Re: The True Cost of the Essentials
On Tuesday, April 2, 2002, at 01:08 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote: I have invited Mark Doyle of APS to specify concretely what parallel measures he is recommending that BOAI pursue in order to ensure true archiving in the long-term. BOAI's mandate is to hasten and facilitate open access for the entire peer-reviewed corpus, now, but if there are concrete parallel measures that do not retard the primary objective, I am sure that BOAI will be happy to take them on board. Unfortunately, Mark's (somewhat piqued) reply is far too vague to consititute a concrete recommendation: Suffice it to say that a concrete recommendation will be forthcoming (not in days, but months most likely). My main goal is to raise awareness at institutions and libraries that want to promote non-publisher archiving of research articles. They should consider carefully what kind of infrastructure should be built and understand what costs are involved so that can be covered in any new economic model that is to supplant the subscription model. Such understanding may be helpful for extant journals trying to undo the subscription model and for establishing alternative journals on a sound financial footing without losing some important benefits provided by the status quo. Cheers, Mark Mark Doyle Manager, Product Development The American Physical Society do...@aps.org
Re: Interview with Derk Haank, CEO, Elsevier
Let me respond in the body of the text below. Le 1 Avril 2002 09:58, Stevan Harnad a écrit : > On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Richard Poynder wrote: > > interview... with Elsevier Science chairman Derk Haank... > > in April's Information Today: > > http://www.infotoday.com/it/apr02/poynder.htm > > richard.poyn...@dsl.pipex.com > > http://www.richardpoynder.com > > The interview is interesting and shows the Elsevier chairman to > be very reasonable, open and well-intentioned. I would rather say that he is clever and tries to avoid direct confrontation. > > I think that this confirms yet again that it is and always has been a > waste of time and energy to demonize and vilify publishers like > Elsevier, who really are not any better or worse than any other > company, but just happen to find themselves in an anomalous business, > with large profits but an unusual confluence of interests, including > conflicts of interest, in a radically changing technological setting. It seems to me that a company that is intent on maintaining as high a profit rate as it can in the context of social transactions (information largely produced by public money, given away by their authors, reviewed freely by peers, and bought by libraries or research labs with largely public money) has to face the fact that its legitimacy will be hotly contested. I do believe that the intensense barrage if criticisms levelled at Elsevier and other similar companies has something to do with the Elsevier Chairman and his apparent reasonable stance... > > Instead of misdirecting more time and energy into trying to portray > Elsevier as venal, it would be infinitely more constructive -- and more > likely to help resolve the large and growing conflict of interest > between what is best for research and researchers and what is best for > research journal publishers in the online era -- to focus instead on the > empirical points Derk Haank makes in the interview. Two of these are the > most relevant ones: I believe the two are not mutually exclusive and the former remains useful to keep the pressure on these companies so as to encourage them to behave a little better. > > (1) What are the products and services that research and researchers > want and need from research journal publishers in the online era, and > what are their true costs? I would rephrase this as: "Are there any products and services ... in the online era that could not be provided by a suitably organized network of libraries, and what are their true costs? > > (2) Will researcher/institution self-archiving, in providing free > online access to the full texts of all existing 20,000 research > journals (over half science/tech/medicine, and 1500 of them Elsevier > journals) eventually alter the current system (its products, services > and costs), or will it simply exist in parallel to it? If the two systems exist in parallel, it will essentially mean that a new division of labour will have occurred: on the one hand, scientific information will have been freed; on the other hand, the evaluation through labelling will remain safely in the hands of publishers who will make public institutions pay dearly for the logo (not even the service as it is provided free by peers). Once the question of open archives is solved, the question will become : do we need the logos, i.e. must we delegate our evaluation needs to these commercial publishers? Must we also delegate to these commercial publisher the right to promote some researchersto the level of gatekeepers through their being invited to be editors of new journals constantly being created as part of an investment strategy. Incidentally, Elsevier