[GOAL] The OA Interviews: Ashry Aly of Ashdin Publishing
Ashry Aly is a former employee of Hindawi Publishing Corporation who left the company in 2007 to found Ashdin Publishing Ashdin Publishing is currently included on Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers: http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/12/06/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers-2013/ Aly disagrees that Ashdin Publishing should be on the list. An interview with Aly can be reader here: http://poynder.blogspot.de/2013/01/the-oa-interviews-ashry-aly-of-ashdin.htm l ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Fwd: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee announces inquiry into Open Access
Apologies, as ever, for cross positing. A new Inquiry on Open Access in the UK Parliament. This is a committee of MPs who scrutinise the workings of our Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). Universities and research funding sit under this department.David Begin forwarded message:From: "MORRIS, Pam" morri...@parliament.ukDate: 18 January 2013 12:53:20 GMTTo: "MORRIS, Pam" morri...@parliament.ukSubject: Business, Innovation and Skills Committee announces inquiry into Open AccessBusiness, Innovation and Skills CommitteeSelect Committee Announcement No.42Friday 18 January, 2013For immediate releaseOPEN ACCESSAnnouncement of InquiryThe Business, Innovation and Skills Committee today announces its intention to inquire into the Government’s Open Access policy.Written submissions addressing the Committee’s inquiry are invited by close of business on7 February 2013. Respondees are requested not to submit copies of responses to other consultations or to the Finch Report.The Committee will consider a range of topics including:·The Government’s acceptance of the recommendations of the Finch Group Report ‘Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications’, including its preference for the ‘gold’ over the ‘green’ open access model;·Rights of use and re-use in relation to open access research publications, including the implications of Creative Commons ‘CC-BY’ licences;·The costs of article processing charges (APCs) and the implications for research funding and for the taxpayer; and·The level of ‘gold’ open access uptake in the rest of the world versus the UK, and the ability of UK higher education institutions to remain competitive.Written evidence should be sent to the Committee,as an MS Word document, by e-mail tobiscom...@parliament.uk.A guide for written submissions to Select Committees may be found below:http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/witnessguide.pdf (PDF 431 KB)Parties submitting evidence are requested to follow these guidelines. Email submissions are strongly preferred. If you wish your evidence to remain confidential, please contact the Committee staff.FURTHER INFORMATION:Committee Membership is as follows:Chair: Mr Adrian Bailey MP (Lab) (West Bromwich West)Mr Brian Binley MP (Con) (Northampton South) Paul Blomfield MP (Lab) (Sheffield Central)Katy Clark MP (Lab) (North Ayrshire and Arran) Mike Crockart MP (Lib Dem) (Edinburgh West)Caroline Dinenage MP (Con) (Gosport) Julie Elliott MP (Lab) (Sunderland Central)Rebecca Harris MP (Con) (Castle Point) Ann McKechin MP (Lab) (Glasgow North)Mr Robin Walker MP (Con) (Worcester) Nadhim Zahawi MP (Con) (Stratford upon Avon)Committee Website:www.parliament.uk/bisMedia Information: David Fosterfoste...@parliament.uk 020 719 7556Specific Committee Information:bis...@parliament.uk/020 7219 5777/ 020 7219 5779Watch committees and parliamentary debates online:www.parliamentlive.tvPublications / Reports / Reference Material:Copies of all select committee reports are available from the Parliamentary Bookshop (12 Bridge St, Westminster, 020 7219 3890) or the Stationery Office (0845 7023474). Committee reports, press releases, evidence transcripts, Bills; research papers, a directory of MPs, plus Hansard (from 8am daily) and much more, can be found onwww.parliament.ukUK Parliament Disclaimer:This e-mail is confidential to the intended recipient. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender and delete it from your system. Any unauthorised use, disclosure, or copying is not permitted. This e-mail has been checked for viruses, but no liability is accepted for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail.___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
The issue of books has always been a difficult terrain within the OA community. A narrow interpretation of Open Access tends to limit its reach to journal articles, and this choice has the obvious advantage of leaving the issue of royalties aside. However, it should be remembered that scholars who write scholarly monographs or contribute to scholarly anthologies do not generally do it for money, but for the same kind of goals that scholars do when they publish in articles. Consequently, drawing a red line around the royalty issue is really a moot point in the great majority of case and can be justified only on the ground of wanting to simplify matters to the extreme. At the same time, it must be remembered that books and even anthologies carry more weight in most SSH (social science and humanities) areas. leaving them aside would be like telling scientists that, for whatever reason, publishing in the most prestigious journals cannot be taken into account. And citation trackers, until very recently, have also systematically neglected books despite their obvious importance. Now, let us look at the issues of books with regard to the ARC policy. Books do not have “less developed mechanisms for open access copyright clearance than journal articles”. They have better developed mechanisms for copyright transfer, and greater justification for closed access. There is no simple parallel between scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing. The industries are very different, and convergence is slow in coming though we may be starting on that path. I believe this statement to be very poorly written. In this I agree with Arthur. But I am not sure that they have greater justification for closed access. And I do not understand why scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing are so vastly different. Book publishing in general, yes; but scholarly book publishing works about the same way as journal publishing (with the minor difference of insignificant royalties). If there are so many justifications for closed access to books, why are some academic presses practising open access? Are they crazy? Unrealistic? Whatever? If the ARC policy extends to books, and according to the AOASG statement also to ibooks and ebooks, and to a lesser extent but still importantly book contributions (chapters), then it is easy to predict: 1. Very few books will be published as the outcomes of a research project. Book publishers incur real costs (editorial, printing, stock and distribution), especially research or review books, and require closed access to recover costs over much longer timeframes than articles. They will simply refuse to publish books that are to be made open access, unless heavily subsidized. 