Fool's Gold Journal Spam
Dear colleagues, They just keep coming, almost daily, pre-emptively spamming all the people we had been hoping to win over to Open Access. Not only is it regrettable that OA is so unthinkingly identified in most people's minds exclusively with gold OA publishing, but this growing spate of relentless fool's-gold junk-OA spamming is now coalescing with that misconception -- and at the same time more and more universities and funders are reaching into their scarce funds to pay for this kind of thing, thinking this is the way to provide OA. (Meanwhile, green OA mandates, the real solution, are still hovering at about 200 out of about 10,000 (2%!) -- and mostly needlessly watered-down mandates. I wish I could figure out a way to turn this liability -- fool's-gold spam and scam -- into an asset for spreading green mandates, but I'm afraid that even Richard Poynder's critical articles are being perceived mostly as critical of OA itself rather than just of fool's-gold OA.) The real culprits are not the ones trying to make a buck out of this current spike in pay-to-publish-or-perish/gold-fever co-morbidity, but the researchers themselves, who can't put 2+2 together and provide green OA on their own, cost-free; and their institutions and funders, who can't put 2+2 together and mandate that they do it. Instead of thinking, it's easier to shell out for fool's gold... Richard's exposés are helpful, but I think they are not enough to open people's eyes. So all we can do is hope that the spamming itself will become so blatant and intrusive that it will wake people up to the fact that this is not the way to provide OA... Stevan PS Not only do I not work on anything faintly resembling proteomics/bioinformatics but I have no relationship with OMICS Group (except possibly prior complaints about spam)! These spam disclaimers are a lark. They seem to be using professional spam services that try to appear respectable. From: JPBeditor@omicsgroup.co List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: October 28, 2011 4:29:28 AM EDT To: Stevan Harnad Subject: Invitation for Special Issue: Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics Reply-To: editor@omicsgroup.co You are receiving this email because of your relationship with OMICS Group. Please reconfirm your interest in receiving email from us. If you do not wish to receive any more emails, you can unsubscribe here Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics - Open Access Dear Dr. Stevan Harnad, We are glad to announce the success of Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics (JPB) an Open Access platform for proteomics, bioinformatics research and updates. To provide a rapid turn-around time regarding reviewing, publishing and to disseminate the articles freely for research, teaching and reference purposes we are releasing following special issues. Upcoming Special Issues Handling Editor(s) Domain-Domain Interactions Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA Microarray Proteomics Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Canonical approach: Moleculomics Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China Shifts and deepens : Biomarkers Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan Membrane Protein Transporters Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada Structural and Functional Biology Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples Federico II, ITALY HLA-based vaccines Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina Insulin Signaling Insulin Resistance Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA Proteomics for Cancer chemoprevention Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA Membrane Proteomics Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK We would like to request a contribution from you for any of these special issues or regular issues of the Journal to improve the Open Access motto in this field. For more details PS : http://www.omicsonline.com/SpecialissueJPB.php Why to submit and benefits : http://www.omicsonline.org/special-features.php Submit your article online at : http://www.editorialmanager.com/proteomics/ (Or) As e-mail attachment to the Editorial Office :editor@omicsgroup.co We shall look forward to hear from you. Sincerely, Editors, Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples Federico II, ITALY Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK Editorial office OMICS Publishing Group 5716 Corsa Ave., Suite 110 Westlake, Los Angeles CA 91362-7354, USA E-mail:editor@omicsgroup.co Ph:
Re: Open Access Doubts
Eric F. Van de Velde writes Remember, I am an OA supporter, though I am getting discouraged about the slow progress. Blame your colleagues in the library community. If they would stop subscribing to toll-gated journals, the toll-gated journals can't survive. You say that journal prices do not matter with Green OA in place. I say they do, because universities end up underwriting two overlapping systems: one to maintain the scholarly record and editorial boards and the other to provide immediate access. Admittedly, Green OA is the better bargain. But if Green OA is not reducing the cost of the other, it just adds to the total cost. It is time to reduce expenditure on the former to build the latter. Cheers, Thomas Krichelhttp://openlib.org/home/krichel http://authorprofile.org/pkr1 skype: thomaskrichel
Re: Fool's Gold Journal Spam
