Re: [GOAL] Elsevier is now the world's largest open access publisher (by number of journals)
Calling them the largest open access publisher because they publish the most journals is ridiculous, and flies in the face of the whole idea of open access, which is about articles, not journals. On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 9:54 PM, Heather Morrison < heather.morri...@uottawa.ca> wrote: > Highlights > > Elsevier is now the world’s largest OA publisher with 511 fully open > access titles (De Gruyter second at 435, Hindawi third at 405). These > figures are drawn from the publishers’ websites. > > 315 of the 511 journals (63%) have an APC of 0 and an indication of “fee > not payable by author”. This is primarily due to substantial active society > and institutional involvement and sponsorship of these journals. A large > percentage of these societies are keeping their copyright. I argue that > this is not a bad thing; the alternative may not be a purer OA but rather > Elsevier copyright retention. > > There are marked differences between Elsevier’s fully OA journals and > their 2,149 hybrid journals. The OA journals tend to be clustered near the > low end of the $0 - $5,000 APC range while the hybrids are skewed toward > the high end. Society and institutional involvement and copyright retention > is far more evident in the open access journals. > > Using data from Elsevier’s website and 2015 annual report, I assess the > potential for Elsevier to achieve a full flip to OA while retaining the > current $3 billion USD in revenue and 37% profit rate. By my calculations, > Elsevier would need to charge APCs averaging from $5,000 to $11,000 USD. > This is not realistic. Libraries and those seeking to further transition to > open access should (in my opinion) expect that Elsevier will continue to > seek substantial subscriptions revenue for some time to come, even given > substantial support for APCs. > > For more detail and a link to a draft article on the topic, see: > > https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2016/05/13/elsevier-now-the-worlds-largest-open-access-publisher/ > > best, > > -- > Dr. Heather Morrison > Assistant Professor > École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies > University of Ottawa > http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html > Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ > heather.morri...@uottawa.ca > > > > ___________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive
://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive
Nobody is insisting on perfect *solutions* - none of the current solutions are even close to perfect - but what Heather was proposing was a change in *goals*. There is nothing to be gained - and a lot to lose - by redefining what we mean by open access (and thereby what we are trying to achieve) in order to wrap its umbrella around every imperfect effort to achieve it. On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 11:26 AM, Dana Roth dzr...@library.caltech.edu wrote: Taking Bernard's 'public road' analogy a little further ... one wonders his insistence on a 'perfect' solution isn't unfairly denigrating a reasonable (at least in the short term) alternative. The current situation, where the 'public NIH road' is closed temporarily (12 months) and one has to use a 'toll road' to access embargoed articles, seems much better than the situation before the creation of PubMed Central ... which now has 3.5 million freely available full text articles. Dana L. Roth Millikan Library / Caltech 1-32 1200 E. California Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91125 626-395-6423 fax 626-792-7540 dzr...@library.caltech.edu http://library.caltech.edu/collections/chemistry.htm -- *From:* goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] on behalf of brent...@ulg.ac.be [brent...@ulg.ac.be] *Sent:* Monday, June 01, 2015 11:02 AM *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive When I want to drive on a public road, whether it is closed or temporarily closed makes no difference to me. It is not open. I can't use it. Embargo is antinomic to open. Bernard Rentier Le 1 juin 2015 à 18:26, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com a écrit : On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Michael Eisen mbei...@gmail.com wrote: There's a difference between trying to be inclusive, and redefining goals and definitions to the point of being meaningless. I can not tell you how many times I hear that the NIH provides open access because they make articles freely available after a year. This is not just semantics. The belief that the NIH provides open access with its public access policy provides real drag on the quest to provide actual open access. You can argue about whether or not the policy is a good thing because it's a step in the right direction, or a bad thing because it reifies delayed access. But calling what the provide open access serves only to confuse people, to weaken our objectives and give the still far more powerful forces who do not want open access a way to resist pressure for it. It's nice to be able to agree with Mike Eisen. Open Access (OA) comes in two degrees http://www.sparc.arl.org/resource/gratis-and-libre-open-access: *Gratis OA* is immediate, permanent free online access and *Libre OA* is Gratis OA plus various re-use rights (up to CC-BY or even public domain). What both degrees of OA share is that they are both immediate (and permanent) http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/harnad/03harnad.html. Otherwise, there's just Delayed (Embargoed) Access, which is no more Open Access than Toll Access is. To treat Delayed Access as if it were a form of Open Access would be to reduce OA to meaninglessness (and would play into the hands of publishers who would like to see precisely that happen). Stevan Harnad On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Heather Morrison heather.morri...@uottawa.ca wrote: hi David, Redefining open access and understanding that a great many people are moving towards open access in slightly different ways are two different things. My post will focus on the benefits of a more inclusive and welcoming approach to open access. For example, I have been conducting interviews and focus groups with editors of small journals that either are, or would like to be, open access. Behind the more than 10 thousand journals listed in DOAJ are probably much more than 10 thousand such editors, working hard to convince colleagues to move to open access, struggling to figure out how to do this in order to make ends meet. While some of us have been active and vocal in OA discussions and policy formulation, others have been quietly doing this work, often contributing a great deal of volunteer effort, over the years. We rarely hear from these people, but actively listening and figuring out how to provide the support needed for the journals to thrive in an OA environment is in the best interests of continuing towards a fully open access and sustainable system. These people are OA heroes from my perspective, whether their journal is currently OA or not. In my experience, when someone says their journal is free online after a year and they would like to move to OA, asking about the barriers and what is needed to move to OA results in productive discussions. OpenDOAR maintains a list of over 2,600 vetted open access archives: http://opendoar.org/ OA archives have made a very great
[GOAL] Re: In Defence of Elsevier
collaboration networks - We provide new services to authors such as the share link which enables authors to post and share a customized link for 50 days free access to the final published article - For authors who want free immediate access to their articles, we continue to give all authors a choice to publish gold open access with a wide number of open access journals and over 1600 hybrid titles Unlike the claims in this COAR document, the policy changes are based on feedback from our authors and institutional partners, they are evidence-based, and they are in alignment with the STM article sharing principles. They introduce absolutely no changes in our embargo periods. And they are not intended to suddenly embargo and make inaccessible content currently available to readers – as we have already communicated in Elsevier Connect http://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-updates-its-policies-perspectives-and-services-on-article-sharing . In fact, we have been developing services, in partnership with libraries, to help institutional repositories track research output and display content to their users. This includes: • Sharing metadata: In order to showcase an institutions’ work, an institutional repository must identify their institution’s research output. By integrating the ScienceDirect metadata API into the repository, this task becomes simple. Even in cases where the repository doesn’t hold the full text manuscript, the article information and abstract can be displayed.. • Sharing user access information and embedding final articles: We are testing a workflow in which a user’s access level to the full text is checked on the fly, and if full text access is available, the user will be served the final published version, instead of the preprint or manuscript hosted by the repository. Users who are not entitled to view the full text of the final article will be led to the version available in the repository, or- if this is not available- to a page where they can view the first page of the article and options for accessing it (including via interlibrary loan). This ensures that users will always be served the best available version. This also enables the repository to display the best available version to their users even if no self-archived manuscript is available. We have not only updated our policies, we are active in developing and delivering technology that enables research to be shared more widely. COAR states that the addition of a CC-BY-NC-ND license is unhelpful. Feedback suggests that clarity about how manuscripts can be used is welcome, when asked in surveys often choose NC ND of their own volition (see the TF study from 2014 at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/explore/open-access-survey-june2014.pdf ), and it works across a broad range of use cases. Our refreshed policies are about green OA, and some elements of this – for example the use of embargo periods – are specifically for green OA when it is operating in tandem with the subscription business model. Here time is needed for the subscription model to operate as libraries will understandably not subscribe if this material is available immediately and for free. In closing, we appreciate an open dialogue and are always happy to have a dialogue to discuss these, or any other, issues further. Dr Alicia Wise Director of Access and Policy Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.w...@elsevier.com *Twitter: @wisealic* -- Elsevier Limited. Registered Office: The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford, OX5 1GB, United Kingdom, Registration No. 1982084, Registered in England and Wales. ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Elsevier: Trying to squeeze the virtual genie back into the physical bottle
to consult with me about present and future OA policy conditions. I'll be happy to share with you which ones are logically incoherent and technically empty in today's virtual world. It could save Elsevier a lot of futile effort and save Elsevier authors from a lot of useless and increasingly arbitrary and annoying nuisance-rules. Best wishes, *Stevan Harnad* ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: How a flat APC with no price increase for 3 years can be a 6% - 77% price increase at the same time
It is true that distributing publication services locally would diminish the risk of currency fluctuations affecting APC stability, but it does not necessarily reduce costs for authors. I am sure, for example, that most authors would be happier to pay APCs that varied +/- 25% around $1350 than they would a fixed $2000. On Wed, May 13, 2015 at 5:40 PM, Heather Morrison heather.morri...@uottawa.ca wrote: In this post Jihane Salhab I explain the impact of currency variations and fluctuations on the APC model. PLOS ONE has been a good model for the past few years in at least one respect: maintaining the APC of $1,350 USD with no price increase over several years. However, if you happen to be paying in Euros, the PLOS ONE APC rose 14% from March to December of 2014, or 23% from March 20, 2014 to March 20, 2015. In South Africa, the price increased 58% in the same 3-year period; in Brazil, the price increase was 77%. For details and to view a table illustrating the PLOS ONE pricing in 8 currencies: http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/13/how-a-flat-apc-with-no-price-increase-for-3-years-can-be-a-6-77-price-increase/ Any scholarly publishing system that involves cross-border payments, whether demand side (subscriptions / payments) or supply side (APC, journal hosting or other production services) has this disadvantage of pricing variability almost everywhere. In this case, US payers benefit from the flat fee, but anytime an APC is paid for a US scholar publishing in an international venue the same pricing variations based on currency will apply. In contrast, any scholarly publishing system that involves local payments (e.g. hosting of local journals, paying local copyeditors and proofreaders) has the advantage of relative pricing stability that comes with paying in the local currency. Also on Sustaining the Knowledge Commons today: does the market economy really work for social reality? Reflections on an interview with David Simon by Alexis Calvé-Genest. http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/13/market-economy-and-social-reality-a-pragmatic-view-from-a-well-known-author/ best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa Desmarais 111-02 613-562-5800 ext. 7634 Sustaining the Knowledge Commons: Open Access Scholarship http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/ http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html heather.morri...@uottawa.ca ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Sharing and reuse - not within a commercial economy, but within a sharing economy
That's a lovely sentiment Jeffrey, except for the part about copyright incentivizing publishers to make work available. It does just the opposite. It provides them a clear incentive to restrict access to the work so that they can compel people who need access to pay. On Monday, April 13, 2015, Beall, Jeffrey jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu wrote: Regarding this ongoing discussion about Creative Commons licenses and scholarly publishers, I think it is fair to conclude the following: 1. There is much disagreement about what the licenses mean, how they can be interpreted, and how they are applied in real-world situations 2. The licenses are not as simple as advertised. In fact, they are complex legal documents subject to expert interpretation, and they lead to ongoing contentiousness and debate, even among experts. 3. There is beauty in the simplicity of copyright, that is, transferring one's copyright to a publisher. It is binary. The terms are clear. The publisher employs professionals that expertly manage the copyright. Owning the copyright incentives the publisher to make the work available and preserve it over time. I just had an article accepted recently, and last week I turned in a form transferring copyright to the publisher, something I was happy to do. There is nothing wrong with this. It's my choice. The paper will eventually appear in J-STOR and will be preserved. My transaction was easy to understand, unambiguous, and clear. Let's remember that transferring copyright to a high quality publisher is still a valid option and for many authors may be the best option. Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor Scholarly Communications Librarian Auraria Library University of Colorado Denver 1100 Lawrence St. Denver, Colo. 80204 USA (303) 556-5936 jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu javascript:; ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org javascript:; http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: GOAL] Re: Don't Conflate OA with Peer-Review Reform
Open access and peer review reform are not necessarily related in that you can have OA without peer review changes (e.g. PLOS Biology) and have peer review changes without open access. However, in practical terms it makes sense to discuss them both in the same place because they are both inhibited by the extreme stasis in conventional publishing, and because most of the efforts to innovate in peer review are coming from open access journals (e.g. F1000 Research). I also find it highly ironic that Jeffrey Beall would complain about tone after he just published an article that went to great lengths to slander everyone ever connected with the open access movement. On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 2:59 AM, Graham Triggs grahamtri...@gmail.comwrote: On 11 December 2013 20:13, Bosman, J.M. j.bos...@uu.nl wrote: Let me be clear on this. My suggestion to move the discussion on peer review to another list has nothing to do with agreeing or not agreeing with anyone. It has to do with the degree to which peer review is related to Open Access. Even with zero open access peer review would reach its limits and needs to change. I think peer review discussions are more fruitful in a forum that focusses on innnovations in scholarly communication rather than just open access, although of course some lines that converge and intersect. Well, at the risk of putting words into the mouths of others, I find it hard to believe that there is anyone - even advocates of traditional publishing - who thinks it is a good idea to deny access to the outputs of quality research. Two highly substantive issues about open access are cost and credibility. Closed access publishing is not immune to the potential flaws in peer review, but open access can provide more opportunity and incentive to leverage flawed peer review. Whilst the major [open access] publishers have maintained a commitment to honest peer review, the same can't be said of every operating publisher. This list may not be the appropriate place for an in-depth discussion about changing the peer review process. But assuring the credibility of open access - in particular open access publishing - is inextricably linked to peer review, and how it is conducted. And a discussion of any changes would also impact on how much open access [publishing] costs, and how it is funded. On that basis, it would be impractical to consider peer review as off topic for an open access list - but any discussion would also need to recognise that there is a larger audience that needs to be involved (but then that is true of any list that people choose to subscribe to, regardless of it's scope). G ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: My last post on the Cherubim/Seraphim issue (promise!)
