. If everyone else did too, there would be nothing for me to keep banging on about, and the research community could already be counting the green (and gold!) chicks that had hatched from those green eggs (85% of which we have alas not yet laid, because the likes of Marc are still so few, whereas those afflicted with pre-emptive Gold Fever are many). (The one point I am not sure I quite understand in Marc's commentary was I put more efforts [into] green-OA because I see more immediate, if not overreaching, results in gold-OA. I'm not sure what Marc means here: that making one's own article OA by self-archiving it is a more immediate result than making it OA by publishing it in a Gold OA journal? Or that creating or promoting a Gold OA journal provides more immediate results than creating or promoting an Green OA IR? My hunch is that Marc's real disappointment is with having worked so hard to create an IR at UQAM, only to fail (so far) to persuade UQAM to adopt a mandate, and hence to have to witness Archipel lie fallow, as all other IRs are lying fallow worldwide today, except the 50 institution-wide and 14 departmental/faculty IRs that have adopted Green OA Mandates. If so, I'm with him there, though I think consoling oneself with Gold -- rather than redoubling one's efforts to promote Green mandates is a bit like persisting in searching for one's keys near the glittering lamp-post... Stevan Harnad On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Couture Marc couture.m...@teluq.uqam.ca wrote: On November 9, 2009, 18:22, Stevan Harnad wrote: I'm not criticizing the pursuit of other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without first doing the doable, and already long overdue. As one who has worked (and devoted much time) on both Green- and Gold-OA in the last few years (though on a definitely smaller scale than the global crusade of Stevan's, but the changes
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
Stevan Harnad wrote : The one point I am not sure I quite understand in Marc's commentary was I put more efforts [into] green-OA because I see more immediate, if not overreaching, results in gold-OA. I was speaking on general terms: I see (but it may be highly subjective) more progress on the general front of Gold OA with, for instance, successes like PLoS, two journals appearing every day in DOAJ, etc. Somewhat paradoxically, the feeling that this flavour (colour?) of OA is indeed accelerating gives me the impetus to keep on putting much energy in Green OA where, as far as the repository I contributed to create is concerned, progress is slow, if not illusory... But I must admit that we see also interesting advances on the Green-OA front, with mandates piling up, albeit at a modest pace. By the way, I saw recently that at Université de Liège's, which adopted a mandate, the repository ORBi went from 178 full-text documents in July 2008 to... no less than 15 000 documents (mostly articles) 15 months later (source: http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/stats). Now that's some success... Marc Couture
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On 11/10/09, Couture Marc couture.m...@teluq.uqam.ca wrote: I was speaking on general terms: I see (but it may be highly subjective) more progress on the general front of Gold OA with, for instance, successes like PLoS, two journals appearing every day in DOAJ, etc... But I must admit that we see also interesting advances on the Green-OA front, with mandates piling up, albeit at a modest pace. You should ask yourself how many articles all PLoS journals together have published since their founding -- and compare that to the number of articles published by Harvard authors in one year -- let alone how many articles NIH funds annually. For the two new OA journals per day in DOAJ (i.e., about 800 per year): If, say, journals are quarterly, with about 20 articles per issue, that's 80 x 800 = 64,000 new OA articles per year (out of a total of perhaps 2.5 million annual articles). That's an annual increase of 2.5% (and its growth cannot be accelerated by mandates). Compare that to the growth potential of a single institutional mandate (6000% in your example below). (This why it's a pity if gold dust gets in the way green acres!) as far as the repository I contributed to create is concerned, progress is slow, if not illusory... Université de Liège, which adopted a mandate... 178 full-text documents in July 2008 [now has] no less than 15 000 documents (mostly articles) 15 months later
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
[ The following text is in the utf-8 character set. ] [ Your display is set for the iso-8859-1 character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] That gold dust cannot accelerate through mandates is right, but it does not get in the way of green acres. And in the case of countries like Brazil, self-archiving the articles published in journals the OECD ignore, neglect or simply fail to place within their indexing tools will not make them look more appealing to the rest of the world. Self-archiving is important. Mandates are crucial. And working on producing ever more visible OA journals is also, I repeat *also*, crucial. Once again, I invite everyone to meditate the lessons of SciELO. And I defy anyone to demonstrate that the presence of SciELO has slowed down the move toward self-archiving in Brazil or in other countries in latin America, or in South Africa. Jean-Claude Guédon PS Mandates are the result of political pressure, be it institutional or national. Producing OA journals can also be the result of political pressure and will (as again SciELO demonstrates). Accelerating the production of quality OA journals that are free to readers and to authors (i.e. fully subsidized by governments, as scientific research is subsidized by governments) would greatly increase the number of articles accessible and reusable to all. It is simply part of the general political pressure in favour of Open Access in al of its forms and shapes. Let both branches of OA identified in BOAI flourish next to each other,, and even support each other wherever and whenever possible. Le mardi 10 novembre 2009 à 19:21 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On 11/10/09, Couture Marc couture.m...