Re: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge
Lovely response, Peter. And, yes, let us remember the example set by Latin America, and in particular by Amelica. They are now the true leaders of open access. Incidentally, everyone should read this: https://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/347. It is an important article co-authored by Dominique Babini and Humberto Debat. Jean-Claude Guédon On 2020-03-31 11:59 a.m., Peter Murray-Rust wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 4:21 PM Jean-Claude Guédon <mailto:jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca>> wrote: One last note: OA will succeed, despite what Stevan says. Let us shape OA the right way, and certainly not in the way supported by Elsevier: in their view, OA is a "charitable" gesture that is applied only in extreme cases. The reality is that the Great Conversation of science constantly needs it. We need clear messages. Open by default. Friction costs resources and lives. I don't think people realise how serious friction is in the modern world. If you have to write to an author the friction is absolute. If you have to read a licence the friction is absolute. If you have to work out where to find the full content is from a landing page the friction is large. If you have to parse PDFs or publisher HTML the friction is massive If you have to copy text the friction is absolute. If you don't know what you are getting , that's friction. If you get Dublin-Core or Highwire metadata , it's out of date, undocumented, ambiguous and serious friction. If you crawl UK universities for theses that's Infinite friction. If you crawl US universities for theses that's even worse than infinite. As an example we are working on design and use of masks for COVID-19 and actually supporting their manufacture. The best known one is N95. I immediately go to Wikidata. This disambiguates all other "N95" so we have a precise ontological object which machines can compute in SPARQL. Wikipedia will be as correct and as uptodate as any other authority. That's where the modern knowledge world is. By using Wikidata I reduce almost all friction. See our tutorial example at: https://github.com/petermr/openVirus/blob/master/examples/n95/OVERVIEW.md where over 300 papers were analysed in great detail in 5 minutes. Volunteers welcome. My sources are now: EuropePMC, which mirrors PMC and adds to it. biorxiv/medrxiv which require me to write serious scrapers so huge friction but our group will try to do it Redalyc (Mexico) really excited about this as it's a real example of no fees - that Latin America has pioneered so well. LatA HAL (FR) frictionless In the UK can I use CORE? "Please register to receive an API key ". I don't use services that require APIs so I haven't used CORE. Why is this necessary? I bet it's to do with IP somewhere. Also CORE is non-commercial. So, slightly regretfully, I shan't use CORE. The right way to go is OA free for authors and for readers, which means that it must be subsidized. But that is all right because scientific research is subsidized and scientific communication is an integral part of scientific research (and it costs only 1% of the rest of research). Yes. I suggest we humbly approach LatAm and other parts of the Global South where we may learn what the real purpose of publishing is. It's so people can READ things, whereas megapub451 builds systems to stop people reading. Let's glory the reader. Let's assess scholarship by how many citizens OUTSIDE academia read our work. Because there are a huge number of smart educated people throughout the world who are - literally - killed by the present system. "When I am dead, I hope it may be said. His sins were scarlet, but his books were read." - Hilaire Belloc. https://github.com/petermr/openVirus - we now have a wiki where you can leave messages (I think) -- "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same". Peter Murray-Rust Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 ___ 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
Re: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge
The first point, of course, is that if the "tenured saint" is not available, the greedy devil is not the only behavioural alternative. Neither is sainthood, so to speak, dependent upon tenure. Tenure was invented to protect free expression. It might be useful to remind everyone that many people looking for tenure, do so precisely for this reason, while knowing that, given their level of education and (presumably) competence, they could probably trade more money for less freedom. And this is not theory. Creating an Elsevier Hub for research on the coronavirus is nothing more than a fig leaf for that company. Research is not particularly helped by opening up only what someone thinks is good for a particular field of research, while preserving the revenue stream in other areas of knowledge. Doing so is assuming that fields of knowledge do not overlap to some extent, and that one already knows the broad contours of the solutions, however unexpected they may be. Both claims are broadly incomplete, at best. It would be amusing to know whether, in the Elsevier boardrooms, issues arose such as : "if we open access too much, we are going to lose significant revenue", or "there is threshold beyond which we lose both control and revenue", etc. Jean-Claude Guédon On 2020-03-31 12:35 p.m., Éric Archambault wrote: Peter, Stevan, and Jean-Claude, Sorry if my life's circumstances led me to become a greedy devil instead of a tenured saint. That said, I don't think it's right to assume that we are working out of self-interest to build the Coronavirus Research Hub - as early as January individuals at Elsevier and people here in my team sought to do our bit to make information discoverable. These people are like me, we live outside a Manichean world and as we decided to do our part with the tools at our disposal even if that didn't solve all the issues in the world we live in. There are people in these organizations and insulting us at the personal level doesn't help creating the sense of community we all need to fight this bug. There is time for theory, other for actions. Cordially Éric *From:* goal-boun...