Sandy, I'm all for OA to monographs, of course. It's *mandating* OA to monographs that I am very skeptical about, because there is unanimity among researchers about desiring -- even if not daring, except if mandated, to provide -- OA to peer-reviewed journal articles, whereas there is no such unanimity about monographs.
Not to mention that prestige publishers may not yet be ready to agree to it. So mandate Green OA to articles first; that done, mandate (or try to mandate) whatever else you like. But not before, or instead. Meanwhile, where the author and publisher are willing, there is absolute no obstacle to providing OA to monographs today, unmandated. Stevan Harnad On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Sandy Thatcher <s...@psu.edu> wrote: > Stevan continues to be hung up on the idea that some academic authors > still have visions of fame and fortune they'd like to achieve through > publishing books in the traditional manner, so he believes that the time > for OA in book publishing has not yet arrived. But perhaps a simple > terminological distinction may suffice to place this problem in proper > perspective. Academic books may be divided into two types: monographs and > trade books. Monographs, by definition, are works of scholarship written > primarily to address other scholars and are therefore unlikely to attract > many, if any, readers beyond the walls of academe. Trade books encompass a > large category that includes, as one subset, nonfiction works written by > scholars but addressed not only to fellow scholars but also to members of > the general public. > > There is an easy practical way to distinguish the two: commercial trade > publishers (as distinct from commercial scholarly publishers that do not > aim at a trade market) have certain requirements for potential sales that > guarantee that monographs will never be accepted for publication. It is > true that the authors of monographs, published by university presses and > commercial scholarly publishers, are sometimes paid royalties. But these > amounts seldom accumulate to large sums (unless the monographs happen to > become widely adopted in classrooms as course assignments--a phenomenon > that happens less these days when coursepacks and e-reserves permit use of > excerpts for classroom assignments). Thus not much is sacrificed, > financially speaking, by publishing these books OA. And, indeed, a scholar > may have more to gain, in terms of increased reputation from wider > circulation that may translate into tenure and promotion, which are vastly > more financially rewarding over the long term than royalties are ever > likely to be from monograph sales. > > Also, of course, financial opportunities do not need to be sacrificed > completely by OA if the CC-BY-NC-ND license is used for monographs, > preserving some money-generating rights to authors even under OA. > > It also needs to be said that even trade authors can benefit from OA, as > the successes of such authors as Cory Doctorow, Larry Lessig, Jonathan > Zittrain, and others have demonstrated, with the free online versions of > their books serving to stimulate print sales. > > Thus I believe Stevan is not being quite pragmatic enough in recognizing > that the time has arrived for OA monograph publishing also, not just OA > article publishing. > > Sandy Thatcher > > > > At 12:44 PM -0500 11/19/13, Stevan Harnad wrote: > > Ann Okerson (as > interviewed<http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ann-okerson-on-state-of-open-access.html>by > Richard Poynder) is committed to licensing. I am not sure whether the > commitment is ideological or pragmatic, but it's clearly a lifelong > ("asymptotic") commitment by now. > > I was surprised to see the direction Ann ultimately took because -- as I > have admitted many times -- it was Ann who first opened my eyes to (what > eventually came to be called) "Open Access." > > In the mid and late 80's I was still just in the thrall of the scholarly > and scientific potential of the revolutionarily new online medium itself > ("Scholarly > Skywriting"<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/sky-writing-or-when-man-first-met-troll/239420/>), > eager to get everything to be put online. It was Ann's work on the serials > crisis that made me realize that it was not enough just to get it all > online: it also had to be made accessible (online) to all of its potential > users, toll-free -- not just to those whose institutions could afford the > access-tolls (licenses). > > And even that much I came to understand, sluggishly, only after I had > first realized that what set apart the writings in question was not that > they were (as I had first naively dubbed them) > "esoteric<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversive_Proposal>" > (i.e., they had few users) but that they were* peer-reviewed research > journal articles*, written by researchers solely for impact, not for > income <http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.1>. > > > But I don't think the differences between Ann and me can be set down to > ideology vs. pragmatics. I too am far too often busy trying to free the > growth of open access from the ideologues (publishing reformers, rights > reformers (Ann's "open use" zealots), peer review reformers, freedom of > information reformers) who are slowing the progress of access to > peer-reviewed journal articles (from "now" to "better") by insisting only > and immediately on what they believe is the "best." Like Ann, I, too, am > all pragmatics (repository software, analyses of the OA impact advantage, > mandates, analyses of mandate effeciveness). > > So Ann just seems to have a different sense of what can (hence should) be > done, now, to maximize access, and how (as well as how fast). And after her > initial, infectious inclination toward toll-free access (which I and others > caught from her) she has apparently concluded that what is needed is to > modify the terms of the tolls (i.e., licensing). > > This is well-illustrated by Ann's view on SCOAP3: "All it takes is for > libraries to agree that