@teluq.uqam.ca wrote: [snip] For the two new OA journals per day in DOAJ (i.e., about 800 per year): If, say, journals are quarterly, with about 20 articles per issue, that's 80 x 800 = 64,000 new OA articles per year (out of a total of perhaps 2.5 million annual articles). That's an annual increase of 2.5% (and its growth cannot be accelerated by mandates). Compare that to the growth potential of a single institutional mandate (6000% in your example below). (This why it's a pity if gold dust gets in the way green acres!)
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: TW: Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals are another. My position is not against the former, it is simply that one approach alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, subsidised OA journals bring the maximum social benefit. The crux of our disagreement concerns speed, probability, and the limited attention (and action) span of the scholarly community. Subsidized OA journals would definitely bring the maximum social benefit -- if only they were within practical reach (i.e., if the subsidy funds were available, and the 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- i.e., the titles, editorial boards, referees and authors -- to whose annual 2.5 million articles the OA movement is seeking OA were ready and willing to migrate to subsidized OA). But there are only about 4000 Gold OA journals today (and mostly not the top journals overall.) And among the OA journals, the top ones tend to be paid Gold OA; the rest are either subsidized or subscription-based (or both). It is not within the hands of the content-provider community -- authors, their institutions and their funders -- to make all, most or many of the 25,000 peer reviewed journals either paid Gold OA (publication fees) or free Gold OA (subsidized) today. That option is a very slow and extremely uncertain one, because it is mostly in the hands of publishers today. Meanwhile, research access and impact continue to be lost, day after day, week after week, month after month, for year upon year upon year. In contrast, it is, today, entirely within the hands of the content- provider community -- authors, their institutions and their funders -- to make every single one of the 2.5 million articles they publish annually in those 25,000 journals either immediately Green OA (63%) or Almost-OA (37% -- through the use of the Institutional Repository's email eprint request button) by mandating the self-archiving of all refereed final drafts in the author's Institutional Repository (IR) immediately upon acceptance for publication. http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html Until those mandates -- which will provide at least 63% immediate OA plus 37% Almost-OA -- are adopted, it continues to be a waste of time and energy to focus on Gold OA (free or paid) -- or on peer review reform or social networking -- in the interests of OA, today. (There may be other reasons for pursuing those matters, but let us be clear that the immediate interests of OA today definitely are not among them, until and unless the Green OA self-archiving mandates are adopted. Till then, all time, attention and energy diverted toward these other pursuits *in the name of OA* is simply delaying and diverting from the progress of OA.) http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html TW: [social networking and direct unrefereed posting] is an approach that may evolve within specific sub-disciplines, if the researchers concerned find that it is a mode of communication that suits them. Yes, that may (or may not) all happen. But right now, what is already fully within reach, indeed already long overdue, yet still not yet being grasped, is Green OA self-archiving and self-archiving mandates. Continuing to divert attention to hypothetical options (in the name of OA) while failing to implement the tried, tested and proven option is simply continuing to delay OA. Let me stress again: this exclusivism is exclusively because of the slowness with which the scholarly community has been getting around to doing the doable for over a decade. Continuing to split time, attention and energy with the far less doable just slows down the doable even longer; and it has already been slowed long enough. SH: irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and publishing reform... whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact keep burning... TW: ? (What I meant was that whilst speculations, long-shots and irrelevancies keep distracting and diverting us from doing and mandating self-archiving, access and impact just keep being lost, daily, weekly, monthly, year upon year upon year.) TW: What we have been waiting for is not for publishers to do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for publishers to agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not dependent upon the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. We are not dependent on the agreement of publishers. But for those of us who mistakenly think we are: We already have publishers' agreement for 63% of journals (including the top ones) yet we are only self- archiving 15% (and mandating 0.0001%). Mandates will immediately deliver at least 63% immediate OA (and for those who wrongly think self-archiving is dependent on publisher agreement, 37% Almost-OA, with the help of immediate deposit and the IR's email eprint request button). So what makes more sense: to mandate the moving our fingers for 100%
