Eric, I'm not sure I'm reading it the same way you are, nor am I as convinced as Mike is that Green OA (of pre-prints & author manuscripts) is a threat to publishers.
On the first point, if you read Karen's statement as "the author version, including peer-review revisions is now considered to be a pre-print" this is indeed a advancement over the previous policy as is doing the opposite of what you state. They're essentially saying with this policy, as I read it, that the major value-add the publisher brings is the branding & the hosting of the version of record, because the peer review is included in the free-to-post preprint. On the second point, we need data. Are there any libraries who say they will definitely cancel a subscription if they can find all papers from a given journal in a repository somewhere? What does that even mean, given that libraries don't buy subscriptions a la carte, but as bundles? We need data! William Gunn +1 (650) 614-1749 http://synthesis.williamgunn.org/about/ On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:41 PM, Éric Archambault < [email protected]> wrote: > Stevan > > > > The point you make is important. Elsevier HAS changed its policy and in > fact the difference is that the peer-review process, done for free by > academics, is now under embargo, whereas it wasn't before. So you are right > to mention that Elsevier is backpedalling on OA. The pre-print, > pre-peer-reviewed was not embargoed before the latest policy, and it is not > with that policy either. In a way, Elsevier says the original contribution > to knowledge that academics and researchers submit for publication does not > belong to them, and so authors are free to make this available for free. > Fair enough, this is paid for by public money (the greatest majority of it > anyway). > > > > What Elsevier says now is that the peer-review process belongs exclusively > to Elsevier, at least during the embargo period. This is problematic as > most of the value-added in the peer-review process is paid for by the > public and income taxes. As Elsevier paid only between 6% of to 8% of its > revenues in income taxes in the last two years, it can't pretend to > contribute highly to paying the salary of academics who do that job. We do > that, us the members of the middle-income earners as we are the most taxed > of all, all over the world (as % of income, and certainly even more as a % > of wealth as Thomas Piketty would notice). So basically, the peer-review > process as well as the papers submitted to that process are largely paid > for by the public, and should both remain public in the interest of > consistency and efficiency of economic and social policies. > > > > Coming to the discussion on "fair-gold", I think it is not productive > given our most urging challenges. We don't care if companies make profit > (well, I do as an entrepreneur as I try to produce it, and as a citizen, > just like you, I do care about social justice and am bothered with the > profits of Apple and Google and the fact that they barely pay taxes, but > this is beside the current debate). The core problem with access is when > companies take public goods and appropriate them exclusively. This is the > problem with the current publishing system. If we switch to gold, Elsevier > and others could continue to earn their $10-15 billion per year, and > provided everything becomes widely available we will have tackled a huge > problem of private appropriation of a public good, one that means that $450 > billion is locked behind paywalls to generate a comparatively paltry $10-15 > billion in revenues (a large part of it being profit admittedly, it's a > great business model they have). The present situation is akin to people > taking down power lines from public utilities to sell the copper in the > wires for melting - the private rewards to social cost ratio is firmly > against the public interest. If we switch to gold for the same social cost > ($10-15 billion per year), we will have sorted the problem. If you then > feel that Elsevier continues to earn exorbitant profits, you will be free > to quit your job and compete with them by publishing honest-gold journals, > Beall will be happy, and everyone will celebrate. > > > > Yet, though your quest about unfair-embargoing important, there is one > important aspect you nearly always omit as part of your exercise in > vigilante. It is currently close to impossible for the public to monitor > the "à la pièce gold", also frequently called "hybrid OA" that appears in > subscription-based journals. For example, Elsevier maintains robots.txt > files that preclude academics and companies alike from crawling its web > sites to discover the gold articles for which the public has paid. > > For example, if you do, in your browser: > > > > http://www.sciencedirect.com/robots.txt > > > > You discover that Elsevier mentions: > > > > User-agent: * > > Disallow: / > > > > which means if your crawler is not on the list, you should be polite > enough to not crawl the site. There are currently only 15 welcome > crawlers, mostly from large firms such as Google and Microsoft. > > > > Elsevier is not the only one to do that, Wiley does the same, Springer > also does it even on Springer Open and BMC. As these companies are > frequently suspected of "double dipping" (charging for à la pièce gold, aka > "hybrid OA", in subscription journals, and then also charging full price > for subscription), then something is wrong especially as, as you are well > aware, some governments mandate this type of solution to increase access. > The double charging of fees is more of a serious problem than the fact that > publishers earn profit as again we obtain a socially misfiring policy, > short-circuited by undue private appropriation. Either publishers do allow > robots to crawl