@eprints.org on behalf of Jean-Claude Guédon *Sent:* March 31, 2020 11:17 AM *To:* goal@eprints.org *Subject:* Re: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge I also strongly agree with Peter. As for Éric Archambault, it is simply a pity to see greed trump principles. One last note: OA will succeed, despite what Stevan says. Let us shape OA the right way, and certainly not in the way supported by Elsevier: in their view, OA is a "charitable" gesture that is applied only in extreme cases. The reality is that the Great Conversation of science constantly needs it. The right way to go is OA free for authors and for readers, which means that it must be subsidized. But that is all right because scientific research is subsidized and scientific communication is an integral part of scientific research (and it costs only 1% of the rest of research). Jean-Claude Guédon Le 31/03/2020 à 08:28, Stevan Harnad a écrit : I agree with Peter. Eric has gone over to the devil. This is a shameful time for token measures. Covid-19 is a litmus test for disclosing who are going all out for the public good and who are in it for themselves. OA used to be for the sake of scientific and scholarly research -- an abstraction, and it did not succeed. Here it’s about survival. Stevan Harnad Editor,Animal Sentience <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fanimalstudiesrepository.org%2Fanimsent%2F=01%7C01%7C%7Cd547a0da71564c7fb48108d7d56f0886%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0=u4SeHgBD0Upyemmp4Nf0%2Be9a3nOcKNimsGZ3BY2YhGA%3D=0> Professor of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcrcsc.uqam.ca%2F=01%7C01%7C%7Cd547a0da71564c7fb48108d7d56f0886%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0=cXNp0TpmsXPsLTCN5AYm8hfmpZmgij7X2Up3%2FNnGjvo%3D=0> Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science, McGill University <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mcgill.ca%2Fpsychology%2Fabout%2Ffaculty-0%2Faffiliate-and-adjunct=01%7C01%7C%7Cd547a0da71564c7fb48108d7d56f0886%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0=FirEAYdQS9zIJvZwZOu3TyqInl7b71VCYxIDnoAQ6O4%3D=0> Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton <http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/harnad> On Mar 30, 2020, at 6:14 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <mailto:pm...@cam.ac.uk>> wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 7:48 PM Éric Archambault <mailto:eric.archamba...@science-metrix.com>> wrote: Peter, Two months ago, that is, on January 27, we started work at Elsevier to make available as much as possible of the scholarly literature on coronavirus re
Re: [GOAL] COVID-19 and access to knowledge
I also strongly agree with Peter. As for Éric Archambault, it is simply a pity to see greed trump principles. One last note: OA will succeed, despite what Stevan says. Let us shape OA the right way, and certainly not in the way supported by Elsevier: in their view, OA is a "charitable" gesture that is applied only in extreme cases. The reality is that the Great Conversation of science constantly needs it. The right way to go is OA free for authors and for readers, which means that it must be subsidized. But that is all right because scientific research is subsidized and scientific communication is an integral part of scientific research (and it costs only 1% of the rest of research). Jean-Claude Guédon Le 31/03/2020 à 08:28, Stevan Harnad a écrit : I agree with Peter. Eric has gone over to the devil. This is a shameful time for token measures. Covid-19 is a litmus test for disclosing who are going all out for the public good and who are in it for themselves. OA used to be for the sake of scientific and scholarly research -- an abstraction, and it did not succeed. Here it’s about survival. Stevan Harnad Editor,Animal Sentience <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fanimalstudiesrepository.org%2Fanimsent%2F=01%7C01%7C%7Cd547a0da71564c7fb48108d7d56f0886%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0=u4SeHgBD0Upyemmp4Nf0%2Be9a3nOcKNimsGZ3BY2YhGA%3D=0> Professor of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcrcsc.uqam.ca%2F=01%7C01%7C%7Cd547a0da71564c7fb48108d7d56f0886%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0=cXNp0TpmsXPsLTCN5AYm8hfmpZmgij7X2Up3%2FNnGjvo%3D=0> Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science, McGill University <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mcgill.ca%2Fpsychology%2Fabout%2Ffaculty-0%2Faffiliate-and-adjunct=01%7C01%7C%7Cd547a0da71564c7fb48108d7d56f0886%7C4a5378f929f44d3ebe89669d03ada9d8%7C0=FirEAYdQS9zIJvZwZOu3TyqInl7b71VCYxIDnoAQ6O4%3D=0> Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton <http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/harnad> On Mar 30, 2020, at 6:14 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <mailto:pm...@cam.ac.uk>> wrote: On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 7:48 PM Éric Archambault <mailto:eric.archamba...@science-metrix.com>> wrote: Peter, Two months ago, that is, on January 27, we started work at Elsevier to make available as much as possible of the scholarly literature on coronavirus research easily discoverable and freely accessible. At 1science, we created the Coronavirus Research Hub: Why does Elsevier not simply open all its content and let the scientific , medical and citizen community decide what they want? Elsevier can't guess what we want. The Royal Society has done this. Elsevier can afford to do it. If we can help further, please let us know, we have been on it for two months and we continue to evaluate options to help the research community. My colleague, a software developer, working for free on openVirus software, is spending most of his time working making masks in Cambridge Makespace to ship to Addenbrooke's hospital. When he goes to the literature to find literature on masks, their efficacy and use and construction he finds paywall after paywall after paywall after paywall Some are 1-page notes behind a 36 USD Elsevier paywall. Do not tell us what we want. let us choose freely. Peter Murray-Rust Volunteer fighting for free scientific knowledge in a world crisis. -- "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same". Peter Murray-Rust Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 ___ 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
Re: [GOAL] Plan S. Because not enough has been written about it yet.