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On 1-Nov-09, at 10:21 AM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: SH: Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. TW: Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in any event, it is the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the publisher. Free OA journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial publisher, since it is without cost in either case. Irrelevant to what? I would say that it is the details of peer review that are irrelevant, when what we are seeking is access to peer-reviewed journal articles, all annual 2.5 million of them, published in all the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- of which only about a 5th at most, and mostly not the top 5th, are OA journals. If researchers -- as authors and users -- want OA, it borders on the absurd for them to keep waiting for journals to convert to OA, rather than providing it for themselves, by self-archiving their journal articles, regardless of the economic model of the journal in which they were published -- but especially for the vast majority of journals that are not OA journals. (And it is equally absurd for researchers' institutions and funders to keep dawdling in doing the obvious, which is to mandate OA self-archiving. And posting to unrefereed content to a social network is no solution to the problem. Among the many dawdles that never seem to relent diverting our attention from this (and our fingertips from doing it) are irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and publishing reform. And whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact keep burning to ash... SH: The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to refereed research articles. TW: The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the scholarly community to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case originally. Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has made redundant. In any true sense? What on earth does that mean? The only sense in which articles are truly free online is if we make them free online. Waiting for publishers to do it in our stead has been the sure way of *not* accomplishing it. SH: The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a (virtually cost- free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and funding. TW: The only way it is cost free is through the publication of free OA journals - anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with withdrawal of permission to archive. Truly astonishing: Charging author/institutions publication fees today is decidedly not cost-free, especially while the potential funds to pay it are still locked up in subscriptions to journals whose articles authors are not self-archiving to make them free! The cost per article of an Institutional Repository and a few author keystrokes is risible. And as for the tired, 10-year-old Poisoned Apple canard -- I expect that people can and keep invoking it, against all sense and evidence, for 10 more decades as yet another of the groundless grounds for keeping fingers in that chronically idle state of Zeno's Paralysis: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ SH: The way to take matters in their own hands is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles in their university's OA Repository. TW: No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to develop and publish in free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the publishers and that can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes evident. Repeating the Poisoned Apple canard does not make it one epsilon more true. Fifteen percent of articles are being self-archived, yet 63% of journals (including most of the top ones) have already endorsed immediate OA self-archiving -- and for the rest (i.e., those authors who elect to honor publisher embargoes), there is the immediate option of depositing anyway and providing Almost OA via the IR's email eprint request button. http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html These are all just the same old, wizened Zeno's canards, being repeated over and over again, year in and year out. http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries I've lately even canonized them all as haikus -- http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/648-guid.html -- upgraded from koans: http://bit.ly/1CfGir But it doesn't work; they seem to be imperishable, and just keep being reborn, as my voice goes hoarse from making the same rebuttals year in and year out, and my fingertips decline into dystonia... SH: No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just deposit all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon acceptance. TW: I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is happening
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