their site so that people can monitor whether there is some > "double dipping", or all OA is made available and crawlable, and generally > publicly discoverable by being consolidated in one place. For these single > OA papers to become useful, they have to be discovered easily, and be easy > to consolidate by services such as Paperity, Core, [beginning of the > commercial self-promotion] and our forthcoming 1science product which aims > to make all forms of peer-reviewed OA articles searchable in a > user-friendly, highly streamlined system [end of the commercial > self-promotion]. > > > > Don't get me wrong, I consider your work as extremely important. Yet, you > once told me in an email that I was conflating the high price paid for > subscription with the access issue. You were right to note that, and I saw > the light thanks to you. I don't care about the money so much as I care > about access - I'm putting my money where my mouth is and developing > solutions to increase access to peer-reviewed scientific publications. With > the fool-gold discourse, you conflate profits and access. For the sake of > switching to a more socially optimal position, it would be better if we did > not trap publishers and bare them for doing a honorable exit from the > currently social un-optimal model towards one everyone can see is clearly > better for everyone, provided publishers can survive. We all need > publishers to make the transition in their business model. Your suggestions > amount to the near-annihilation of the publishers, if I were them, I > wouldn't be too tempted to follow that path, and this is what they do at > the moment, and for this I cannot blame them. We have to partners with the > thousands of middle-income highly taxed individuals in these companies to > ease the transition of their employers. Let's keep the pressure for green, > support the intelligent non-doubled-dipped use of gold, support monitoring > and more transparency. If we keep all the jobs in the publishing industry, > then just as well, they'll be more taxpayers to pay the tab for the $450 > billion we spend collectively on research, and on paying the salaries of > university staff and free though conflating thinkers such as yourself. > > > > Éric Archambault > > President and CEO, Science-Metrix Inc. > > President and CEO, 1science Inc. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] *On > Behalf Of *Stevan Harnad > *Sent:* May-25-15 2:24 PM > *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > *Subject:* [GOAL] Elsevier: Trying to squeeze the virtual genie back into > the physical bottle > > > > *Alicia Wise wrote* > <http://www.elsevier.com/connect/coar-recting-the-record#comment-2037996108> > : > > > > *Dear Stevan,* > > > > *I admire your vision and passion for green open access - in fact we all > do here at Elsevier - and for your tenacity as your definitions and > concepts of green open access have remain unchanged for more than 15 years. > We also recognize that the open access landscape has changed dramatically > over the last few years, for example with the emergence of Social > Collaboration Networks. This refresh of our policy, the first since 2004, > reflects what we are hearing from researchers and research institutions > about how we can support their changing needs. We look forward to > continuing input from and collaboration with the research community, and > will continue to review and refine our policy.* > > > > *Let me state clearly that we support both green and gold OA. Embargo > periods have been used by us - and other publishers - for a very long time > and are not new. The only thing that's changed about IRs is our old policy > said you had to have an agreement which included embargos, and the new > policy is you don't need to do an agreement provided you and your authors > comply with the embargo period policy. It might be most constructive for > people to just judge us based on reading through the policy and considering > what we have said and are saying.* > > > > *With kind wishes and good night,* > > *Alicia Wise, Elsevier* > > > > > > Dear Alicia, > > > > You wrote: > > > > *"This refresh of our policy [is| the first since 2004... Embargo periods > have been used by us... for a very long time and are not new. The only > thing that's changed about IRs is our old policy said you had to have an > agreement which included embargos..."* > > > > Is this the old policy that hasn't changed changed since 2004 (when > Elsevier was still on the "side of the angels <http://j.mp/OAngelS>" > insofar as Green OA was concerned) until the "refresh"? (I don't see any > mention of embargoes in it...): > > > > *Date:** Thu, 27 May 2004 03:09:39 +0100 * > > *From:** "Hunter, Karen (ELS-US)" * > > *To:** "'harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk <http://harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>'" * > > *Cc:** "Karssen, Zeger (ELS)" , "Bolman, Pieter (ELS)" , "Seeley, Mark > (ELS)" * > > *Subject:** Re: Elsevier journal list * > > > > *Stevan, * > > > > *[H]ere is what we have decided on post-"prints" (i.e. published articles, > whether published electronically or in print): * > > > > *An author may post his version of the final paper on his personal web > site and on his institution's web site (including its institutional > respository). Each posting should include the article's citation and a link > to the journal's home page (or the article's DOI). The author does not need > our permission to do this, but any other posting (e.g. to a repository > elsewhere) would require our permission. By "his version" we are referring > to his Word or Tex file, not a PDF or HTML downloaded from ScienceDirect - > but the author can update his version to reflect changes made during the > refereeing and editing process. Elsevier will continue to be