Danny is spot on. The real conversation is about the reward system. In particular, we need to move away from two principles: 1. Journals are not good tools to evaluate the quality of individual works; individual works are; 2. Present reward systems focus exclusively on the outcome of competition; science need cooperation and sharing at least as much as competition. Jean-Claude Le mercredi 12 septembre 2018 à 12:35 +, Danny Kingsley a écrit : > > > Dear all, > > To add to the collection of commentary on Plan S I have just > published two sister blogs on Unlocking Research: > > "Relax everyone, Plan S is just the beginning of the discussion" > https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2148 and"Most Plan S > principles are not contentious" > https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2145 > > > The general points are that this is a statement of principle rather > than a set of policies, it does not necessarily represent a ligature > on academic’s choice of publication (note that hybrid is not > necessarily > off the table and green OA is compliant with zero embargo and a CC- > BY license), and that the real conversation we should be having is > about the academic reward system rather than Plan S itself. > > Enjoy! > > Danny > > > Dr Danny Kingsley > Deputy Director - Scholarly Communication & Research Services > Head, Office of Scholarly Communication > Cambridge University Library > West Road, CB3 9DR > e: da...@cam.ac.uk > p: 01223 747 437 > m: 07711 500 564 > t: @dannykay68 > w: www.osc.cam.ac.uk > b: https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk > o: orcid.org/-0002-3636-5939 > > > > > > > > ___GOAL mailing > listg...@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
Re: [GOAL] DOAJ stability issues
I do not think that you should apologize about such a situation. What it means, on the other hand, is that a few resources should be added to DOAJ and similar non-profits to have a team defending such wonderful projects. I wonder if the Free software foundation could be of help in identifying such a group. If not, it might be time to explore the possibility of a consortial effort on that front. Libraries might be interested too. Jean-Claude Guedon Le vendredi 10 août 2018 à 13:06 +0200, Clara Armengou a écrit : > Dear community, > We deeply regret the current problems with the DOAJ site. After much > investigation and active measures, we can state that the DOAJ > is effectively under attack from an unknown third party. > > We have deployed a number of counter-measures to halt this attack, > but with limited success, and are therefore forced to take even more > extreme measures to attempt to mitigate this. We hope that this will > work but we cannot predict the outcome at this stage. > > The DOAJ team would like to apologise for the intermittent service > and to let you know we are doing our best to go back to normal > operations. > > > -- > Clara Armengou > Project and Communications Manager > > > Directory of Open Access Journals > www.doaj.org > > > > > > > > ___GOAL mailing > listGOAL@eprints.orghttp://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/g > oal___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] COAR Annual Meeting and new Executive Board
Peter, Just to touch upon this very quickly, in my talk, I used the metaphor of a town. Towns relate to other towns basically in two ways. First, geographical proximity; second economic complementarity. Transposing these two variables onto the communication system, this yields the following possibilities: 1. Intellectual proximity works in ways that relate to disciplinary or specialty domains. In many ways, this is also what many journals do as well: they bundle articles that relate to each other (more or less) by virtue of being in the same domain. 2. Intellectual complementarity works in the ways that inter- disciplinary teams generally work. Another way of putting it is to refer to the "Mode 2 of scientific production" that was proposed (back in 1994) by Michael Gibbons and his colleagues in a collective book called The New Production of Knowledge. What is presented as "new" really means an inter-disciplinary approach focused on a complex problem. Both 1 and 2 open the possibility of tackling new or neglected scientific problems, provided an adequate reward system is built around repositories. This is probably the major challenge to overcome, given the present (and silly) obsession with impact factors. To address this issue, I suggested first to downplay the role of metrics, and then to base evaluation (rewards) on at least three variables: scientific significance (particularly theoretical significance) which should be expressed in words, not numbers; relevance to specific problems and their solutions (e.g. Zika is known since the '40s, but was little studied because journals did not see a potential for many citations in such a research problem); reach (how do these questions reverberate in a wider public and can be of help to it). I hope this is a little helpful. Best, Jean-Claude Le mardi 22 mai 2018 à 12:47 -0400, Kathleen Shearer a écrit : > Well I’m sure Jean Claude could do a much better job in explaining > than I, but the idea is to build into a distributed system a way to > support solving problems and intellectual dialogue and exchange on > specific domains, fields of studies and problems. Journals bring > together content that is related. We also want to do this but in a > distributed, global repository network that is currently very > multidisiplinary. > > On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 12:19 PM Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk> > wrote: > > Replying only to GOAL... > > > > Thank you very much for this report. > > > > One question: > > > > > > > > On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 5:05 PM, Kathleen Shearer > e...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Jean-Claude Guédon, Professor at the Université de Montreal and > > > respected open access advocate, urged us to consider two > > > important principles within our repository network: intellectual > > > proximity and problem solving complementarity. > > > > Could you please expand on these as I don't understand what they > > mean in detail. > > Thanks > > > > P. > > > > > > > > ___ > > 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] Jussieu Call
I would like to attract the list's attention to a declaration emanating from the University of Paris-Jussieu. It is referred to as the "Jussieu call" (appel de Jussieu). It is open to organizations of all countries, as the presence of CLACSO and LIBER, for example, testifies. North American institutions are, therefore, encouraged to sign on to this declaration. http://jussieucall.org/index.html Jean-Claude Guédon___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] A game project regarding the publishing landscape