2. Very few ibooks will be published as outcomes of a research project. Although the iTunes policy is that free ibooks (ie open access) are accepted, most people wanting to publish a research output as an ibook (.iba format for iPad) will want to recover some of their development cost. This will be less significant in the less interactive .pub format. 1. It is true that book publishers incur real costs, but so do journal publishers, especially when they maintain a paper version, as is still the case in a majority of SSH journals. Then, even printing, stock and distribution issues are shared by both worlds. The life cycle of scholarly books (and articles within anthologies) may or may not be longer than those of journal articles: it all depends on the discipline, and the best proof of this is JSTOR which is a success. But Arthur is not really speaking about life cyles of articles; he is speaking about cost recovery of journals and articles. Actually, given the present price of many scholarly books - anyone looking at catalogues from Sage or similar publishers can confirm this point - few individuals buy them, which means that the scholarly book market depends on library demand as heavily as scholarly journals. Finally, in many countries (e.g. Canada, France, Italy, etc.), scholarly books are heavily subsidized to the point that, for these books, publishers really face a risk-free world. And not so long ago, most US university presses were in a position to work at a loss, which means that their books were subsidized locally. In fact, ever since Johns Hopkins U. Presss was founded, university presses original mandate was to publish books that could not succeed commercially but were important for the growth of knowledge. 2. Arthur makes a prediction that does not appear substantiated. If university presses that already practise OA decide to produce eBooks (why limit oneself to iBooks?), they will simply decrease many of their production, storage and distribution costs, and this will help them financially in their effort to promote book OA. One has to
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
I'd like to mention that some funding agencies and initiatives which have already launched some interesting initiatives which fund OA books or are prepared to do it in the future: OAPEN: http://www.oapen.org/home Austrian Science Fund (FWF): http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/projects/stand_alone_publications.html German Research Fundation (DFG): http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/info_wissenschaft/info_wissenschaft_12_53/index.html A Consortium Approach to OA Monographs in Sweden: http://www.ep.liu.se/aboutliep/pdf/progress_report_oa_monopraphs.pdf Best, Falk __ Falk Reckling, PhD Social Science and Humanities / Strategic Analysis / Open Access Head of Units Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Sensengasse 1 A-1090 Vienna email: falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.atmailto:falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at Tel.: +43-1-5056740-8301 Mobil: + 43-699-19010147 Web: http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/contact/personen/reckling_falk.html Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] im Auftrag von Jean-Claude Guédon [jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca] Gesendet: Freitag, 18. Jänner 2013 15:19 An: goal@eprints.org Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy The issue of books has always been a difficult terrain within the OA community. A narrow interpretation of Open Access tends to limit its reach to journal articles, and this choice has the obvious advantage of leaving the issue of royalties aside. However, it should be remembered that scholars who write scholarly monographs or contribute to scholarly anthologies do not generally do it for money, but for the same kind of goals that scholars do when they publish in articles. Consequently, drawing a red line around the royalty issue is really a moot point in the great majority of case and can be justified only on the ground of wanting to simplify matters to the extreme. At the same time, it must be remembered that books and even anthologies carry more weight in most SSH (social science and humanities) areas. leaving them aside would be like telling scientists that, for whatever reason, publishing in the most prestigious journals cannot be taken into account. And citation trackers, until very recently, have also systematically neglected books despite their obvious importance. Now, let us look at the issues of books with regard to the ARC policy. Books do not have “less developed mechanisms for open access copyright clearance than journal articles”. They have better developed mechanisms for copyright transfer, and greater justification for closed access. There is no simple parallel between scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing. The industries are very different, and convergence is slow in coming though we may be starting on that path. I believe this statement to be very poorly written. In this I agree with Arthur. But I am not sure that they have greater justification for closed access. And I do not understand why scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing are so vastly different. Book publishing in general, yes; but scholarly book publishing works about the same way as journal publishing (with the minor difference of insignificant royalties). If there are so many justifications for closed access to books, why are some academic presses practising open access? Are they crazy? Unrealistic? Whatever? If the ARC policy extends to books, and according to the AOASG statement also to ibooks and ebooks, and to a lesser extent but still importantly book contributions (chapters), then it is easy to predict: 1. Very few books will be published as the outcomes of a research project. Book publishers incur real costs (editorial, printing, stock and distribution), especially research or review books, and require closed access to recover costs over much longer timeframes than articles. They will simply refuse to publish books that are to be made open access, unless heavily subsidized. 2. Very few ibooks will be published as outcomes of a research project. Although the iTunes policy is that free ibooks (ie open access) are accepted, most people wanting to publish a research output as an ibook (.iba format for iPad) will want to recover some of their development cost. This will be less significant in the less interactive .pub format. 1. It is true that book publishers incur real costs, but so do journal publishers, especially when they maintain a paper version, as is still the case in a majority of SSH journals. Then, even printing, stock and distribution issues are shared by both worlds. The life cycle of scholarly books (and articles within anthologies) may or may not be longer than those of journal articles: it all depends on the discipline, and the best proof of this is JSTOR which is a success. But Arthur is not really speaking about life cyles of