[ The following text is in the utf-8 character set. ] [ Your display is set for the iso-8859-1 character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] Le samedi 31 octobre 2009 à 15:16 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : [snip] (And I do try to preach it from a different angle each time, varying my diction and my style. A nice bit of reciprocation would be to actually pay attention to the content, for once, long enough to get it, and act on it. That would be the best way to get me to shut up. Failing that, just some sign of actually having grasped the simple point at hand would be a rare and welcome treat for me, rather than just the usual repetitive response of ignoring or misconstruing it for the Nth time with a groan...) I can think of nothing more counterproductive than these two needlessly lost decades insofar as OA, ever within immediate reach, is concerned (and I doubt that my relentless sloganeering has been any bit more effectual in prolonging these decades than it has been in foreshortening them). Jeremiah Due attention has been paid to the (largely repetitive) content. Extreme attention has been paid to the arguments. The logic is generally not in question, although some flaws have been detected. What is often in question is the ambit of the issue. And the kind of naive, uncompromising impatience is also in question. That Stevan Harnad has contributed much to the OA movement is not in question. That he has always acted in the best interest of the OA movement is in question. However, on balance, is contribution has been very positive. With a bit more wisdom, it would have been exceptional. And various biblical identifications do not help. The OA movement does not need a Messiah. Neither is it waiting for one. Perhaps a little bit of distance between self and issue would help. It might even help the OA movement focus more easily on its real obstacles rather than waste time on relatively minor internal dissensions. So long as we roughly pull in the same direction, the cart moves forward. We do not have to believe that a really simple and obvious solution really exists to push for OA. The Internet wisdom should serve us here: working code and rough consensus. It is what allowed the Internet community to overwhelm the resistance of the telecoms. The same philosophy will carry us forward just as well. Let us remember that the Internet started either in 1969 (Arpanet) or 1973 (Cerf-Kahn paper on TCP/IP); yet, the public still did not know about it in 1996 when Inet came to Montreal. Quite a few geeks felt frustrated then, and some may have felt that time was slipping through their fingers. As a historian, I do not fear time; I only fear processes moving away from desired objectives. Two decades is really nothing in the grand scheme of things, and we may still need another decade to bring OA to the world. And not just science articles, by the way! Just a hint... Jean-Claude Guédon
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On 31 Oct 2009, at 16:05, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: 2, anything that props up the industry will simply delay the inevitable and institutional repositories prop up the industry - indeed, why else would publishers give permission for authors' works to be archived? Strong advocacy of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly communication. There is, ironically, a degree of truth in this. Some see the issue as OA vs subscription journals, but in fact green OA is pivotal for non- OA journals in allowing them to participate in OA. Strategically it has been helpful to both, resulting in services such as Romeo and in mandates. Has it produced enough OA content? Clearly not yet, since the goal is 100% (all published research papers) open access. So the question becomes how to achieve the objective, bearing in mind that the target of 100% is quantitatively and qualitatively different from some OA and should focus minds on a clear strategy rather than the piecemeal approach that this discussion reveals some people wish for. We have at least been at this long enough to learn that. For those that believe IRs are the way forward to OA, the answer is to increase the primacy of institutional open access repositories by focussing on the terms institutional and access. The terms I seem to hear too often in this context are repositories and prices. That is what's propping up the industry, as Tom Wilson puts it: obfuscation and unfocussed advocacy, rather than strong advocacy. Focussing on the former will lead to a clearer analysis of the motivations of institutions and authors of target papers, to the services they require, to more OA, and more likely to 100% OA. The platform to do this is there and waiting. Steve Hitchcock IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
The debate below has been going on for quite a while... Stevan use[s] numbers for what he considers to be solved and repetitive questions. It is not all that simple in our messy world... ...research dissemination is not a logical process; it is a social and institutional process. Speaking as if it were only logical ends up confusing many issues because the simplification used is simply excessive... When arguments are pushed too hard, beyond their pragmatic social and institutional value, they may end up reading like rigid slogans, however good the logic behind these arguments may be. This is simply counter-productive... It's a question of time. Others with more time on their hands and/or fewer decades already wasted on OA may be content to sit back and wait patiently for human nature to take its glacial social course toward OA -- irked, perhaps, by the pointed and relentless pushing of others toward a proven, immediate, practical solution. But in the one brief lifetime vouchsafed one, I am not yet ready