what they've now paid as subscription fees for > those journals will be paid instead to CERN, who will in turn pay to the > publishers as subsidy for APCs." > > I must alas disagree with this view, on entirely pragmatic -- indeed > logical -- grounds: the transition from annual institutional subscription > fees to annual consortial OA publication fees is an incoherent, unscalable, > unsustainable Escherian scheme that contains the seeds of its own > dissolution, rather than a pragmatic means of reaching a stable > "asymptote": Worldwide, across all disciplines, there are P institutions, Q > journals, and R authors, publishing S articles per year. The only relevant > item is the article. The annual consortial licensing model -- reminiscent > of the Big Deal -- is tantamount to a global oligopoly and does not scale > (beyond CERN!). > > So if SCOAP3 is the pragmatic basis for Ann's "predict[ion that] we'll see > such journals evolve into something more like 'full traditional OA' before > too much longer" then one has some practical basis for scepticism -- a > scepticism Ann shares when it comes to "hybrid Gold" OA journals -- unless > of course such a transition to Fool's Gold is both mandated and funded by > governments, as the UK and Netherlands governments have lately > proposed<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1073-The-Journal-Publisher-Lobby-in-the-UK-Netherlands-Part-I.html>, > under the influence of their publishing lobbies! But the globalization of > such profligate folly seems unlikely on the most pragmatic grounds of all: > affordability. (The scope for remedying world hunger, disease or injustice > that way are marginally better -- and McDonalds would no doubt be > interested in such a yearly global consortial pre-payment > deal<https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=oI6LUpG8LPLCyAHT5IHQDg#q=McNopoly+harnad>for > their Big Macs tooŠ) > > I also disagree (pragmatically) with Ann's apparent conflation of the > access problem for journal articles with the access problem for books. > (It's the inadequacy of the "esoteric" criterion again. Many book authors > -- hardly pragmatists -- still dream of sales & riches, and fear that free > online access would thwart these dreams, driving away the prestigious > publishers whose imprimaturs distinguish their work from vanity press.) > > Pragmatically speaking, OA to articles has already proved slow enough in > coming, and has turned out to require mandates to induce and embolden > authors to make their articles OA. But for articles, at least, there is > author consensus that OA is desirable, hence there is the motivation to > comply with OA mandates from authors' institutions and funders. Books, > still a mixed bag, will have to wait. Meanwhile, no one is stopping those > book authors who want to make their books free online from picking > publishers who agreeŠ > > > And there are plenty of pragmatic reasons why the librarian-obsession -- > perhaps not ideological, but something along the same lines -- with the > Version-of-Record is misplaced when it comes to access to journal articles: > The author's final, peer-reviewed, accepted draft means the difference > between night and day for would-be users whose institutions cannot afford > toll-access to the publisher's proprietary VoR. > > And for the time being the toll-access VoR is safe [modulo the general > digital-preservation problem, which is not an OA problem], while > subscription licenses are being paid by those who can afford them. CHORUS > and SHARE have plenty of pragmatic advantages for publishers (and > ideological ones for librarians), but they are vastly outweighed by their > practical disadvantages for research and researchers -- of which the > biggest is that they leave access-provision in the hands of publishers (and > their licensing conditions). > > About the Marie-Antoinette option for the developing world -- R4L -- the > less said, the better. The pragmatics really boil down to time: the access > needs of both the developing and the developed world are pressing. Partial > and makeshift solutions are better than nothing, now. But it's been "now" > for an awfully long time; and time is not an ideological but a pragmatic > matter; so is lost research usage and impact. > > Ann says: "Here's the fondest hope of the pragmatic OA advocate: that we > settle on a series of business practices that truly make the greatest > possible collection of high-value material accessible to the broadest > possible audience at the lowest possible cost - not just lowest cost to end > users, but lowest cost to all of us." > > Here's a slight variant, by another pragmatic OA advocate: "that we settle > on a series of research community policies that truly make the greatest > possible collection of peer-reviewed journal articles accessible online > free for all users, to the practical benefit of all of us." > > The online medium has made this practically possible. The publishing > industry -- pragmatists rather than ideologists -- will adapt to this new > practical reality. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. > > Let me close by suggesting that perhaps something Richard Poynder wrote is > not quite correct either: He wrote "It was [the] affordability problem that > created the accessibility problem that OA was intended to solve." > > No, it was the creation of the online medium that made OA not only > practically feasible (and optimal) for research and researchers, but > inevitable. > > *Stevan Harnad* > > > > -- > > Sanford G. Thatcher > 8201 Edgewater Drive > Frisco, TX 75034-5514 > e-mail: s...@psu.edu > Phone: (214) 705-1939 > Website: http://www.psupress.org/news/SandyThatchersWritings.html > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sanford.thatcher > > "If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865) > > "The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who > can write know anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853) > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > >
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