[GOAL] Recommendations of the European Commission on Open Access : GFII’s first comments (English version)
Recommendations of the European Commission on Open Access : GFII’s first comments 11 January 2013 On July 17, 2012, the European Commission issued a recommendation encouraging the Member States to make necessary arrangements to disseminate publicly funded research through open access publication, as soon as possible, preferably immediately and in any case within 6 or 12 months after the date of publication, depending on the discipline. The French government should soon take a stand on this issue. In this context, the professional Group GFII, bringing together public and private stakeholders involved in the information and knowledge industry, would like to inform the government on the preliminary findings of its Working Group on Open Access. The text below has been discussed by the GFII Board of Directors and was approved with just one vote against (CNRS). The GFII shares the conviction that publications, which are researchers output, must be disseminated as open as possible and as soon as possible to the benefit of their authors, their institutions, readers and the whole of society. But the Group recalls that editing scientific texts, either in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) or in the Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) publishing, is not only publishing it, particularly in the digital environment. Indeed, editing scientific texts involves different stages including selecting, enhancing and validating information through exchanges with authors on a regular basis, correcting proofs, formatting it, printing these manuscripts or posting it online and ensuring sustainable indexing on valuable platforms, enhancing it by adding metadata, developing tools to facilitate information retrieval through databases, communicating/promoting authors and their research, etc. So many activities and services are needed to the scientific community and they have a cost that requires to be paid. Open Access needs therefore to find a balance between ensuring the widest dissemination of research publications and business models allowing a real editorial and promotional work of scientific texts for their potential readers. In absence of balance between these different objectives, the scientific information sector will be deeply destabilized. The balance is even more difficult to find since the situation is actually different depending on the discipline, the linguistic area or the type of works published. There are differences, for example, in scholarly publishing in the STM compared with the HSS, as the former is largely globalized whereas the latter is highly dependent on specificities of each linguistic area. And within these fields of disciplines, there are major differences of communication practices between each discipline. For the GFII, it is only through consultation between the scientific communities, publishers and distributors of scientific publications that such complex issues can be really addressed and that a balanced outcome can be achieved. It is convinced that this consultation is an essential step before any decision is made on the subject. To avoid counterproductive effects, particularly in areas where public and private national publishing houses or publishing structures are involved, the GFII strongly recommends an independent impact study seeking to address the following questions : -What is, for each discipline, the adequate embargo period needed for rewarding fairly scholarly publishing actors ? -If adequate embargo periods for each discipline were not obtained, which other business models could be implemented to ensure quality, diversity, sustainability and independence of scientific publications (“Author pays” model, freemium model, etc.) ? What would be the cost of it ? How to bear this cost ? -In accordance to the measures currently specified by the European Commission for the Horizon 2020 program, what should the French government do to provide a mechanism for an immediate posting of scholarly articles through pre-financing of publication costs ? What would be the case for the Humanities and Social Sciences in particular ? -What would be the impact of science dissemination using open access on other publishing sectors such as the professional publishing and/or other knowledge publishing sectors ? We believe also that the Government should take account of the following points : -Which type of publications should not be subject to the regulatory measures being considered ? Regarding self-archiving, should recommendations only be applied on journal articles or also on collective books and even research monographs ? -How should a “publicly funded” research be clearly defined ? For example, should we consider that all the writings of an author that has been paid from public funds, in some way, must be made freely available (after the embargo period) ? Should knowledge transfer
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
