On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 5:39 AM, Jan Velterop <[email protected]> wrote:
> The cost of properly and robustly preparing articles for preservation, > archiving, machine-reading (TDM) etc. is more essential in my view, given > the mess many authors (and, it has to be said, many publishers) make of > that. That cost is but a fraction of the cost of arranging peer review by > publishers. Prepublication peer review can perfectly well be arranged by > academics themselves. See this: > http://blog.scienceopen.com/2015/04/welcome-jan-velterop-peer-review-by-endorsement/ > > Endorsement is not peer review. Harnad, S. (1998/2000/2004) The invisible hand of peer review <http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html>. *Nature* [online] (5 Nov. 1998), *Exploit Interactive* <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue5/peer-review/> 5 (2000): and in Shatz, B. (2004) (ed.) *Peer Review: A Critical Inquiry*. Rowland & Littlefield. Pp. 235-242. http://cogprints.org/1646/ Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/>. 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/ Please also see the reference below, on crowd-sourcing. Stevan Harnad Sent from Jan Velterop's iPhone. Please excuse for brevity and typos. > > On 1 May 2015, at 10:10, Stevan Harnad <[email protected]> wrote: > > The only essential cost in peer-reviewed research publication in the > online (PostGutenberg) era is the cost of managing peer review. > > Harnad, S (2014) The only way to make inflated journal subscriptions > unsustainable: Mandate Green Open Access > <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/> > . *LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog **4/28 * > http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/ > > Harnad, S. (2014) Crowd-Sourced Peer Review: Substitute or supplement for > the current outdated system? > <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/21/crowd-sourced-peer-review-substitute-or-supplement/> > *LSE Impact Blog* 8/21 August 21 2014 > http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/08/21/crowd-sourced-peer-review-substitute-or-supplement/ > Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity > Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed > <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/>. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8) > <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html>. > http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21348/ > > > > > On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 10:04 PM, Éric Archambault < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> Heather >> >> I think using the term "toll" when what we mean is "subscription" is >> quite limiting. There is always a toll charged or taken whatever the model >> used to diffuse scientific knowledge. The important question is not about >> toll or profit, it is about seeking an effective knowledge delivery system >> that is as close as possible to universal access to academic and scientific >> knowledge, while doing this relatively efficiently at the system level. >> Like anything else in our money-mediated society, there is a cost >> associated with achieving this objective. Several models are available, all >> with their own tolls. >> >> PLoS charges tolls at the entry point in the form of Article Processing >> Charge while Elsevier charges tolls in the form of subscription. Both limit >> access at one end of the communication pipeline (to publish, or to read), >> both charge money. Hence, Elsevier and PLoS both are toll access publishers. >> >> Everything being equal, between the two, the APC model is inherently more >> efficient as it more largely unleashes the $450 billion spent annually by >> governments the world over to support public research. However, it presents >> its own problems of equal access (that is, equal access to the capacity to >> publish equal quality papers) and is likely to perpetuate the North-South >> divide if no steps are taken. >> >> Gold with no APC is certainly also associated with large tolls, including >> resource allocation inefficiencies, and lack of sustainability which >> reduces the value of the published output (it takes a long time to build a >> reputation for a publication venue and papers in abandoned journals are >> less likely to be read over time). Individuals in the top 5% income bracket >> (e.g. university professors) producing journals is not a model of efficient >> allocation of public money. Finding long term sustainable income to pay for >> the rest of the personnel involved in APC-less gold also present some >> definitive challenges, sustainability being the toughest. >> >> Hybrid, à la pièce, gold probably present the worse of all worlds as it >> is expensive, paid twice for, and very difficult to discover considering >> that publishers are packaging these papers among the restricted access >> material. These should be duplicated on separate parts of the publishers' >> website and their metadata freely harvestable by anyone, and the papers >> themselves mass downloadable. This would increase their value, and >> facilitate oversight. >> >> Green alas does not seem to save it all. On the Southampton repository, >> there are only some 7000-8000 peer-reviewed published papers which are >> available for download out of about 57,000 claimed peer-reviewed papers in >> the repository. For most of these 57,000 items, there is only fairly >> unequal quality and often incomplete metadata (what is the purpose of >> putting varying quality metadata in a repo if no associated paper is >> available is something I still have to understand), and frequently, when >> there is a paper, access is restricted to Southampton. Postscript