will put out 1,700 journals by year's end, thanks to Academic Press being absorbed into Science Direct, and this figure must not be compared to the 20,000 journal figure (incidentally, where does this figure come from?) that Stevan quotes, but to thenumbe rof "core" journals. This is more of the order of 6,000 titles if one relies on SCI. Even with a few more global indices added, I doubt one reaches 20,000 titles. > > This is a very reasonable question. It is clear that Elsevier is not > trying or intending to block the freeing of access to the entire > research journal literature through self-archiving. Elsevier is simply > assuming that either self-archiving will not take place on any > significant scale, or, if it does, it will have no appreciable effects > on the overall structure of research journal publishing. > http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#publishers-do I think Elsevier is counting its options and, as I suggested in my Oldenburg paper (http://www.arl.org/arl/proceedings/138/guedon.html), Ibelieve publisher ssuch as Elsevier are now focusing on economic prospects that can be derived from archiving (see the projects at Yale with Ann Okerson), evaluating, and intelligence gathering from real-time usage of a significant fraction of the world literature. It
Re: OAI and the rational publisher
Hi David, On Monday, April 1, 2002, at 05:26 PM, David Goodman wrote: The solution for a publisher is obvious: it should publish good journals, and only good journals. A publisher complaining about the threat of OAI suggests that it knows very well that the quality of its journals cannot compete. I don't really think that is universally the case. APS certainly has good quality journals, but we are still vulnerable to not being able to continue to publish the journals in the face of large cancellations. And there has been a steady decrease in subscriptions (for many reasons, over the last 30 years). It is an economic and financial reality that we don't have much wiggle room. We would also like to make our journals more widely available (ideally freely available). But we need a new model and it is very difficult for a single publisher to move unilaterally without support from institutions, fund agencies, and libraries. Thus, there is a reason for concern and it isn't irrational to worry about the transition to a new economic model. That doesn't mean the transition shouldn't take place though. Cheers, Mark
Re: The True Cost of the Essentials
I have invited Mark Doyle of APS to specify concretely what parallel
measures he is recommending that BOAI pursue in order to ensure true
archiving in the long-term. BOAI's mandate is to hasten and facilitate
open access for the entire peer-reviewed corpus, now, but if there are
concrete parallel measures that do not retard the primary objective,
I am sure that BOAI will be happy to take them on board. Unfortunately,
Mark's (somewhat piqued) reply is far too vague to consititute a concrete
recommendation:
On Tue, 2 Apr 2002, Mark Doyle wrote:
> It is fine to pursue self-archiving.
> It isn't fine to wait to develop broader solutions
> that address archiving since they take a long time to develop and
> they will be needed at the end point of self-archiving.
So what should one do, in parallel, and without retarding the primary
BOAI objective of immediate open access? Who should do what, and how?
> > In particular, WHO should pay attention to "true electronic archiving,"
> > and how?
>
> Everyone interested of course. Libraries, institutions, authors,
> publishers, government agencies, BOAI signatories, etc. They should
> be working together to create standards for marked up content, to build
> tools, and to build repositories that are markup aware. They should be
> working on new economic models for paying for this and peer review.
I am afraid this does not help: Who should do what? What, exactly, should
BOAI be advocating here, to whom?
> This shouldn't wait on every author self-archiving.
And should every author self-archiving wait on this?
And what is this?
> > I mean it is fairly clear what the advocates of immediate open access
> > are advocating: That researchers should self-archive, now. And it is
> > fairly clear what they are up against: A huge panoply of prima facie
> > worries that have already been holding back self-archiving for far too
> > long: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#1.Preservation
>
> Fine, and neither should the false worry of slowing self-archiving hold
> up discussion of these other "worries". They are worries because they
> are important for scholarly communication. Some like archiving and
> preservation are clearly essential and should be addressed as early
> as possible if you really want to transform the whole system.
Mark has lost me. The many worthwhile desiderata he mentions are worth
pursuing in their own right, by those who are immediately concerned
with such things. They are only false worries (and have only been
dismissed, vigorously, and with supporting reasons) by me as reasons
for not self-archiving! As parallel projects they are more than
welcome.