Let's please distinguish between (1) mandating (requiring) to do X and (2) offering a subsidy to do X. Gratis Green OA self-archiving of journal articles can be and is being mandated, unproblematically (with the ID/OA Immediate-Deposit/Optional OA compromise). Finding the money to pay for Gold OA and/or CC-BY and/or for books is another matter, with problems that do not beset mandating ID/OA for articles. So let's keep thinking about subsidizing Gold OA and/or CC-BY and/or books. But meanwhile, let's mandate ID/OA for articles, unproblematically. And let's not handicap those mandates with needless constraints that apply only to Gold, CC-BY, or books. Stevan Harnad On 2013-01-18, at 10:13 AM, Reckling, Falk, Dr. falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at wrote: I'd like to mention that some funding agencies and initiatives which have already launched some interesting initiatives which fund OA books or are prepared to do it in the future: OAPEN: http://www.oapen.org/home Austrian Science Fund (FWF): http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/projects/stand_alone_publications.html German Research Fundation (DFG): http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/info_wissenschaft/info_wissenschaft_12_53/index.html A Consortium Approach to OA Monographs in Sweden: http://www.ep.liu.se/aboutliep/pdf/progress_report_oa_monopraphs.pdf Best, Falk __ Falk Reckling, PhD Social Science and Humanities / Strategic Analysis / Open Access Head of Units Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Sensengasse 1 A-1090 Vienna email: falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.atmailto:falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at Tel.: +43-1-5056740-8301 Mobil: + 43-699-19010147 Web: http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/contact/personen/reckling_falk.html Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] im Auftrag von Jean-Claude Guédon [jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca] Gesendet: Freitag, 18. Jänner 2013 15:19 An: goal@eprints.org Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy The issue of books has always been a difficult terrain within the OA community. A narrow interpretation of Open Access tends to limit its reach to journal articles, and this choice has the obvious advantage of leaving the issue of royalties aside. However, it should be remembered that scholars who write scholarly monographs or contribute to scholarly anthologies do not generally do it for money, but for the same kind of goals that scholars do when they publish in articles. Consequently, drawing a red line around the royalty issue is really a moot point in the great majority of case and can be justified only on the ground of wanting to simplify matters to the extreme. At the same time, it must be remembered that books and even anthologies carry more weight in most SSH (social science and humanities) areas. leaving them aside would be like telling scientists that, for whatever reason, publishing in the most prestigious journals cannot be taken into account. And citation trackers, until very recently, have also systematically neglected books despite their obvious importance. Now, let us look at the issues of books with regard to the ARC policy. Books do not have “less developed mechanisms for open access copyright clearance than journal articles”. They have better developed mechanisms for copyright transfer, and greater justification for closed access. There is no simple parallel between scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing. The industries are very different, and convergence is slow in coming though we may be starting on that path. I believe this statement to be very poorly written. In this I agree with Arthur. But I am not sure that they have greater justification for closed access. And I do not understand why scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing are so vastly different. Book publishing in general, yes; but scholarly book publishing works about the same way as journal publishing (with the minor difference of insignificant royalties). If there are so many justifications for closed access to books, why are some academic presses practising open access? Are they crazy? Unrealistic? Whatever? If the ARC policy extends to books, and according to the AOASG statement also to ibooks and ebooks, and to a lesser extent but still importantly book contributions (chapters), then it is easy to predict: 1. Very few books will be published as the outcomes of a research project. Book publishers incur real costs (editorial, printing, stock and distribution), especially research or review books, and require closed access to recover costs over much longer timeframes than articles. They will simply refuse to publish books that are to be made open access, unless heavily subsidized. 2. Very few ibooks will be published as outcomes of
[GOAL] If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences http://wp.me/p20y83-BF The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group proposed the formation of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. ... Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared multi-disciplinary online service could make operations sustainable and per article costs low. ... Late last week I received a tweet from Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a lecturer in English Literature at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. You may recall back in July I gave a hat tip to Martin for his excellent Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide. The tweet linked to a post on his blog soliciting participants to help build a Public Library of Science model for the Humanities and Social Sciences. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
Stevan, I do not really understand your distinction. a) A book is an article but a bit longer and vice versa. (By the way, OA could dissolve that difference.) b) At least in some countries, research monographs and collected volumes were subsidised for decades by public funders, but just for printing cost while peer review and copy editing were usually not offered by the publishers. Therefore, I see good reasons for a funder to pay more to a publisher but to require also peer review, copy editing and gold OA. Best, Falk __ Falk Reckling, PhD Social Science and Humanities / Strategic Analysis / Open Access Head of Units Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Sensengasse 1 A-1090 Vienna email: falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at Tel.: +43-1-5056740-8301 Mobil: + 43-699-19010147 Web: http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/contact/personen/reckling_falk.html Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org]quot; im Auftrag von quot;Stevan Harnad [har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Gesendet: Freitag, 18. Jänner 2013 17:07 An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy Let's please distinguish between (1) mandating (requiring) to do X and (2) offering a subsidy to do X. Gratis Green OA self-archiving of journal articles can be and is being mandated, unproblematically (with the ID/OA Immediate-Deposit/Optional OA compromise). Finding the money to pay for Gold OA and/or CC-BY and/or for books is another matter, with problems that do not beset mandating ID/OA for articles. So let's keep thinking about subsidizing Gold OA and/or CC-BY and/or books. But meanwhile, let's mandate ID/OA for articles, unproblematically. And let's not handicap those mandates with needless constraints that apply only to Gold, CC-BY, or books. Stevan Harnad On 2013-01-18, at 10:13 AM, Reckling, Falk, Dr. falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at wrote: I'd like to mention that some funding agencies and initiatives which have already launched some interesting initiatives which fund OA books or are prepared to do it in the future: OAPEN: http://www.oapen.org/home Austrian Science Fund (FWF): http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/projects/stand_alone_publications.html German Research Fundation (DFG): http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/info_wissenschaft/info_wissenschaft_12_53/index.html A Consortium Approach to OA Monographs in Sweden: http://www.ep.liu.se/aboutliep/pdf/progress_report_oa_monopraphs.pdf Best, Falk __ Falk Reckling, PhD Social Science and Humanities / Strategic Analysis / Open Access Head of Units Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Sensengasse 1 A-1090 Vienna email: falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.atmailto:falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at Tel.: +43-1-5056740-8301 Mobil: + 43-699-19010147 Web: http://www.fwf.ac.at/de/contact/personen/reckling_falk.html Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] im Auftrag von Jean-Claude Guédon [jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca] Gesendet: Freitag, 18. Jänner 2013 15:19 An: goal@eprints.org Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy The issue of books has always been a difficult terrain within the OA community. A narrow interpretation of Open Access tends to limit its reach to journal articles, and this choice has the obvious advantage of leaving the issue of royalties aside. However, it should be remembered that scholars who write scholarly monographs or contribute to scholarly anthologies do not generally do it for money, but for the same kind of goals that scholars do when they publish in articles. Consequently, drawing a red line around the royalty issue is really a moot point in the great majority of case and can be justified only on the ground of wanting to simplify matters to the extreme. At the same time, it must be remembered that books and even anthologies carry more weight in most SSH (social science and humanities) areas. leaving them aside would be like telling scientists that, for whatever reason, publishing in the most prestigious journals cannot be taken into account. And citation trackers, until very recently, have also systematically neglected books despite their obvious importance. Now, let us look at the issues of books with regard to the ARC policy. Books do not have “less developed mechanisms for open access copyright clearance than journal articles”. They have better developed mechanisms for copyright transfer, and greater justification for closed access. There is no simple parallel between scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing. The industries are very different, and convergence is slow in coming though we may be starting on that path.
[GOAL] Open access innovations in the humanities social sciences
The open access movement tends to talk a lot about sciences. Let's applaud and recognize the many scholars and initiatives leading in open access in the humanities and social sciences. The Directory of Open Access Journals lists 1,689 journals under the Social Sciences browse: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subjectcpid=87uiLanguage=en The Social Sciences Research Network is one of the largest and most active open access subject repositories: http://www.ssrn.com/ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was an early innovator in the creation of a scholar-led open access encyclopedia and the development of the ongoing OA via creation of an endowment fund model (still promising, but as one might guess the financial crisis slowed this approach down a little): http://plato.stanford.edu/ The Public Knowledge Project, initiated by education researcher John Willinsky, created the Open Journal Systems used by about 15,000 journals around the world, about half of which are open access: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ Open Humanities Press was an early innovator in open monographs publishing: http://openhumanitiespress.org/ This is a very small list - humblest apologies to all of the other important initiatives and people that are missing here. Each and every one of these initiatives is worthy of our support. best, Heather G. Morrison, PhD The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
The idea of a PLOHSS is one I have discussed with at least one person who works for PLOS. Personally, I believe the PLOS solution is extremely important in that it contributes to separating scholarship quality from journal editorial lines. In other words, in a PLOS-like journal, if the work is well done, it does not matter whether it is a popular, or a hot, or frivolous, or a locally relevant, topic, and so on. The main issue with a PLOS-HSS journal is that HSS journals are strongly tied to editorial lines. In HSS journals, the editorial line is often as important as quality concerns. Quite often, HSS Journals are flag-bearers of interpretive perspectives or schools. One way, perhaps, to overcome this difficulty is to create a PLOS-HSS journal that would federate many editorial boards of as many journals. Each editorial board would thus retain its journal-like identity. When an article would be submitted to the PLOS-HSS megajournal, every editorial board could decide whether to evaluate it or not. The result is that the article could be peer reviewed from a variety of perspectives including several editorial boards. If accepted, the article would be published with an acknowledgement of the boards involved. Any article published with the peer-review of one person chosen by one particular editorial board would automatically be part of the content of that journal. As a result, an article could be associated with several journals, but would appear only once in the mega-journal. Of course, each journal could repackage the articles it owns to publish a separate journal (without quotation marks). This possibility might limit the pains of losing one's editorial identity in a big mega-journal, but, ultimately, the mega journal would simply federate boards that would reflect a wide variety of trends, tendencies, and theoretical choices. Given the continuing importance of national languages in the HSS, one possible principle of aggregation or federation could be based on language. In this fashion, HSS studies would begin to reorganize themselves in large linguistic groups. Then further refinements can appear such as translations of the best papers in the main trade languages of the world (e.g. English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, etc.). In this fashion, the globalization of HSS studies could begin in earnest. Of course, there are many devils lurking in many detail crannies, but some good thinking should allow overcome most if not all of them. Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 18 janvier 2013 à 12:29 -0500, Omega Alpha|Open Access a écrit : If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences http://wp.me/p20y83-BF The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group proposed the formation of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. ... Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared multi-disciplinary online service could make operations sustainable and per article costs low. ... Late last week I received a tweet from Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a lecturer in English Literature at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. You may recall back in July I gave a hat tip to Martin for his excellent Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide. The tweet linked to a post on his blog soliciting participants to help build a Public Library of Science model for the Humanities and Social Sciences. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal
[GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
It seems that we are equating PLoS with PLoS ONE, the megajournal. Is PLoS planning to abandon its original strategy of producing top-quality journals to compete with the likes of Nature and Science? If not, some thought about how to talk about this might be a good idea. Along this vein, I am wondering if it is wise to brand a new humanities and social sciences megajournal after PLoS - at first glance it gives the appearance that HSS is considered to be slow and lacking in innovation. This is not the case. It is true that there are many very traditional publishers in HSS, but it is also true that a large portion of the world's STM journals are still being published by Elsevier. best, Heather Morrison On 2013-01-18, at 11:03 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: The idea of a PLOHSS is one I have discussed with at least one person who works for PLOS. Personally, I believe the PLOS solution is extremely important in that it contributes to separating scholarship quality from journal editorial lines. In other words, in a PLOS-like journal, if the work is well done, it does not matter whether it is a popular, or a hot, or frivolous, or a locally relevant, topic, and so on. The main issue with a PLOS-HSS journal is that HSS journals are strongly tied to editorial lines. In HSS journals, the editorial line is often as important as quality concerns. Quite often, HSS Journals are flag-bearers of interpretive perspectives or schools. One way, perhaps, to overcome this difficulty is to create a PLOS-HSS journal that would federate many editorial boards of as many journals. Each editorial board would thus retain its journal-like identity. When an article would be submitted to the PLOS-HSS megajournal, every editorial board could decide whether to evaluate it or not. The result is that the article could be peer reviewed from a variety of perspectives including several editorial boards. If accepted, the article would be published with an acknowledgement of the boards involved. Any article published with the peer-review of one person chosen by one particular editorial board would automatically be part of the content of that journal. As a result, an article could be associated with several journals, but would appear only once in the mega-journal. Of course, each journal could repackage the articles it owns to publish a separate journal (without quotation marks). This possibility might limit the pains of losing one's editorial identity in a big mega-journal, but, ultimately, the mega journal would simply federate boards that would reflect a wide variety of trends, tendencies, and theoretical choices. Given the continuing importance of national languages in the HSS, one possible principle of aggregation or federation could be based on language. In this fashion, HSS studies would begin to reorganize themselves in large linguistic groups. Then further refinements can appear such as translations of the best papers in the main trade languages of the world (e.g. English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, etc.). In this fashion, the globalization of HSS studies could begin in earnest. Of course, there are many devils lurking in many detail crannies, but some good thinking should allow overcome most if not all of them. Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 18 janvier 2013 à 12:29 -0500, Omega Alpha|Open Access a écrit : If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences http://wp.me/p20y83-BF The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group proposed the formation of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. ... Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared multi-disciplinary online service could make operations
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
Thanks Jean-Claude Guédon and Falk Reckling for your comments. It is difficult to answer them succinctly, but I will try. 1. There is a substantial difference between books and articles in the current situation. Almost no researcher reads the printed copy of a journal article any more: they access the online version. Journal publishers who continue to print paper journals are largely wasting money, or doing it for archival purposes. On the other hand, until very recently, no-one read a book in any other format than paper. This is beginning to change with Kindle, iPad and other tablets, but the paradigm change is far from complete. 2. Editorial work on journal articles is mimimal (and often counter-productive), while refereeing (selectivity of articles) is a major issue. With books the situation is reversed. Editorial work is often extensive, and acceptance (the parallel for refereeing) is largely in-house and there are fewer proposals. 3. I used ibooks as my example because they offer the best example of where electronic books are going: interactive. The conventional ebook that one can see in novels or .pub format is just a slightly souped-up pdf of text and a few pictures. An ibook is an interactive object, albeit at present in a proprietary format. I could also have cited Wolframs CDF (Computable Document Format). Have you used an ibook or CDF? Tried to write one? I have done both and the experience tells me that this is going to be an influential development. 