I just want to bring the following to the list's attention. It is a game project designed to bring understanding to the publishing landscape. Here is the announcement I received: Thank you for getting in touch with us about our new game the Publishing Trap. The Publishing Trap resources are now available to download from: http://bit.ly/2yjrjzj We recommend you download and read the Instructions first. Please contact us if you have any problems and don't forget to fill in our feedback form (http://bit.ly/2xKKAVT) once you have used the resources as this will help us improve the next iteration of the game! Also feel free to talk about the game on social media using the hashtag #publishingtrap and mentioning @ukcopyrightlit We promise not to share your personal data with anyone else and the reason we are collecting it is so we can understand who is interested in the game, and to set up a development community. We will be in touch in due course with an update on this, but please let us know if you do not want us to contact you. Very best wishes Chris (@cbowiemorrison) and Jane (@jsecker) -- UK Copyright Literacy: Decoding copyright and bringing you enlightenment https://copyrightliteracy.org/ As a pedagogical tool, such a game, if well designed (I have not yet had time to study it), could be the "Monopoly" of scientific publishing. Jean-Claude Guédon ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
In LEARNED PUBLISHING. VOL . 1 5, N O. 4, OCTOBER 200 2, Brian Cox, writing about Maxwell, offers the following story: "In 1951, when Pergamon was founded, the US dollar had already replaced sterling as the world currency and until the 1980s remained the benchmark against which all other currencies were measured. Costs and subscription rates grew as journals grew in size and frequency, but were incurred in pounds during many years when the pound fell in value against the dollar – a fact not immediately apparent to librarians in the United States, who were pleased with Pergamon’s apparently stable prices. The exchange illusion was a major factor in Pergamon’s profitability." (p. 276). Cox continues "When, after 40 years, the US dollar ceased to be the benchmark for world currency, and the true costs and prices of STM journals became apparent, Pergamon and other European journal publishers fell abruptly in the esteem of the US library market." Between 1975 and 1985, the exchange rate between £ and $ started around 2.4£/$ to drop at 1.75 £/$ in early 1977 to climb back to nearly 2.5 around 1983 finally to decline slightly above par in early 1985. (See https://www.poundsterlinglive.com/bank-of-england-spot/historical- spot-exchange-rates/gbp/GBP-to-USD) Likewise, the exchange rate between the Guilder and the dollar went from 0.3957 in 1975 to 0.3024 in 1985 with a peak of 0.5033 in 1980. There again, fluctuations went both ways. (http://www.historicalstatistics.org/Currencyconverter.html) The fluctuations in the exchange rate militate against the argument that exchange rates consistently worked against (or for) US buyers. What is more probable is that European commercial publishers, at least some of them some of the time, used the dollar value when the European currencies went down, thus creating the illusion of stability in their prices (but increased profits in European currencies). When the dollar decreased in value, they simply applied the current exchange rate. In other words, they manipulated exchange rates to their advantage. Cox, an employee of maxwell, obviously thought this was a nifty trick! Too bad for ethics. If this hypothesis can be documented, it may be another good example of how commercial publishers view libraries and their budgets. Has anyone kept old accounting records? Jean-Claude Guédon Le samedi 08 juillet 2017 à 12:32 -0700, Dana Roth a écrit : > Very interesting article, although the author missed a couple of > points ... namely that > > 1.Maxwell was very clever in providing 'personal subscriptions' to > scientists at subscribing institutions at less than the cost of > mailing. > > 2. The 10% increase in price for Brain Research from 1975 to 1985 was > due both to a 50% increase in the number of articles (1000 to 1500) > but also to exchange rate changes. The value of the US$ vs Dutch > Guilder underwent some major fluctuations in those years. > > 3. Problems with exchange rate profiteering came later. > > On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 4:35 AM, <barry.ma...@iol.ie> wrote: > > Interesting, especially nostalgic. However, a good start re > > Elsevier became the story of Maxwell. Pity > > > > > Interesting article in the Guardian that spells out the role > > > played by Robert Maxwell in the development of the scholarly > > > journal industry. > > > > > > Éric > > > > > > > > > Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing > > > bad for science? > > > https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-busine > > > ss-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other > > > > > > > > > Eric Archambault > > > 1science.com > > > Science-Metrix.com > > > +1-514-495-6505 x111 > > > > > > > > > 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
[GOAL] A small, yet needed, correction to Glenn Hampson's claims
of Open Access generally agree that more openness is worth achieving. Mr. Hampson's remark here is anything but incomprehensible. Open Access is not the mode of expression of a closed sect. Moreover, having a clear conception of what the objective should ultimately look like is not an expression of rigidity, but rather an attempt to maintain reliable bearings in order to move forward. Think the "compass" metaphor, once more! 6. The attempt to recruit people to OSI is somewhat amusing. I assume people in the research communities are adult enough to determine whether they agree with whatever OSI is offering and whether they want to support OSI's viewpoint. However, before they do so, and because these people too are pragmatic, they will insist on knowing OSI's impact better. From my perspective, I must say that I do not see OSI's alleged difference is making any significant difference (to echo the formulation of the Palo Alto school of communication). 7. As for "rejoining" OSI - as if I had even "joined" OSI - Mr. Hampson should simply consider that people within OSI can either read what I publish, or contact me individually. I do not need to put a label on my back, especially when this label appears somewhat dubious and ambiguous to me. 8. For a while, I considered going to the meeting in 2016. I decided against it when I realized that the on-line discussion was losing all interest. Also, I had been invited to an important meeting of university publishers of academic journals in mexico, and I thought that that discussion was far more important than anything that could ever happen at the 2016 meeting. Retrospectively, I have the feeling I was absolutely right in doing so, for I learned really important things in Mexico. Jean-Claude Guédon ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] Copyright: the immoveable barrier that open access advocates underestimated
