Re: [GOAL] Open Access: "Plan S" Needs to Drop "Option B"

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I am in agreement with Stefan.

The situation with all commercial publishers (including many scholarly
societies) is now unacceptable. I see very little value for the citizens of
the world, who either cannot read Northern Science or can't be authors.
Closed Access Means People Die, and so do outrageous APCs.

On Fri, Sep 14, 2018 at 1:33 PM Stevan Harnad  wrote:

> To combine Peter Suber's
> post with George
> Monbiot
> 's:
> The only true cost (and service) provided by peer-reviewed research journal
> publishers is the management and umpiring of peer review, and this costs an
> order of magnitude less that the publishers extortionate fees and profits
> today.
>
Yes. I am now appalled at the scale of OA APC charges. I have outlined
these in

https://www.slideshare.net/petermurrayrust/scientific-search-for-everyone
slides 3-11

where I contend that probably >1000 USD of an APCs goes to shareholder
profits and corporate branding and gross inefficiency. The (failed)
Springer IPO effectively argued that they would use the flotation to invest
in brands so they could charge higher prices. The effect of APCs on the
Global  South is appalling (one publisher make no discount for anyone - see
my slides).

I believe the true cost of publishing and hosting a peer-reviewed scholarly
article is less than 200 USD. It's probably true that in some regulated
fields (e.g. clinical trials) reviewing needs more input but that's the
sort of amount that it costs for a single review cycle, no typesetting (the
publishers cost ca 200 USD and it destroys information) and hosting on a
public site. Of course many journals do it for zero.

The actual transaction costs of preprint servers are about 8 USD.




> The researchers and peer-reviewers conduct and report the research as well
> as the peer reviewing for free (or rather, funded by their institutions and
> research grants, which are, in turn, funded mostly by tax-payers).
>
Yes

> Peer-reviewed research journal publishers are making among the biggest
> profit margins on the planet through almost 100% pure parasitism.
>
Totally agreed.

> Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub is
> one woman's noble attempt to fix this.
>
> But the culprits for the prohibitive pay-walling are not just the
> publishers: They are also the researchers, their institutions and their
> research grant funders -- for not requiring all peer-reviewed research to
> be  made Open Access (OA) immediately upon acceptance for publication
> through researcher self-archiving intheir own institutional open access
> repositories.
>
Yes, this is what I refer to as the Publisher-Academic complex

> Instead the OA policy of the EC ("Plan S
> ")
> and other institutional and funder OA policies worldwide are allowing
> publishers to continue their parasitism by offering researcher' the choice
> between Option A (self-archiving their published research) or Option B
> (paying to publish it in an OA journal where publishers simply name their
> price and the parasitism continues in another key).
>
> I agree. I approve of the motivation of PlanS to reassert control, but I
doubtb it will lower pricess to the real cost (200 USD)

> Unlike Alexandra Elbakyan, researchers are freeing their very own research
> OA when they deposit it in their institutional OA repository.
>
Agreed. It's a pity that in some countries the repositories are scattered
and incredibly difficult for machines to search . We need central
aggregations like Core, Dare, HAL

> Publishers try to stop them by demanding copyright, imposing OA embargoes,
> and threating individual researchers and their institutions with
> Alexandra-Elbakyan-style lawsuits.
>
> Such lawsuits against researchers or their institutions would obviously
> cause huge public outrage globally -- an even better protection than hiding
> in Kazakhstan.
>
> And many researchers are ignoring the embargoes and spontaneously
> self-archiving their published papers -- and have been doing it,
> inclreasingly  for almost 30 years now (without a single lawsuit).
>
> But spontaneous self-archiving is growing far too slowly: it requires
> systematic mandates from institutions and funders in order to break out of
> the paywalls.
>
> The only thing that is and has been sustaining the paywalls on research
> has been publishers' lobbying of governments on funder OA policy and their
> manipulation of institutional OA policy with "Big Deals" on extortionate
> library licensing fees to ensure that OA policies always include Option B.
>
> The solution is ever so simple: OA policies must drop Option B.
>
I think there is a synergistic 

[GOAL] Open Access: "Plan S" Needs to Drop "Option B"

[Stevan Harnad]

To combine Peter Suber's
post with George
Monbiot
's:
The only true cost (and service) provided by peer-reviewed research journal
publishers is the management and umpiring of peer review, and this costs an
order of magnitude less that the publishers extortionate fees and profits
today.