4. Why do academic presses produce open access books? Because they are subsidized to do so, and their performance indicators are not profit-oriented, but academic prestige. I know that Jean-Claude realizes this, because he says so. The same for some professional societies. Good for them too, but it is not the norm. 5. Printing, stock and distribution is largely wasted effort for journals. My own university library frequently simply trashes unwanted print copies sent to them as not worth the costs of cataloguing or shelving. 6. A book is not just a long article, any more than the Golden Gate Bridge is just a long log across a creek. Scale changes things. Every engineer knows this. So do the publishing industries. Books have much smaller purchasing groups and much greater costs, in general, than a journal house. They also are not serials and cannot rely on continuing business. 7. Yes, I agree that academic presses will reduce costs to produce books. The ANU Press for example publishes online OA, or on-demand print for a fee. Sensible and makes OA books more viable. But academic presses are subsidized. 8. My point in mentioning other forms of research outputs (and some of them are research outputs in the fine arts, others in engineering, and others in various other disciplines) was to point up the absurdity of interpreting all research outputs literally. I apologise to any pure scientists who are bemused by this exchange. If one only publishes in journals or conferences, then the practices of other disciplines may appear strange. You may note that I did not include furniture prototypes, sculptures, etc to try to be succinct. The concept of making a sculpture open access would be an interesting question for a morning tea discussion. I could have made up a much longer list of objects which are research outputs, including databases and datasets, plant patents, etc. I fully expect that the ARC guidelines will spell out what research outputs they specifically intend. I hope that this explanation has helped. Arthur Sale University of Tasmania, Australia ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
Le samedi 19 janvier 2013 à 10:14 +1100, Arthur Sale a écrit : Thanks Jean-Claude Guédon and Falk Reckling for your comments. It is difficult to answer them succinctly, but I will try. 1. There is a substantial difference between books and articles in the current situation. Almost no researcher reads the printed copy of a journal article any more: they access the online version. Journal publishers who continue to print paper journals are largely wasting money, or doing it for archival purposes. On the other hand, until very recently, no-one read a book in any other format than paper. This is beginning to change with Kindle, iPad and other tablets, but the paradigm change is far from complete. The reading situation you describe is not yet the dominant situation in HSS. As for publishers who continue to publish on paper, I agree, they are wasting money, but this is not the point of this discussion. They are doing so, however, in part to respond to a real demand from significant fractions of their readership. This may be a generational thing, but the generalization above is inaccurate in HSS. 2. Editorial work on journal articles is mimimal (and often counter-productive), while refereeing (selectivity of articles) is a major issue. With books the situation is reversed. Editorial work is often extensive, and acceptance (the parallel for refereeing) is largely in-house and there are fewer proposals. Again, you generalize too fast. Editorial work is still important in SSH journals, in part because articles do not obey any particular templates. It is comparable to book editing. Many academic publishers use external referees to evaluate book manuscripts ( I have done such work on a number of occasions). Granting agencies that support the publishing of academic books use external referees extensively, if only to have ready justification for their decision-making results. 3. I used ibooks as my example because they offer the best example of where electronic books are going: interactive. The conventional ebook that one can see in novels or .pub format is just a slightly souped-up pdf of text and a few pictures. An ibook is an interactive object, albeit at present in a proprietary format. I could also have cited Wolfram’s CDF (Computable Document Format). Have you used an ibook or CDF? Tried to write one? I have done both and the experience tells me that this is going to be an influential development. I obviously do not have your expertise on this topic, but this was only a very minor, marginal point in my counter-argument. 4. Why do academic presses produce open access books? Because they are subsidized to do so, and their performance indicators are not profit-oriented, but academic prestige. I know that Jean-Claude realizes this, because he says so. The same for some professional societies. Good for them too, but it is not the norm. The norm is that academic presses that produce books are generally subsidized. The are subsidized by either by their own institution or by external, governmental, agencies. This is true of OA books, but it is also true of books for sale. OA books, and I agree with you, are not the norms among academic presses, but various projects (e.g. OAPEN in Europe) point in that direction. The subsidies from institutions have gone down and this has led a number of academic presses to become more like commercial presses. In turn, this situation has produced a crisis for the career management of many SSH disciplines. Both Robert Darnton (historian) and Stephen Greenblatt (literature) have, as presidents of their respective associations, published their concern about this. It demonstrates, in passing, the central importance of books in those disciplines. 5. Printing, stock and distribution is largely wasted effort for journals. My own university library frequently simply trashes unwanted print copies sent to them as not worth the costs of cataloguing or shelving. But It just happens, to repeat myself, that many SSH journals are still being distributed in paper form, if only because a number of (presumably) old farts want to read them that way. Personally, I don't, but many of my colleagues do. And the type of reading needed to study a 30-page SSH article is a lot easier when print is available. In SSH disciplines, people, when they use on-line journals, download and print to read. Try reading Derrida on a screen... :-) 6. A book is not just a long article, any more than the Golden Gate Bridge is just a long log across a creek. Scale changes things. Every engineer knows this. So do the publishing industries. Books have much smaller purchasing groups and much greater costs, in general, than a journal house. They also are not serials and cannot rely on continuing business. Again, this is way too general and too fast. Book series exist, as do thematic journal that really are book series in disguise.
[GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it? PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
Heather, PLOS ONE is only one of seven journals published by PLOS. I'm not aware that PLOS has any plans to abandon its original strategy. Martin should probably be invited to offer his own description and intention (I don't know if he is on this list). It does seem, however, that it is specifically the PLOS ONE mega journal format that he is looking at as a model for his HSS effort. If there is any conflation it's only in the sense of: PLOS publishes PLOS ONE. Therefore, PLOS is providing the model for PLOHSS (not through any affiliation, just by example). In any event, as I understand it, PLOHSS is not the official name for the effort, it's only a placeholder designation for the initial ideas hub website http://www.plohss.org he has setup. See on his blog here https://www.martineve.com/2013/01/13/an-update-on-the-plohss-project/, where he is soliciting ideas for a name. Also, I believe it was in the Library Journal interview http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/01/oa/qa-martin-eve-on-why-we-need-a-public-library-of-the-humanities-and-social-sciences/#_ where he indicated that discussions might conclude that they separate the humanities and social sciences into subset journals. At the very least, my take was that by invoking PLOS he is saying HSS should be able to have its own online public library of open access article literature. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess On Jan 18, 2013, at 7:24 PM, goal-requ...@eprints.org wrote: Message: 3 Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 11:18:31 -0800 From: Heather Morrison hgmor...@sfu.ca Subject: [GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it? PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) goal@eprints.org Cc: boai-forum boai-fo...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Message-ID: fc0abee7-ad47-4ff9-a7de-12b95cf12...@sfu.ca Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252 It seems that we are equating PLoS with PLoS ONE, the megajournal. Is PLoS planning to abandon its original strategy of producing top-quality journals to compete with the likes of Nature and Science? If not, some thought about how to talk about this might be a good idea. Along this vein, I am wondering if it is wise to brand a new humanities and social sciences megajournal after PLoS - at first glance it gives the appearance that HSS is considered to be slow and lacking in innovation. This is not the case. It is true that there are many very traditional publishers in HSS, but it is also true that a large portion of the world's STM journals are still being published by Elsevier. best, Heather Morrison On 2013-01-18, at 11:03 AM, Jean-Claude Gu?don wrote: The idea of a PLOHSS is one I have discussed with at least one person who works for PLOS. Personally, I believe the PLOS solution is extremely important in that it contributes to separating scholarship quality from journal editorial lines. In other words, in a PLOS-like journal, if the work is well done, it does not matter whether it is a popular, or a hot, or frivolous, or a locally relevant, topic, and so on. The main issue with a PLOS-HSS journal is that HSS journals are strongly tied to editorial lines. In HSS journals, the editorial line is often as important as quality concerns. Quite often, HSS Journals are flag-bearers of interpretive perspectives or schools. One way, perhaps, to overcome this difficulty is to create a PLOS-HSS journal that would federate many editorial boards of as many journals. Each editorial board would thus retain its journal-like identity. When an article would be submitted to the PLOS-HSS megajournal, every editorial board could decide whether to evaluate it or not. The result is that the article could be peer reviewed from a variety of perspectives including several editorial boards. If accepted, the article would be published with an acknowledgement of the boards involved. Any article published with the peer-review of one person chosen by one particular editorial board would automatically be part of the content of that journal. As a result, an article could be associated with several journals, but would appear only once in the mega-journal. Of course, each journal could repackage the articles it owns to publish a separate journal (without quotation marks). This possibility might limit the pai! ns of losing one's editorial identity in a big mega-journal, but, ultimately, the mega journal would simply federate boards that would reflect a wide variety of trends, tendencies, and theoretical choices. Given the continuing importance of national languages in the HSS, one possible principle of aggregation or federation could be based on language. In this fashion, HSS studies would begin to reorganize themselves in large
