Re: Book on future of STM publishers
M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: What About the Author Self-Archiving of Books?
David Goodman writes The traditional solution here is a traditional library. Some things librarians can't do as well as we would like, but we do know how to buy books and lend them to people. It would be a waste of resources for a book that is written in German, when there may only be a handful of people on campus who read that language. That brings me back to my earlier point about the automated translation. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? Fytton. Fytton Rowland, Dept of Information Science, Loughborough University, UK. Quoting Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org: M. Meier writes An exposé is availabel under http://www.ep.uni-muenchen.de/themen.htm. The book as a whole will unfortunately not be available online for free. I understand that the book is Michael's PhD thesis. I think that it would be interesting to understand the reasons why it is not freely available online. If the FOS movement can not convince scholars in scholarly communication to make their work freely available online, we do have a problem. I would like to understand what the problem is here. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
Fytton Rowland, Dept Information Science, Loughborough Univ, UK wrote: ...In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI-compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. There is (and should be) a growing number of Open Access Eprint Archives for University Theses and Dissertations. I append a list of Universities that are already providing open online access to their theses in this way at the end of this message. Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be available free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? This interesting puzzle is certainly worth discussing. I can guess the answer: For 99% of theses/dissertations, the optimal/inevitable outcome is exactly the same as for 100% of the peer-reviewed research literature: Open Access. But for perhaps 1% of dissertations -- those from which their authors hope to make a book that can make some money for them -- those authors may not want to provide open access to their dissertation (beyond the mandatory deposit in their university library, and whatever can be attained by interlibrary loan, etc.). (I doubt this has much to do with discipline differences: It has more to do with expectation of sellability, and whether the author wishes to make a career in research or in writing.) There is absolutely nothing wrong with this. I see no reason why authors should be denied possible sales revenue if they wish it. This topic has already been discussed in this Forum under the thread Journal Papers vs. Books: The Direct/Indirect Income Trade-off http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0317.html and has since been published as an article: Harnad, S., Varian, H. Parks, R. (2000) Academic publishing in the online era: What Will Be For-Fee And What Will Be For-Free? Culture Machine 2 http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Cmach/Backissues/j002/Articles/art_harn.htm and http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/17/00/index.html By way of summary: Hal Varian pointed out that, statistically speaking, MOST books fail to make money for their authors. I replied that where there's life there's hope, and that hope of sales revenue is what drives a good deal of human creativity and productivity in certain areas. With no hope of sales revenue, some things simply would never get written in the first place. Having said that, it is also true that even non-give-away authors sometimes give away their early work in order to publicize it and to build a readership for later work. This would certainly apply to thesis-work too. In addition, the book version is often much more readable than the thesis, so a give-away open-access thesis might serve as an advertisement for the non-give-away, toll-access book version. And finally, thesis authors can make their own decisions on the trade-off between maximizing the research impact of their theses through open access and maximizing their sales income from toll-access. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.2 I doubt that many thesis authors believe they have a potential best-seller on their hands and, on reflection, and in the context of the 99% of theses that will be openly accessible, more and more will opt for open access. But this is their choice. No coercion is necessary. On the contrary, any hint of coercion will only work against the cause of open-access for the remaining 99% Now, the growing list of Open Access Archives for Theses and Dissertations: Virginia Tech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september96/theses/09fox.html Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) http://www.ndltd.org/ Caltech Electronic Theses and Dissertations http://etd.library.caltech.edu/ CCSD theses-EN-ligne http://theses-en-ligne.in2p3.fr/
Re: Ingenta to offer OAI eprint service
This is a reply to another commentator's expression of concern (excerpt will be quoted shortly) about the license that Southampton University has given to Ingenta to develop a commercial service to install, customize and maintain Eprints Archives for Universities who wish to purchase such a service. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2108.html The commentator's concern is that the Ingenta version of the software might become better than the free version, and that this would increase rather than decrease the digital divide for poorer countries. The gist of the reply has already made in this Forum: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2111.html The GNU license for the free version not only requires that the free version remain freely available, but it also requires that all alterations in the software be freely available, both to all users and to all programmers who are doing further modifications of the code. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2118.html Moreover, any revenues received from Ingenta by Southampton University will be used to continue to develop and support the free version. This has already been stated in this Forum. The point to be addressed here is the specific one, about developing countries and the digital divide: The commentator who is quoted (anonymously) below expresses some entirely understandable yet entirely groundless worries. I would have preferred to reply to the entire message in full openly, but as it was not posted, I reply only to the anonymized excerpt. I think we have come to a point where it is very important to express explicit commitment to the support of the free version of Eprints, by way of reassurance to the developing world. http://software.eprints.org/ This is not because there is any danger at all that Southampton University would betray the project, nor because there is any immediate danger that underfunding of the free Southampton version could make it inferior to the fee-based Ingenta version (the GNU license already protects against that). It is merely because of perceptions. It is important to reassure both the developing world and the many first-world institutions suffering from the serials budget crisis that the rug will not be pulled out from under them insofar as the Eprints software is concerned. The fact is that so much about open-access is about perception: It is (wrong-headed) perceptions that are making us demonize publishers, and believe that the open-access problem, or its solution, somehow lies with them. It is (wrong-headed) perceptions that make as believe that copyright (or peer review, or preservation, or plagiarism, or something else) makes it illegal (or imprudent or unnecessary) to take matters into our own hands and create open access overnight by self-archiving our peer-reviewed research in our institutional Eprint Archives. http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ By the same token, it is perception (and in this case misperception) that sees Ingenta's commercial version of Eprints as an obstacle to open access and as widening the digital divide. At the heart of the commentator's worry is a profound and persistent misunderstanding of the actual causal role that the software is meant to play in the Open Access movement -- and from the specific vantage point of the developing countries in particular. The misunderstanding is this: The Eprints software and the Eprints Archives themselves cannot give the developing world (or anyone) access to the research literature. Only researchers and their institutions can do that. It is wrong to think of either the software or the (empty) archives as any sort of a boon to the developing world. It is the FILLING of those archives that will constitute the boon to the developing world (and to everyone else too). Hence what the commentator and everyone else should really be worrying about is: How can we get those archives filled as soon as possible? Offering the commercial Ingenta option for those universities who prefer to pay to have their Eprint Archives installed and maintained for them, rather than to use the free version and do it for themselves, is one of the (many) things that can be done to help get those archives filled as soon as possible! For, whether Ingenta-maintained or university-maintained, we are talking about Open Access Archives, containing each university's own peer-reviewed research output, freely accessible to everyone. It should not worry anyone that some universities (who can afford it, and have only been held back from self-archiving by the fact that they did not wish to install and maintain their archives themselves, preferring instead to pay a commercial service to do it) will now have available to them the very service whose absence has so far held them back from self-archiving. And a second, perhaps deeper misperception inherent in the commentator's worry is this: The real boon to the developing world that the eprints
Re: Book on future of STM publishers
on Thu, 18 Jul 2002 Fytton Rowland j.f.rowl...@lboro.ac.uk wrote: This is an interesting point. In some disciplines, there is a tradition of writing journal articles based on one's PhD research -- some of them perhaps published before the thesis is written -- while in other fields the practice is to turn one's thesis into a book. However, the thesis itself, in its original form as an examination document, is usually made publicly available in the library of its home university, and is indexed in various secondary services such as Dissertation Abstracts. If universities in future mostly have OAI- compliant servers, and theses are submitted in electronic as well as printed form, there seems to be no obstacle to each university mounting its own theses on its server for free worldwide access. But... Stevan often makes the point that his concern is purely with the scholarly journal literature, which is given away by its authors, and which should be avialable free of charge to other scholars. He goes on to say that this argument does not apply to other kinds of publication for which authors are traditionally paid, which is the case with books, even scholarly books. On that argument, having to pay 30 Euros for Meier's book is o.k. Hmm... So, if we are in a discipline that uses journals, free access is o.k.; free access to the raw thesis is also o.k.; but if the discipline is one that has the tradition of a book based on the thesis, then free access is not o.k. What do others think of this line of argument? The fundamental flaw in Stevan's position is that it discounts the receipt of value -- recognition and targeted dissemination -- exchanged by the journal author. If one recognizes that the journal publisher does provide such value, the journal author is on the same footing as the book author. No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money, as Samuel Johnson observed. Steven's position is out of bounds. The question is moot. In the case of the dissertation, the acceptance is of a lesser value, since it is student work. Most books derived from dissertations require a good deal of additional work before they are publishable in the usual sense and recognizable by the world beyond dissertation examiners. The future of STM publishing is a great topic for magazines that have a short shelf life. They can attract a curious readership and sell lots of advertising by puzzling over questions without answers. I for one have serious doubts whether the future of any industry niche would be a fit subject for a student dissertation. Most predictive visions offered decades ago by experts are today only meaningful as evidence of lobbying and other promotional efforts. Book or dissertation, I would expect to shelve this topic near astrology. Best wishes, Albert Henderson Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 70244.1...@compuserve.com . .