Stevan- Saying that people should shun gold OA because there are spammers pushing journals is like saying people should never take prescription drugs because there are spammers trying to sell cheap prescription drugs, or that nobody should ever do business with Nigeria. But if you're going to use the standard of email inboxes being filled with nonstop entreaties to pursue a path to open access, surely it is green OA that would suffer the most :-). -Mike On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com wrote: Dear colleagues, They just keep coming, almost daily, pre-emptively spamming all the people we had been hoping to win over to Open Access. Not only is it regrettable that OA is so unthinkingly identified in most people's minds exclusively with gold OA publishing, but this growing spate of relentless fool's-gold junk-OA spamming is now coalescing with that misconception -- and at the same time more and more universities and funders are reaching into their scarce funds to pay for this kind of thing, thinking this is the way to provide OA. (Meanwhile, green OA mandates, the real solution, are still hovering at about 200 out of about 10,000 (2%!) -- and mostly needlessly watered-down mandates. I wish I could figure out a way to turn this liability -- fool's-gold spam and scam -- into an asset for spreading green mandates, but I'm afraid that even Richard Poynder's critical articles are being perceived mostly as critical of OA itself rather than just of fool's-gold OA.) The real culprits are not the ones trying to make a buck out of this current spike in pay-to-publish-or-perish/gold-fever co-morbidity, but the researchers themselves, who can't put 2+2 together and provide green OA on their own, cost-free; and their institutions and funders, who can't put 2+2 together and mandate that they do it. Instead of thinking, it's easier to shell out for fool's gold... Richard's exposés are helpful, but I think they are not enough to open people's eyes. So all we can do is hope that the spamming itself will become so blatant and intrusive that it will wake people up to the fact that this is not the way to provide OA... Stevan PS Not only do I not work on anything faintly resembling proteomics/bioinformatics but I have no relationship with OMICS Group (except possibly prior complaints about spam)! These spam disclaimers are a lark. They seem to be using professional spam services that try to appear respectable. From: JPBeditor@omicsgroup.co Date: October 28, 2011 4:29:28 AM EDT To: Stevan Harnad Subject: Invitation for Special Issue: Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics Reply-To: editor@omicsgroup.co You are receiving this email because of your relationship with OMICS Group. Please reconfirm your interest in receiving email from us. If you do not wish to receive any more emails, you can unsubscribe here Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics - Open Access Dear Dr. Stevan Harnad, We are glad to announce the success of Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics  (JPB) an Open Access platform for proteomics, bioinformatics research and updates. To provide a rapid turn-around time regarding reviewing, publishing and to disseminate the articles freely for research, teaching and reference purposes we are releasing following special issues. Upcoming Special Issues Handling Editor(s) Domain-Domain Interactions Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA Microarray Proteomics Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Canonical approach: Moleculomics Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China Shifts and deepens : Biomarkers Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan Membrane Protein Transporters Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada Structural and Functional Biology Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples Federico II, ITALY HLA-based vaccines Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina Insulin Signaling Insulin Resistance Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA Proteomics for Cancer chemoprevention Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA Membrane Proteomics Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK We would like to request a contribution from you for any of these special issues or regular issues of the Journal to improve the Open Access motto in this field. For more details PS : http://www.omicsonline.com/SpecialissueJPB.php Why to submit and benefits :
Re: Fool's Gold Journal Spam
This is a nettle that OA organisations like SPARC, OASPA and COPE should be grasping. There are things they could be doing, and things they could be saying. And for so long as the OA movement continues to ignore the problem, Open Access is in danger of being discredited. People are beginning to conclude that OA is about dubious marketing practices and vanity publishing, not about freeing the refereed literature. To tie this up with the recent commentary on Eric Van de Velde's post: Personally I think I see a new strand in the discussion about OA in Eric's post. I say this because until now most of the debate appears to have taken place in the speculative realm. Those against it have focused on arguing why OA will not/cannot work - be it Green, Gold, or the whole shebang.  Those who support it have responded that that is all speculation, and then add that a more likely scenario is . What I think we are beginning to see is a strand that says, Ok, we've tried OA, and here are the consequences and the problems. And some of Eric's questions reveal the sort of conclusions that people are reaching: What if we could significantly reduce cost by implementing pay walls differently? Are Open-Access Journals a Form of Vanity Publishing? These questions may not entirely reflect Eric's conclusion, but they are I think indicative of where the debate is moving. Stevan may be right to say that some of the arguments used are as flawed and wrong-headed as they always were, and frequently presented from the perspective of the wrong people. But if one considers how a debate is framed and develops - even if the thinking behind it is wrong-headed - once ideas gain mindshare they tend to take on a life of their own, as the history of OA demonstrates. I also understand Stevan's point about conflating access with affordability, but at one time many in the OA movement argued that OA would solve both problems, and it was for that reason perhaps that people like Eric (and many others too) supported the movement in the first place. Indeed, the roots of SPARC lie in the affordability problem, not the access problem.  