hi Ross, As you point out, this study is not funded by taxpayers. Do you have any solutions to offer to ALPSPs and similar groups so that they can have the revenue to fund their work and reports such as this for open access? I think that we would agree that open access is an unprecedented public good, and hence something to support. However, I would argue that scholarly societies are very important, too. For example, a scholarly society can speak up for scholarly values, such as the importance of knowledge / science / evidence-based policy-making, and in support of intellectual freedom. When commercial interests hire climate change deniers, I am really glad that we have scholarly societies around.
If we lost this sector in the rush to open access, this would be a real loss to scholarship and society. The Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers is a support for this sector. Many of these publishers are fully in favor of open access, and doing as much as they can to support it - with policies allowing for self-archiving, free back issues, etc. Unlike a select few high-profit commercial publishers, most scholarly societies publish at or around the break-even point. I argue that it is in the best interests of scholars, publishers, libraries, and society as a whole to support this sector and help them make the transition to an open access future. This requires that we consider the underlying economics, and how to transition this from supporting subscriptions to supporting open access. The Synergies project in Canada (providing infrastructure to assist publishers to make the transition) is one good model. Direct subsidies to this sector so that they can move to open access could be much more cost-effective than indirect subsidies for article processing fees. best, Heather MOrrison On 2012-10-09, at 10:03 AM, Ross Mounce wrote: > 'Pirate copies'... now there's an interesting topic for the list. > > I am a member of several social networking sites used by academics e.g. > Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed etc... and more traditional academic mailing > lists (GOAL itself is one!) like TAXACOM (Taxonomy), DML (Dinosaur Mailing > List), VRTPALEO (Vertebrate Palaeontology) and more. > > Such "PDF requests" for research material are a daily occurrence. I assume > everyone on these sites and lists knows that it is technically copyright > infringement if they supply a PDF to various requesters, but it seems to me > that no researcher actually cares one bit about this. (my opinion/observation) > > More importantly, the very ubiquity of these acts, the fact that very senior > respected researchers in my field also do this, and that it's an everyday > occurrence lead me to believe this practice is completely accepted by > researchers (if not by subscription publishers) as just part and parcel of > normal research in a 'serials crisis world' where no research library has > access to everything. > > So, I'm sorry but I fail to feel shamed. Requests for unrestricted access to > information are completely normal in my community. > > Point-taken though that this particular study is unlikely to have been > publicly funded by taxpayers, and so it's a slightly different case to > 'normal' publicly funded research works. > > > Ross > > PS Thanks for the suggestion David but I never use the Inter Library Loans > system - it is very slow and supplies really awkward protected PDFs that can > only be printed once (and our printer is very unreliable) from what I > remember when I last attempted to use it years ago. Twitter is the new ILL > from what I can see... [just making practical observations...] > > > On 9 October 2012 17:23, Sally Morris <sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote: > I don't see why ALPSP's ability to recoup the cost of this research should > be undermined by open distribution of pirate copies - shame on you! However, > I did summarise their findings, and combine them with other data, in a paper > for the Publishing Research Consortium > (http://www.publishingresearch.net/author_rights.htm) > > Sally > > > Sally Morris > South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU > Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 > Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk > > > From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of > Ross Mounce > Sent: 09 October 2012 16:59 > > To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > Subject: [GOAL] Re: Europe PubMed as a home for all RCUK research outputs? > > Thank you Sally. > > These are exactly the kind of evidence-based contributions we should be > striving for in our discussions, in my opinion. > > I found Cox & Cox 2008 here: > http://test.alpsp.org/ngen_public/article.asp?id=200&did=47&aid=24781&st=&oaid=-1 > > but regrettably it is only available for 'free' to ALPSP Members. > > It would seem that I would have to pay £250/$480/€330 as a non-member to read > this report! If anyone could furnish me with a PDF copy I'd be much obliged. > > Best, > > Ross > > On 9 October 2012 16:39, Sally Morris <sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk> wrote: > On one point - publishers' insistence on (c) transfer - there certainly are > facts available. The most recent study of which I am aware is Cox & Cox, > Scholarly Publishing Practice 3 (2008). They surveyed 400 publishers > including most leading journal publishers, and received 203 usable responses. > According to further analysis by Laura Cox, 181 of these publishers > represented 753,037 articles (74.7% of ISI's world total for that year). > > In their 2008 study, they found just over 50% of publishers asking for > copyright transfer in the first instance (this had declined steadily from > over 80% in 2003 and over 60% in 2005); of these, a further 20% would > provide a 'licence to publish' as an alternative if requested by the author. > At the same time, the number offering a licence in the first instance had > grown to around 20% by 2008. So that's nearly 90%, by my reckoning, who > either don't ask for (c) in the first place, or will provide a licence > instead on request. > > They also found that over 40% (by number of