Paul can comment on this better than I, but my understanding is that the Liège model has now been extended to all French-speaking universities in Belgium through the application of the Liège rules to FNRS, the Walloon national funder. The second point that Richard Poynder does not seem to pick up at all (or is it simple journalistic scepticism?) is that, after a while, the Liège rules are more than accepted; they are largely embraced by the researchers. Finally, the attitude of OA advocates is not to identify the "typical", but rather the fruitful and forward looking. Liège is clearly in that latter category and this is why it finds itself the centre of fascinating discussions around Green OA. Kudos to both Bernard Rentier and Paul Thirion about this. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 23 février 2017 à 20:53 +0100, Paul THIRION a écrit : > > > Le 23/02/17 à 15:53, Richard Poynder a écrit : > > I would be interested in further details of the survey you mention > > Paul. Have the details been published? > No. It was only internal. But it could be fine to publish them. I > just need time > > > > My suspicion is that ORBi and Liège are not typical so far as OA > > and institutional repositories are concerned. > > > > Richard Poynder > > > > > > On 23 February 2017 at 12:35, Paul THIRION <paul.thir...@ulg.ac.be> > > wrote: > > > Dear Richard > > > Maybe what you say is not as general as you think. For example > > > in my institution a recent large survey shows that 91% of > > > researchers are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" by ORBi (our IR). > > > +90 % add all or allmost all their publications on ORBi. For the > > > deposits made in 2016, +65% of deposits with FT are OA. Last > > > thing, recently it's the researchers themselves who asked to add > > > Open Access as a key element in the strategic plan of the > > > institution... > > > Not sure we are the only one institution in the world where OA > > > won the hearts and minds of most researchers :-) > > > > > > Best regards > > > > > > Le 22/02/17 à 09:17, Richard Poynder a écrit : > > > > In calling for research papers to be made freely available open > > > > access advocates promised that doing so would lead to a > > > > simpler, less costly, more democratic, and more effective > > > > scholarly communication system. > > > > > > > > However, while the OA movement has succeeded in persuading > > > > research institutions and funders of the merits of open access, > > > > it has failed to win the hearts and minds of most researchers. > > > > > > > > More importantly, it is not achieving its objectives. There are > > > > various reasons for this, but above all it is because OA > > > > advocates underestimated the extent to which copyright would > > > > subvert their cause. > > > > > > > > That is the argument I make in a recently-posted text on my > > > > blog, which can be accessed from this page: http://poynder.blog > > > > spot.co.uk/2017/02/copyright-immoveable-barrier-that-open.html > > > > > > > > Richard Poynder > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > ___ > > > > GOAL mailing list > > > > GOAL@eprints.org > > > > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > > -- > > > Paul THIRION > > > Directeur ULg Library > > > Quartier des Urbanistes 1 > > > Traverse des architectes, 5D > > > B-4000 LIEGE > > > BELGIQUE > > > +32 (0)4 366 20 22 > > > paul.thir...@ulg.ac.be (secrétariat bib.direct...@ulg.ac.be) > > > http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/ph-search?uid=U013783 > > > http://lib.ulg.ac.be > > > ___ GOAL mailing list > > > GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/ > > > goal > > -- > > Richard Poynder www.richardpoynder.co.uk > > > > ___ > > GOAL mailing list > > GOAL@eprints.org > > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > -- > Paul THIRION > > Directeur ULg Library > Quartier des Urbanistes 1 > Traverse des architectes, 5D > B-4000 LIEGE > BELGIQUE > +32 (0)4 366 20 22 > paul.thir...@ulg.ac.be (secrétariat bib.direct...@ulg.ac.be) > http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/ph-search?uid=U013783 > http://lib.ulg.ac.be > ___ > 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
Re: [GOAL] Beall's list is removed
Thank you, once more, David. Presenting Beall almost as if he were the target and victim of some obscure force from some unnamed publishing interests is worthy of the best conspiracy theories found on some strange radio channels (Limbaugh, for example). Stevan, who (generally rightly) prides himself for his rationality should know better. Jean-Claude Guédon PS Those interested in laughing a little might want to read Beall's own "The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access" to be found in tripleC 11(2): 589-597, 2013 http://www.triple-c.at. This said, I should add that in the presently demented climate of non-factual opinions, Beall appears in the company of extremely well-known personalities. Perhaps laughter is not entirely appropriate here. In the case of Beall, the best is to let this miniscule storm die out. Beall's list is useless anyway. So, who cares? Le mercredi 18 janvier 2017 à 19:46 +, David Prosser a écrit : > Let us not forget that Beall was as well versed in supplying FUD as > anybody else. Remember that he wrote that open access (in all it’s > forms) was a plot by European socialists and an existential threat to > the scholarly process. > > Let’s also not forget that for every false-positive Beall casually > and unfairly stigmatised the authors who published in the journals he > listed and the publishers who published them. And when I say > ‘causally’ I really mean it - Walt Crawford has shown that for almost > 90% of journals included in the list Beall gave absolutely no reasons > for why they were included (http://walt.lishost.org/2016/01/trust-me- > the-other-problem-with-87-of-bealls-lists/) > > Beall made himself judge, jury and executioner - with no requirement > to justify his decisions and no obvious route for appeal. And he > puffed the issue of ‘predatory’ journals to a level far beyond its > actual impact and importance. Of course, that is his right to do so. > What I find sad is that for so long we gave him such attention. > > David > > (Writing in a purely personal capacity.) > > > > On 18 Jan 2017, at 19:07, Couture Marc <marc.cout...@teluq.ca> > > wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > Although I don’t applaud to the sudden disappearance of Beall’s > > list, I certainly think his legacy is highly controversial. In > > short, relying on a one-person black list to make overall quality > > judgments (on publishers or journals) as well as specific decisions > > (on where to publish) was not appropriate. There are other ways, > > and other tools (DOAJ, to name one) better suited to these tasks. > > An eventual new “reliable service” (a “black” complement to > > Cabells’ white list?) could be part of them; we’ll see. > > > > To Stevan: I wish to reassure you that I don’t see myself as > > “predatorily inclined” (not being sure though what that means) and > > that I’m not aware, much less part of any “FUD campaign to take > > [Beall] down” ;-) > > > > Marc Couture > > > > De : goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] De > > la part de Stevan Harnad > > Envoyé : 18 janvier 2017 13:04 > > À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > > Objet : Re: [GOAL] Beall's list is removed > > > > No, this is not the whole -- nor the end — of the story. > > > > My prediction is that the take-down of Beall’s list was indeed a > > result of FUD threats and actions (to Beall and his institution) by > > the deep pockets profiting from predation on authors’ publish-or- > > perish pressures. > > > > My hope is that a reliable service like it will indeed re-appear, > > with the collaboration of Jeffrey Beall (who has been something of > > a loose cannon, but on balance provided a valuable service). > > > > My suspicion is that those trying to make hay out of this take-down > > are themselves predatorily inclined and perhaps even part of the > > FUD campaign to take him and his institution down. > > > > Where there’s big bucks to be made, as in predatory “journal” > > publishing,” principles and scruples wither (with peer review the > > first to go)... > > > > Stevan Harnad > > > > On Jan 18, 2017, at 10:24 AM, Jihane Salhab <jderg...@uottawa.ca> > > wrote: > > > > Hi all, > > > > FYI Beall’s list is removed. Check the following post: Mystery as > > controversial list of predatory publishers disappears . > > > > A better option for authors to verify good publishers > > is thinkchecksubmit.org. In my opinion, it does a better job than > > Beall's cont