Personally, I believe that affordability is just as important as access, and while one can argue that the two problems should be tackled one at a time, with access addressed first, what we are actually witnessing is publishers co-opting OA in a way that embeds the affordability problem into an OA environment, so I don't think these are problems that can be tackled separately. Stevan is right to argue that Green is a better option, not just in terms of speed, but also for its potential to solve both problems (by forcing publishers to downsize while also providing access), but the problem is that Gold is winning the race to the finish line, not Green. Add to this the vanity publishing issue and the situation becomes even more perilous. As people will no doubt recall, Elsevier predicted what we are seeing in its evidence to the Science Technology Committee in 2004 (for self-serving purposes perhaps, but so what), and indeed the claim had been made by others before. The problem is that many now see that prediction coming true. And if Gold OA is tainted, then Green OA will be viewed as guilty by association (and of course accused, however inaccurately, of not being all the things that Eric believes it ought to be). Richard On Oct 30, 2011, at 05:03 PM, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com wrote: Dear colleagues, They just keep coming, almost daily, pre-emptively spamming all the people we had been hoping to win over to Open Access. Not only is it regrettable that OA is so unthinkingly identified in most people's minds exclusively with gold OA publishing, but this growing spate of relentless fool's-gold junk-OA spamming is now coalescing with that misconception -- and at the same time more and more universities and funders are reaching into their scarce funds to pay for this kind of thing, thinking this is the way to provide OA. (Meanwhile, green OA mandates, the real solution, are still hovering at about 200 out of about 10,000 (2%!) -- and mostly needlessly watered-down mandates. I wish I could figure out a way to turn this liability -- fool's-gold spam and scam -- into an asset for spreading green mandates, but I'm afraid that even Richard Poynder's critical articles are being perceived mostly as critical of OA itself rather than just of fool's-gold OA.) The real culprits are not the ones trying to make a buck out of this current spike in pay-to-publish-or-perish/gold-fever co-morbidity, but the researchers themselves, who can't put 2+2 together and provide green OA on their own, cost-free; and their institutions and funders, who can't put 2+2 together and mandate that they do it. Instead of thinking, it's easier to shell out for fool's gold...
Re: Fool's Gold Journal Spam
Richard, You are right about the abuse and the taint, and about the way even wrong-headed ideas can  become entrenched and grow, just because of their number of believers, not their validity. And, yes, some thought OA would solve both the accessibility and the affordability problem (esp. librarians) and really only joined the fray because of affordability, not access. And never much supported green. And are now ditching OA altogether (because affordability was all they ever sought, and OA does not seem to be providing it.) But, Richard, how can affordability be just important as access? Journal affordability is not an abstraction, or an ideological matter: The reason institutions subscribe to journals is in order to buy *access*. That's why high prices are a problem -- because they deny access. So how can affordability be just as important as access if there is a way to provide 100% access (green OA) that does not make journals more affordable? The access is still provided, and therefore, surely, the problem of affordability is mooted: Who cares if journals are unaffordable if we have access anyway? Why does it matter? It's not a principle (excess-profit publishers) that is at issue here, it is access to their (joint) product! (Let's not forget that the major producer of the two is the author!) Besides, having been systematically ignored on what I thought was just a fanciful speculation for a decade -- namely that 100% green OA will force publisher downsizing and conversion to gold OA, as well as releasing the money to pay for it -- I have now become pretty confident that this is almost exactly what would happen if we all mandated green OA. What has increased my confidence that this is exactly what would happen is precisely the obtuse way in which everyone is going about it instead: ignoring or deprecating green OA a priori, and pressing for pre-emptive gold (whether as a greedy bottom-feeder publisher, or a top publisher trying to co-opt all contingencies, or a frustrated librarian or university administrator, or a bemused, blinkered, and uninformed author/user). In other words, it's the patent irrationality of the alternative paths people are bent on taking that has made me realize that universal green OA first is the only way -- not only to accessibility, but eventually to affordability too! But it's clear that -- despite all this rationality -- I am losing the battle, both practically, and theoretically (in that people not only aren't doing what needs to be done to get OA, but they are clinging to incoherent ideas, stubbornly refusing to examine them carefully enough to see their incoherence; and then when nothing works, they are ready to give up on OA altogether). If I had any sense, I would give up, and forget about it myself. But now it's become kind of a historic mission for me. The OA juggernaut seems to be as good an example as any of the kind of collective irrationality that has cropped up over and over again in human history. Might as well grasp this one by the horns, even if one is fated to lose. At least one will have fought the good fight, and that (if not OA) will be part of the historic record. (Nowhere near as important as having abstained from eating animals, but not entirely pointless just the sameâ¦) And, believe it or not, I'm not convinced that green has lost: I am still pinning my hopes on EOS being able to convince university policy-makers to see reason. (And despite the bad press they generate for OA, I am pretty sure the fool's gold bottom-feeders are just a flash in the pan.) Chrs, Stevan On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 3:38 PM, Richard Poynder poyn...