[GOAL] The OA Interviews: Kamila Markram, CEO and Co-Founder of Frontiers

[Richard Poynder]

Based in Switzerland, the open access publisher Frontiers was founded in
2007 by Kamila and Henry Markram, who are both neuroscientists at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. 

 

A researcher-led initiative envisaged as being "by scientists, for
scientists" the mission of Frontiers was to create a "community-oriented
open access scholarly publisher and social networking platform for
researchers."

 

Like most successful open access publishers Frontiers has attracted
controversy along the way. There have been complaints, for instance, about
its peer review process (including an oft-repeated claim that its editorial
system does not allow papers to be rejected), complaints about the level of
"spam" it bombards researchers with, and complaints that its mode of
operating is inappropriately similar to the one used by multi-level
marketing company Amway.

 

Frontiers has also attracted criticism for publishing a number of
controversial papers, and in 2014 it was accused of caving in to specious
libel threats by retracting a legitimate paper. 

 

The wave of criticism reached a peak last October when Jeffrey Beall added
Frontiers to his list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory
scholarly open-access publishers".

 

But Frontiers has no shortage of fans and supporters, not least amongst its
army of editors and authors. It has also received public support from a
number of industry organisations. 

 

Supporters suspect that much of the criticism comes from researchers who
have failed to understand, or are not comfortable with, Frontiers'
distinctive "impact-neutral" collaborative peer review process.

 

A detailed Q with CEO and Co-Founder of Frontiers Kamila Markram can be
read here:

 

http://poynder.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-oa-interviews-kamila-markram-ceo.html

 

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[GOAL] Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?

[Walker,Thomas J]

In investigating the PDFs of articles in Journal of Medical Entomology [JME] 
published by Oxford University Press [OUP] I’ve found that OUP puts a time 
stamp on every PDF they provide to others.  This makes it impossible for 
authors, who have paid a fee or $2000 to $3500 for OA, to make a non-time 
stamped PDF openly accessible on the Web.

This is because even though OUP has granted copyrights to OA-fee paying 
authors, it requires the corresponding author of each article to sign (for 
himself and for any other authors of the article) OUP’s “License to Publish.”  
This License 
states (in legal language) that OUP has the exclusive right to publish the 
article!  That would mean that authors could not legally post their copyrighted 
PDFs on their homepages.

In a draft of a paper about this practice, I’ve argued that OUP’s time-stamped 
PDFs should not qualify as OA:

All the meanings of OA that I am aware of would exclude PDF files that have 
been altered to prevent their being an unaltered copy of the printed pages of 
the version of record.  None of the PDF files in OUP’s archive are unaltered.  
I challenge anyone to find one PDF that is a true electronic version of the 
printed version of that article [which is the “version of record”].   Yet PDF 
files of journal articles are valued because they are unaltered scans of the 
pages of the paper version of the article.

But am I wrong and OUP’s PDFs meet current NIH standards for OA?

Tom

Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology
PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
E-mail: t...@ufl.edu FAX: (352)392-0190
Web: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/





jme52(6)p1378-p2.pdf
Description: jme52(6)p1378-p2.pdf
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[GOAL] Re: Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?

[Peter Murray-Rust]

The OUP journal Nucleic Acids Research (which has been "Open" for many
years) uses CC licences: Example:

http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/44/2/524.full.pdf+html

which is CC-BY and the licence is clearly displayed on the PDF . This
grants rights to any reader to re-publish. (Note that some articles are
CC-NC). My guess is that this is variable between journals or else simply
inconsistent (The price we pay for not challenging publishers more
frequently)
.
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
Nucleic Acids Research.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http:
//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which
permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.






On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 1:03 PM, Walker,Thomas J  wrote:

> In investigating the PDFs of articles in Journal of Medical Entomology
> [JME] published by Oxford University Press [OUP] I’ve found that OUP puts a
> time stamp on every PDF they provide to others.  This makes it impossible
> for authors, who have paid a fee or $2000 to $3500 for OA, to make a
> non-time stamped PDF openly accessible on the Web.
>
>
>
> This is because even though OUP has granted copyrights to OA-fee paying
> authors, it requires the corresponding author of each article to sign (for
> himself and for any other authors of the article) OUP’s “License to
> Publish.”  This License
>  states
> (in legal language) that OUP has the exclusive right to publish the
> article!  That would mean that authors could not legally post their
> copyrighted PDFs on their homepages.
>
>
>
> In a draft of a paper about this practice, I’ve argued that OUP’s
> time-stamped PDFs should not qualify as OA:
>
>
>
> All the meanings of OA that I am aware of would exclude PDF files that
> have been altered to prevent their being an unaltered copy of the printed
> pages of the version of record.  None of the PDF files in OUP’s archive are
> unaltered.  I challenge anyone to find one PDF that is a true electronic
> version of the printed version of that article [which is the “version of
> record”].   Yet PDF files of journal articles are valued *because* they
> are unaltered scans of the pages of the paper version of the article.
>
>
>
> But am I wrong and OUP’s PDFs meet current NIH standards for OA?
>
>
>
> Tom
>
> 
>
> Thomas J. Walker
> Department of Entomology & Nematology
> PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
> University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
>
> E-mail: t...@ufl.edu FAX: (352)392-0190
>
> Web: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/
>
> 
>
>
>
>
>
> ___
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL@eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
>


-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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[GOAL] Re: Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?

[Paul Royster]

Dear Dr Walker,

I infer that you are talking about the stamp: “Downloaded from 
http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 8, 2016” or equivalent that 
OUP pastes on every PDF it sends out? In practice, that stamp can be removed by 
Adobe Acrobat, though it takes a bit of practice and a delicate touch. (I won’t 
speak to whether such removal is within the bounds of any specific license 
agreement.) Those time stamps are an ugly imposition marring the pages of many 
content sources, including JSTOR, Hathi Trust, and others, and I deplore them. 
They remind me of dogs marking their territories.

Oxford’s website for the JME says < 
http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/for_authors/charges-licenses-and-self-archiving.html>
 that authors paying for Open Access under Oxford Open have a choice of 
CC-BY-NC (no commercial re-use) or CC-BY-NC-ND (no commercial, no derivatives) 
licenses. Under either of these, authors (who pay) have immediate license to 
post the Oxford (or ESA) pdf versions in their institutional repositories (or 
any other non-commercial uses). (Whether CC-BY-NC counts as “real” OA is a 
matter for discussion with the purists—most people would say it is, some more 
extreme advocates would not. It’s not clear to me whether it meets the strict 
BOAI standard or not; or even if that matters.)

Authors who do not pay for Oxford Open still “may upload their accepted 
manuscript PDF to an institutional and/or centrally organized repository, 
provided that public availability is delayed until 12 months after first online 
publication in the journal.” < 
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/rights-and-permissions/self-archiving-policyb.html
 > So authors may still take the “Green OA” route—though whether Green OA 
counts as “real” OA is another murky or muddled question for some.

Your article in Learned Publishing (2002)15, 279–284 < 
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1087/095315102760319242/abstract > 
[though ironically not OA] made a clear and bold appeal for immediate free web 
access. I wish we had all been sooner to demand this of publishers and 
societies.

It is unfortunate the ESA has cast its lot with OUP. I hope its members will 
realize the impact and reconsider the arrangement. Meanwhile, we do a lot of 
entomology for our repository (including Insecta Mundi), and I would be happy 
to help you get your JME papers online, if you wish to contact me off-list. 
Best regards.

Paul Royster
Coordinator of Scholarly Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries
proys...@unl.edu
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Walker,Thomas J
Sent: Monday, February 8, 2016 7:04 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
Subject: [GOAL] Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?

In investigating the PDFs of articles in Journal of Medical Entomology [JME] 
published by Oxford University Press [OUP] I’ve found that OUP puts a time 
stamp on every PDF they provide to others.  This makes it impossible for 
authors, who have paid a fee or $2000 to $3500 for OA, to make a non-time 
stamped PDF openly accessible on the Web.

This is because even though OUP has granted copyrights to OA-fee paying 
authors, it requires the corresponding author of each article to sign (for 
himself and for any other authors of the article) OUP’s “License to Publish.”  
This License 
states (in legal language) that OUP has the exclusive right to publish the 
article!  That would mean that authors could not legally post their copyrighted 
PDFs on their homepages.

In a draft of a paper about this practice, I’ve argued that OUP’s time-stamped 
PDFs should not qualify as OA:

All the meanings of OA that I am aware of would exclude PDF files that have 
been altered to prevent their being an unaltered copy of the printed pages of 
the version of record.  None of the PDF files in OUP’s archive are unaltered.  
I challenge anyone to find one PDF that is a true electronic version of the 
printed version of that article [which is the “version of record”].   Yet PDF 
files of journal articles are valued because they are unaltered scans of the 
pages of the paper version of the article.

But am I wrong and OUP’s PDFs meet current NIH standards for OA?