Re: [GOAL] Shining a light on Discoverability of Open Access content
I am not sure of being quite on target, but I will risk it anyway. This perspective seems to me to complete the dissemin tool in useful ways. To inspect what Dissemin is about, just check http://dissem.in . And if I am totally off base, please tell me. I stand to be corrected, if needed. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 30 juin 2016 à 15:12 -0400, John G. Dove a écrit : > I thought this GRID might be useful or interesting to some people on > this list. > > > > As I started looking (see link below my signature) at ways in which to > use pre-publication reference lists to identify and mobilize authors > to share their submitted manuscripts (green OA) I came to recognize > that not each of the various "discovery pathways" by which readers can > find articles of interest are equally able to discover such content. > > I began developing a GRID to lay out each discovery pathway and each > location of "open" content. Then I started asking questions from > those much more knowledgeable than me about how such content would be > found. I soon realized that this is not just a problem for green OA, > but even for gold OA as well as OA monographs and OER. If a new OA > publisher is unaware of some advantages to providing the discovery > tool knowledge bases with the right meta-data, for example, then their > open articles won't be included in the discovery tool. Subscription > publishers tend to know about these things because they have on-going > revenue to protect which is at risk if there's no usage attributed to > their journal. More seriously is the case of hybrid open articles > which have been paid for by authors or funding agencies to be open but > are apparently unable to be discovered by mechanisms that are > architected at the journal level rather than the article level. So I > ask, would funding agencies pay for articles to be open in a hybrid > journal if they knew that such articles would not be discoverable via > a link-resolver or a library's discovery service? > > > > I've now shared with GRID with the NISO "Discovery to Delivery Topic > Committee" which I joined last year. There is interest on that > committee to draft a "new item request" which then, should it gain > support, can be voted on by NISO membership to establish a NISO > "Working Group". > > > > I'm not necessarily sure that all of this lends itself to a NISO > "recommended practice" or standard. It could well be that other > organizations might adopt best practices or policies that would be > informed by the light this grid (or some version of it) might shine on > the problem. The fact that there is content which the author or > perhaps the publisher or perhaps a funding agency is fully intending > to be open to the world but is, in fact, hidden or blocked from some > of the common discovery mechanisms is something I think needs > attention. > > > > It's offered here without any rights reserved. Feel free to use it, > modify it, with or without attribution. > > > > -John Dove > > > An Open Content Discovery Grid for full-text discovery of content > intended to be open. > > >Location > > > > > > > > > > > > Discovery > > _ > Pathway > > > Gold > OA > Journal Articles hosted by publisher > > > Articles in hybrid journals which have been paid to be “open” > > > Versions of articles which have been submitted to institutional or subject > repositories > > > Versions of articles which the author has posted in Academia .edu > > > Versions of articles which the author has posted in Research Gate > > > Versions of articles which the author has posted in personal or departmental > websites > > > > > > Open > Access > Monographs > > > > > > Open > Educational Resources > > > General Web Search Engine > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Academic Web Search Engine > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > Library Webscale Discovery Services > > > > > > > > > > > >
Re: [GOAL] Policy to make sure open access works stay open access (was SSRN sellout to Elsevier)
I agree with Heather on this point: Focusing on the "purpose of open dissemination" is important. Heather's last suggestion regarding whole repositories being downloaded by other repositories can be improved by conceiving all of this within a general LOCKSS context. In other words, the question of distributed robustness also touches upon the preservation issue. All of this should probably be handled by dark archives. OpenAIRE and La Referencia are the perfect institutions to begin experimenting with this. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mardi 17 mai 2016 à 21:55 +, Heather Morrison a écrit : > Open access is in the process of transition from a toll access system that > continues to yield enormous profits to a very few publishers at the expense > of the rest of us. OA gains have been significant, but I do not think we > should underestimate the temptation to revert to toll access. The SSRN > sellout to Elsevier might be a good opportunity to consider how to develop > open access policy to ensure that works that are made open access remain open > access. Every potential approach has both strengths and weaknesses. I argue > that a sustainable open access ecosystem needs to have redundancy built in. > Copies of OA works should be in the institutional repository, every possible > subject repository, as well as many research and national libraries around > the world for safeguarding. > > One of the potential vulnerabilities of institutional repositories is that > institutions facing a budgetary crisis could be tempted to charge for access > or to sell off the repository (or even the institution). > > The best policy to date to minimize this potential, in my mind, is the MIT > faculty open access policy (acknowledging Harvard as the pioneer of this > style of policy). Following is the relevant part of the text of the policy: > > "Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology > nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and > to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open > dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to MIT a > nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all > rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in > any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to > authorize others to do the same”. > from: > https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-mit/mit-open-access-policy/ > > The improvement over the Harvard policy is the specification that the > articles are to be made available for the purpose of open dissemination. The > reason that this is important is because specifying that the articles not be > “sold for a profit” leads the door open for cost-recovery charges. > Institutional cost-recovery could include paying a company that provides the > service, e.g. Elsevier. If anyone is considering similar policy I recommend > adding a clause stating “free of charge for the user” which is much clearer. > > If even a few large research libraries around the world were to regularly > download and make accessible a mirror of the whole MIT open access > repository, making good use of their downstream user rights, I submit that > that would be a very robust system indeed to secure open access into the > future. > > Thoughts? > ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