@me.com wrote: This is a nettle that OA organisations like SPARC, OASPA and COPE should be grasping. There are things they could be doing, and things they could be saying. And for so long as the OA movement continues to ignore the problem, Open Access is in danger of being discredited. People are beginning to conclude that OA is about dubious marketing practices and vanity publishing, not about freeing the refereed literature. To tie this up with the recent commentary on Eric Van de Velde's post: Personally I think I see a new strand in the discussion about OA in Eric's post. I say this because until now most of the debate appears to have taken place in the speculative realm. Those against it have focused on arguing why OA will not/cannot work - be it Green, Gold, or the whole shebang.  Those who support it have responded that that is all speculation, and then add that a more likely scenario is . What I think we are beginning to see is a strand that says, Ok, we've tried OA, and here are the consequences and the problems. And some of Eric's questions reveal the sort of conclusions that people are reaching: What if we could significantly reduce cost by implementing pay walls differently? Are Open-Access Journals a Form of Vanity Publishing? These questions may not entirely reflect Eric's
Re: Fool's Gold Journal Spam
On Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Michael Eisen mbei...@gmail.com wrote: Stevan- Saying that people should shun gold OA because there are spammers pushing journals is like saying people should never take prescription drugs because there are spammers trying to sell cheap prescription drugs, or that nobody should ever do business with Nigeria. I agree completely. And I didn't say people should shun (real) gold OA. I said fool's gold OA spam was giving OA (both green and gold) a bad name. (I do, however, say, often, that institutions, funders or individual authors spending money pre-emptively on (real) gold OA is premature and a waste of both money and time *unless the institution or funder has first mandated green OA for all articles* -- and the individual authors are providing it...) But if you're going to use the standard of email inboxes being filled with nonstop entreaties to pursue a path to open access, surely it is green OA that would suffer the most :-). Mike, do you really think that my email CCs -- to individuals whose identity I know, and to lists dedicated to OA matters -- in the interests of promoting (and explaining!) OA can be fairly likened to the indiscriminate, industrial-scale spamming of fool's gold OA publishers in the interest of peddling their products? Stevan Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age, pp. 99-105, L'Harmattan. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac..uk/15753/ ABSTRACT: What the research community needs, urgently, is free online access (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output. Researchers can provide that in two ways: by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to publish in non-OA journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts in their own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). OA self-archiving, once it is mandated by research institutions and funders, can reliably generate 100% Green OA. Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing (which is not in the hands of the research community) and it also requires the funds to cover the Gold OA publication costs. With 100% Green OA, the research community's access and impact problems are already solved. If and when 100% Green OA should cause significant cancellation pressure (no one knows whether or when that will happen, because OA Green grows anarchically, article by article, not journal by journal) then the cancellation pressure will cause cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a leveraged transition to OA (Gold) publishing on the part of journals. As subscription revenues shrink, institutional windfall savings from cancellations grow. If and when journal subscriptions become unsustainable, per-article publishing costs will be low enough, and institutional savings will be high enough to cover them, because publishing will have downsized to just peer-review service provision alone, offloading text-generation onto authors and access-provision and archiving onto the global network of OA Institutional Repositories. Green OA will have leveraged a transition to Gold OA. Harnad, S. (2010) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos: The Journal of the World Book Community, 21 (3-4). pp. 86-93. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21818/ ABSTRACT: Universal Open Access (OA) is fully within the reach of the global research community: Research institutions and funders need merely mandate (green) OA self-archiving of the final, refereed drafts of all journal articles immediately upon acceptance for publication. The money to pay for gold OA publishing will only become available if universal green OA eventually makes subscriptions unsustainable. Paying for gold OA pre-emptively today, without first having mandated green OA not only squanders scarce money, but it delays the attainment of universal OA. Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus, 28 (1). pp. 55-59. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac..uk/18514/ ABSTRACT: Among the many important implications of Houghton et alâs (2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits of providing free online access (âOpen Access,â OA) to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as particularly compelling: It would yield a forty-fold benefit/cost ratio if the worldâs peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by its authors so as to make it OA. There are many assumptions and estimates underlying Houghton et alâs modelling and analyses, but they are for the most part very reasonable and even conservative. This makes their strongest practical implication particularly striking: The 40-fold benefit/cost ratio of providing Green OA is an order of magnitude greater than all the other potential combinations of alternatives to