I have to remind Mark that whereas in his field of physics,
self-archiving has advanced relatively well (although its linear growth
is still far too slow), this is not yet true in other fields. It is a real
challenge to get other disciplines to self-archive, and the kinds of prima
facie worries that I (among others) have been working hard to get out of
researcher's heads are a real problem. These false worries not only slow
self-archiving, they in many cases prevent it from getting off the ground
at all. That is why -- across 10+ long years -- I have built up the file
of FAQs for combatting Zeno's Paralysis ("I worry about self-archiving
because..."). http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#8
BOAI's explicit and direct goal is to hasten and facilitate open
access. Long-term archiving, preservation, markup, reference-linking, etc.
are all worthy and desirable goals too, and inasmuch as promoting them in
parallel with BOAI's primary goal of open access is feasible without
diverting resources from or slowing progress toward that primary goal,
I am sure BOAI will be happy to oblige. You need only specify concretely
exactly what it is that you would like to see BOAI do. (But don't just
say that BOAI should stop telling people to stop worrying about things like
markup, etc. as reasons for not self-archiving or submitting their work
to an open-access journal now!)
> sh> So I have to repeat: Who should be paying attention to "true electronic
> sh> archiving," and how? The authors of the annual 2 million articles
> sh> in the annual 20,000 peer-reviewed journals?
>
> Authors are only one player. Right now publishers and libraries act as
> proxies for them in building digital libraries. New proxies (or new tools)
> will be needed.
For BOAI Strategy 1 (self-archiving), authors are the main player.
Publishers have no role in it (apart from not trying to discourage
self-archiving)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/selfaq.htm#publishers-do
and libraries have a role only inasmuch as they can facilitate self-archiving:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/selfaq.htm#libraries-do
I don't know what you mean by "proxies." I am guessing you mean that
they do the markup for the authors, and I agree with you that the most
likely, natural and optimal outcome will be that XML authoring tools
are developed and markup is
Re: The True Cost of the Essentials
Stevan, On Monday, April 1, 2002, at 08:50 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote: I don't think I said you advocated waiting; I drew attention to the fact that your words (like ALPSP's Sally Morris's words) were (perhaps understandably, ex officio) ambivalent. I am not speaking ex officio. And I am not being ambivalent. It is fine to pursue self-archiving. It isn't fine to wait to develop broader solutions that address archiving since they take a long time to develop and they will be needed at the end point of self-archiving. In particular, WHO should pay attention to "true electronic archiving," and how? Everyone interested of course. Libraries, institutions, authors, publishers, government agencies, BOAI signatories, etc. They should be working together to create standards for marked up content, to build tools, and to build repositories that are markup aware. They should be working on new economic models for paying for this and peer review. This shouldn't wait on every author self-archiving. I mean it is fairly clear what the advocates of immediate open access are advocating: That researchers should self-archive, now. And it is fairly clear what they are up against: A huge panoply of prima facie worries that have already been holding back self-archiving for far too long: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#1.Preservation Fine, and neither should the false worry of slowing self-archiving hold up discussion of these other "worries". They are worries because they are important for scholarly communication. Some like archiving and preservation are clearly essential and should be addressed as early as possible if you really want to transform the whole system. So I have to repeat: Who should be paying attention to "true electronic archiving," and how? The authors of the annual 2 million articles in the annual 20,000 peer-reviewed journals? Authors are only one player. Right now publishers and libraries act as proxies for them in building digital libraries. New proxies (or new tools) will be needed. I rather think that what those authors should instead be doing is self-archiving. This is a false opposition (you seem to the master of this). It is not one or the other. Both are important and both can develop in parallel. Other revolutions, "true" revolutions, are welcome, and let those who want to usher them in pay attention to them, but the prime focus of the attention of the open-access movement should be on open access, now. Well, that is a tautology. My point is that open access is going to transform the system (is transforming the system). But those interested in open access should also pay attention to the eventual end point now. Let's call a spade a spade. (Mark, please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't wish to misrepresent your