Re: [GOAL] Re : Re: SSRN Sellout to Elsevier
Thank you for checking this. However, numbers do not tell the whole story. Elsevier, Thomson-Reuters, Springer, etc... behave strategically. Like good military leaders, they constantly try and test to see what sticks and works. For the moment, Pure's presence is small, but the parent company learns through this limited presence, and it obviously studies ways to make it more appealing to the repository community. This reminds me of ScholarOne as deployed by Thomson-Reuters. Scielo-Brazil had trouble marking its articles in a suitable XML format, and did it largely by hand. When Scielo did all it could to be included in the Web of Science, they were also "offered" the use of Scholar One. Now their work flow is dependent upon this software tool to such an extent that moving out of Scholar One will be very costly. This reminds me also of the recent report by the NSF which, for the first time, relies on Scopus rather than the Web of Science. Elsevier is getting closer to the the old dream first entertained by Robert Maxwell when he tried to coax the Science Citation Index out of Eugene Garfield's hands, so as to be both judge and party in the evaluation of journals. Reading how they gloat about this is also instructive: https://www.elsevier.com/connect/tracking-progress-in-us-science-and-engineering . We, in the OA community, have been rather naive about the ways in which power works and how it it is wielded. We had better wise up, and fast. But thank you again, Jessica, for doing the checking. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 18 mai 2016 à 12:08 +, Jessica Lindholm a écrit : > Hi Ross (et al.), > > Out of curiosity I had to check the amount of Pure instances as you > mentioned that many institutional repositories run on Pure. > > > > Checking openDOAR’s registry of repositories > (http://www.opendoar.org/) I find 16 PURE-repositories listed, whereas > e.g. Eprints has +400 instances and DSpace has +1300 instances. > However I am not at all sure to what degree openDOAR is containing > exhaustive data (or rather I am quite sure it doesn’t) -it is either > lacking data about PURE instances – or if not, I do not agree that > they are many.. > > > > Regards > > Jessica Lindholm > > > > > > From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On > Behalf Of Ross Mounce > Sent: den 17 maj 2016 22:54 > To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal@eprints.org> > Subject: Re: [GOAL] Re : Re: SSRN Sellout to Elsevier > > > > > Elsevier have actually done a really good job of > infiltrating institutional repositories too: > > > http://rossmounce.co.uk/2013/01/25/elseviers-growing-monopoly-of-ip-in-academia/ > > > > > > They bought Atira back in 2012 which created PURE which is the > software that many of world's institutional repositories run on. > > > I presume it reports back all information to Elsevier so they can > further monetise academic IP. > > > > > > Best, > > > > > > Ross > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On 17 May 2016 at 21:22, Joachim SCHOPFEL > <joachim.schop...@univ-lille3.fr> wrote: > > > Uh - "the distributed network of Green institutional > repositories worldwide is not for sale"? Not so sure - the > green institutional repositories can be replaced by other > solutions, can't they ? Better solutions, more > functionalities, more added value, more efficient, better > connected to databases and gold/hybrid journals etc. > > > > > > - Mail d'origine - > De: Stevan Harnad <amscifo...@gmail.com> > À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > <goal@eprints.org> > Envoyé: Tue, 17 May 2016 17:03:18 +0200 (CEST) > Objet: Re: [GOAL] SSRN Sellout to Elsevier > > > > > > Shame on SSRN. > > > > > > Of course we know exactly why Elsevier acquired SSRN (and > Mendeley): > > > > > > It's to retain their stranglehold over a domain (peer-reviewed > scholarly/scientific research publishing) in which they are no > longer needed, and in which they would not even have been able > to gain as much as a foothold if it had been born digital, > instead of being inherited as a legacy from an ob
Re: [GOAL] Subscription Costs - Full Disclosure
Again, I can express only admiration for the work and dedication of Christian Gutknecht. Let us all give him a hand in this effort. The figures for Chile are also interesting and can be taken out of the annual reports to be found in the URL I gave earlier and which I repeat here: http://www.cincel.cl/content/view/90/50/ I am now pursuing the figures from Uruguay which, I have been told, are also in the open, and this by law. Incidentally, the North-Atlantic countries often claim the right to tell the rest of the world how to behave when it comes to transparency and democracy. In this case, the right lessons come from Latin America where one does not have to go through lengthy court procedures to obtain what should be accessible to any taxpayer. Those who believe in capitalism and market economics should realize that this economic doctrine does not sit well with information asymmetry. And oligopolies do not sit well with liberal economics either. In the case of scholarly publishing, this is what we have to deal with. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 11 mai 2016 à 09:26 +0200, Christian Gutknecht a écrit : > Here the specific spendings from the University of Geneva: > https://wisspub.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/2016-04-14-bibliotheque-unige_depenses_20160316.xlsx > > > In fact as private citizen I’m trying to get these numbers for every > University in Switzerland, but it’s quite a time consuming effort, as > - even after the decision in Geneva - the Universities and their > libraries are unwilling to disclose this information and I have to > make an appeal almost every time in order to get the numbers (and an > appeal can take two years!). I’m constantly blogging about my efforts > here: > https://wisspub.net/2014/10/13/intransparenz-bei-den-bibliotheksausgaben-von-schweizer-hochschulen/ > At the bottom you find a table with all current decisions and > currently received numbers so far (including the University of Bern > and Zurich, as well as the ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne). > > > Actually there is a wiki page from OKF about collecting this > approaches: http://wiki.okfn.org/Open_Access/OA_FOI (The Numbers from > Argentina will make a great addition) > > > Given the fact, that these numbers are so essential in the current > debate about the transformation to OA, it’s really a shame that we > only have so little solid specific information about the current costs > of the system. It’s really about time to open this black box and I > really admire the work that has been done in this direction already at > UK: http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.72 > > > Best regards > > > Christian Gutknecht > > > > > > > > > > > Am 10.05.2016 um 23:53 schrieb Jean-Claude Guédon > > <jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca>: > > > > > > > > I just had a great time reading