Keep up the emphasis, Stevan, as appropriate. I totally agree that the 
double-payment argument is absurd, as I wrote. And yes there is added value in 
published books, including but not limited to preservation. I did not need the 
spray.

 

As a result of the OA movement (including your and my efforts) all Australian 
universities have 100% of their articles self-archived. Yes all and 100%, for 
audit purposes. That’s been the case for many years now.

Unfortunately they are not all open access immediately, but they are available 
within the institution on one server, and the academics all comply. Their 
departmental standing and funding would otherwise suffer.

It is a small victory, to be sure, but the inability of people to think outside 
the box of their scholarly training is a huge problem. It helps that we have a 
few people at the decision levels in Australia who are ICT-savvy and more 
flexible. I think the same is true of Canada.

 

Best wishes

Arthur Sale

 

 

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Stevan Harnad
Sent: Wednesday, 11 January 2017 06:05 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Cc: scholc...@lists.ala.org; jisc-repositories
Subject: Re: [GOAL] OA Overview January 2017

 

Not to put too fine a point on it (and this reminds me why I've tired of the 
fray):

 

If double-payment for subscriptions (first pay for the research, then pay again 
to buy it "back") had been a valid argument against having to pay for 
subscriptions, it would have applied to books too, just as to journals: "Why 
should institutions pay the cost of researching and writing their books, only 
to have to buy them "back"? Answer: because books, unlike journal articles, are 
not author give-aways, written solely for usage, 

uptake and impact. Books are also written for (potential) royalties (and there 
might possibly still be some added value in producing and purchasing a hard 
copy).

 

If the double-payment argument is not valid for books, then it's not valid for 
peer-reviewed journal articles either. (And this is true no matter what 
perspective one takes on the "double-payment": the institution, the funder, the 
funder's funder (the tax-payer) or the whole planet.)

 

The valid argument is that peer-reviewed journal articles are give-away 
research: No one should have to pay for access to it, neither its author nor 
its users. The only thing still worth paying for in the OA era is the peer 
review (Fair-Gold OA).

 

(Preservation is a red herring in this context. So is "journal impact factor.")

 

No lengthy "re-education" program for scholars is needed to enlighten them that 
they should self-archive all their papers. The message is too simple (and over 
20 years seems more than enough for any scholarly "re-education" progamme!) If 
the diagnosis of laziness, timidity or stupidity does not explain why they 
don't self-archive, find another descriptor. It's happening, but it's happening 
far too slowly. And institutional (and funder) self-archiving (Green OA) 
mandates still look like the only means of accelerating it (and forcing 
publishers journals to downsize and convert to Fair Gold). (Paying instead 
pre-emptively for Fool's Gold is unaffordable, unsustainable and unnecessary -- 
and that's the real double-payment.)

 

Stevan Harnad

 

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 4:46 PM, Arthur Sale <a...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:

This is angels dancing on the point of a pin!.

Universities subscribe to journals or buy books to either (a) get other 
people’s research outputs, or (b) to acquire a canonic authorized version of 
their own research in print. Yes, it sounds silly, but librarians value 
preservation.

If a subscription gives you back some of what you’ve already got, well who 
cares? Not the author, nor the institution, nor the publisher. I often get 
freebies that I don’t need, but that does not invalidate my original purchase, 
nor reduce its value to me.

 

Arthur Sale

Also tilling other fields, but not asleep either. Think functionally!

 

------------------------------------------------------------------

Arthur Sale PhD

Emeritus Professor of Computer Science

School of Engineering and ICT | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology

University of Tasmania

Private Bag 65

HOBART TASMANIA 7001

M +61 4 1947 1331

 <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7261-8035> http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7261-8035 

 

cid:CA66235E-F79F-4ECD-A612-0376BD33B152

CRICOS 00586B

 

From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk] On 
Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Monday, 9 January 2017 23:14 PM
To: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk
Subject: Re: OA Overview January 2017

 

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 5:30 AM, David Prosser <david.pros...@rluk.ac.uk> wrote:

 

SH: (2) No, the institution that pays for the research output is not paying a 
second time to buy it back. Institutional journal subscriptions are not for 
buying back their own research output. They already have their own research 
output. They are buying in the research output of other institutions, and of 
other countries, with their journal subscriptions. So no double-payment there, 
even if you reckon it at the funder- or the tax-payer-level instead of the 
level of the institution that pays for the subscription.

 

DP: So, when UCL (say) purchases access to Elsevier articles through 
ScienceDIrect (say) Elsevier removes all of the UCL articles from the bundle 
and prices accordingly?  Of course not.  The institution is purchasing articles 
by researchers across the world’s, including its own.

 

To repeat: UCL (and everyone) has their own article output. Getting access to 
their own article output is not why researchers publish, nor why institutions 
subscribe to journals. It is to get access to the articles of others.

 

So that version of the simplistic double-payment plaint is, and remains, 
invalid. (And it, and its (il)logic predates OA by at least a decade.

 

DP: SBut I agree with (12)

 

But (12) is about OA, not the old double-payment argument against subscriptions 
(which, by the way, if it had been valid would also have applied to 
royalty-based output, including the institutional purchase of books by its own 
authors!). The essence of the case for OA is and has always been that 
(refereed) research is an author giveaway, written only for researcher uptake, 
usage and impact, not for royalty revenue. We keep forgetting this, with this 
misleading notion of "double-payment" (for subscription access).

 

There is certainly double-payment in the case of OA (subscription plus Fool's 
Gold publication fees) as well as double-dipping (in the case of hybrid Fool's 
Gold). But that is not at all the kind of double-payment that the old argument 
against subscriptions was (and is) about.

 

Stevan Harnad (tilling other fields, but not asleep)

 

 

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