A few responses to Guedon's comments: --The "gold" approach here in the UK = author-pay, whatever it may mean elsewhere. --If many journals offer "free" services to authors, that's because they have an income-stream to pay the people who provide the services, whether by some form of subsidy (and I don't know of many in my field) or by subscription fees. For these services to be provided will either require these income sources or the author-pay model. --We can extrapolate roughly what this would cost authors: It would be at least multiple(s) of the single-article charge being levied already by, e.g., OUP and Brill for "gold" option article publication (in each case £2000 or more for articles of ca. 20 pp. printed). --I fail to see how any sort of mandate would be of any comfort and assistance to authors, whether first-time or established. I repeat: Surely a fundamental rule should be that any convention should have the confidence and support of the constituency affected. The alternative is tyranny.
Larry Hurtado Quoting Guédon Jean-Claude <[email protected]> on Fri, 29 Nov 2013 10:24:32 +0000: > There a number of points to be made regarding Hurtado's message: > > 1. The "horrid 'Gold'" must refer to the author-pay gold. This is > not the whole of gold, only a subset. Gold ciovers a wide variety of > financing schemes. > > 2. The figures given for "horrid gold" - incidentally, I like this > term applied to author-pay business models - are real, but not > general. Thousands of journals offer gratis services to authors and > free use by readers because, simply, they are subsidized in one > fashion or another. > > 3. Even if the cost of £2000+ (Sterling) were accepted for articles, > the cost of monographs could not be derived from a simplistic linear > extrapolation based on page numbers. > > 4. Young scholars who may not enjoy Hurtado's stature in the world, > would be delighted to have their first work published, if only > electronically. Moreover, they would probably prefer open access to > ensure maximum visibility and use, provided the evaluation process > in force within their universities does not treat electronic > publishing as inferior. > > 5. In many countries, e.g. in Canada, subsidies exist to support the > publishing of monographs. This precedent opens the door to possible > extensions to full OA-publishing support, for example for a young > scholar's first book. > > Jean-Claude Guédon > ________________________________________ > De : [email protected] [[email protected]] de la part > de [email protected] [[email protected]] > Envoyé : jeudi 28 novembre 2013 05:40 > À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > Objet : [GOAL] Re: Monographs > > Further to Steven's comment, as a scholar in the Humanities, in which > the book/monograph is still THE major medium for high-impact > research-publication, mandating a major change such as OA (even > "Green", to say nothing of the horrid "Gold"), would be opposed by at > least the overwhelming majority (and perhaps even unanimously) in the > disciplines concerned. And the reasons aren't primarily author-income > that might accrue from traditional print-book publication. For many > European-type small-print-run monographs, sold almost entirely to > libraries, often no royalty accrues to author. Even serious books > intended primarily for other scholars in the field and published by > university presses and/or reputable trade publishers, the royalties > will still be modest in comparison with, e.g., popular fiction works. > > My best-selling book, sold ca. 5,000 hardback and has sold now over > another 3000 in paperback. Several thousand in royalties, but, > seriously, my main aim in writing books has been to get them into the > hands of as many fellow scholars in my field as possible, and also > then into the hands of advanced students and other serious readers. > I've typically gone with a highly-respected and well-established > "trade" publisher, mainly because they combine excellent editing, > marketing, and a readiness to price the books affordably (e.g., a 700 > page hardback at $55 USD, because they committed to a 5000 copy > initial print-run.) > > For an equivalent service to be provided, someone has to pay. "Gold" > access articles are costing now £2000+ (Sterling) each, with > page-lengths of ca. 20 print pages. Imagine what an author would have > to pay for a 150-200 page monograph. And don't tell me that > everything will be OK, because university libraries will hand over > their acquisitions budget for this. It won't happen. Moreover, what > about "independent" and retired scholars, who continue to produce > important works? > > And the "Green" approach means no one pays, and so no service > (editing, and other production