position.) At the root of their (understandable) ambivalence about open access is Mark's (and APS's) worry that open access could compromise journals' cost-recovery before an alternative means of cost-recovery is in place. Yes. Whereas my (and BOAI's) worry is that open access is already long overdue. BOAI's every effort is dedicated to hastening open access. Do you think that encouraging researchers already long held back by needless worries to worry about "true" archiving is a way to hasten self-archiving (even if you are, as I do not doubt, an advocate of self-archiving)? Again, false opposition. A long term archiving solution is needed. It isn't needed while open access is growing, but it will be needed as we approach the end point. Hence each should develop in parallel. Note the relative emphasis, in the two interests, regarding cost-recovery and open-access. I don't say APS's (and other publishers') concerns are not understandable, but I hope you will also understand BOAI's and the research community's determination not to let such concerns continue to serve as any kind of a brake on immediate progress towards open access. The APS is the research community (at least for our field). You seem to keep forgetting that. I cannot speak for BOAI, but I am fairly confident that if APS makes concrete recommendations as to ways in which BOAI's efforts towards hastening open access can be augmented in such a way as to converge with APS's own efforts towards open access (without slowing BOAI's momentum), BOAI will prove very accommodating. We shall see Anyway, I don't really have time for these long back and forths and we have become broken records. So I'll stop here. If anyone else in the open access world is interested in pursuing these issues with the APS, please let me know. Cheers, Mark Mark Doyle Manager, Product Development The American Physical Society do...@aps.org
Re: The True Cost of the Essentials
> On Mon, 1 Apr 2002, Mark Doyle wrote: > > Stevan keeps misrepresenting what I have said. I have not > advocated waiting on self-archiving at all. Only that in parallel and > as part of initiatives that create self-archiving or alternative > journal solutions, attention should be paid to true electronic > archiving. I don't think I said you advocated waiting; I drew attention to the fact that your words (like ALPSP's Sally Morris's words) were (perhaps understandably, ex officio) ambivalent. In particular, WHO should pay attention to "true electronic archiving," and how? I mean it is fairly clear what the advocates of immediate open access are advocating: That researchers should self-archive, now. And it is fairly clear what they are up against: A huge panoply of prima facie worries that have already been holding back self-archiving for far too long: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#1.Preservation So I have to repeat: Who should be paying attention to "true electronic archiving," and how? The authors of the annual 2 million articles in the annual 20,000 peer-reviewed journals? I rather think that what those authors should instead be doing is self-archiving. It is fine for publishers to be paying attention to true-archiving; it is fine for archivists to be paying attention to true-archiving. But what it is already long overdue for researchers to do is neither of these things, but to self-archive. > It doesn't matter if this is "relatively new" - it is a cost today and > anyone serious about taking advantage of electronic publishing to > revolutionize scholarly communication knows that is important. Indeed. And I think that without the slightest doubt the most important thing for scholarly communication is open access, now. That is the revolution that is already well past its due date. Other revolutions, "true" revolutions, are welcome, and let those who want to usher them in pay attention to them, but the prime focus of the attention of the open-access movement should be on open access, now. Let's call a spade a spade. (Mark, please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't wish to misrepresent your position.) At the root of their (understandable) ambivalence about open access is Mark's (and APS's) worry that open access could compromise journals' cost-recovery before an alternative means of cost-recovery is in place. Whereas my (and BOAI's) worry is that open access is already long overdue. BOAI's every effort is dedicated to hastening open access. Do you think that encouraging researchers already long held back by needless worries to worry about "true" archiving is a way to hasten self-archiving (even if you are, as I do not doubt, an advocate of self-archiving)? Yes, "true" archiving is new, and it is not yet clear what its true costs will be, and what will eventually constitute essentials and what will constitutes deluxe options. But should any of this deter or redirect self-archiving efforts today? > My only interest is in getting this cost recognized and true archiving > implemented widely so that such costs can be externalized by publishers > like the APS so that we can make a transition to open access. And my only interest is in getting self-archiving implemented widely right now, such as it is, for that would CONSTITUTE open