Tom

Thomas J. Walker
Department of Entomology & Nematology
PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
E-mail: t...@ufl.edu FAX: (352)392-0190
Web: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/



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[GOAL] Re: Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?

[Peter Murray-Rust]

Following up,
I have checked the reuse permissions on OUP's Nucleic Acids Research (see
previous mail) and they are charging large prices for re-use of CC-BY
articles (e.g. 400 USD for use in an academic course pack for 100 students.

I hope this is a "glitch" (though I am getting very very tired of publisher
glitches in their favour). If it is deliberate then although it is possibly
legal - they can argue that a consumer can ignore their reprint permission
charges - it is morally and ethically unacceptable.

I continue to point out such unacceptable practices. They will continue
until the community also regards them as unacceptable and takes decisive
action against unacceptable publishers.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 5:39 PM, Paul Royster  wrote:

> Dear Dr Walker,
>
>
>
> I infer that you are talking about the stamp: “Downloaded from
> http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/ by guest on February 8, 2016” or
> equivalent that OUP pastes on every PDF it sends out? In practice, that
> stamp can be removed by Adobe Acrobat, though it takes a bit of practice
> and a delicate touch. (I won’t speak to whether such removal is within the
> bounds of any specific license agreement.) Those time stamps are an ugly
> imposition marring the pages of many content sources, including JSTOR,
> Hathi Trust, and others, and I deplore them. They remind me of dogs marking
> their territories.
>
>
>
> Oxford’s website for the JME says <
> http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/for_authors/charges-licenses-and-self-archiving.html>
> that authors paying for Open Access under Oxford Open have a choice of
> CC-BY-NC (no commercial re-use) or CC-BY-NC-ND (no commercial, no
> derivatives) licenses. Under either of these, authors (who pay) have
> immediate license to post the Oxford (or ESA) pdf versions in their
> institutional repositories (or any other non-commercial uses). (Whether
> CC-BY-NC counts as “real” OA is a matter for discussion with the
> purists—most people would say it is, some more extreme advocates would not.
> It’s not clear to me whether it meets the strict BOAI standard or not; or
> even if that matters.)
>
>
>
> Authors who do not pay for Oxford Open still “may upload their *accepted
> manuscript PDF* to an institutional and/or centrally organized
> repository, provided that public availability is delayed until *12 months
> after first online publication *in the journal.” <
> http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/rights-and-permissions/self-archiving-policyb.html
> > So authors may still take the “Green OA” route—though whether Green OA
> counts as “real” OA is another murky or muddled question for some.
>
>
>
> Your article in *Learned Publishing *(2002)*15*, 279–284 <
> http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1087/095315102760319242/abstract > 
> [though
> ironically not OA] made a clear and bold appeal for immediate free web
> access. I wish we had all been sooner to demand this of publishers and
> societies.
>
>
>
> It is unfortunate the ESA has cast its lot with OUP. I hope its members
> will realize the impact and reconsider the arrangement. Meanwhile, we do a
> lot of entomology for our repository (including *Insecta Mundi*), and I
> would be happy to help you get your JME papers online, if you wish to
> contact me off-list. Best regards.
>
>
>
> Paul Royster
>
> Coordinator of Scholarly Communications
>
> University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries
>
> proys...@unl.edu
>
> http://digitalcommons.unl.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Walker,Thomas J
> *Sent:* Monday, February 8, 2016 7:04 AM
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?
>
>
>
> In investigating the PDFs of articles in Journal of Medical Entomology
> [JME] published by Oxford University Press [OUP] I’ve found that OUP puts a
> time stamp on every PDF they provide to others.  This makes it impossible
> for authors, who have paid a fee or $2000 to $3500 for OA, to make a
> non-time stamped PDF openly accessible on the Web.
>
>
>
> This is because even though OUP has granted copyrights to OA-fee paying
> authors, it requires the corresponding author of each article to sign (for
> himself and for any other authors of the article) OUP’s “License to
> Publish.”  This License
>  states
> (in legal language) that OUP has the exclusive right to publish the
> article!  That would mean that authors could not legally post their
> copyrighted PDFs on their homepages.
>
>
>
> In a draft of a paper about this practice, I’ve argued that OUP’s
> time-stamped PDFs should not qualify as OA:
>
>
>
> All the meanings of OA that I am aware of would exclude PDF files that
> have been altered to prevent their being an unaltered copy of the printed
> pages of the version of record.  None of the PDF files in OUP’s archive are
> unaltered.  I challenge