services, including promotion) will be > done free? Think again. > > But the fundamental thing is this: Any "mandate" that does not have > the enthusiasm of the constituency is tyranny. And neither "Green" > nor "Gold" access has any enthusiasm among Humanities scholars as may > be applied to books/monographs. > > Larry Hurtado > > Quoting Stevan Harnad <[email protected]> on Mon, 25 Nov 2013 > 17:09:56 -0500: > >> Sandy, I'm all for OA to monographs, of course. >> >> It's *mandating* OA to monographs that I am very skeptical about, because >> there is unanimity among researchers about desiring -- even if not daring, >> except if mandated, to provide -- OA to peer-reviewed journal articles, >> whereas there is no such unanimity about monographs. >> >> Not to mention that prestige publishers may not yet be ready to agree to it. >> >> So mandate Green OA to articles first; that done, mandate (or try to >> mandate) whatever else you like. But not before, or instead. >> >> Meanwhile, where the author and publisher are willing, there is absolute no >> obstacle to providing OA to monographs today, unmandated. >> >> Stevan Harnad >> >> >> On Mon, Nov 25, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Sandy Thatcher <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Stevan continues to be hung up on the idea that some academic authors >>> still have visions of fame and fortune they'd like to achieve through >>> publishing books in the traditional manner, so he believes that the time >>> for OA in book publishing has not yet arrived. But perhaps a simple >>> terminological distinction may suffice to place this problem in proper >>> perspective. Academic books may be divided into two types: monographs and >>> trade books. Monographs, by definition, are works of scholarship written >>> primarily to address other scholars and are therefore unlikely to attract >>> many, if any, readers beyond the walls of academe. Trade books encompass a >>> large category that includes, as one subset, nonfiction works written by >>> scholars but addressed not only to fellow scholars but also to members of >>> the general public. >>> >>> There is an easy practical way to distinguish the two: commercial trade >>> publishers (as distinct from commercial scholarly publishers that do not >>> aim at a trade market) have certain requirements for potential sales that >>> guarantee that monographs will never be accepted for publication. It is >>> true that the authors of monographs, published by university presses and >>> commercial scholarly publishers, are sometimes paid royalties. But these >>> amounts seldom accumulate to large sums (unless the monographs happen to >>> become widely adopted in classrooms as course assignments--a phenomenon >>> that happens less these days when coursepacks and e-reserves permit use of >>> excerpts for classroom assignments). Thus not much is sacrificed, >>> financially speaking, by publishing these books OA. And, indeed, a scholar >>> may have more to gain, in terms of increased reputation from wider >>> circulation that may translate into tenure and promotion, which are vastly >>> more financially rewarding over the long term than royalties are ever >>> likely to be from monograph sales. >>> >>> Also, of course, financial opportunities do not need to be sacrificed >>> completely by OA if the CC-BY-NC-ND license is used for monographs, >>> preserving some money-generating rights to authors even under OA. >>> >>> It also needs to be said that even trade authors can benefit from OA, as >>> the successes of such authors as Cory Doctorow, Larry Lessig, Jonathan >>> Zittrain, and others have demonstrated, with the free online versions of >>> their books serving to stimulate print sales. >>> >>> Thus I believe Stevan is not being quite pragmatic enough in recognizing >>> that the time has arrived for OA monograph publishing also, not just OA >>> article publishing. >>> >>> Sandy Thatcher >>> >>> >>> >>> At 12:44 PM -0500 11/19/13, Stevan Harnad wrote: >>> >>> Ann Okerson (as >>> interviewed<http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ann-okerson-on-state-of-open-access.html>by >>> Richard Poynder) is committed to licensing. I am not sure >>> whether >>> the >>> commitment is ideological or pragmatic, but it's clearly a lifelong >>> ("asymptotic") commitment by now. >>> >>> I was surprised to see the direction Ann ultimately took because -- as I >>> have admitted many times -- it was Ann who first opened my eyes to (what >>> eventually came to be called) "Open Access." >>> >>> In the mid and late 80's I was still just in the thrall of the scholarly >>> and scientific potential of the revolutionarily new online medium >>> itself ("Scholarly >>> Skywriting"<http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/sky-writing-or-when-man-first-met-troll/239420/>), >>> eager to get everything to be put online. It was Ann's work on the serials >>> crisis that made me realize that it was not enough just to get it all >>> online: it also had to be made accessible (online) to all of its potential >>> users, toll-free -- not just to those whose institutions could afford the >>> access-tolls (licenses). >>> >>> And even that much I came to understand, sluggishly, only after I had >>> first realized that what set apart the writings in question was not that >>> they were (as I had first naively dubbed them) >>> "esoteric<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversive_Proposal>" >>> (i.e., they had few users) but that they were* peer-reviewed research >>> journal articles*, written by researchers solely for impact, not for >>> income <http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.1>. >>> >>> >>> But I don't think the differences between Ann and me can be set down to >>> ideology vs. pragmatics. I too am far too often busy trying to free the >>> growth of open access from the ideologues (publishing reformers, rights >>> reformers (Ann's "open use" zealots), peer review reformers, freedom of >>> information reformers) who are slowing the progress of access to >>> peer-reviewed journal articles (from "now" to "better") by insisting only >>> and immediately on what they believe is the "best." Like Ann, I, too, am >>> all pragmatics (repository software, analyses of the OA impact advantage, >>> mandates, analyses of mandate effeciveness). >>> >>> So Ann just seems to have a different sense of what can (hence should) be >>> done, now, to maximize access, and how (as well as how fast). And after her >>> initial, infectious inclination toward toll-free access (which I and others >>> caught from her) she has apparently concluded that what is needed is to >>> modify the terms of the tolls (i.e., licensing). >>> >>> This is well-illustrated by Ann's view on SCOAP3: "All it takes is for >>> libraries to agree that what they've now paid as subscription fees for >>> those journals will be paid instead to CERN, who will in turn pay to the >>> publishers as subsidy for APCs." >>> >>> I must alas disagree with this view, on entirely pragmatic -- indeed >>> logical -- grounds: the transition from annual institutional subscription >>> fees to annual consortial OA publication fees is an incoherent, unscalable, >>> unsustainable Escherian scheme that contains the seeds of its own >>> dissolution, rather than a pragmatic means of reaching a stable >>> "asymptote": Worldwide, across all disciplines, there are P institutions, Q >>> journals, and R authors, publishing S articles per year. The only relevant >>> item is the article. The annual consortial licensing model -- reminiscent >>> of the Big Deal -- is tantamount to a global oligopoly and does not scale >>> (beyond CERN!). >>> >>> So if SCOAP3 is the pragmatic basis for Ann's "predict[ion that] we'll see >>> such journals evolve into something more like 'full traditional OA' before >>> too much longer" then one has some practical basis for scepticism -- a >>> scepticism Ann shares when it comes to "hybrid Gold" OA journals -- unless >>> of course such a transition to Fool's Gold is both mandated and funded by >>> governments, as the UK and Netherlands governments have lately >>> proposed<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1073-The-Journal-Publisher-Lobby-in-the-UK-Netherlands-Part-I.html>, >>> under the influence of their publishing lobbies! But the globalization of >>> such profligate folly seems unlikely on the most pragmatic grounds of all: >>> affordability. (The scope for remedying world hunger, disease or injustice >>> that way are marginally better -- and McDonalds would no doubt be >>> interested in such a yearly global consortial pre-payment >>> deal<https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=oI6LUpG8LPLCyAHT5IHQDg#q=McNopoly+harnad>for >>> their Big >>> Macs >>> too?) >>> >>> I also disagree (pragmatically) with Ann's apparent conflation of the >>> access problem for journal articles with the access problem for books. >>> (It's the inadequacy of the "esoteric" criterion again. Many book authors >>> -- hardly pragmatists -- still dream of sales & riches, and fear that free >>> online access would thwart these dreams, driving away the prestigious >>> publishers whose imprimaturs distinguish their work from vanity press.) >>> >>> Pragmatically speaking, OA to articles has already proved slow enough in >>> coming, and has turned out to require mandates to induce and embolden >>> authors to make their articles OA. But for articles, at least, there is >>> author consensus that OA is desirable, hence there is the motivation to >>> comply with OA mandates from authors' institutions and funders. Books, >>> still a mixed bag, will have to wait. Meanwhile, no one is stopping those >>> book authors who want to make their books free online from picking >>> publishers who agree?