the single, > definitive archive for the formal published version. * > > > > *We will be gradually updating any public information on our policies > (including our copyright forms and all information on our web site) to get > it all consistent. * > > > > *Karen Hunter * > > *Senior Vice President, Strategy * > > *Elsevier * > > *+1-212-633-3787 <%2B1-212-633-3787> * > > *k.hunter_at_elsevier.com <http://k.hunter_at_elsevier.com>* > > > > Yes, the definition of authors providing free, immediate online access > (Green OA self-archiving) has not changed since the online medium first > made it possible. Neither has researchers' need for it changed, nor its > benefits to research. > > > > What has changed is Elsevier policy -- in the direction of trying to > embargo Green OA to ensure that it does not Elsevier's current revenue > levels at any risk. > > > > Elsevier did not try to embargo Green OA from 2004-2012 -- but apparently > only because they did not believe that authors would ever really bother to > provide much Green OA, nor that their institutions and funders would ever > bother to require them to provide it (for its benefits to research). > > > > But for some reason *Elsevier is not ready to admit that Elsevier has now > decided to embargo Green OA purely to ensure that it does put Elsevier's > current subscription revenue levels at any risk. * > > > > Instead, Elsevier wants to hold OA hostage to its current revenue levels > -- by embargoing Green OA, with the payment of Fools-Gold OA > <https://www.google.ca/search?num=20&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org+%22fools+gold%22&oq=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org+%22fools+gold%22&gs_l=serp.3...339136.344145.0.345749.12.12.0.0.0.0.217.856.11j0j1.12.0.ckpsrh...0...1.1.64.serp..12.0.0._lRkTp5SLmk> > publication fees the only alternative for immediate OA. This ensures that > Elsevier's current revenue levels either remain unchanged, or increase. > > > > But, for public-relations reasons, Elsevier prefers to try to portray this > as all being done out of "fairness," and to facilitate "sharing" (in the > spirit of OA). > > > > The "fairness" is to ensure that no institution is exempt from Elsevier's > Green OA embargoes. > > > > And the "sharing" is the social sharing services like Mendeley > <http://www.elsevier.com/online-tools/mendeley> (which Elsevier owns), > about which Elsevier now believes (for the time being) that authors would > not bother to use enough to put their current revenue levels at risk (and > their institutions and funders cannot mandate that they use them) -- hence > that that they would not pose a risk to Elsevier's current subscription > revenue levels. > > > > Yet another one of the "changes" with which Elsevier seems to be trying to > promote sharing seems to be by trying to find a way to outlaw the > institutional repositories' "share button > <http://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/hosting#non-commercial-platforms>" > (otherwise known as the "Fair-Dealing" Button > <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/>). > > > > So just as Elsevier is trying to claim credit for "allowing" authors to do > "dark" (i.e., embargoed, non-OA) deposits, for which no publisher > permission whatsoever is or ever was required, Elsevier now has its lawyers > scrambling to find a formalizable way to make it appear as if Elsevier can > forbid its authors to provide individual reprints to one another, as > authors have been doing for six decades, under yet another new bogus formal > pretext to make it appear sufficiently confusing and threatening to ensure > that the responses to Elsevier author surveys (for its "evidence-based > policy") continue to be sufficiently perplexed and meek to justify any > double-talk in either Elsevier policy or Elsevier PR. > > > > The one change in Elsevier policy that one can applaud, however (though > here too the underlying intentions were far from benign), is the CC-BY-NC-ND > license > <http://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-posting-policy#accepted-manuscript> > (unless Elsevier one day decides to back-pedal on that too too). That > license is now not only allowed but required for any accepted paper that an > author elects to self-archive. > > > > Let me close by mentioning a few more of the howlers that keep making > Elsevier's unending series of arbitrary contractual bug-fixes logically > incoherent (i.e., self-contradictory) and technically nonsensical, hence > moot, unenforceable, and eminently ignorable for anyone who takes a few > moments to think instead of cringe. *Elsevier is trying to use > pseudo-legal words to squeeze the virtual genie (the Web) back into the > physical bottle (the old, land-based, print-on-paper world):* > > > > *Locus of deposit:* Elsevier tries to make legal distinctions on "where" > the author may make their papers (Green) OA on the Web: "You may post it > here but not there." "Here" might be an institutional website, "there" may > be a central website. "Here" might be an institutional author's homepage, > "there" might be an institutional repository. > > > > But do Elsevier's legal beagles ever stop to ask themselves what this all > means, in the online medium? *If you make your paper openly accessible > anywhere at all on the web, it is openly accessible (and linkable and > harvestable) from and to anywhere else on the Web.