access, rather than merely being a prelude to it. We have already been preluding for far too long. Note the relative emphasis, in the two interests, regarding cost-recovery and open-access. I don't say APS's (and other publishers') concerns are not understandable, but I hope you will also understand BOAI's and the research community's determination not to let such concerns continue to serve as any kind of a brake on immediate progress towards open access. > The soapbox (and resources) of something like BOAI should be used to do > something concrete beyond just creating free PDF or HTML archives which > we all know how to do and we all know are cheap. Why? It would be immediate open access to the cheap PDF and HTML of all 2 million articles in all 20,000 peer-reviewed journals that would revolutionize scientific communication irreversibly; "true" archiving could meanwhile proceed on its own timetable. Having said that, I am sure that BOAI would be responsive to any substantive suggestions as to what might be usefully done IN PARALLEL with its central mission (which continues to be immediate "cheap" archiving), as long as it did not draw appreciable resources away from its central mission, or otherwise retard it in any way. > The current economic model for peer review and archiving is very much > still tied tightly to publisher restricted access to the article > content. Undermining this without developing a true alternative to what > the current system provides is naive and may lead to a true loss for > the scholarly community. Unfortunately this is a reiteration of the difference in the main concerns between publishers and the BOAI that we have already noted: ensurin
Re: Excerpts from FOS Newsletter
Excerpts from the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter April 1, 2002 * IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy are collaborating on a Science Grid. Grid computing makes data storage and processing power available to users the way the electricity grid makes electrical power available to consumers. The Science Grid will store about 1.3 petabytes of data (equivalent to 200 times the content of the Library of Congress), and support computation at more than 10 trillion calculations per second. U.S. scientists should have access to the grid by 2004. http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16918.html * A beta or "first internet test version" of the Scientific Information Service (SIS) is now online. SIS is a free online archive of biomedical research methods that make animal experimentation unnecessary. It also includes related biomedical information and research results. SIS is funded by the European Commission. http://ecvam-sis.jrc.it/ (Thanks to EuroCrisNews.) * The UK's Re:source (Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries) has given ?22,500 to the National Council on Archives to fund Phase 2 of the Access to Archives (A2A) project, which makes nine centuries' worth of archival content from around the UK freely available online. http://www.resource.gov.uk/news/press_article.asp?articleid=314 * The Text Encoding Initiative has approved and released version 4 of its Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange (FOSN for 8/7/01, 8/23/01). Version 3 has been in use since 1994. The new version is a very extensive document providing XML tags to mark nearly every conceivable aspect of a text that might have to be identified or processed by software. The online edition of version 4 conforms to its own guidelines and contains the tags necessary to process it with existing XML tools. http://www.tei-c.org/P4X/ * The European Commission invites expressions of interest to help shape the agenda for the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). The earlier Framework Progammes not only funded research and technological development, but funded ways to make their results freely available online. Expressions of interest in FP6 will be accepted until June 7. http://www.cordis.lu/fp6/eoi-instruments/ (Thanks to EuroCrisNews.) * In the April issue of _Information Today_, Richard Poynder interviews Elsevier CEO Derk Haank. Some highlights. (1) Haank explains the rapid rise in journal prices through exchange rates and a vicious circle in which library cancellations force publishers to recoup their costs from a smaller subscriber base. Elsevier profit margins are decreasing. (2) His response to frustrated librarians and researchers is to deliver more for the price, not to decrease the price. "The long-term solution today...lies in converting people to our electronic products, and then delivering a service where people say, 'Wow!' If we can do this, then the money that our customers spend with us will be perceived as reasonable." (3) He describes the ScienceDirect licence as "too good to be true for users". (4) What does he think of the Budapest Open Access Initiative? "We consider open archiving to be in line with our policy of open linking, which we have always supported." But doesn't this confuse standards of interoperability with free online access? Perhaps, but "[i]f people feel unhappy and want to develop alternatives, that is always possible. But is it wise?" He is confident that open-access journals will