Back in 2002 when the debates about Gold vs. Green OA began, I and other advocates for developing Gold OA publishing argued that the friendly stance of publishers like Elsevier to self-archiving was a transient state, and that as soon as people started to make appreciable numbers of papers available in IRs - thereby actually threatening publisher revenues - publishers would change their tune. And this is exactly what we're seeing with Elsevier. Yes, their policies now are confusing, but I suspect they won't be for long, and that we'll soon see explicit policies that require embargoes. The proper response on the part of instituions is not to sign agreements with Elsevier and other publishers allowing embargoes, but to set a clear mandate for OA with no embargoes. Publishers will have to live with our terms, rather than continuing to demand that we live with theirs. On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 6:08 AM, brent...@ulg.ac.be wrote: Elsevier's policy is now clear: *Accepted author manuscripts (AAM)http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/article-posting-policy#accepted-author-manuscript *: Immediate posting and dissemination of AAM’s is allowed to personal websites, to institutional repositories, or to arXiv. However, if your institution has an open access policy or mandate that requires you to post, Elsevier requires an agreement to be in place which respects the journal-specific embargo periods. Click herehttp://cdn.elsevier.com/assets/pdf_file/0018/121293/external-embargo-list.pdf for a list of journal specific embargo periods (PDF) and see our funding body agreementshttp://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/funding-body-agreements for more details. Le 3 mai 2013 à 14:17, Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk a écrit : On 2013-05-03, at 5:02 AM, Andras Holl h...@konkoly.hu wrote: Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. I think that could be said on Elsevier's OA policy, because of two reasons. Firstly, it quite effectively hinders OA. Secondly, however badly constructed this OA policy is, one can see that from a publisher's perspective, mandates like the NIH mandate are threatening. As a side effect, other mandates - which would cover only a tiny fraction of the articles, and does not designate a single target repository are also affected, regardless that these hardly affect any publishers' profits. Andras, You are right that the pseudo-legal hedging is a pain. But in point of fact, Elsevier is still just as Green on paper as Springer is, once one realizes that one can ignore all their hedging. It is clear that Elsevier wants to hold onto the good PR it gains them to be perceived as Green. That's why they have not, in fact, revoked their policy since it was adopted in 2004http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html#msg3771. They have a terrible image problem, on all fronts, and this is their only positive face. But it's not just psychology or strategy: *The Elsevier policy really does * *mean that all Elsevier authors retain their right to provide Green OA,* *unembargoed. * Yes, it's a nuisance that Elsevier hedges this with pseudo-legal FUD, but our job is to make it clear to authors, institutions and funders that the Elsevier policy does, indeed, formally allow immediate, unembargoed OA, exactly as Springer policy does, and that the Elsevier hedging is empty and can be completely ignored. The real problem here is not Elsevier's double talk: It is *the gratuitous * *boost that the credibility of Elsevier's hedging has received from the* *breath-takingly fatuous and counterproductive Finch/RCUK policy* and its flow-charts (which Elsevier has eagerly included in its rights documentation). For Elsevier has now got a new positive face that it can use for PR: Elsevier is fully *RCUK-compliant*. Please add this to the growing list of the perverse effects of Finch/RCUK... But rest assured that (1) the RCUK's own forced back-pedalling, grudgingly admitting that Green is just as RCUK-compliant as Gold, together with (2) HEFCE/RCUK's timely proposal to mandate immediate-deposit as the precondition for submitting a paper for REF 2020 undoes most of the damage done by the Finch Report. Stevan ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Is CC-BY analogous to toll access?
This is one of the most ludicrous arguments I have ever heard. I requires mental gymnastics of an absurd kind to equate a system in which people use copyright to heavily restrict content to a system in which works are freely available in perpetuity. If people can build services built on top of the literature and people want to pay for them, even when the underlying content is freely available, that is the definition of added value, and is in no way comparable to a system in which the underlying content is private property. On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 9:57 AM, Heather Morrison hgmor...@sfu.ca wrote: A problem with CC-BY: permitting downstream use with no strings attached is the toll access model The Creative Commons - Attribution (CC-BY) only license grants blanket permission rights for commercial use to any third party downstream. Proponents of CC-BY argue that this will open up the possibility for new commercial services to serve scholarship. This may or may not be; this is a speculative argument at this point. However, if this happens, this opens up the possibility that these new services will be made available on a toll access basis, because none of the CC-BY licenses is specific to works that are free of charge. This is very similar to the current model for dissemination of scholarship. Scholarly research is largely funded by the public, whether through research grants or university salaries. Scholars must make their work public (publish) in order to continue to receive grants, retain their jobs and advance in their careers. They give away their work to publishers with no strings attached, often signing away all copyright. A few publishers have taken advantage of this system to lock up scholarship for their private profit. One potential outcome of a CC-BY default for scholarship is a next generation of Elsevier-like toll access services. Many scholars and the public whose work was given away through CC-BY could be unable to afford the latest and best services made possible by their contributions. This is just one of the reasons to give serious thought to this matter before recommending a CC-BY default. For more, please see my Creative Commons and open access critique series. Thanks to Heather Piwowar for posting an opposing view on google g+ that helped me to work through this argument. from: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/03/a-problem-with-cc-by-permitting.html best, Heather 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 -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing
from my blog: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=105820 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing By Michael Eisen http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?author=1 | May 1, 2012 When Harvard University says it can not afford something, people notice. So it was last month when a faculty committee examining the future of the university?s libraries declared that the continued growth of journal subscription fees was unsustainable, even for them. The accompanying calls for faculty action are being hailed as a major challenge to the traditional publishers of scholarly journals. Would that it were so. Rather than being a watershed event in the movement to reform scholarly publishing, the tepidness of the committee?s recommendations http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1052, and the silence of the university?s administration http://www.harvard.edu/, are just the latest manifestation of the toothless response of American universities to the ?serials crisis? that has plagued libraries for decades. Had the leaders major research universities attacked this issue head on when the deep economic flaws in system became apparent, or if they?d showed even an ounce of spine in the ensuing twenty or so years, the subscription-based model that is the root of the problem would have long ago been eliminated. The solutions have always been clear. Universities should have stopped paying for subscriptions, forcing publishers to adopt alternative economic models. And they should have started to reshape the criteria for hiring, promotion and tenure, so that current and aspiring faculty did not feel compelled to publish in journals that were bankrupting the system. But they did neither, choosing instead to let the problem fester. And even as cries from the library community intensify, our universities continue to shovel billions of dollars a year to publishers while they repeatedly fail to take the simple steps that could fix the problem overnight. *The roots of the serials crisis * Virtually all of the problems in scholarly publishing stem from the simple act, repeated millions of times a year, of a scholar signing over copyright in their work to the journal in which their work is to appear. When they do this they hand publishers a weapon that enables them to extract almost unlimited amounts of money from libraries at the same research institutions that produced the work in the first place. The problem arises because research libraries are charged with obtaining for scholars at their institution access to the entire scholarly output of their colleagues. Not just the most important stuff. Not just the most interesting stuff. Not just the most affordable stuff. ALL OF IT. And publishers know this. So they raise prices on their existing journals. And they launch new titles. And then they raise *their* prices. What can libraries do? They have to subscribe to these journals. Their clientele wants them ? indeed, they need them to do their work. They can?t cancel their subscription to Journal X in favor of the cheaper Journal Y, because the contents of X are only available in X. Every publisher is a monopoly selling an essential commodity. No wonder things have gotten out of control. And out of control they are. Expenditures on scholarly journals at American research libraries quadrupledhttp://www.arl.org/bm~doc/arlbr249serials.pdf from 1986 to 2005, increasing at over three times the rate of inflation. This despite a massive reduction in costs due to a major shift towards electronic dissemination. These rates of growth continue nearly unabated, even in a terrible economy. (For those interested in more details, I point you to SPARC http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.shtml, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, who tracks journal pricing and revenues). *The opportunity universities missed* **Just as the serials crisis was hitting its stride in the mid-1990?s, fate handed universities an out ? the internet. In the early 1990?s access to the scholarly literature almost always occurred via print journals. By the end of the decade, virtually all scholarly journals were publishing online. This radical transformation in how scholarly works were disseminated should have been accompanied by a corresponding radical shift in the economics of journal publishing. But it barely made a dent. Publishers, who were now primarily shipping electrons instead of ink on paper, kept raising their subscription prices as if nothing had happened. And universities let them get away with it. By failing to show even a hint of creativity or initiative in seizing the opportunity presented by the internet to reshape the system of scholarly communication in a productive way, the leaders of American universities condemned themselves to 15 more years (and counting) of rising costs, and decreasing value. Their inaction also cost them the chance to reclaim the primary role they once held
[GOAL] Re: 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing
Steve- I'm not sure what you're taking with. I agree that universities should take control of their own scholarly content. But are you trying to argue that they have done this? Because I don't view setting up an IR to hold material published in subscription journals as taking ownership of the process - rather it's attempting to have it both ways without actually challenging the system in any meaningful way. -Mike On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Steve Hitchcock sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.ukwrote: A perspective spanning 20 years on this topic that fails to mention repositories hardly begins to tackle the issues or the problems. If we go back 20 years to 1992 we had arXiv, a repository, but barely any e-journals (although most e-journals then were free). Some journals that followed were called 'overlay' journals, because they effectively overlaid peer review on top of arXiv. The problems they solved were: 1 access to peer reviewed electronic content (when there were few peer reviewed journals available electronically) 2 low costs for peer reviewed content These original overlay journals were so successful they later became subscription journals (mainly because they also began to overlay conventional journal production costs on top of peer review). There were few imitators subsequently because the two problems were effectively solved c. 2000 by the mass switch to electronic journals, and the emergence of IRs and green OA journals. This polemic is trying to solve the same problems, but the solutions from the last 20 years are still in place, and it ignores them. The response of many universities has been pathetic, but not for the reasons suggested, and if the problem being addressed is costs rather than access, then the proposals here, to forcibly switch journals to gold OA, risks making the access problem worse and raising total costs higher than is achievable with IRs. It is not enough simply to talk with publishers about reallocation of charges. Instead institutions should be investing in and promoting local published content, ensuring it is made open access to the world locally; also making the inevitable connection between institutional repositories and research data linked to publications, before that too becomes subject to outside control and cost escalation. We can agree that we don't want it to take 15 more years for open access to become the norm. Steve Hitchcock WAIS Group, Building 32 School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 On 1 May 2012, at 15:30, Michael Eisen wrote: from my blog: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1058 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing By Michael Eisen | May 1, 2012 When Harvard University says it can not afford something, people notice. So it was last month when a faculty committee examining the future of the university?s libraries declared that the continued growth of journal subscription fees was unsustainable, even for them. The accompanying calls for faculty action are being hailed as a major challenge to the traditional publishers of scholarly journals. Would that it were so. Rather than being a watershed event in the movement to reform scholarly publishing, the tepidness of the committee?s recommendations, and the silence of the university?s administration, are just the latest manifestation of the toothless response of American universities to the ?serials crisis? that has plagued libraries for decades. Had the leaders major research universities attacked this issue head on when the deep economic flaws in system became apparent, or if they?d showed even an ounce of spine in the ensuing twenty or so years, the subscription-based model that is the root of the problem would have long ago been eliminated. The solutions have always been clear. Universities should have stopped paying for subscriptions, forcing publishers to adopt alternative economic models. And they should have started to reshape the criteria for hiring, promotion and tenure, so that current and aspiring faculty did not feel compelled to publish in journals that were bankrupting the system. But they did neither, choosing instead to let the problem fester. And even as cries from the library community intensify, our universities continue to shovel billions of dollars a year to publishers while they repeatedly fail to take the simple steps that could fix the problem overnight. The roots of the serials crisis Virtually all of the problems in scholarly publishing stem from the simple act, repeated millions of times a year, of a scholar signing over copyright in their work to the journal in which their work is to appear. When they do
[GOAL] Re: 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing
I did mention it briefly, saying Their inaction also cost them the chance to reclaim the primary role they once held (through their university presses) in communicating the output of their scholars. But, look, not every thing anyone writes about scholarly publishing can touch on every aspect of the problem and possible solutions. I was responding to the ridiculous accolades being given to Harvard for their latest challenge to publishers. Their complaint was about the rising cost of journals, and I wanted to point out that they're facing this problem because they've never tried to deal with it. This rising cost of journals is, obviously, related to, but not identical to, the problem of providing access to a university's scholarly output. This is another area where the university's response has been woefully inadequate, but it was not the subject of my post. On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Steve Hitchcock sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.ukwrote: I agree that universities should take control of their own scholarly content. Mike, Where does your article say this? How are you proposing they do this? Perhaps this was not an angle you wanted to cover in this article, but hard to ignore in a 20 year view. Repositories were not attempting to 'challenge' the system, but to solve the access problem, by working with and extending the system. They do that, for people who use repositories. Nor are repositories trying to take 'ownership' of the process, although the more content they can provide the more of a stake they have in continuing the process towards more access. These sound like terms used when someone wants to solve a problem by first replacing the incumbents, rather than someone who first wants to solve the problem. Steve On 1 May 2012, at 17:34, Michael Eisen wrote: Steve- I'm not sure what you're taking with. I agree that universities should take control of their own scholarly content. But are you trying to argue that they have done this? Because I don't view setting up an IR to hold material published in subscription journals as taking ownership of the process - rather it's attempting to have it both ways without actually challenging the system in any meaningful way. -Mike On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Steve Hitchcock sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: A perspective spanning 20 years on this topic that fails to mention repositories hardly begins to tackle the issues or the problems. If we go back 20 years to 1992 we had arXiv, a repository, but barely any e-journals (although most e-journals then were free). Some journals that followed were called 'overlay' journals, because they effectively overlaid peer review on top of arXiv. The problems they solved were: 1 access to peer reviewed electronic content (when there were few peer reviewed journals available electronically) 2 low costs for peer reviewed content These original overlay journals were so successful they later became subscription journals (mainly because they also began to overlay conventional journal production costs on top of peer review). There were few imitators subsequently because the two problems were effectively solved c. 2000 by the mass switch to electronic journals, and the emergence of IRs and green OA journals. This polemic is trying to solve the same problems, but the solutions from the last 20 years are still in place, and it ignores them. The response of many universities has been pathetic, but not for the reasons suggested, and if the problem being addressed is costs rather than access, then the proposals here, to forcibly switch journals to gold OA, risks making the access problem worse and raising total costs higher than is achievable with IRs. It is not enough simply to talk with publishers about reallocation of charges. Instead institutions should be investing in and promoting local published content, ensuring it is made open access to the world locally; also making the inevitable connection between institutional repositories and research data linked to publications, before that too becomes subject to outside control and cost escalation. We can agree that we don't want it to take 15 more years for open access to become the norm. Steve Hitchcock WAIS Group, Building 32 School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 On 1 May 2012, at 15:30, Michael Eisen wrote: from my blog: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1058 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing By Michael Eisen | May 1, 2012 When Harvard University says it can not afford something, people notice. So it was last month when a faculty committee examining the future
[GOAL] 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing
from my blog: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1058 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing By Michael Eisen | May 1, 2012 When Harvard University says it can not afford something, people notice. So it was last month when a faculty committee examining the future of the universityâs libraries declared that the continued growth of journal subscription fees was unsustainable, even for them. The accompanying calls for faculty action are being hailed as a major challenge to the traditional publishers of scholarly journals. Would that it were so. Rather than being a watershed event in the movement to reform scholarly publishing, the tepidness of the committeeâs recommendations, and the silence of the universityâs administration, are just the latest manifestation of the toothless response of American universities to the âserials crisisâ that has plagued libraries for decades. Had the leaders major research universities attacked this issue head on when the deep economic flaws in system became apparent, or if theyâd showed even an ounce of spine in the ensuing twenty or so years, the subscription-based model that is the root of the problem would have long ago been eliminated. The solutions have always been clear. Universities should have stopped paying for subscriptions, forcing publishers to adopt alternative economic models. And they should have started to reshape the criteria for hiring, promotion and tenure, so that current and aspiring faculty did not feel compelled to publish in journals that were bankrupting the system. But they did neither, choosing instead to let the problem fester. And even as cries from the library community intensify, our universities continue to shovel billions of dollars a year to publishers while they repeatedly fail to take the simple steps that could fix the problem overnight. The roots of the serials crisis Virtually all of the problems in scholarly publishing stem from the simple act, repeated millions of times a year, of a scholar signing over copyright in their work to the journal in which their work is to appear. When they do this they hand publishers a weapon that enables them to extract almost unlimited amounts of money from libraries at the same research institutions that produced the work in the first place. The problem arises because research libraries are charged with obtaining for scholars at their institution access to the entire scholarly output of their colleagues. Not just the most important stuff. Not just the most interesting stuff. Not just the most affordable stuff. ALL OF IT. And publishers know this. So they raise prices on their existing journals. And they launch new titles. And then they raise their prices. What can libraries do? They have to subscribe to these journals. Their clientele wants them â indeed, they need them to do their work. They canât cancel their subscription to Journal X in favor of the cheaper Journal Y, because the contents of X are only available in X. Every publisher is a monopoly selling an essential commodity. No wonder things have gotten out of control. And out of control they are. Expenditures on scholarly journals at American research libraries quadrupled from 1986 to 2005, increasing at over three times the rate of inflation. This despite a massive reduction in costs due to a major shift towards electronic dissemination. These rates of growth continue nearly unabated, even in a terrible economy. (For those interested in more details, I point you to SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, who tracks journal pricing and revenues). The opportunity universities missed Just as the serials crisis was hitting its stride in the mid-1990â²s, fate handed universities an out â the internet. In the early 1990â²s access to the scholarly literature almost always occurred via print journals. By the end of the decade, virtually all scholarly journals were publishing online. This radical transformation in how scholarly works were disseminated should have been accompanied by a corresponding radical shift in the economics of journal publishing. But it barely made a dent. Publishers, who were now primarily shipping electrons instead of ink on paper, kept raising their subscription prices as if nothing had happened. And universities let them get away with it. By failing to show even a hint of creativity or initiative in seizing the opportunity presented by the internet to reshape the system of scholarly communication in a productive way, the leaders of American universities condemned themselves to 15 more years (and counting) of rising costs, and decreasing value. Their inaction also cost them the chance to reclaim the primary role they once held (through their university presses) in communicating the output of their scholars. But while universities did
[GOAL] Re: 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing
I did mention it briefly, saying Their inaction also cost them the chance to reclaim the primary role they once held (through their university presses) in communicating the output of their scholars. But, look, not every thing anyone writes about scholarly publishing can touch on every aspect of the problem and possible solutions. I was responding to the ridiculous accolades being given to Harvard for their latest challenge to publishers. Their complaint was about the rising cost of journals, and I wanted to point out that they're facing this problem because they've never tried to deal with it. This rising cost of journals is, obviously, related to, but not identical to, the problem of providing access to a university's scholarly output. This is another area where the university's response has been woefully inadequate, but it was not the subject of my post. On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 11:14 AM, Steve Hitchcock sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: I agree that universities should take control of their own scholarly content. Mike, Â Where does your article say this? How are you proposing they do this? Perhaps this was not an angle you wanted to cover in this article, but hard to ignore in a 20 year view. Repositories were not attempting to 'challenge' the system, but to solve the access problem, by working with and extending the system. They do that, for people who use repositories. Nor are repositories trying to take 'ownership' of the process, although the more content they can provide the more of a stake they have in continuing the process towards more access. These sound like terms used when someone wants to solve a problem by first replacing the incumbents, rather than someone who first wants to solve the problem. Steve On 1 May 2012, at 17:34, Michael Eisen wrote: Steve- I'm not sure what you're taking with. I agree that universities should take control of their own scholarly content. But are you trying to argue that they have done this? Because I don't view setting up an IR to hold material published in subscription journals as taking ownership of the process - rather it's attempting to have it both ways without actually challenging the system in any meaningful way. -Mike On Tue, May 1, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Steve Hitchcock sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: A perspective spanning 20 years on this topic that fails to mention repositories hardly begins to tackle the issues or the problems. If we go back 20 years to 1992 we had arXiv, a repository, but barely any e-journals (although most e-journals then were free). Some journals that followed were called 'overlay' journals, because they effectively overlaid peer review on top of arXiv. The problems they solved were: 1 access to peer reviewed electronic content (when there were few peer reviewed journals available electronically) 2 low costs for peer reviewed content These original overlay journals were so successful they later became subscription journals (mainly because they also began to overlay conventional journal production costs on top of peer review). There were few imitators subsequently because the two problems were effectively solved c. 2000 by the mass switch to electronic journals, and the emergence of IRs and green OA journals. This polemic is trying to solve the same problems, but the solutions from the last 20 years are still in place, and it ignores them. The response of many universities has been pathetic, but not for the reasons suggested, and if the problem being addressed is costs rather than access, then the proposals here, to forcibly switch journals to gold OA, risks making the access problem worse and raising total costs higher than is achievable with IRs. It is not enough simply to talk with publishers about reallocation of charges. Instead institutions should be investing in and promoting local published content, ensuring it is made open access to the world locally; also making the inevitable connection between institutional repositories and research data linked to publications, before that too becomes subject to outside control and cost escalation. We can agree that we don't want it to take 15 more years for open access to become the norm. Steve Hitchcock WAIS Group, Building 32 School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 Â Â Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 On 1 May 2012, at 15:30, Michael Eisen wrote: from my blog: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1058 20 years of cowardice: the pathetic response of American universities to the crisis in scholarly publishing By Michael Eisen | May 1, 2012 When Harvard University says it can not afford something, people notice. So it was last month when a faculty committee examining the future of the universityâs libraries declared that the continued growth of journal
[GOAL] Re: OA and NIH public access compliance and enforcement?
The NIH enforces the policy by requiring a PMC ID on every paper submitted with grant progress reports and renewals. It's actually fairly effective. On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 8:02 PM, Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: Hard to imagine how fundee compliance with NIH OA policy can be effectively enforced while: (1) Deposit can be done by either the fundee or the publisher (who is not bound by the grant's conditions) (2) Deposit must by directly in PubMed Central instead of the fundee's institutional repository (where the institution can monitor publication output and ensure compliance) Unlike the institution (which monitors its researchers' publication output and productivity) the funder is unaware of what and where papers are published, especially after peer review is done and the researcher is funded. (Final Reports come far too late.) Hence the natural enforcer for funder policy is of course the fundee's institution, which already casts an eager eagle eye on all phases of the all-important research application and funding process (because of a shared institutional interest in getting research funding). The publisher, in contrast, has every interest in deterring or delaying OA as much as possible. The researcher, meanwhile, is busy writing grant applications and conducting research, if funded. Publish-or-perish ensures that researchers publish, but only institutions and institutional mandates can ensure that the publications are made OA (especially if institutional repository deposit is designated as the sole mechanism for submitting research for annual institutional performance review). See http://bit.ly/institutionalOA Stevan Harnad On 2012-04-23, at 8:03 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote: From: Hansen, Dave drhan...@email.unc.edu Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:28:06 + Does anyone on this list have an idea of how the NIH enforces its public access policy? I recently had a conversation with someone who has viewed several NIH non-compliance letters. She expressed some consternation that, while letters sometimes go out about non-compliance, there is no real force behind them and nothing that effectively compels compliance. I couldnât find any more info from the NIH itself. Does anyone have any idea how prevalent non-compliance is and how frequently NIH takes actions to enforce the policy, and for those library lawyers that I know lurk around on this list, who (if anyone) would be able to contest non-enforcement by the NIH?* *Iâm not trying to pick a fight. Iâd just like to know who has the right to do such a thing. - David R. Hansen Digital Library Fellow Samuelson Law, Technology Public Policy Clinic UC Berkeley School of Law dhan...@law.berkeley.edu (510) 643-8138 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley [ Part 2: Attached Text ] ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] op-ed on Research Works Act in today's NYT
I have an op-ed in today's NYT about the Research Works Act http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/research-bought-then-paid-for.html --Â Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley [ Part 2: Attached Text ] ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [sparc-advocacy] Re: [BOAI] Call to action: 2011 White House RFI on public access (deadline Jan. 2)
Daureen- You're missing the point. Under the current model members of the public who want to access a paper are paying for THE PAPER twice. They are heavily subsidizing the subscriptions that pay for journals - providing far more than the cost of publishing through indirect costs and other means. And then they're paying again to access the article themselves. And (putting aside the fact that Tang was NOT developed by NASA), It's as if NASA had paid $100,000,000 to General Foods to produce an infinite supply of Tang for the use of its astronauts, and then Tang charged $40/glass to the general public to get some for themselves. One can understand why GF might try to do that, but it's an insane deal from the public's perspective. -Mikw On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Daureen Nesdill daureen.nesd...@utah.edu wrote: Actually they probably pay for it multiple times since the taxpayers use the products of research. Should all the products that came out of the space program be free - e.g. Tang, velcro?  Should all results of medical research partially funded by taxpayers be free (that would be a billing nightmare)? Daureen Nesdill U of Utah From: Andras Holl [h...@konkoly.hu] Sent: Friday, November 18, 2011 9:17 AM To: boai-fo...@ecs.soton.ac.uk; SPARC Open Access Forum; American Scientist Open Access Forum; scholc...@ala.org; sparc...@arl.org; sparc...@arl.org; sparc-arfo...@arl.org; sparc-opend...@arl.org; Carter, Janet Subject: [sparc-advocacy] Re: [BOAI] Call to action: 2011 White House RFI on public access (deadline Jan. 2) Dear All, Taxpayers paid for the research. We deserve to be able to access the results. The main point to emphasize is that taxpayers are entitled to access the results of the research our tax dollars fund. Taxpayers should be allowed to immediately access and fully reuse the results of publicly funded research. I would put it differently. The taxpayers should be allowed access, but most of them would not be interested. But with toll access, taxpayers actually pay for the research twice. Once when it is done, and once again when other researchers, funded by them as well, read it. So: Taxpayers paid for the research. They should not pay twice. Andras --- - Andras Holl / Holl Andras         e-mail: h...@konkoly.hu Konkoly Observatory / MTA CsKI      Tel.: +36 1 3919368 Fax: +36 1 2754668 IT manager / Szamitastechn. rendszervez. Mail: H1525 POBox 67, Budapest, Hungary --- - -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups SPARC Advocacy group. To post to this group, send email to sparc-advoc...@arl.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sparc-advocacy+unsubscr...@arl.org For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-advocacy -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley
Re: Fool's Gold Journal Spam
/special-features.php Submit your article online at : http://www.editorialmanager.com/proteomics/       (Or) As e-mail attachment to the Editorial Office :editor@omicsgroup.co We shall look forward to hear from you. Sincerely, Editors, Journal of Proteomics Bioinformatics Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples Federico II, ITALY Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK Editorial office OMICS Publishing Group 5716 Corsa Ave., Suite 110 Westlake, Los Angeles CA 91362-7354, USA E-mail:editor@omicsgroup.co Ph: +1-650-268-9744 Fax: +1-650-618-1414 Toll free: +1-800-216-6499 Unique features: ⢠User friendly/feasible website-translation of your paper to 50 worldâs leading languages ⢠Audio version of published paper ⢠Digital articles to share and explore ⢠200 Open Access Journals ⢠10,000 Editorial team ⢠21 days rapid review process ⢠Indexing at PubMed (partial), Scopus, Chemical Abstracts, Scholar, DOAJ, EBSCO, Index Copernicus and Google Scholar etc ⢠Sharing Option: Social Networking Enabled ⢠Authors, Reviewers and Editors rewarded with online Scientific Credits This message was sent... by editor@omicsgroup.co Unsubscribe from all mailings Manage Subscription | Forward Email | Report Abuse -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley
Re: Captured product vs. service
Yes - I agree with Paul. There's very little lost relative to the public domain by going with the CCby license - it's what we chose long ago to use at PLoS. But it's worth pointing out that the currency of non-commercial intellectual work is citation, which is very different from the attribution protected by the CCby license. Citation is an academic tradition, and the expectation that one cites works they use applies to any published work, no matter the terms under which it was distributed. For example, all works of US government employees have been in the public domain for many decades. But - by tradition if not by law - one still has to cite them when they are used. The CCby license deals with something very different, requiring that, when the work is reproduced, the original citation must be maintained in the copy. Since normal academic referencing does not usually involve replication of the work, this term is moot. Don't get me wrong - I'm not arguing against the use of the CCby license - this is something I strongly advocate. But this is because I see the value in maintaining attribution in a future world where papers are widely replicated, repackaged, etc... - not because it has any real impact on the current academic citation system. On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Uhlir, Paul puh...@nas.edu wrote: I was referring to the first license below, Les. It has very few restrictions. One could use the CC0 license, which dedicates the work to the public domain, but almost all scientists want attribution, since that is the currency of non-commercial intellectual work. This is why I would reject the pure public domain status of research publications that are the result of government funded research, as suggested by Michael Eisen. There are other reasons to treat the pure public domain option with scepticism, but that is the main one in my view. Paul -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Leslie Carr Sent: Sun 2/21/2010 4:52 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject:     Re: Captured product vs. service On 21 Feb 2010, at 20:56, Uhlir, Paul wrote: In response to your last question, yes, if the article is made available under an Attribution Only (ATT 3.0) Creative Commons license. This is the recommended license for open access journals and is already broadly in use. The advantage of this license is that it also allows various types of automated knowledge discovery. CC licenses are not without restrictions! By Attribution Only do you mean http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ ? --- Les Carr -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley
Re: Captured product vs. service
recipients do not take action on it or show it to anyone else, but return this email to the sender and delete your copy of it The STFC telecommunications systems may be monitored in accordance with the policy available from http://dlitd.dl.ac.uk/policy/monitoring/monitoring%20statement.htm . --- --- -- Scanned by iCritical. -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley
Re: What about delayed open access
While delayed free access is better than no free access, you suggest that the question of whether delayed free access is better than immediate free access is equivalent to asking whether each article reading is equally valuable from society's viewpoint. But this issue perfectly illustrates why delayed free access is far less valuable - most accesses of most articles are made soon after publication. For open access articles these early accesses are free - for delayed free access articles tolls are collected (indeed, for most publishers the delay is titrated to ensure that most accesses are tolled). Thus, even if we accept that every reading is equivalently valuable, delayed free access has substantially less value than immediate open access. 2009/11/15 bj...@hanken.fi: Dear all regardless of your colour (gold or green) I've been following the recent debates on this forum with interest. Reminds me a bit about the schisms beteen the boljseviks and the mensjeviks at the beginning of the Russian revolution. In the current OA barometer project we're now in the final stages of our empirical work trying to establish what part of the 2008 peer reviewed article production is available as OA. Overall it seems the share available in journals and as e-copies is around equally big. What is particularly interesting is the split into different types of channels also inside gold and green. We will publish the results in due course but I would already now point out that we have found a perhaps surprisingly large amount of articles which have become OA on toll-gate publishers sites after a delay of 12 months. Very often you can only find this out after trying out with more recent articles, since the publishers in question don't seem to advertise the delayed OA. It becomes particularly intriguing when the same publishers also practice Open choice for individual articles. Why pay if all articles become free after 12 months anyway? I think we should take note of this and accept delayed OA as a viable form of Open Access. What is in fact the difference between this and a repository copy posted after an embargo of 12 months. From a more philosophical viewpoint I would like to raise the issue of weather each article reading is equally valuable from society's viewpoint. A very important type of reading is where the reader find's an interesting citation and tries to retrieve the cited article. For this type of reading 12 month delayed OA provides almost an equal service to full OA. And usually the chances are much higher that these readings influence the readers own research and that the article is read more carefully than the average current awareness reading where researchers quicly scan new articles in the journals they follow. Bo-Christer Björk -- Michael Eisen, Ph.D. Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California, Berkeley
Re: Green Angels and OA Extremists
Les Carr wrote: HAVING SAID THAT, the library is in no way adverse to finding mechanisms that assist individuals and ease their tasks, and I guess that Elsevier can have no objections to that either! How about a notification email to be sent to authors of In Press papers that contains a Deposit this paper button that initiates the user's deposit workflow on the ScienceDirect Submitted Manuscript PDF. You guys are such suckers. OF COURSE Elsevier can have objections to libraries assisting individuals in self-archiving their work, because Elsevier does not want self archiving to succeed! What do they have to do to actually prove this to you? Stevan, Les and others seem to think that Karen Hunter's recent email was some kind of bureaucratic error, rather than realize it for what it clearly is - a direct statement from Elsevier that they do not want self-archiving to actually take off. It's a ploy (an apparently successful ploy) on their part to diffuse moves towards effective universal open access by a) making them seem like good guys and b) fostering the illusion that we can have universal green OA without altering the economics of publishing. And Stevan, rather than the typical retort about how green OA can be achieved now, with a few keystrokes, can you please instead explain how the policy statement from your friends at Elsevier does not indicate that they are really opposed to real OA.
Re: AmSci Forum Netiquette
Is rabulistic a word? On Nov 21, 2008, at 7:54 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote: ...you seems to use a rabulistic discussion style... Do you think I am an idiot... Fair warning: Further postings in this vein will not be approved. This Forum is not for flaming. The messages will either be kept courteous and nonpersonal, or they will not appear. Stevan Harnad Moderator, American Scientist Open Access Forum
Re: Call for a vote of nonconfidence in the moderator of the AmSci Forum
I disagree with Stevan often. He can be infuriating. He has a tendency to bloviate. Nonetheless - he has been a FANTASTIC moderator of this list. I have sent off many posts that have criticized Stevan directly, and he has never failed to send them to the group. I can think of no other list that has not just lasted for 10 years, but kept up a high level of discourse and relevance. Stevan has my complete confidence. The list would die without him. On Oct 7, 2008, at 5:37 AM, Stevan Harnad wrote: On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 3:37 AM, c.oppenh...@lboro.ac.uk c.oppenh...@lboro.ac.uk wrote: I totally support Jean-Claude's view. I can only repeat what I said before: (1) I am happy to put an end to my 10-year moderatorship of the American Scientist Open Access Forum and hand it over to someone else who is willing to do it, but only if it is requested by a plurality of the membership, not if it is merely requested by a few dissatisfied members. (2) The moderator's role is to filter postings, approving the relevant ones, and rejecting the off-topic or ad-hominem ones. (3) Apart from that, the moderator has no special status or authority (other than what may accrue from the substance of his postings), and may post *exactly* as any other poster may post, including the posting of quotes, comments, critiques, elaborations, rebuttals *and summaries*. By my count, there have not been many votes one way or the other, but of the few votes there have been, more seem to be expressing confidence in my moderatorship than those that are calling for me to be replaced. I have also been accused of of censorship, by both Jean-Claude and Sally, the charge being subsequently rescinded. If there are doubts about whether I can be trusted to post or tally the votes -- or, more important, if we are to spare the Forum the bandwidth of votes appearing instead of OA substance -- I am also quite happy to direct the votes to be sent to a trusted 3rd party for tallying, if that is the wish of the Forum. Stevan Harnad Charles Professor Charles Oppenheim Head Department of Information Science Loughborough University Loughborough Leics LE11 3TU Tel 01509-223065 Fax 01509 223053 e mail c.oppenh...@lboro.ac.uk From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org] On Behalf Of Jean-Claude Guédon Sent: 06 October 2008 19:00 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: American Scientist Open Access Forum settings What I note is that my messages sometimes appear back very late and I wonder why. It is this detail which caused my recent angry reaction. While we are on technical matters, I would appreciate two things from this moderator/actor: 1. That he should refrain from ever summarizing somebody's words. We are all versed enough in the art of reading to be able to survive without this doubtful form of help. Besides, list moderators are not mentors or paternal figures. When the summary ends up distorting the original message, it becomes reprehensible; 2. Since the moderator also intervenes as member in this list, he should make clear which of his interventions are moderating interventions and which ones are participations in discussions. In the latter case, summaries should be avoided. I realize that Peter Suber manages a blog and not a list, but I really like the way in which he carefully delineates the pieces of news he wants to convey, and how he announces his own comments. This is a very good model to follow. I would also add that Peter Suber refrains from using judgements and terms that occasionally raise the ire of readers such as me. When I read a sentence such as Many silly, mindless things have been standing in the way of the optimal and inevitable (Sept 28), I ask myself if the silly, and mindless characterizations belong to this context. I also wonder whether the optimal and inevitable are objective, neutral terms. On Sept. 30th, in answering to me, Stevan made free to add: What on earth does this mean?. Was that useful? In short, Stevan acts as if there was one truth, one defender of this truth (himself). The list is his list and, on it, he can berate people at will (What on earth does this mean?). And then if you resist and respond with a few equivalents to What on earth... etc., then you are accused of flaming, being vituperative, or whatever. I wonder how the same individual, at will and arbitrarily, can assume the trappings of a moderator or a debate without even making sure that people know which role is at work. It troubles me and, I assume, it should trouble many people. This said, Stevan has also done excellent work in setting up this list and maintaining it. This too should be
Re: Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate: A Deposit Mandate
it legally. It is only technological short-sightedness that is making publishers and OA advocates alike imagine that the outcome is a somehow a matter of law and legislation. It is not, and never has been. It is only because we have been taking an obsolete, paper-based view of it all that we have not realized that when authors wish it to be so, the Web itself has made it no longer possible to prevent authors from freely distributing their own writings, one way or the other. There is no law against an author giving away individual copies of his own writing. And NIH need only mandate that authors deposit their (published research journal) writings: giving them away for free can be left to the individual author. The eventual outcome is obvious, optimal and inevitable. I strongly urge OA advocates to united under this back-up strategy. It will allow us to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Stevan Harnad http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/ Michael Eisen, Ph.D. (mbei...@berkeley.edu) Investigator Howard Hughes Medical Institute Associate Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development Department of Molecular and Cell Biology UC Berkeley
Re: Convergent IR Deposit Mandates vs. Divergent CR Deposit Mandates
I haven't followed this entire thread (I never can when Stevan is involved...), but I would like to add a few thoughts. The NIH had lots of reasons for requiring deposition in a central repository. But one that I have not seen mentioned is that the NIH can ask things of its grantees, but no authority to require that institutions set up an archive of their own, and are particularly reluctant do anything that might be perceived as an unfunded mandate. And why is everyone assuming that the existence of an institutional archive requires double deposits for authors who are also under a funder mandate to submit to a central repository? Why can't authors just simply submit to their institutional archive and then have the archive pass on the paper to PMC along with the minimal extra meta- data required (grant codes, etc...)? Or conversely why can't the institutions just harvest information about their authors from PMC? Alma seems to suggest there's something difficult about this, but if institutional archives are the interoperable utopia Stevan and others tout, this should be trivial. What am I missing here? Michael Eisen UC Berkeley/PLoS On Jul 25, 2008, at 8:54 AM, Alma Swan wrote: Can I reply to Jean-Claude and others from a slightly different perspective, that of an institution now wanting to make its outputs OA? I spent yesterday at a large London medical school to which I was invited to talk with the people involved in research policy about establishing a repository and making their research Open Access. The invitation included the phrase: because it is time we organised our research better and allowed access to it. In our discussions yesterday we had to deal with the fact that while over 90% of UK biomedical research is now covered by funder OA mandates (good), many of those mandates stipulate UKPMC as the deposit locus (not so good for the employers of the fundees - the universities). It's not so good because although this medical school can harvest a considerable amount of the material published by its employees from UKPMC, thus finding an easy way to start filling its own repository, this does mean it has an extra job to do. It's not a disaster, and CERN has been doing the same thing with arXiv for years, but it's another task for the repository staff. It also means that the medical school has to add a complication to a nice simple wording for its own policy, explicitly allowing those who are already under a funder mandate exemption from the medical school's policy of requiring researchers to deposit their work in that repository. For sure, it would be asking too much to demand that these people deposit BOTH in the institutional repository and in UKPMC. And the funders got there first. (And yes, researchers would balk at double - or more - depositing being required: I hear this complaint already and we've barely started with institutional mandates). True, we shouldn't get too wound up about this. Interoperability means that back-harvesting, forward-harvesting and upside-down-harvesting can go on wherever appropriate but it is a shame that we have arrived at a point where universities, the mainstays of our societies' research endeavours, have to develop more complex policies than would otherwise have been the case had funders simply directed their grantees to deposit their work in their institutional collections and harvested from there. The funders know where their grantees are, the repository software has a metadata field for funder, so the mechanics are simple. The benefit of such a move would have been to help the universities see the overall plan (earlier than they have done), ensure they put the right infrastructure in place and encouraged them to apply polices to cover *all* the research their employees do. The whole research community would thus be included and benefitting by this time, not just the biomedical community or other communities covered by big funder mandates. I would say that the research funders have rather let down their partners, the universities, in this sense. The other strand of discussion on this topic is always about where users find the Open Access information they want. The argument goes that they want to find it in subject-specific collections. Of course they do. It was never expected that searching specific institutional repositories would be a common practice - the whole point of OAI-PMH was to build what is effectively a worldwide research database, free to use, and that services would harvest and offer the packaged content of that worldwide database in myriad ways. So subject-specific collections, which are lovely, should be harvesting from the university repositories all the material that is relevant to that subject. They can provide all manner of nice services on that collection, tailored to the needs of that particular subject community. I thought
leveraging funder mandated deposition into central archives
There are some interesting threads in the discussion about whether the NIH should have mandated deposition into institutional archives. But the discussion is really kind of pointless, because, as we like to say in these parts it ain't gonna happen - for both practical and political reasons. And, whether Stevan likes it or not, other funders are likely to follow suit (though - bless his heart - I'm sure Stevan will never stop trying). I would like to shift the discussion a bit to something a bit more practical. Now that the NIH policy is in place, how can we most effectively leverage it to advance open access. I have been trying here at the University of California to do just this by proposing that the University: a) require author deposition in an institutional archive b) require that authors amend copyright agreements with publishers to not only allow deposition in the IR, but to allow redistribution and reuse of the content (so, for example, the full-text could be ingested into PMC, thereby satisfying the NIH mandate) c) handle the deposition of material from the IR to PMC (which may, or may not, require additional steps) Honestly, I don't have high hopes at this point. But I'm going to keep trying and would love some thoughts from the group about HOW to do this (and not the endless debate about whether (b) is necessary that I fear might ensue) and what other steps we might take make this a teachable/actionable moment. -Mike Michael Eisen UC Berkeley/PLoS
PLoS Biology impact factor
Thought you all might be interested that PLoS Biology received a preliminary impact factor (based only on articles published in the fall of 2003) of 13.9. Not quite in Nature and Science territory, but a very good number for a startup journal from a new publisher. All the usual caveats about impact factors apply, but it's a great statement about the value and progress of open access.
Re: Open Access Does Not require Republishing and Reprinting Rights
Fytton Rowland wrote: If something has been placed in the public domain, anyone may use it for any purpose whatsoever without reference to the author. Academic authors who favour Open Access are definitionally happy for anyone to read, download and print off their scholarly papers free of charge. However, I for one would be unhappy if a publisher were to take one of my (free) papers off the WWW and include it in a collection of some sort which is then sold, without any reference to me. I would not necessarily want any money but I'd like to be asked! So I think authors are well advised to assert copyright in their material even if they intend to allow unlimited free access to it. The Creative Commons Licenses that PLoS and others are now using were designed specifically so that you can define what kind of uses you wish to permit for your works. PLoS uses their attribution license which grants users unlimited rights to access, use and distribute a work, so long as they cite the original author. I should add that a very important reason to use licenses like this is so that you don't have to be asked for permission for something you were going to ok anyway. Asking permission may not sound like a big deal, but if you are trying to do something with the thousands of articles available in, say, e-print servers, it is a practical impossibility to ask for permission from all of the copyright holders. It makes far, far more sense for everyone involved to agree on what kind of uses are ok, and to explicitly permit them.
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Stevan Harnad wrote: There is nothing in the BOAI definition to support the free/open distinction that some have since attempted to make. In particular, the BOAI definition states that author/institution self-archiving of the full-text of an article is one of the two ways to make that article open access (BOAI-1 [green] and BOAI-2 [gold]). Proponents of the free/open distinction have attempted to argue that BOAI-2 is open access while BOAI-1 is merely free access (unless the author negotiates something equivalent to the creative commons license, including republication rights, as in some BOAI-2 journals). I have argued that this is not only *not* part of the BOAI definition, but that it is unnecessary and would be a gratuitous deterrent if taken to be a necessary condition for open access. I really don't want to beat this to death, and I think you and I are just going to have to agree to disagree about the importance of redistribution and reuse rights. However, I don't see how you can keep saying that the BOAI doesn't support the distinction between free and open. The BOAI text can speak for itself. By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. I have been arguing that self-archiving where the original publisher restricts uses of the self-archived version of the paper falls outside the BOAI definition of open access. While I disagree strongly with you on this, I accept that you think there are tactical reasons to promote such restricted self-archiving. But I simply can not see how you can claim that making papers freely available in a way that explicitly prevents copying, distribution and many other uses is consistent with the BOAI definition of open access.
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
I think an important point has been lost in the various threads on this topic. While there is clearly disagreement about what does and should constitute open access, I think we all agree on two things: 1) universal free access to the peer-reviewed literature, in any form, would be a wonderful thing - both in its own right, and because it would almost certainly lead to universal open access 2) the greatest challenge facing open access advocates is convincing authors to make their works available freely and/or openly by either publishing in open access journals or by self-archiving One of the reasons that I and many others are so ardent in our defense of the stronger form of open access - one that explicitly permits redistribution and reuse - is because we believe that the uses these freedoms will enable are a critical part of making open access more attractive to authors. A simple example is PubMed. Virtually all scientists who work in fields whose journals are included in PubMed use this database as their primary tool for searching the literature, and this is unlikely to change. PubMed is free, simple, efficient and fairly comprehensive, and, with links to journals on publisher websites it provides a gateway to the online scientific literature. Of course, most of the articles are behind toll barriers, and these barriers are not transparent even to scientists at the wealthiest institutions. An exception are the articles in PubMed Central - these are freely available to anyone, with a prominent link provided in PubMed. Because scientists in their role as readers experience the utility of PMC on a daily basis, they recognize the advantages of journals that deposit their content in PMC when they choose the journals in which they publish, and PLoS has received considerable feedback from authors who cite immediate availability in PMC as a major reason for their choosing to publish with us (I'm sure BMC has had a similar experience). Recently, the NCBI has begun linking their sequence, structure, taxonomy and other databases to the full-text articles in PMC, thereby increasing their utility and their impact. As people start to use these tools, the attractiveness of journals in PMC - especially those that make their content available immediately - will grow. The benefits of inclusion in PMC - and in other services that will begin taking advantage of the content published by BMC, PLoS and others open access publishers or made truly open access through other means - are denied to articles that are self-archived in a way that precludes their reuse and redistribution. While it is may be theoretically possible to do some of these things by crawling self-archived content, it is a practical reality that relying solely on such methods will diminish the attractiveness of open access, and is a major reason why I believe that the things that Stevan dismisses as frills or as organic food for the starving - things like conversion to XML and the right to make articles available in different forms at different places - are practical prerequisites for the success of open access.