to concede or believe that something as monumentally trivial as OA, and as readily reachable as it has been for at least two decades, is destined to keep on bumbling aimlessly as it has been, because of some (unstated) law of human nature according to which this endless, aimless, but far from speechless random walk toward nowhere is what it is (and ever was) unalterably destined to be. No, I shall continue to point out the simple, practical (and, yes, logical) solution (self-archiving), already tried, tested, and demonstrated to be feasible and successful in generating OA for everything to which it is applied, until either the token drops, or I do. Because the solution is so simple, and there is only one, it is unavoidable that there will be an element of repetition in continuing to push for it. But there's the same element of repetition in continuing to ignore it too; and I'd say that was even less productive. (And I do try to preach it from a different angle each time, varying my diction and my style. A nice bit of reciprocation would be to actually pay attention to the content, for once, long enough to get it, and act on it. That would be the best way to get me to shut up. Failing that, just some sign of actually having grasped the simple point at hand would be a rare and welcome treat for me, rather than just the usual repetitive response of ignoring or misconstruing it for the Nth time with a groan...) I can think of nothing more counterproductive than these two needlessly lost decades insofar as OA, ever within immediate reach, is concerned (and I doubt that my relentless sloganeering has been any bit more effectual in prolonging these decades than it has been in foreshortening them). Jeremiah -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Stevan Harnad Sent: Fri 10/30/2009 1:06 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? How they do it does not matter if they do arrive at OA. But it makes every difference if they don't. the price of Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing Lower journal prices does not mean OA. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal No, OA is the primary goal and lowering journal subscription prices is not a path toward that goal. (And journal boycott threats, even if motivated by OA rather than journal pricing, are ineffectual, as the PLoS boycott has shown.) Robert Noel is conflating the journal affordability problem and the research accessibility problem. Stevan Harnad On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about Getting Yourself out of the Business; perhaps he read the Wrong Advice message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know. It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC endorsed Algebraic and Geometric Topology, and Geometry and Topology) were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, Fleeced). The message of that opinion piece again
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On 31-Oct-09, at 10:21 AM, Françoise Salager-Meyer wrote: I agree that the only solution is AN INSTITUTIONAL MANDATE. My question is: In view of the fact that all researchers want to publish in top-notch jornals (the 5.000 core journals), isnt' there an incompatibility between the pre-print publishing of peer-reviewed papers and the subsequent publishing of the papers in one such journal? Will the publisher agree that the pre-print be published? (1) One *publishes* in a journals and one *deposits* in an Open Access (OA) institutional repository (IR) (2) OA Mandates are to deposit the author's final, peer-reviewed draft in the IR immediately upon acceptance for publication. (This is the refereed postprint, not the unrefereed preprint). (3) Sixty-three percent of journals (including most of the top journals in each field) already endorse immediate OA deposit of the refereed postprint and a further 32% endorse the immediate OA deposit of the preprint. http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php (4) For embargoed deposits, the IRs have the Almost OA email eprint request Button: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html So all postprints can be deposited immediately, the majority can be made OA immediately, and for the rest the Almost OA Button can take care of any user needs during any embargo (until embargoes all die their natural and well-deserved deaths under mounting OA pressure from the research community). I have a problem, for example, with the commercial publisher Peter Lang. It does NOT allow me to put in my institutional repository the papers (post-print) that have been published in Peter Lang books. I don't know about Lang, but OA is first and foremost for journal and conference articles, not books. But you can always deposit and rely on the Button till Lang updates its policy. Elsevier acccepts the post-print publication under the conditon that one does not use the Elsevier logo. I don't understand. What needs to be deposited is the postprint, not the logo. And Elsevier is completely green on immediate OA self-archiving of both postprints and preprints. Can anymore please answer the pre-print question: will a commercial publisher accept that one put on one's institution IR the pre-prints of the papers to be later published in their journals? The preprint predates even submission to the journal. It does not need the publisher's endorsement. Hope this helps. Stevan Harnad Thankx a lot. Françoise Salager-Meyer (Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida. Venezuela) I am about to give a lecture on Open Access in developing countries and I would very much like to have a reply to my question!