articles) made the finally > published version open to text mining. In addition, 80% or more allowed > self-archiving to a personal or departmental website, 60% to an institutional > website and over 40% to a subject repository (though authors often don't know > that they are allowed to do this). In most cases this applied to the > submitted and/or accepted version; self-archiving of the final published > version was much less likely to be permitted (though it appears to be what > authors really want). > > I understand ALPSP are currently repeating the study, so we may soon know if > these trends have continued - I'd be amazed if they have not. > > Sally > > > Sally Morris > South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU > Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 > Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk > > > From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of > Ross Mounce > Sent: 09 October 2012 15:51 > To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > Cc: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk > Subject: [GOAL] Re: Europe PubMed as a home for all RCUK research outputs? > > Dear Stevan, > > I'm disappointed that you continue to make wild assertions without backing > them up with good evidence. I, like many readers of this list (perhaps?) > suggest you're not doing your credibility any favours here... > > A grating example: > > Moreover, most fields don't need CC-BY (and certainly not as urgently as they > need access). > > [citation needed!!!] > > Who (aside from you) says that most fields "don't need CC-BY"? > You're the only person I know saying this. > > *I* argue that we clearly would benefit greatly from CC-BY research as this > explicitly enables content mining approaches such as textmining that may > otherwise be impeded by less open licences. > > It has been estimated that over 50 million academic articles have been > published (Jinha, 2010) and the volume of publications is increasing rapidly > year on year. The only rational way we’ll be able to make full use of all > this research both NOW and in the future, is if we are allowed to use > machines to help us make sense of this vast and growing literature. I should > add that it's not just scientific fields that would benefit from these > approaches. Humanities research could greatly benefit too from techniques > such as sentiment analysis of in-text citations across thousands of papers > and other such analyses as applied to a whole variety of hypotheses to be > tested. These techniques (and CC-BY) aren't a Panacea but they would have > some strong benefits for a wide variety of research, if only people in those > fields a) knew how to use those techniques and b) were allowed to use the > techniques. (see McDonald & Kelly, 2012 JISC report on 'The Value and > Benefits of Text Mining' for more detail) > > For an example of the kind of papers we *could* write if we actually used all > the literature in this manner see Kell (2009) and its impressive reference > list making use of 2469 previously published papers. CC-BY enables this kind > of scope and ambition without the need for commercially provided information > retrieval systems that are often of dubious data quality. > > > Repositories cannot attach CC-BY licenses because most publishers still > insist on copyright transfer. (Global Green OA will put an end to this, but > not if it waits for CC-BY first.) > > I agree with the first half of the sentence BUT the second half your > assertion: "most publishers still insist on copyright transfer" - where's > the evidence for this? I want hard numbers. If there are ~25 or ~28 thousand > active peer-reviewed journals (figures regularly touted, I won't vouch for > their accuracy it'll do) and vastly fewer publishers of these, data can be > sought to test this claim. For now I'm very unconvinced. I know of many many > publishers that allow the author to retain copyright. It is unclear to me > what the predominate system is with respect to this contra your assertion. > > > Finally: > > > Green mandates don't exclude Gold: they simply allow but do not require Gold, > nor paying for Gold. > > Likewise RCUK policy as I understand it does not exclude Green, nor paying > for the associated costs of Green OA like institutional repositories, staff, > repo development and maintenance costs. Gold is preferred but Green is > allowed. Glad we've made that clear... > > > > > > > Jinha, A. E. 2010. Article 50 million: an estimate of the number of scholarly > articles in existence. Learned Publishing 23:258-263. > http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20100308 > > Kell, D. 2009. Iron behaving badly: inappropriate iron chelation as a major > contributor to the aetiology of vascular and other progressive inflammatory > and degenerative diseases. BMC Medical Genomics 2:2+. > http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1755-8794-2-2 > > McDonald, D & Kelly, U 2012. The Value and Benefits of Text Mining. JISC > Report > http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2012/value-and-benefits-of-text-mining.aspx > > > > > > > -- > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- > Ross Mounce > PhD Student & Panton Fellow > Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group > University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07 > http://about.me/rossmounce > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > > > > -- > -- > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- > Ross Mounce > PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow > Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group > University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07 > http://about.me/rossmounce > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > > > > -- > -- > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- > Ross Mounce > PhD Student & Panton Fellow > Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group > University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07 > http://about.me/rossmounce > -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/- > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