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
Stevan- You say: Am I missing something? It seems to me that we have all the access and use we could possibly want here, without going so far as to stipulate what sort of velum it should appear on before declaring the access truly open! Yes, you are missing something. You seem intent on narrowly circumscribing the possible uses of the literature to include only those that amount to reading and citing works, thereby needlessly limiting both current and future uses, and it is absurd to dismissing other possible uses as perks that exist only to promote open access journals. I will await your reply to my earlier posting before I reiterate, once again, the types of uses that you have left off of your exhaustive list of possible uses of the literature. And none of this free vs. open business is either explicit or implicit in what we agreed that open access meant when we founded the BOAI. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess I don't see how you can possibly say this. The definition from BOAI follows: By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. But you seem to be editing out the rights to distribute and use the literature. I don't recall it ever coming up in Budapest that we were endorsing flavors of open access where these key elements were missing. It was always assumed that the two strategies were alternative ways of achieving this end - a belief that I still strongly endorse. Open access, in the true BOAI sense, can be readily achieved by self-archiving. But - and I think this is the crux of the current argument - self-archiving does not in and of itself achieve open access, especially when its chief proponent is dismissing critical parts of the open access definition as spurious. By relaixng the definition of open access in order to appease publisher you may achieve free access more rapidly, but this will not be without a cost. But before I reply I would like to introduce two historical/factual points, and one logical point that they entail, for reflection: (1) Let's ask ourselves what it was, exactly, that changed, with the advent of the online age, insofar as the specific literature we are discussing here -- which I must never tire to remind everyone is the annual 2.5 million articles published in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals -- is concerned? Others may have other answers, but by my lights what changed was nothing more or less than the *means* and the *cost* of making one's peer-reviewed research accessible to would-be users: In the on-paper era, access had to be restricted to those users whose institutions could afford the subscription access tolls, and the potential usage and impact from those would-be users whose institutions could not afford the access tolls had to be renounced as lost -- in order to ensure the recovery of the substantial real costs of on-paper publication (without which there would be no access or impact at all). In the on-line era it became possible, at last, (a) for researchers, if they wished, to make their peer-reviewed articles accessible to all would-be users toll-free, by self-archiving them on the web, and thereby putting an end to their lost potential impact. It also become possible (b) for publishers, if they wished, to cut the costs of on-paper publication and recover the much lower on-line-only costs by charging the author-institution a fee per outgoing article published instead of by charging user-institutions an access-toll per journal or article accessed. http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/ It's certainly true that the means and costs changed - but that is certainly not all! What also changed was that it became possible to begin moving beyond the limitations on the creative use of the knowledge contained in the scientific literature imposed by the printed page. Saying that all that changed for scientific publishing in the on-line era is that it became possible to expose a greater chunk of the world to our writing, is, in my mind, like saying all that changed for society with the birth of the internet was that it became easier and cheaper to send letters to our friends and family. In neither case is any of the following a sine qua non, though they appear to be 'articles of faith' for some: *Copyright retention by the author, or the author's institution (or, for that matter, absence of
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
works are suddenly self-archived, who is going to subscribe to journals? I just don't see how self-archiving can provide universal free access without killing off toll-access journals in the process (do you really think selling print subscriptions will sustain them?). I feel that living under and promulgating the illusion that self-archiving and toll-access journals are mutually compatible does not hasten universal access, it delays it because it delays us facing up to the reality that we need a new economic model for scientific publishing. (6) SELF-ARCHIVED FULL-TEXTS CAN BE COMPUTATIONALLY DATA-MINED: Research articles are not themselves research data (though they may contain some research data), but they can be treated as computational data if they are accessible toll-free online. Again, there is no need for any further rights or computational capabilities to do be able to do this: The full-text need merely be immediately, permanently, and ubiquitously (i.e., webwide) accessible toll-free, so any user anywhere, any time, can read the full-text on-screen, download it, store it, print it off, search/grep it, computationally process it, etc. While there is a lot that can/could be done with self-archived free-access works, the inability to serve up cached, or more importantly, digested and reprocessed versions of works greatly and needlessly limits the types of computational analysis and data-mining that can be done on the literature. If all you want to do is search, then self-archiving is ok (although still subotimal), but for any more sophisticated analyses it is not. - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 7:45 AM Subject: Re: Free Access vs. Open Access ~On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote: sh Perhaps all Sally means here is that she thinks it would be more useful sh if open-access (gold) journals did not use the creative-commons sh license, and instead, apart from providing immediate, permanent, sh toll-free, non-gerrymandered, online access to the full-text, the journal sh required *exclusive* copyright transfer for its sale in derivative works. sh I'd say: No harm in that; go ahead! There was never any need for the sh creative-commons license here anyway! Open-access provision was all that was sh needed -- whether via the golden road or the green one. sh (But again, what market is there likely to be for derivative works when the sh full-text is forever freely available online?) I couldn't disagree more. You are redefining open access to be no more than free access. For many of us involved in open access the ability to reuse and republish text is a critical part of making optimal use of the scientific literature. PLoS chose the creative commons license in order to encourage creative reuse of the content we publish. Mike, In this discussion thread Free Access Vs. Open Access http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2956.html I have several times laid out in some detail the reasons I believe the distinction between free access and open access is not only vacuous, but is now even becoming an obstacle to the understanding and growth of free/open access itself. I will again summarize the points, but please, by way of reply, do not just reinvoke the distinction, as if it were valid and unchallenged, but rather defend it against the 6 points I make, if it can be defended. I hasten to add that it is not a defence to say that the free/open distinction is enshrined in the wording of the Budapest Open Access Initiative that we both had a hand in drafting and that we both signed: I considered the distinction just as empty then as I do now, but then I thought it was harmless, like adding for the candidate of your choice to the demand for voting rights. I would never have thought that anyone would call it not true voting rights or less than full voting rights if you got to vote, but the candidate of your choice was not on the ballot! Here is the BOAI definition: What does BOAI mean by open access? http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. So here is my list, again: (1
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
Stevan- I couldn't disagree more. You are redefining open access to be no more than free access. For many of us involved in open access the ability to reuse and republish text is a critical part of making optimal use of the scientific literature. PLoS chose the creative commons license in order to encourage creative reuse of the content we publish. You may not see the value in allowing redistribution, derivative works and other forms of reuse, but you have to recognize that others do and that this is an central part of the definition of open access. And you shouldn't be encouraging this kind of confusion of open access and free access. If all you care about is free access, then lobby for that, but don't dilute the meaning of open access. -Mike - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 5:23 PM Subject: Re: Free Access vs. Open Access Perhaps all Sally means here is that she thinks it would be more useful if open-access (gold) journals did not use the creative-commons license, and instead, apart from providing immediate, permanent, toll-free, non-gerrymandered, online access to the full-text, the journal required *exclusive* copyright transfer for its sale in derivative works. I'd say: No harm in that; go ahead! There was never any need for the creative-commons license here anyway! Open-access provision was all that was needed -- whether via the golden road or the green one. (But again, what market is there likely to be for derivative works when the full-text is forever freely available online?) Stevan Harnad On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote: sm I think it is perfectly reasonable (and in no way a denial of Open Access) sm for a publisher to wish to retain the right to sell derivative copies of a sm work, even if in its original form it is made freely available. This is indeed perfectly reasonable and correct, and in no way a denial of Open Access. (But if the original form of a work is freely available online, it is not clear what market there would be for derivative copies...) sm After all, they've got to recover their costs somehow - and if they sm recover more from other sources, they will not need to ask authors to sm pay so much. This sentence is far less clear than the prior one, and appears to be conflating the case where open-access to the work is being provided by self-archiving an article that has been published in a toll-access (green) journal with the case where open-access to the woork is being provided by publishing it in an open-access (gold) journal. If the sentence referred to self-archiving green journal articles, then the authors are not paying anything (the green journals are still charging access tolls). If the sentence was referring to publishing articles in gold (open-access) journals, then author/institution publication fees are paying the costs. There might conceivably be additional revenue to be made from selling derivative works, which could then lower the gold journal's author/institution fees, but (as noted) who would want to pay for derivative works if the full-text was already available free for all online? Many gold journals are using or planning to use the creative commons license, which (as I understand it) allows anyone to publish derivative works from the open-access work. That would of course include its gold publisher too. So no further right needs to be retained by the gold publisher in that case. Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 99 00 01 02 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 (green): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin Declaration
Stevan- PLoS and BMC are open access publishers and thus have to be expected to put most of our effort into promoting open-access journals, just as you put most of your effort into promoting self-archiving. But PLoS (and, I should add BMC) have also supported self-archiving as well, and will continue to do so, whether or not you change the wording of this document. I can't speak for PLoS on my own, but will run this by our board and staff and will pass any additional suggestions they have on to you. -Mike - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 12:51 PM Subject: Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin On Thu, 25 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote: I don't want to reopen the argument about your 5%/95% division, but I don't think its appropriate or necessary to use these figures here. How about just: (8) New open-access journals recover their costs by charging the author-institution for each outgoing article they publish and making all published works freely and openly accessible from the moment of publication, instead of restricting access to subscribers (9) For articles for which no suitable open access journal exists, an alternative immediate solution to put an end to access denial and impact loss is for their authors to self-archive their full-texts online on their own institutional open-access websites for all would-be users worldwide. Mike, those changes seem reasonable, but I hope you will find it equally reasonable that they be made only on condition that Public Library of Science (PLoS) then officially supports and promotes the signing of this statement to institutions in its own open-access promotional efforts. So far, both PLoS and BMC have been promoting only (8) and not (9) in their negotiations with institutions, and it is for that very reason that I have invoked the 5%/95% figure (which is fair and true -- but I agree that we need not reopen that here): to make it clear that the far bigger and faster means of providing immediate open access is being systematically overlooked. I think it would be reasonable to dilute the statement by removing the 5/95 contrast, but only if it will then be actively promoted by PLoS and BMC. If it is diluted only to have PLoS and BMC continue to promote only (8) unilaterally, and not (8) and (9) jointly, then I don't think the interests of immediate open access will be served by diluting it in this way. I know you cannot speak for BMC, but I am confident that if PLoS commits to promoting this joint open-access provision strategy with institutions instead of just promoting (8), then BMC will follow suit too. Best wishes, Stevan
Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin
Stevan- If the Public Library of Science is dedicated to promoting OA for all journal articles, and not just to promoting OA journal publishing for its own articles, I hope that it will elect to use its vast subsidy to promote the Unified Joint OA Provision Policy, rather than just promoting OAJ alone. There is a serious misconception underlying this statement, one that is all too often repeated by people quibbling about what PLoS is doing. It needs to be corrected. PLoS does not have a vast subsidy. We have a grant from the Moore Foundation, the explicit purpose of which is to launch and promote open access journals like PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine. We believe that the long-term success of open access requires building broad community support, and thus we have always been engaged in promoting open access in general. However, we also believe that the long-term success of open access requires a robust and vibrant open access publishing sector, and that PLoS has to remain focused on this goal if we are to succeed. -Mike - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 6:19 PM Subject: Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin On Thu, 25 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote: PLoS and BMC are open access publishers and thus have to be expected to put most of our effort into promoting open-access journals, just as you put most of your effort into promoting self-archiving. Mike, I put all of my effort into promoting open-access provision, via the Unified Joint Open-Access Provision Policy: (OAJ) Researchers publish their research in an open-access journal if a suitable one exists, otherwise (OAA) they publish it in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it in their own research institution's open-access research archive. I have been promoting both components of this strategy for over 10 years, and the OAJ cost-recovery model in particular since well before either PLoS or BMC existed! For some time now I have been faithfully promoting them jointly, as the complementary components they are. OAA (self-archiving) is not promoting a product, nor has it ever had a subsidy or promotional budget, as PLoS and BMC have. It is being promoted purely on the strength of the existing evidence as the powerful and effective means that it is for providing immediate open access to all of the peer-reviewed research literature: The existing evidence is that OAA actually does provide at least three times as much OA as OAJ does today, and could provide OA to all current journal articles overnight, tonight. sh I hope... Public Library of Science (PLoS)... officially supports sh and promotes the signing of this statement to institutions in its sh own open-access promotional efforts. So far, both PLoS and BMC have sh been promoting only [OAJ] and not [OAA] in their negotiations with sh institutions. I can't speak for PLoS on my own, but will run this by our board and staff and will pass any additional suggestions they have on to you. If the Public Library of Science is dedicated to promoting OA for all journal articles, and not just to promoting OA journal publishing for its own articles, I hope that it will elect to use its vast subsidy to promote the Unified Joint OA Provision Policy, rather than just promoting OAJ alone. Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 99 00 01 02 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 (green): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin Declaration
Stevan- I don't want to reopen the argument about your 5%/95% division, but I don't think its appropriate or necessary to use these figures here. How about just: (8) New open-access journals recover their costs by charging the author-institution for each outgoing article they publish and making all published works freely and openly accessible from the moment of publication, instead of restricting access to subscribers (9) For articles for which no suitable open access journal exists, an alternative immediate solution to put an end to access denial and impact loss is for their authors to self-archive their full-texts online on their own institutional open-access websites for all would-be users worldwide. -Mike - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2003 12:13 PM Subject: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin Declaration This is the draft of a statement for universities and research institutions worldwide to sign to commit themselves to implementing the Berlin Declaration by providing open access to their peer-reviewed research output. Note that it is not meant to be merely a declaration of solidarity and support for the principle of open access, but an institutional commitment to open-access provision. Comments are welcome. The draft can be revised to incorporate recommended corrections, clarifications or other improvements. -- Declaration of institutional commitment to implementing the Berlin Declaration on open-access provision http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html and the WSIS Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action http://www.itu.int/wsis/ (1) Our researchers are paid (and their research projects are funded, often with tax-payers' money) to conduct research and to publish their findings (publish or perish) so that other reseachers, at other universities and institutions worldwide, can access, use, build-upon, cite and apply those findings. This is called research impact. The productivity and progress of research depend on its impact. (2) Research is published in peer-reviewed journals (24,000 worldwide, across all disciplines and languages, publishing about 2,500,000 articles per year). (3) Unlike book-authors or journalists, research article-authors do not seek royalties or fees for these writings: They write them only for the sake of research impact. (This is why they and their institutions were always willing, in the paper era, to undertake the effort and expense of mailing out hard-copies of their articles to any would-be users who requested a reprint, and sometimes even to pay page-charges to the journal for publishing the article. Greater research impact means both (i) career advancement, higher salary, more research income, prizes and prestige for the researchers and their institutions and, more important, (ii) greater research productivity and progress, hence greater benefits to the tax-payers who fund the research.) (4) In the paper era, the only way for journals to cover the costs of peer-review and publication was to charge subscription tolls for access: Universities and research institutions paid the tolls so their own researchers could access and use the peer-reviewed research output of other universities and research institutions. (5) No institution could ever afford toll-access to anywhere near all 24,000 journals; and most could only afford a small fraction of them -- a fraction that keeps shrinking with rising journal prices, even in the Web era. (6) As a result, it was true in the paper era -- and is still true today, in the Web era -- that for each one of the 2,500,000 articles published yearly, most of its would-be users cannot access it. That means much of its potential research impact is being lost. (7) In the paper era, this impact loss was unavoidable, but in the Web era it is no longer necessary. There are two complementary ways in which all access-denial -- and hence all impact-denial -- can now be eradicated: (8) New open-access journals can recover their costs by charging the author-institution for each outgoing article they publish, instead of charging the user-institution for each journal or article they access. (But fewer than 1000 open-access journals exist so far, publishing only about 5% out of the 2,500,000 articles that are published every year.) (9) For the remaining 95%, the articles published yearly in the 23,400 toll-access journals, the immediate solution to put an end to access denial and impact loss is for their authors to self-archive their full-texts online on their own institutional open-access websites for all would-be users worldwide. (10) As soon as universities, research institutions and research funders extend their existing publish or
Re: Query About Open-Access Journal Start-Ups
My name is [identity deleted], I am a graduate student in [] at []. My professor [], recommended you when I discussed writing an essay on the internet and the monopoloy of the journals. I think he was amused when I said I wanted to take a marxist approach... Not so sure about that anymore. It is not that journals have a monopoly (there are 24,000 different peer-reviewed journals, publishing about 2.5 million articles per year), although 1500 of them are published by one publisher. What the top journals have is *inelastic demand.* (The university libraries *must* subscribe to them, because their researchers need access.) So the problem is not monopoly but access; nor is it a marxist matter: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#14.Capitalism I think one of the main problems is that journals are not monopolies. The problem is not that any one publisher has control over the market, but rather that any non-open access publisher has a monopoly on the distribution of every article that they publish. Journal articles are not interchangeable, and thus it is important to view the distribution of every article as a market of its own. When the right to distribute any article or collection of articles (no matter how small a fraction of the total industry) is monopolized, all of the problems of monopolies follow - especially excessive prices, poor customer service, etc... That these monopolies also have a captive market that requires their products only makes things worse.