The researchers and peer-reviewers conduct and report the research as well
as the peer reviewing for free (or rather, funded by their institutions and
research grants, which are, in turn, funded mostly by tax-payers).

Peer-reviewed research journal publishers are making among the biggest
profit margins on the planet through almost 100% pure parasitism.

Alexandra Elbakyan's Sci-Hub is one
woman's noble attempt to fix this.

But the culprits for the prohibitive pay-walling are not just the
publishers: They are also the researchers, their institutions and their
research grant funders -- for not requiring all peer-reviewed research to
be  made Open Access (OA) immediately upon acceptance for publication
through researcher self-archiving intheir own institutional open access
repositories.

Instead the OA policy of the EC ("Plan S
")
and other institutional and funder OA policies worldwide are allowing
publishers to continue their parasitism by offering researcher' the choice
between Option A (self-archiving their published research) or Option B
(paying to publish it in an OA journal where publishers simply name their
price and the parasitism continues in another key).

Unlike Alexandra Elbakyan, researchers are freeing their very own research
OA when they deposit it in their institutional OA repository.

Publishers try to stop them by demanding copyright, imposing OA embargoes,
and threating individual researchers and their institutions with
Alexandra-Elbakyan-style lawsuits.

Such lawsuits against researchers or their institutions would obviously
cause huge public outrage globally -- an even better protection than hiding
in Kazakhstan.

And many researchers are ignoring the embargoes and spontaneously
self-archiving their published papers -- and have been doing it,
inclreasingly  for almost 30 years now (without a single lawsuit).

But spontaneous self-archiving is growing far too slowly: it requires
systematic mandates from institutions and funders in order to break out of
the paywalls.

The only thing that is and has been sustaining the paywalls on research has
been publishers' lobbying of governments on funder OA policy and their
manipulation of institutional OA policy with "Big Deals" on extortionate
library licensing fees to ensure that OA policies always include Option B.

The solution is ever so simple: OA policies must drop Option B.
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[GOAL] OpenAIRE on Plan S

[Rettberg, Najla]

-Apologies for cross-posting -


Dear all,

The following might be of interest to the list.

OpenAIRE welcomes the recent announcement of 'Plan S', in particular the 
following from the 10 Principles:


1.   Author copyright retention: Authors retain copyright and 
should use open licenses such as the CC-BY license (or other licenses 
fulfilling the criteria of the Berlin Declaration). This is a crucial principle 
to enable the reuse of scholarly information.

2.   Support for existing or future infrastructures: These 
infrastructures should be as open as possible in terms of governance and 
technology.

3.   Recognition of the importance of repositories: The 'green' 
road to Open Access represents a cost-friendly and sustainable way of offering 
freely accessible, searchable and findable research artefacts.

4.   Monitor compliance and sanction non-compliance: Follow up of 
OS mandates is a necessity, as well as to see funder output in terms of 
publications and data.

We also expect the announcement of Plan S to have an effect on the following 
elements of the scholarly communication landscape:


1.   Reinforce the role of the existing network of repositories. 
Sustained by hundreds of universities and other research institutions 
worldwide, repositories are an essential building block in the Open Access 
landscape.

2.   Support versatile, alternative and innovative publishing 
models.  Plan S should not 'seal' the current system, rather work to support 
collaborative Open Access publishing

3.   Build trusted, open, new-generation infrastructures.  
Infrastructures to support research and reproducibility need to be built on the 
principle of 'open'

Read the full statement 
HERE

Many thanks, Najla



Najla Rettberg
OpenAIRE www.openaire.eu
@najlaoa
Skype: najladpc

Göttingen State and University Library
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1
37073 Göttingen

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