not be able to cover their costs. (4) He implies that Elsevier allows author self-archiving of refereed postprints, but in fact it only allows the self-archiving of unrefereed preprints. (5) He asks: if users are employed by institutions that pay for their access to online journals, regardless of how much the institution has to pay and regardless of how many fellow researchers must do without, "[w]hat more would they want?" http://www.infotoday.com/it/apr02/poynder.htm * The April issue of _Learned Publishing_ is contains many FOS-related articles: http://makeashorterlink.com/?U6A223C9 Fytton Rowland, What do users want? http://makeashorterlink.com/?E3D224C9 (Argues that different disciplines have different responses to FOS in part because they differ in their percentages of journal readers employed outside the academy. He also argues, as have Jean-Claude Gu?don and others, that researchers have an interest in FOS as readers that they do not have as authors.) Kent Anderson, The useful archive http://makeashorterlink.com/?E5F262C9 (How moving archives online makes them more active and useful both for publishers and readers.) Keith Silver, Pressing the 'send' key --preferential journal access in developing countries http://makeashorterlink.com/?V21F51C9 (Reviews the major initiatives to provide free online access to developing countries, tries to disentangle charitable motivations from PR, and explores ways for the various i
Re: Interview with Derk Haank, CEO, Elsevier
Bernard Lang writes > The one important point I read there is: > > « You can put your paper on your own Web site if you want. The only > thing we insist on is that if we publish your article you don't > publish it in a Springer or Wiley journal, too. In fact, I believe we > have the most liberal copyright policy available. » > > Is that what the Elsevier copyright form says ? Yes, at least one that was common for economics journals a few years ago. However, as far as I am aware off, that policy is not posted on any Elsevier web site. > Furthermore, he did not say anything about putting it on another web > site. On an open archive managed by someone else ? The concept of "own" web site is a fuzzy one. Salut, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: OAI and the rational publisher
Should a rational publisher fear the OAI? A rational publisher need not and does not fear the OAI for those journals which are worth reading, and consequently worth buying; it will both now and in the future be able to sell these. It certainly ought to fear for those journals that are not worth reading, and consequently not worth buying. The only function of these journals is to certify publications as having been at least superficially "peer-reviewed." This can obviously be done at a much lower cost; thus, if they continue to publish these journals at anywhere near the present prices, they will not be able to sell them. Considering the low demand, it seems probable to me that they might not be able to reduce their costs enough to sell them at all. The solution for a publisher is obvious: it should publish good journals, and only good journals. A publisher complaining about the threat of OAI suggests that it knows very well that the quality of its journals cannot compete. David Goodman Research Librarian and Biological Science Bibliographer Princeton University Library Princeton, NJ 08544-0001 phone: 609-258-7785 fax: 609-258-2627 e-mail: dgood...@princeton.edu Stevan Harnad wrote: > > Re: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1885000/1885931.stm > > See also: > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1818000/1818652.stm > http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/education/features/newsid_521000/521816.stm > > > Critics of a project to set up alternative open-access > > scientific journals on the internet say the idea is > > ill-conceived and will undermine quality. ... > > > But, says Sally Morris, of the Association of Learned and > > Professional Society Publishers, open-access initiatives will > > undermine existing journals without replacing them. > > Open access will free researchers' give-away peer-reviewed research > from obsolete access barriers, maximizing their research impact and > allowing journal publishers to downsize and restructure accordingly. > > > "People value peer review and they value research being gathered > > together in things called journals," she told BBC News Online. > > Peer review will continue exactly as before there was open access. > Journals will continue to be journals. What will change is what > "gathered in" means. And open access is for those would-be users > whose institutions cannot afford access to each given paper, either > on-paper or on-line. That corresponds to the majority of potential > users, for the majority of the annual 2 million papers in the 20,000 > extant peer-reviewed journals. All of that would be lost research > impact otherwise. > > > 'Somebody has to pay' > > > "But open archiving means you don't have to go to the journal > > and we believe it could very rapidly undermine the journals > > without putting anything in their place," she said. > > ... > > See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess --