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3223.html http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess In approximate numbers, we are taking about how to provide OA, in the above sense, to the yearly 2,500,000 articles that appear in the planet's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals (across all disciplines and languages). Before I proceed to a point-by-point commentary on Mike's posting, I will reproduce it in full. But before that I will provide a succinct summary of my reply. Here it is: There is only one, unified OA provision strategy: Publish your article in an OA journal if a suitable one exists, otherwise publish your article in a suitable TA journal and also self-archive it. There is no competition between these two components; they are complementary. The discussion below is only about what is the immediate scope for each component today. All are agreed that both components are underutilized. The only disagreement is about *how much* each component is underutilized. The disagreement would be immediately mooted if the advocates of each component always explicitly advocated their own component as only one part of the unified OA provision strategy: Publish your article in an OA journal if a suitable one exists otherwise publish your article in a suitable TA journal and also self-archive it. First, here is Mike's comment in full: On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote: I think Sally is absolutely correct that less than 2.5% of published content is published in open access journals, but that doesn't count the large amount of material that is made freely available by fee-for-access publishers through their own websites or through PubMed Central. I, of course, don't count this later class as being truly open access, but it is as available as self-archived content and should be given its proper due. I would also like to object, once again, to Stevan's continued use of this 5% open access / 95% self-archiving number. It's grossly unfair to contrast reality (5% of articles currently published in open access journals) on one side with potential (that 95% - or more accurately something like 50% - of articles COULD be self-archived). With BMC's diverse collection of journals, PLoS, and the many other open-access publishers in DOAJ (including high-end journals like PLoS Biology, J. Biol, JCI, BMJ) virtually any biomedical research article could be published in an open-access journal today. Thus, most authors - many, many more than the 5% you imply - who want to make their work freely available have a choice - they can publish it in a green fee-for-access journal and self-archive it, or they can publish in an open access gold journal. They may have reasons to choose the former route, and there is certainly a lot of work that needs to be done to make open access journals more appealing, but let's stop implying that the open access journal option wasn't available. I now reply point by point: I think Sally is absolutely correct that less than 2.5% of published content is published in open access journals, but that doesn't count the large amount of material that is made freely available by fee-for-access publishers through their own websites or through PubMed Central. I, of course, don't count this latter class as being truly open access, but it is as available as self-archived content and should be given its proper due. I completely agree with Mike that all freely-accessible full-text journal articles should be counted, but I don't think it is giving them their proper due to decline to count them as truly OA! Unless, of course, they fail to meet the full OA definition: FREE, IMMEDIATE, PERMANENT ACCESS TO REFEREED-ARTICLE FULL-TEXTS ONLINE Is there any need for a universal Open Access label? http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3223.html They could fail to meet that definition not only by failing to be free, or failing to be refereed journal articles, or failing to be full-texts online. They could also fail by not being immediate or by not being permanent. (A journal that makes its contents free online after a delayed embargo period of 6 months to 2 years or more is certainly no OA journal. Nor is a journal that temporarily makes its contents free online as a from of advertisement, but then removes them.) Harnad, S. (2001) AAAS's Response: Too Little, Too Late. Science dEbates [online] 2 April 2001. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/291/5512/2318b Mike and I are agreed on this. We do disagree, however, on the free/open distinction (which I consider completely spurious): Free Access vs. Open Access http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2956.html But there is also an important logical point which Mike seems to have overlooked: If a journal provides the following for *all* of its articles: FREE
Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Open Access
I think Sally is absolutely correct that less than 2.5% of published content is published in open access journals, but that doesn't count the large amount of material that is made freely available by fee-for-access publishers through their own websites or through PubMed Central. I, of course, don't count this later class as being truly open access, but it is as available as self-archived content and should be given its proper due. I would also like to object, once again, to Stevan's continued use of this 5% open access / 95% self-archiving number. It's grossly unfair to contrast reality (5% of articles currrently published in open access journals) on one side with potential (that 95% - or more accurately something like 50% - of articles COULD be self-archived). With BMC's diverse collection of journals, PLoS, and the many other open-access publishers in DOAJ (including high-end journals like PLoS Biology, J. Biol, JCI, BMJ) virtually any biomedical research article could be published in an open-access journal today. Thus, most authors - many, many more than the 5% you imply - who want to make their work freely available have a choice - they can publish it in a green fee-for-access journal and self-archive it, or they can publish in an open access gold journal. They may have reasons to choose the former route, and there is certainly a lot of work that needs to be done to make open access journals more appealing, but let's stop implying that the open access journal option wasn't available. - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 1:29 PM Subject: Re: Journals Peer-Reviewed Journals Open-Access Journals Open Access On Thu, 11 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote: I would question Stevan's estimate that 2.5% of articles are published in OA journals. While it does indeed look as if 2 - 2.5% of peer reviewed journals are OA (that is, if all those listed by Lund et al are peer reviewed), I very much doubt that they carry as many articles as the rest. This is because OA journals are, almost without exception, relatively new and extremely long-established journals tend to be far, far, bigger in terms of issues and articles published per year. I don't disagree with Sally's suggestion that 2.5% of journals does not necessarily mean 2.5% of articles published in journals. I was very deliberately using a very conservative, high-end estimate (sometimes I even use 5%) merely to illustrate how minuscule is the amount of OA that can currently be provided via the OA journal route (gold) and hence how important it is to supplement it via the OA self-archiving route (green), today. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 99 00 01 02 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 (green): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives
I would like you to defend your claim that PLoS is crunching small publishers. Can you provide an example? - Original Message - From: Dr. Vinod Scaria drvi...@hotpop.com To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 9:07 AM Subject: Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives CALICUT MEDICAL JOURNAL http://www.calicutmedicaljournal.org ARCHIVES AT COGPRINTS *** As we all know, Open Access Publishing is not gaining the momentum as far as Journals published from Developing Countries are concerned [with reference to western Journals]. Many reasons can be attributed like: 1. Monopolistic nature of Open Access Publishers like BioMedCentral http://www. biomedcentral.com which pursues the author pays and would drive away any author from Developing countries. Thus obviously publishers from Developing countries would have second thoughts before starting one at BMC. By meaning monopolistic, I refer to the almost complete control over open access publishing- say about 75% of open Access Journals in Medicine.and Mega organisations like PLOS are crunching the small publishers, as they can easily override the smaller ones with the mega funding they have. see: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7392/766#art 2. As I previously stated in my Editorial in Internet Health- www. virtualmed. netfirms. com/internethealth/articleapril03. html , the fear of losing revenue, which are the sole source of sustenance of many Journals [though some make a meagre profit]. 3. Lack of sufficient expertise and exposure to Open Access Publishing. www. virtualmed. netfirms. com/internethealth/opinion0303. html http://bmj. com/cgi/eletters/326/7382/182/b But recent developments are worth mentioning - at least from India. Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences www. ojhas. org , India's first Online BioMedical journal declared a couple of months back that they would go Open. [I am in the Editorial board of OJHAS from Sept 2003]. OJHAS is edited and published by a small group of scholars with no external support. Everything from Web Design to Editing and Review are done by voluntarily by the Editorial team. It also stands as a fine example of the fact that Open Access Journals can indeed be successfully organised and can indeed survive without an author pays model. Now coming to the Archival, Cogprints was our first choice for many reasons 1] It offers interoperability [as mentioned by Harnad] 2] It offers unmatched popularity 3] It has been there for years and we can be sure of the permanence 4] It is of course FREE. And as Harnad suggested, there is no reason why Journals should not be archived at Open Archives, be it self maintained repositories or Centralised ones. In fact Open Archiving of electronic journals is the need of the hour because our own studies [unpublished] show that Electronic journals are just as ephemeral as websites. Scholarly communication should never be lost at the cost of copyright restrictions. Many of these journals have perhaps done more harm than good by locking the access by copyright restrictions. Moreover, electronic journals are equally vulnerable to the vagaries of the Internet. For example, JMIR www. jmir. org went suddenly offline some time back [i think it was an year or so] making the whole content inaccessible. [But it reappeared later and now is an Open Access Journal]. Thus in short, OPen Archiving of Journals as a whole is perhaps to be discussed in a wider perspective than just making it OPEN. The major emphasis should be the PERMANENCE of Open Archiving. I hope this post will surely trigger a debate on the topic. Kind regards Dr. Vinod Scaria Executive Editor: Calicut Medical Journal Assoc Editor: Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences Editor in Chief: Internet He@ lth WEB: www. drvinod. netfirms. com MAIL: vinodscaria@yahoo. co. in Mobile: +91 98474 65452 - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER. SIGMAXI. ORG Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 3:38 AM Subject: Re: Central vs. Distributed Archives The two items that follow below are by Vinod Scario from Peter Suber's Open Access News http://www. earlham. edu/~peters/fos/fosblog. html It provides an interesting and inspiring example of the power and value of OAI-interoperability http://www. openarchives. org/ and the interdependence of the two open-access strategies (open-access self-archiving and open-access journal publishing) that this new online open-access journal, produced in India, is being made accessible by archiving it http://calicutmedicaljournal. org/archives. html in a specially created sector of CogPrints in the UK, http://cogprints. ecs. soton. ac. uk/view/subjects/JOURNALS. html a
Re: On the Need to Take Both Roads to Open Access
Whether the digital text (including data) of an article is made openly accessible by being published in an open-access journal or by being published in a toll-access journal but being self-archived in an open-access archive is irrelevant: Either way, the data reported in it are available to be used computationally. Don't confuse the use and re-use of data with the use of the *text* to generate other text (other than by quoting it): Any other re-use of text is plagiarism (i.e., if it is not quotation). Text, unlike data and software code, cannot be reprocessed and made one's own: It can only be cited and quoted. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2967.html Stevan- What do you mean don't confuse the re-use of data with the use of text? These are exactly the same thing. There are two goals for open access publishing. The first is free access for all to the scientific publications. The second is the ability to treat text as data - something that you deride. If you think that the only possible use of text is to cite and quote than you have completely missed the potential of open access publishing. If all we accomplish is to let people read any paper they want, we will have accomplished a lot, but we will still have failed. The true potential of open access publishing is the ways in which we can go beyond simply being able to read papers for free online. Searching the full-text of articles is an obvious example of a use of text that goes beyond citing and quoting. And searching is only a trivial example of a use of the content of scientific publications. Scientific publications are not just words - thet contain knowledge, and the type of use Richard is referring to deals not with the data described in a paper, but with the knowledge contained in the paper itself- ideas, methods, results and insights. The open archives movement is focussed on making it possible for people to read individual works for free. Open access publishing is focussed on this task, as well as the more important goal of ensuring that the contents - data as well as text - of all scientific publication are available not only for people to access, but for them to use. So long as self-archiving focusses only on access, it will not realize the full potential of electronic publishing to transform how we use the scientific literature. -Michael Michael Eisen, Ph.D. (mbei...@lbl.gov) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California at Berkeley http://rana.lbl.gov Lead the Next Scientific Revolution Publish Your Best Work in PLoS Biology www.plos.org
Re: On the Need to Take Both Roads to Open Access
Thank you! - Original Message - From: Richard Durbin r...@sanger.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 3:40 PM Subject: Re: On the Need to Take Both Roads to Open Access I have been watching this mailing list for some time. Although I applaud open archiving, from my point of view open access publishing is what is needed in the long run. This is because the key property is not that everyone can get at a copy of a publication, but rather that people can use information in it computationally, producing extracts, syntheses, new indexes etc. This is now possible. I come from the community that led open release of data in genomics: the C.elegans genome mapping then sequencing project, followed by the human genome project. The real value of the way that genome data such as the human genome sequence is available is that people can use it and build on it. Building on publications used to be open, because the only way to do it was to read and then write something else (e.g. a review or a new paper with a new idea). And a subscription cost was reasonable historically because most of the costs were in printing and distribution. Now, at least in biological science, a lot of valuable data are published in papers in tables and figures, and people are developing computational tools that can use this information, and even the free text. (See www.textpresso.org for an example of the latter.) So there are ways to use the information in papers for new science, but to do this we need much more open access to the literature. Research funding is provided to generate outputs that others can build on. Funders, and the rest of the system, want publication to be as unconstrained as possible, and the only reasons that we haven't yet taken advantage of electronic publishing to make things less constrained are historical inertia and the commercial interests of some publishers (see last week's Wellcome Trust report). So, for me, Open Archiving is just a tactical move to keep the publishers moving to the larger goal of changing scientific publishing to a better and more natural model, which is possible now with the network and electronic publishing. Richard Durbin Head of Informatics, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Stevan Harnad wrote: Scotomata in the Open Access Movement A blind spot seems to be growing at the *center* (not the edges) of the Open-Access-Publishing (OApub) road to Open Access (OA). OApub is a valid and welcome road to OA, but in the minds of many of its proponents the idea seems to have grown that OApub *is* OA, and that *only* OApub is OA. As a result, because OApub also seems to be a much easier concept for researchers to understand than Open-Access Self-Archiving (OAarch), and because this easier concept has now also trickled through to some research funding bodies, legislators, and even the popular press -- Open Access (OA) itself, despite the superficial signs of its growth and progress, is now again at risk of being detoured into yet another decade of needless delay. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/dual-strategy.ppt Part of the problem is that OApub has at least three substantial hurdles to surmount: (OApub-1) OA journals have to be created/converted http://www.doaj.org/ (OApub-2) Funding sources must be found for paying the author charges for publishing in those OA journals (hence the Bethesda Statement http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2878.html ), and (OApub-3) Authors must be persuaded to publish in those OA journals (hence the Sabo Bill http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2977.html ). This would all be fine and as it should be were it anywhere near the truth that OApub was indeed the only, or easiest, or most direct, or surest road to OA. But none of that is the case! Not only is there another road, but that other road is easier, more direct, and surer. It calls for only one step, not three or more, namely: (OAarch-1) Authors must be persuaded to self-archive. The archives are already there (but near-empty) for the making or taking. At least 55% of publishers already support OAarch, and no further funding or journal-creation, -conversion, or -renunciation is needed. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt But if one is strongly committed to OApub as the *only* road to achieve OA, or the main one, one will not have any inclination to stress the *other* road to OA, let alone that it is faster, easier, more direct or surer! Worse, OAarch may not be just a blind spot for OApub: it may even be perceived as an obstacle by some OApub advocates: For unless OAarch can somehow be minimized or dismissed as an unstable, anarchic, impractical, even *illegal* non-starter, there is a chance
Re: Detecting Plagiarism
Sally Are there statistics on how often and through what means scientific journals detect and pursue plagiarism? These would be very useful to help frame these discussions, as would some concrete examples that demonstrate the role that copyright plays in these actions. It seems like you would be in a good position to provide some. Michael - Original Message - From: Sally Morris sec-...@alpsp.org To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 9:25 AM Subject: Re: Learned Society Publisher's Comment on PLoS/Sabo Actually, it is pretty difficult for individual authors to pursue plagiarists, whereas in my experience journal publishers both can and do (often via their contacts with the publishers of the offending journals). I don't think publishers' *willingness* to do so has anything at all to do with copyright ownership; however, their *ability* to act immediately and decisively, in the courts if absolutely necessary, is strengthened by copyright ownership, as Martin Blume convincingly pointed out at the last Zwolle Group conference Sally Sally Morris, Secretary-General Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK Phone: 01903 871686 Fax: 01903 871457 E-mail: sec-...@alpsp.org ALPSP Website http://www.alpsp.org - Original Message - From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 1:00 AM Subject: Re: Learned Society Publisher's Comment on PLoS/Sabo On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Patrick Brown wrote: On Saturday, July 19, 2003, at 08:07 AM, Stevan Harnad wrote: sh The Sabo act is indeed a bit flaky on copyright. Copyright protection sh against plagiarism (theft-of-authorship) and text-corruption will of sh course have to be maintained. But this has nothing whatsoever to do sh with toll-access publishers' use of copyright as protection against sh piracy (theft-of-text). Copyright protection has never been used as a defense against plagiarism of scientific and scholarly work published in research journals. Never is probably overstating it, but I am sure that journals have rarely gone after plagiarists, partly because research plagiarism is rare, and partly because, as I noted, their main interest is in copyright protection against theft-of-text, not theft-of-authorship. But I do think that research authors need and want protection from theft-of-authorship, as well as from text-corruption (reproduction of altered text). http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/ The disincentive to those who would be tempted to plagiarize is not the law but very effective and clear community standards of behavior. But the fact that it also happens to be illegal helps. (And the way to win researchers over to the benefits of open access is not by awakening their fears of plagiarism.) Exposure of an act of plagiarism ruins the perpetrator's reputations and almost inevitably costs them their grant support and their jobs. I agree. And I would even add that it is mostly a victimless crime. (Important research's priority is immediately and widely known; unimportant research is less worth worrying about. I am not the victim if you take my papers and publish them as your own in some obscure journal in order to get tenure or funding at some uninformed institution. At worst, the victim is the duped institution, not me.) But authors nevertheless don't like the prospect of plagiarism, and there is no reason *whatsoever* to couple open-access with any lesser legal protection against plagiarism than that afforded by copyright law. The classic academic plagiarism involves stealing work from an obscure publication, and often publishing it in an equally obscure publication, so that the risk of detection is minimized. There could be no better protection than to have immediate, easy free online access to an authoritative copy of the original work, from a trusted source. I agree 100%. Open access maximizes the likelihood of detection. But now, when we are still trying to allay the research community's prima facie hesitancy about open access, a time when open access is already long overdue, but definitiely not yet upon us -- this is *not* the time to reinforce their worries that open access might come at the cost of a loss of legal protection against plagiarism and corruption of their texts! Copyright, to the extent that it is used to restrict access (and for most online academic journals, proscribe independent users from automatic searching and indexing of the text), protects plagiarizers from being detected. Copyright, when it is used for (publisher) protection against theft-of-text, does the refereed-research community
Re: Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy
, likewise conistent with the above: [From Nature License FAQ] The licence says I may post the PDF on my own web site. What does own mean? It means a personal site, or portion of a site, either owned by you or at your institution (provided this institution is not-for-profit), devoted to you and your work. If in doubt, please contact permissi...@nature.com. http://npg.nature.com/npg/servlet/Content?data=xml/05_faq.xmlstyle=xml/05_f aq.xsl So all of this seems to agree with the reply to Hazel's inquiry and the reply from nature's permissions department. But on Thu, 9 Jan 2003 Michael Eisen mbei...@lbl.gov wrote: me [Nature] explicitly preclude placing the papers in an archive! Authors may also post a copy of their paper on their own website once the printed edition has been published, provided that they also provide a link from the contribution to Nature's website. 'Their own' refers to any site devoted to them, whether owned by them or by a not-for-profit employer. However, it does not mean open archival websites, such as those that host collections of articles by an institution's researchers, which would amount to a breach of our licence. Mike, where is this quote from? (Could you simply have gotten a piece of incorrect advice from an uninformed person in Nature's Permissions Department?) Cheers, Stevan
Re: Update on Public Library of Science Initiative
I can speak for PLoS and will contact you and Mike offline. - Original Message - From: Peter Suber pet...@earlham.edu To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 9:52 AM Subject: Re: Update on Public Library of Science Initiative At 01:16 PM 9/3/2001 +0100, you wrote: Two other current initiatives are relevant here. ICAAP is a mutual self-help organisation for newly established free e-journals (mostly in the humanities). SPARC is a library-centred initiative to support the setting up of lower-cost alternatives to overpriced journals. Have the PLoS initiators tried to establish diplomatic relations with these other organisations? SPARC journals aren't free, but might be willing to be PLoS-compliant. Fytton Rowland. I'm on the ICAAP board and have discussed this with Mike Sosteric, the ICAAP director. We fully support PLoS and can imagine many large and small ways that diplomatic relations would help both organizations and the larger cause to which they are both committed. ICAAP can provide technology and support for new free online journals. It can work with PLoS to extend its initiative to the humanities and social sciences. We'd like to explore issues of mutual concern and give any assistance we can. If anyone on this list can speak for PLoS, please contact me or Mike Sosteric (mi...@athabascau.ca); meantime, we'll try other ways to contact the PLoS leadership. Peter -- Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, 47374 Email pet...@earlham.edu Web http://www.earlham.edu/~peters Editor, The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
Re: Science Article (Roberts et al.) and Science Editorial
If you want to go around handing out little gold stars anytime the journals take a step in the right direction, then fine, Science gets a star. But it is completely ridiculous to argue that differences between the sides is merely posturing. The difference between free access after one year at a single fixed location (e.g. Science's website) is more than just semantically different from free and open disribution of the material they publish. It is the difference between two completely different views of who should own and control the scientific literature. Science and most other journals believe that the only permanent record of the scientific process belongs to them, and that they alone should be allowed to decide the terms under which this material is used. I strongly disagree. Michael Eisen, Ph.D. (mbei...@lbl.gov) Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and Department of Molecular and Cell Biology University of California at Berkeley http://rana.lbl.gov Support Unrestricted Access to Scientific Publications Visit http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org - Original Message - From: David Goodman dgood...@phoenix.princeton.edu To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 2:10 PM Subject: Re: Science Article (Roberts et al.) and Science Editorial This is yet another example of an unnecessary debate between two compatible approaches. Having free access after a year is clearly not as good as having it immediately. But it is better than never having it. Its intended beneficiaries are not those active researchers in the primary field of the journal. Its intended beneficiaries include: people in underdeveloped countries, students and faculty in small colleges who will see the items referred to in indexes and later articles, and people in other fields who will see an occasional later reference. These are important groups, comprising many more people than the active workers in a specialty. I cannot see how one approach will harm the other. Of course we should have free universal archiving, both discipline and university based. But while we have the existing journals as they are, let's make the best use of them we can. People will publish in whatever way gives their work best exposure to those who matter to them, and that carry the highest prestige. The balance of these two factors will vary from person to person, as well as from field to field. Let's all stop saying that any approach that isn't the same as one's own must have fatal defects, and that victory will go to the person who is the cleverest at presenting them. (Though I will say that reading the messages in this and previous controversies has given me a very good appreciation of skillful argumentative prose style.) David Goodman, Princeton University Biology Library dgood...@princeton.edu 609-258-3235