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On 31-Oct-09, at 12:05 PM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: No one knows exactly how the 'open access' movement will pan out but I think that some things are fairly clear. 1, scholarly publishers are facing very similar problems to the newspaper industry - changes in technologies are making them redundant. Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. 2, anything that props up the industry will simply delay the inevitable and institutional repositories prop up the industry - indeed, why else would publishers give permission for authors' works to be archived? Strong advocacy of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly communication. The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to refereed research articles. 3, at least in the UK, universities seem to have other things on their minds (like potential bankruptcies in a number of cases) to be too concerned about such things as mandating repositories. The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a (virtually cost- free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and funding. 4, scholars are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and producing free OA journals on some kind of subsidy basis and any economist will tell you that social benefit is maximised by this form of OA. Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their own hands is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles in their university's OA Repository. 5, change is difficult when status and promotion are made dependent upon publication in journals that are highly cited in Web of Knowledge, consequently, it is only when free OA journals make their way into the upper quartile of the rankings that they will begin to attract as many submissions as the established fee-based journals (whether subscription or author- charged). Some OA journals are already in that position. No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just deposit all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon acceptance. 6, however, 5 above may be overtaken as scholarly communication methods continue to evolve. The present situation is not the end of the line, but a somewhat confused intermediate stage of development. Cherished features of such communication, such as peer review, may disappear, to be replaced by post-publication comments. These may be stronger affirmations of quality than citation - particularly as we usually have no idea as to why a paper has been cited. The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research from access- barriers, not to free it from peer review. In brief - any strategy evolved today on the assumption that the future is likely to be the same as the past is probably going to fail. The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's target content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and institution/funder self-archiving mandates. Stevan Harnad Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD Publisher/Editor in Chief Information Research InformationR.net e-mail: t.d.wil...@shef.ac.uk Web site: http://InformationR.net/ ___
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies from the outset. ... It's tantamount to engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact counterproductive. Bob's analogy would be more accurate if it were expressed as one group of people recommending solar and wind energy versus another group of people campaigning for cheaper oil. Open Access is about a fundamental shift to non-toll-access literature made possible by the Web; others are simply petitioning for less extortionate tolls. -- Les
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
Since when was solar and wind energy free (any more than quality-controlled and value-added research literature!)? Sally Sally Morris Partner, Morris Associates - Publishing Consultancy South House, The Street Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK Tel: +44(0)1903 871286 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr Sent: 31 October 2009 08:38 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies from the outset. ... It's tantamount to engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact counterproductive. Bob's analogy would be more accurate if it were expressed as one group of people recommending solar and wind energy versus another group of people campaigning for cheaper oil. Open Access is about a fundamental shift to non-toll-access literature made possible by the Web; others are simply petitioning for less extortionate tolls. -- Les
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 9:09 AM, Sally Morris (Morris Associates) sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk wrote: Since when was solar and wind energy free (any more than quality-controlled and value-added research literature!)? Oh dear, metaphor miscegenation again! Well, no marriage is perfect, but let me try a more targeted -- if more tortured -- trope (having first ruled out Gold OA as the tertium comparationis, since Gold OA does pay for itself, through publication fees, and Gold OA was not what Les had in mind: Green OA was; with Green OA, subscription fees continue to pay for publication and authors supplement access to their own articles for nonsubscribers by self-archiving them -- until and unless there is an eventual transition to Gold OA; once again, no true cost fails to be paid.) To stick to the energy theme -- it's as if, in a region where all electricity use is fee-based, through a collectively paid monthly fee, individual users pipe some of their (paid up) electricity to power redirecting the output of (their own, home-based) solar and wind energy transducers toward supplying electricity to those who cannot afford the regional electricity fee. All electricity (publication) paid for by those who can and do (subscribers), but supplemented for those who cannot. (What this marriage stresses is the individual users' own added value -- the home-based solar and wind power -- that *they* -- not the utility company -- are not charging for. What this marriage misses is the motivation: Why on earth would individuals fund and build home-based solar and wind power generators only to give away free green electricity to others for free! I wish they would, but it seems unlikely. Not so, however, for Green OA. For individual authors have every reason in the world to give away their own peer-reviewed final drafts for free -- the peer review having already been amply paid for via multiple institutional subscriptions -- to all would-be users for free, in exchange for the enhanced research impact that that vouchsafes...) Stevan Harnad Associates, Imaginary Marriage Consultants -Original Message- From: Leslie Carr Sent: 31 October 2009 08:38 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies from the outset. ... It's tantamount to engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact counterproductive. Bob's analogy would be more accurate if it were expressed as one group of people recommending solar and wind energy versus another group of people campaigning for cheaper oil. Open Access is about a fundamental shift to non-toll-access literature made possible by the Web; others are simply petitioning for less extortionate tolls. -- Les
