Gentle reader, please skip this if you have heard the same things said by me and Jan over and over. If Jan posts again, I won't reply. Please do not construe my silence as assent!
On 2012-06-20, at 2:54 PM, Jan Velterop wrote: > On 20 Jun 2012, at 16:21, Stevan Harnad wrote: > >> On 2012-06-20, at 10:30 AM, Jan Velterop wrote: >> >>> The mistake authors make is to 'pay' publishers for their services >>> by transferring copyright. >> >> Publishers are paid, in full, by institutional subscriptions. > > What does [Publishers are paid, in full, by institutional > subscriptions] mean here? It means the full costs of publication are being paid. No one is doing anything without getting paid for it. > What is being paid is enough to pay for publication, I agree. > But it's not paid for publication, it's paid for access. That's > precisely the problem. What is the problem? If the costs are covered (and covered handsomely) the costs are covered. What is your point? > Plain vanilla [free online] access is solving yesterday's problem. Yesterday's problem is still today's problem, and it is still unsolved -- until institutions and funders mandate Green OA. > Sometimes one has to leapfrog and anticipate the future. > CC-BY allows that. OA as simply 'ocular access' doesn't. We have even less free OA + CC-BY than plain vanilla free online OA today. How does CC-BY "allow" its solution whereas free online access doesn't? This all sounds very theoretical. But what we need is real OA, in the world, and there is not only less free OA + CC-BY than free OA today, but free OA + CC-BY is harder to get then free OA alone (apart from including free OA). So, practically speaking, what is your point? And in what sense is CC-BY the solution for anything other than a self-imposed theoretical puzzle? > I'm referring to text mining and re-use rights, or rather > the lack of it in plain vanilla, before you ask. Yes, besides lacking free OA today, we also lack free OA + CC-BY And your point is...? > [Green OA works] As long as 'green' means manuscripts, > yes. If 'green' means the published paper for which the > copyright has been transferred, no. It means the refereed final draft. That's what access-denied users are denied today. That's what plain vanilla free online OA gives them -- and it would mean the difference between night and day for those access-denied users. So much for practical reality: Now back to abstract theory: > A mandate should make abundantly clear that under no > circumstances copyright should be transferred to a publisher. A mandate should make abundantly clear that the refereed final draft must be deposited immediately (and made OA no later than the allowable embargo period). If in addition the mandate can be strengthened beyond vanilla to include copyright retention, that's even better (no embargo!). But you forgot to mention how, when we have not yet got the vanilla mandates, we're going to get the butterscotch-strawberry ones? Should the "even-better" wait for or hold up the "better"? Especially when the better is already within reach and the even-better is not? > Copyright transfer is a contract. 'Green' mandates rule out > copyright transfer. Legally and practically. All I recall was that they required authors to deposit their refereed drafts within an embargo period... > Researchers shouldn't be enticed into legal conflict zones > with false assertions that they can transfer legal rights and > then ignore the fact that they have transferred them. They > should not transfer them and be advised accordingly. > Admitting the problem is the first step to a solution. I suggest you talk to physicists, who have been doing this for over 20 years now. You would have had a splendid reason for them not have done it at all, since 1991. And I repeat, everything you are saying applies to the length of the allowable OA embargo. I have far, far less interest in that than in mandating the immediate deposit, the keystrokes. I haven't the slightest doubt that once ID/OA is universally mandated, the struggle's over, and the research community will turn the lights on for the dark deposits forthwith. All this abstract talk about what the publishers are being paid for and what rights are transferred is just conceptual shadow-boxing. > Subscriptions pay for access. The fee should be paid > for the service rendered, which is the organisation of > peer review and formal publication. Conflating the two > is the main cause of misunderstanding and conflict. The subscription fees are paying for the costs of publication even if they are designated as contributions to Santa Claus. And peer review won't get unbundled from the rest of the products and services it's wrapped in with until demand for the rest of the products and services vanishes, because users are satisfied with just the vanilla final draft (Green OA). Then institutions can cancel subscriptions and part of their windfall savings can be used to pay for the peer review, as Gold OA. But you need to mandate Green OA to get from here to there! > Mandates would be an awful lot clearer if the argument that > "the publication fee is paid in full by subscriptions" were to > be dropped from the equation. 'Green' mandates are about > making research results open, and costs nothing; publishing, > including OA publishing, is about giving those research results > 'value' and 'context' in the scholarly ego-system, and carries a > cost, because it involves asking people (publishers) to arrange > something, professionally, and those people need to be paid. Jan: Publication costs are being paid, in full, by subscriptions today. That's incontestable, even if notionally they're meant to go to Santa Claus. Green mandates supplement that subscription access to the version of record with free online access to the author's refereed draft. That's all there is to it. The rest is a theoretical loop you are inventing for yourself. > CC-BY is not copyright reform. It's using existing copyright effectively, > and not as a proxy for payment to publishers, that subsequently > makes it possible - and necessary - to sell subscriptions. Whatever it is, there are even fewer authors getting or giving CC-BY than are giving Green OA, unmandated. Green OA mandates make the difference even greater. Lots of luck trying to get institutions and funders to mandate free access + CC-BY rather than just free access. Just as long as at least free access (Green Gratis OA (ID/OA)) gets mandated universally. Why are we going on and on like this? Richard's tired of it, and so are GOAL readers. And it's never anything new. > I'm not discussing the length of embargo periods, either. In fact, I don't > like them at all. 'Gold' OA doesn't need them. Yes, but where's the Gold OA? Do you propose to mandate it? > Indeed, nobody should even have been thinking about the concept > of a car until all the horses had [retired]. No harm thinking all you like. Just don't let your thinking get in the way of the Green OA mandates that will get us from here to there instead of leaving is paralyzed in theoretical thought for yet another lost decade. Stevan _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