* Google and google > scholar will pick up the link, and so will a host of other harvesters and > indexers. And users never go to the deposit site to seek a paper: They seek > and find and link to it via the link harvesters and indexers. So locus > restrictions are silly and completely empty in the virtual world. > > > > The silliest of all is the injunction that "you may post it on your > institutional home page but not your institutional repository." What > nonsense! The institutional home page and the institutional repository are > just tagged disk sectors and software functions, of the self-same > institution. They are virtual entities, created by definition; one can be > renamed as the other at any time. And their functionalities are completely > swappable or integrable too. That too is a feature of the virtual world. > > > > So all Elsevier is doing by treating these virtual entities as if they > were physical ones (besides confusing and misleading their authors) is > creating terminological nuisances, forcing system administrators to keep > re-naming and re-assigning sectors and functions, needlessly, and > vacuously, just to accommodate vacuous nuisance terminological stipulations. > > > > (The same thing applies to "systematicity" and "aggregation," which I > notice that Elsevier has since dropped as futile: The attempt had been to > outlaw posting where the contents of a journal were being systematically > aggregated, by analogy with a rival free-riding publisher systematically > gathering together all the disparate papers in a journal so as to re-sell > them at a cut-rate. Well not only is an institution no free-rising > aggregator: all it is gathering* its own paper output*, published in > multiple disparate journals. But, because of the virtual nature of the > medium, it is in fact the Web itself that is systematically gathering all > disparate papers together, wherever they happen to be hosted, using their > metadata tags: author, title, journal, date, URL. The rest is all just > software functionality. And if the full-text is out there, somewhere, > anywhere, and it is OA, then there is no way to stop the rest of this very > welcome and useful functionality.) > > > > *The Arxiv exception.* In prior iterations of the policy, Elsevier tried > (foolishly) to outlaw central deposit. They essentially tried to tell > authors who had been making their papers OA in Arxiv since 1991 that they > may no longer do that. Well, that did not go down very well, so those > "legal" restrictions have now been replaced by the "Arxiv exception": > Authors making their papers OA there (or in RePeC) are now officially > exempt from the Elsevier OA embargo. > > > > Well here we are again: an arbitrary Elsevier restriction on immediate-OA, > based on locus of deposit. The Pandora's box that this immediately opens is > that all a mandating institution need do in order to detoxify Elsevier's OA > embargo completely is to mandate immediate (dark) deposit of all > institutional output in the institutional repository *alongside remote > deposit in Arxiv* (which is already automated through the SWORD software > <http://arxiv.org/help/submit_sword>). That completely moots all Elsevier > OA embargoes. Yet another example of Elsevier's ineffectual nuisance > stipulations consisting of ad-hoc, pseudo-legal epicycles, all having one > sole objective: to try to scare authors of doing anything that might > possibly pose a risk to Elsevier's current revenue streams, using any words > that will do the trick, even if only for a while, and even if they make no > sense. > > > > What's next, Elsevier? "You may use *this* software but not *this* > software"? > > > > *The Share Button.* Although it never defines what it means by "Share > Button" (nor why it is trying to outlaw it), if what Elsevier means is the > Institutional Repository's copy-request Button > <https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy>, intended to > provide individual copies to individual copy-requestors, then this too is > just a software-facilitated eprint request. > > > > Whenever a user seeks an embargoed deposit, they can click the Button to > send an email to the author to request a copy. The author need merely click > a link in the email to authorize the software to send the copy. > > > > So does Elsevier now want to make yet another nuisance stipulation, so the > Button cannot be called a "Share Button," so instead the name of the author > of the embargoed paper has to be made into an email link that notifies the > author that the requestor seeks a copy, with the requestor's email alive, > and clickable, so that inserting the embargoed paper's URL will attach one > copy to the email? > > > > Elsevier is not going to make many friends by trying to force its authors > to do jump through gratuitous hoops in order to accommodate Elsevier's ever > more arbitrary and absurd attempts to contain the virtual ether with > arbitrary verbal hacks. > > > > *There are more.* There are further nuisance tactics in the current > iteration of Elsevier's charm initiative, in which self-serving > restrictions keep being portrayed as Elsevier's honest attempts to > facilitate rather than hamper sharing. One particularly interesting one > that I have not yet deconstructed (but that the attentive reader of the > latest Elsevier documentation will have detected) likewise moots all > Elsevier OA embargoes even more conveniently than depositing all papers in > Arxiv -- but I leave that as an exercise to the reader. > > > > So Alicia, if Elsevier "admires [my] vision," let me invite you to consult > with me about present and future OA policy conditions. I'll be happy to > share with you which ones are logically incoherent and technically empty in > today's virtual world. It could save Elsevier a lot of futile effort and > save Elsevier authors from a lot of useless and increasingly arbitrary and > annoying nuisance-rules. > > > > Best wishes, > > > > *Stevan Harnad* > ------------------------------ > > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2015.0.5941 / Virus Database: 4347/9832 - Release Date: 05/21/15 > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > >
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