> >>> >>> And there are plenty of pragmatic reasons why the librarian-obsession -- >>> perhaps not ideological, but something along the same lines -- with the >>> Version-of-Record is misplaced when it comes to access to journal articles: >>> The author's final, peer-reviewed, accepted draft means the difference >>> between night and day for would-be users whose institutions cannot afford >>> toll-access to the publisher's proprietary VoR. >>> >>> And for the time being the toll-access VoR is safe [modulo the general >>> digital-preservation problem, which is not an OA problem], while >>> subscription licenses are being paid by those who can afford them. CHORUS >>> and SHARE have plenty of pragmatic advantages for publishers (and >>> ideological ones for librarians), but they are vastly outweighed by their >>> practical disadvantages for research and researchers -- of which the >>> biggest is that they leave access-provision in the hands of publishers (and >>> their licensing conditions). >>> >>> About the Marie-Antoinette option for the developing world -- R4L -- the >>> less said, the better. The pragmatics really boil down to time: the access >>> needs of both the developing and the developed world are pressing. Partial >>> and makeshift solutions are better than nothing, now. But it's been "now" >>> for an awfully long time; and time is not an ideological but a pragmatic >>> matter; so is lost research usage and impact. >>> >>> Ann says: "Here's the fondest hope of the pragmatic OA advocate: that we >>> settle on a series of business practices that truly make the greatest >>> possible collection of high-value material accessible to the broadest >>> possible audience at the lowest possible cost - not just lowest cost to end >>> users, but lowest cost to all of us." >>> >>> Here's a slight variant, by another pragmatic OA advocate: "that we settle >>> on a series of research community policies that truly make the greatest >>> possible collection of peer-reviewed journal articles accessible online >>> free for all users, to the practical benefit of all of us." >>> >>> The online medium has made this practically possible. The publishing >>> industry -- pragmatists rather than ideologists -- will adapt to this new >>> practical reality. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. >>> >>> Let me close by suggesting that perhaps something Richard Poynder wrote is >>> not quite correct either: He wrote "It was [the] affordability problem that >>> created the accessibility problem that OA was intended to solve." >>> >>> No, it was the creation of the online medium that made OA not only >>> practically feasible (and optimal) for research and researchers, but >>> inevitable. >>> >>> *Stevan Harnad* >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Sanford G. Thatcher >>> 8201 Edgewater Drive >>> Frisco, TX 75034-5514 >>> e-mail: [email protected] >>> Phone: (214) 705-1939 >>> Website: http://www.psupress.org/news/SandyThatchersWritings.html >>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sanford.thatcher >>> >>> "If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865) >>> >>> "The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who >>> can write know anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853) >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> GOAL mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal >>> >>> >> > > > > L. W. Hurtado, PhD, FRSE > Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology > Honorary Professorial Fellow > New College (School of Divinity) > University of Edinburgh > Mound Place > Edinburgh, UK. EH1 2LX > Office Phone: (0)131 650 8920. FAX: (0)131 650 7952 > http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/divinity/staff-profiles/hurtado > www.larryhurtado.wordpress.com > > -- > The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in > Scotland, with registration number SC005336. > > > > _______________________________________________ > 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 > > L. W. Hurtado, PhD, FRSE Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology Honorary Professorial Fellow New College (School of Divinity) University of Edinburgh Mound Place Edinburgh, UK. EH1 2LX Office Phone: (0)131 650 8920. FAX: (0)131 650 7952 http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/divinity/staff-profiles/hurtado www.larryhurtado.wordpress.com -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