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On 31 Oct 2009, at 13:09, Sally Morris (Morris Associates) wrote: Since when was solar and wind energy free (any more than quality- controlled and value-added research literature!)? On the contrary, sun and wind energy IS FREE. However, building the infrastructure to collect and distribute the energy ISN'T free, so what starts as free to energy utilities is quite costly to the consumer. The analogy with publishing is straightforward: scientific literature is donated free to publishers. The infrastructure to collect and distribute the literature HASN'T BEEN free, but the Open Access proposition is that the Web reduces the costs so drastically that the literature can become just as free to the consumers as it is to the publishers. Currently consumers pay extra for a premium, value-added product (research, not sunlight!) but those that can't afford it have recourse to the free Green OA copy in an institutional repository. --- Les Carr
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
The debate below has been going on for quite a while, with quite a few people (including myself). Stevan is right to say that the journal affordability problem and access to research should not be conflated, but he should clarify the perspectives that indeed support this distinction. Insead, I have seen Stevan use numbers for what he considers to be solved and repetitive questions. It is not all that simple in our messy world. A researcher rarely has to deal with affordability, since, in effect, he is a subsidized reader, and all he worries about is not being subsidized enough (which translates into some journals not being locally available). However, a librarian, from his/her sees accessibility as a result of affordability. If the librarian were the sole source of scientific information, he/she would be right to conflate affordability and access. If information can be accessed through other routes (and repositories often provide an alternative route to (for the moment some) scientific research, then the conflation is only partially right. Of course, it is possible (although wrong) to say that researh is for researchers. Period! But research disseminatiin is not a logical process; it is a social and institutional process. Speaking asif it were only logical end up confusing many issues because the simplification used is simply excessive. This discussion points to a more general point which has to do with the style used while arguing. When arguments are pushed too hard, beyond their pragmatic social and institutional value, they may end up reading like rigid slogans, however good the logic behind these arguments may be. This is simply counter-productive and our colleague from Indiana is right in pointing it out. There is something to be said in favour of oecumenism. Jean-Claude Guédon -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Stevan Harnad Sent: Fri 10/30/2009 1:06 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? How they do it does not matter if they do arrive at OA. But it makes every difference if they don't. the price of Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing Lower journal prices does not mean OA. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal No, OA is the primary goal and lowering journal subscription prices is not a path toward that goal. (And journal boycott threats, even if motivated by OA rather than journal pricing, are ineffectual, as the PLoS boycott has shown.) Robert Noel is conflating the journal affordability problem and the research accessibility problem. Stevan Harnad On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about Getting Yourself out of the Business; perhaps he read the Wrong Advice message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know. It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC endorsed Algebraic and Geometric Topology, and Geometry and Topology) were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, Fleeced). The message of that opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's points, and not so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? The resignation of that Board was motivated by Getting yourself out of the Business. Similarly, the price of Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing. Many variables have driven that drop in price, and it's presumptuous to think that none of them have to do with Jackson's points. Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, and that access itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought
Re: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about Getting Yourself out of the Business; perhaps he read the Wrong Advice message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know. It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC endorsed Algebraic and Geometric Topology, and Geometry and Topology) were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, Fleeced). The message of that opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's points, and not so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? The resignation of that Board was motivated by Getting yourself out of the Business. Similarly, the price of Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing. Many variables have driven that drop in price, and it's presumptuous to think that none of them have to do with Jackson's points. Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, and that access itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought. It's tantamount to engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact counterproductive. Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how civilization should communicate and share information? Bob Noel Swain Hall Library Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 -Original Message- From: boai-forum-boun...@ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:boai-forum-boun...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM To: American Scientist Open Access Forum Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ] With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/ is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried: * Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to publications owned by for-profit firms. * Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial publisher. * Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under the control of a commercial publisher. * Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being published by a for-profit publisher. * Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially published journals or book series. In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access (OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their journals failed to comply. The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of a quality comparable to conventional journals
Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? How they do it does not matter if they do arrive at OA. But it makes every difference if they don't. the price of Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing Lower journal prices does not mean OA. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal No, OA is the primary goal and lowering journal subscription prices is not a path toward that goal. (And journal boycott threats, even if motivated by OA rather than journal pricing, are ineffectual, as the PLoS boycott has shown.) Robert Noel is conflating the journal affordability problem and the research accessibility problem. Stevan Harnad On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. rn...@indiana.edu wrote: Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about Getting Yourself out of the Business; perhaps he read the Wrong Advice message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know. It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC endorsed Algebraic and Geometric Topology, and Geometry and Topology) were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, Fleeced). The message of that opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's points, and not so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? The resignation of that Board was motivated by Getting yourself out of the Business. Similarly, the price of Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing. Many variables have driven that drop in price, and it's presumptuous to think that none of them have to do with Jackson's points. Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, and that access itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought. It's tantamount to engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact counterproductive. Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how civilization should communicate and share information? Bob Noel Swain Hall Library Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 -Original Message- From: boai-forum-boun...@ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:boai-forum-boun...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM To: American Scientist Open Access Forum Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ] With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/ is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried: * Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to publications owned by for-profit firms. * Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial publisher. * Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under the control of a commercial publisher. * Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being published by a for-profit publisher. * Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards
Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
[ The following text is in the windows-1252 character set. ] [ Your display is set for the iso-8859-1 character set. ] [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ] [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ] With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in Getting Yourself Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/ is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried: ? Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to publications owned by for-profit firms. ? Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial publisher. ? Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under the control of a commercial publisher. ? Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being published by a for-profit publisher. ? Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially published journals or book series. In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access (OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their journals failed to comply. The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not. But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish in them instead of in their established journals, with their track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the author publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very slow and uncertain process. There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors want to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite). There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but most -- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or their publication charges are a deterrent. Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers who were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the journals in which they were published. Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly (interoperably) since at least 2000. But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves. There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change their policies or
