Hi Stevan While it is nice to be agreed with, perhaps you are thinking of somebody else in your third paragraph? I don't recall being part of the debate recently.
Best wishes David On 11 Feb 2012, at 14:31, Stevan Harnad wrote: > A HAPPIER ENDING: UNBUNDLING QUALITY CONTROL > > Mike Taylor's allegory is brilliant. But its pessimistic ending is not > inevitable. > http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/feb/10/parable-farmers-teleporting-duplicator?CMP=twt_gu > > The "distributors" (journals) performed two functions in the > "pre-teleportation" (Gutenberg, per-web) era: One was (1) to package > and distribute (but not produce) the produce (articles), for those who > could afford to pay the price; and the other was (2) to manage (but > not provide) the quality control (peer review) that would ensure and > certify that the produce was fit for consumption. (The peers did the > actual reviewing for free.) > > Mike's analogy suggests that the producers (authors) only need the > quality control (peer review) for their careers (journal prestige). > But they need it as "consumers" (users) too, so they know what is safe > to eat (use, apply, build upon). [And (as David Prosser has been > correctly but so far unsuccessfully trying to explain here) the > quality control (provided free by the peers) does not just *rate* the > quality of the produce: it *improves* it, to the benefit of authors, > users, and public health. ] > > Since the peers review for free, the only essential service that > peer-reviewed journals still perform in the "teleportation" > (Post-Gutenberg web) era is to manage the peer review. Teleportation > can now take care of all the rest of the obsolete Gutenberg products > and services (distribution and storage) for free, but quality control > itself still has to be managed by a neutral 3rd party honest-broker, > as farmers cannot be entrusted to "police" their own produce, and that > still costs a little money (though incomparably less than the whole > obsolescent bundle now costs). > > So here comes another wrinkle in Mike's analogy: Journals, unlike > food, are purchased by users' institutions (universities) via annual > institutional journal subscriptions, not by individual consumers. If > there were a way to unbundle the obsolete products and services > (distribution and storage) from the sole remaining essential service > (managing peer review), then institutions could easily pay the far > lower cost of just the quality control for just their own outgoing > produce out of their windfall savings from no longer having to pay for > the incoming quality-controlled produce of other institutions > (co-bundled in annual journal subscriptions). > > So the outcome of the allegory need not be pessimistic if there is a > way to get from "here" (increasingly unaffordable annual institutional > subscriptions to obsolete products and services) to "there" > (downsizing journals to just the costs of managing quality control). > > And there is a way. And that way is precisely the one that the > "distributors" have been vigorously lobbying against: > > The institutions and funders of the "farmers" (researchers) need to > mandate (require) that their quality-controlled produce (peer-reviewed > final drafts of their articles -- not yet "packaged" by the > distributor) must be "teleported" (deposited in their institutional > repositories, free for all online) by their employees and fundees, > immediately upon being certified as having met the quality control > standards of the distributor (i.e., upon acceptance by the journal). > > This way the full cost of the essential quality control (as well as > the obsolete packaging and distribution) is still being paid for in > full (by the institutions that can still afford the journal > subscriptions), but no one is going hungry, because teleportation > makes the quality-controlled food accessible free for all ("open > access"). > > Then, if and when institutions decide that they no longer need or want > the obsolete products and services still co-bundled with the quality > control, they can cancel their subscriptions. And if and when > institutional cancelations make subscriptions unsustainable as the > means of covering their costs, the (former) distributors can cut the > obsolete costs (per journal) of packaging and distribution, offloading > them onto teleportation (the global network of mandated institution > repositories), leaving just the essential service of managing and > certifying the quality control, which the institutions can then pay > (per outgoing article) out of a fraction of their annual subscription > cancelation savings. > > Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged > Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the > Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106. > http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/ > > Public Access to Federally Funded Research > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/865-guid.html > >> CHARLES OPPENHEIM [c.oppenheim -- btinternet.com] >> Sent: Friday, February 10, 2012 6:53 AM >> To: GlobalOpen Access List ( Successor of Am Sci) >> Subject: [GOAL] Nice blog post on OA >> >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/feb/10/parable-farmers-teleporting-duplicator?CMP=twt_gu >> >> Very nice analogy! >> Professor Charles Oppenheim > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