files >> (.ps) are nice for technically inclined users but most ordinary users do >> not what to do with them and having PDF presenting only a cover page is >> only a loss of time. Sifting through this is time consuming, presents a >> huge toll in time, as the signal to noise ratio really is poor. This model >> takes its toll on the those who depose, and on those who are audacious >> enough to search in there. In my opinion, for what it's worth, Green in >> institutional repositories needs to be re-loaded with clean, curated, and >> useful documents, as currently it is mostly a mess that hides too few gems. >> >> If we had proper economic models, we would probably find that the social >> optimum at the moment for green is in the form of central "repositories" >> such as arXiv, CiteSeerX, PubMedCentral and Scielo. If we had hard data, we >> would certainly find that they cost very little to operate per available >> paper. These are smart models as they present considerable economies of >> scale, reasonable user friendliness and good discoverability, in addition >> to making their metadata available and making papers fairly convenient to >> retrieve. This model of access is great. >> >> Getting closer to universal access to public knowledge is not a simple >> question of tolls - it comprises subscription costs, publications costs, >> production costs, distribution cost, opportunity costs. >> >> Eric Archambault >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On >> Behalf Of Heather Morrison >> Sent: April-29-15 8:42 PM >> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) >> Subject: [GOAL] Elsevier (and other traditional publishers) and PLOS >> >> Elsevier has much in common with Public Library of Science: both are >> scholarly publishing organizations, focused on science, and in my opinion >> both aggressively advocate sometimes for the best interests of scholarship, >> but often primarily for their own business interests. >> >> If policy-makers are aiming to help traditional publishers like Elsevier >> survive in an open access environment (a goal I am not sure we all agree >> on), then in formulating policies it is important to keep in mind some very >> basic differences. >> >> PLOS was born digital and open access and with a full commitment to open >> access. Traditional publishers like Elsevier have a legacy of works under >> copyright and a business model that involves selling rights to these works >> and integrated search services (rather a lot of money at that). In the case >> of Elsevier, this involves millions of works over a long period of time. >> Even if every single article Elsevier publishes from today on were open >> access, this would not impact previously published works. Unless I am >> missing something there is no business model for Elsevier to provide access >> to these previously published works free-of-charge. This means that >> traditional publishers like Elsevier are very likely to have to continue >> with a toll access business model even if they move forward with open >> access publishing. This is an essentially different environment from that >> of a full open access publisher like PLOS. It is not realistic to assume >> that a traditional publisher that must maintain a toll access environment >> will behave in the same way that born open access publishers do. PLOS was >> started from a commitment to providing works free-of-charge. Elsevier and >> publishers like Elsevier have thrived in a toll access environment, and >> will have to maintain a toll access environment. There will be far more >> pressure and incentive to revert to toll access for traditional publishers >> than for PLOS. This is why arguments along the lines that PLOS has been >> around for a while, therefore there are no problems with CC-BY, don't >> necessarily apply to a publisher like Elsevier. >> >> Elsevier, unlike PLOS, does have its own suite of value-added services >> such as Science Direct and Scopus. When friends of PLOS say there is no >> reason not to grant blanket commercial rights to anyone downstream, I think >> it is important to remember that this represents the perspective of one >> type of publisher. Other journals and publishers either provide value added >> services themselves, or receive revenue from providers of such services, >> e.g. payments from journal aggregators. >> >> Note that while Elsevier has no incentive to provide access to previously >> published works free-of-charge, they are a green publisher and so authors >> from recent years can make their works published with Elsevier freely >> available through institutional archives. This is one thing green open >> access can achieve right now that gold OA cannot. I'd like to acknowledge >> that Stevan Harnad has been right on this point for many, many years. >> >> I'm still signed on for the Elsevier boycott, in case anyone is wondering: >> http://thecostofknowledge.com/ >> >> best, >> >> -- >> Dr. Heather Morrison >> Assistant Professor >> École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies >> University of Ottawa >> http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html >> Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ >> [email protected] >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> GOAL mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal >> >> ----- >> No virus found in this message. >> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com >> Version: 2015.0.5863 / Virus Database: 4331/9577 - Release Date: 04/19/15 >> Internal Virus Database is out of date. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> 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 > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > >
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