the decision of the court. > > > > Bravo! > > > > Could you share the information you finally obtained? I would love > > to see it, and so would the head of libraries in my university who > > is presently engaged in a wrestling match with Nature-Springer. > > > > For my part, allow me to point this list to the following documents: > > > > 1. A list of expenses by the Government of Argentina for various > > publishers and several years( attached) > > > > 2. Something equivalent, but in the form of annual reports for > > Chile: http://www.cincel.cl/content/view/90/50/ . > > > > In both of these countries, agreements with publishers are made > > public by law. > > > > Apparently, the same is true in Uruguay but I have not yet found the > > right place or person to ferret out this information. > > > > There is a need to centralize all this information, by the way. OAD > > perhaps ? > > > > > > Jean-Claude Guédon > > > > Professeur titulaire > > Littérature comparée > > Université de Montréal > > > > > > > > > > > > Le mardi 10 mai 2016 à 23:16 +0200, Christian Gutknecht a écrit : > > > > > Hi all > > > > > > > > > The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has released an Open > > > Access Monitoring Report 2013-2015: > > > http://www.snf.ch/SiteCollectionDocuments/Monitoringbericht_Open_Access_2015_e.pdf > > > > > > > > > The OA status of 17'000 publications reported to be output of SNSF > > > funded projects published between 2013 and 2014 an have been > > > checked, and an OA share of at least 39% (or 56% if you also count > > > freely papers on websites,
Re: [GOAL] Request Your Help for an open access study on non-English-language journals
In the same vein, i.e. lists that include a mixture of OA journals, and OA articles past their embargo periods, etc., but also sections that are temporarily closed, one could add Érudit in Québec (http://www.erudit.org/en/ ). Presently, Érudit is, I believe, looking for ways to support a transition to complete OA. On the other hand, Synergies is not moving very much, so far as I know (http://www.synergiescanada.org/). PKP where the Open Journal System finds its home (John Willinsky, Juan Pablo Alperin, etc.) could be a good source of information as their tools are used all over the world. https://pkp.sfu.ca/ Best, -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 11 mars 2016 à 16:29 +0100, Pierre Mounier a écrit : > Revues.org in France : http://www.revues.org > > Hrcak in Croatia : http://hrcak.srce.hr/ > AJOL in Africa : http://www.ajol.info/ > > > > > Best, > > > > > > -- > Pierre Mounier > Directeur adjoint au développement international - OpenEdition > Associate Director for international development - OpenEdition > > EHESS > 190-198 avenue de France > 75244 Paris cedex 13 > Bureau/Office 447 > Mob. +33 (0)6 61 98 31 86 > Twitter : @piotrr70 > orcid.org/-0003-0691-6063 > > > > > > > On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 3:57 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon > <jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca> wrote: > > Do not forget Redalyc in Mexico. > > > Jean-Claude Guédon > > Professeur titulaire > Littérature comparée > Université de Montréal > > > > > > > Le vendredi 11 mars 2016 à 12:04 +0200, Cenyu Shen a écrit : > > > Dear recipient, > > > > We have started a study to look at a subset of Open Access > scholarly > > journal publishing, which we feel has been overlooked in much of > the > > published research, namely OA journals published in other languages > > > than English. We include both newly started electronic only OA > > journals, as well as older print journals that have started to make > > > the e-version free. The vast majority of these probably don?t > charge > > authors. There are a number of reasons there have been few results > > about the overall extent of such publishing etc. One is that many > > leading researchers come from countries where English is the main > > language, and many studies have from the start been restricted to > such > > only journals publishing in English, in order to facilitate the > > gathering of data. Another is that non-English journals are likely > to > > be underrepresented in all the available indexes, including the > DOAJ. > > > > We have so far indentified two easy ways to find information about > > such journals. The first is using DOAJ and its search facilities. > The > > second one is using the OA journal portals we are aware of, such as > > > Scielo, J-stage, doiSerbia etc. In addition to this there are many > > countries, which don?t have such portals and we would like also to > get > > information from those. For this purpose we try to contact experts > who > > we believe have good knowledge of the situation in their countries > and > > could provide us links to list of all reputable scholarly journals > in > > their country, lists of OA journals etc. > > > > Countries which interest us in particular are: Canada, Most > European > > countries (except the UK) and including Russia, Francophone > countries > > in Africa, Middle East and Asian Countries. > > > > We will use three ways to contact volunteers who can help us: > > > > Contact with the management of DOAJ and its voluntary editorial > staff > > An email to The Global Open Access List (GOAL) > > Direct e-mail to people we know > > > > If you feel you are in a position to provide us information, please > > > contact us by e-mail > > > > Cenyu Shen, Ph.D. Student > > Principal researcher > > cenyu.s...@hanken.fi > > > > Bo-Christer Björk, Professor > > bo-christer.bj...@hanken.fi > > >
Re: [GOAL] Request Your Help for an open access study on non-English-language journals
Do not forget Redalyc in Mexico. Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 11 mars 2016 à 12:04 +0200, Cenyu Shen a écrit : > Dear recipient, > > We have started a study to look at a subset of Open Access scholarly > journal publishing, which we feel has been overlooked in much of the > published research, namely OA journals published in other languages > than English. We include both newly started electronic only OA > journals, as well as older print journals that have started to make > the e-version free. The vast majority of these probably don?t charge > authors. There are a number of reasons there have been few results > about the overall extent of such publishing etc. One is that many > leading researchers come from countries where English is the main > language, and many studies have from the start been restricted to such > only journals publishing in English, in order to facilitate the > gathering of data. Another is that non-English journals are likely to > be underrepresented in all the available indexes, including the DOAJ. > > We have so far indentified two easy ways to find information about > such journals. The first is using DOAJ and its search facilities. The > second one is using the OA journal portals we are aware of, such as > Scielo, J-stage, doiSerbia etc. In addition to this there are many > countries, which don?t have such portals and we would like also to get > information from those. For this purpose we try to contact experts who > we believe have good knowledge of the situation in their countries and > could provide us links to list of all reputable scholarly journals in > their country, lists of OA journals etc. > > Countries which interest us in particular are: Canada, Most European > countries (except the UK) and including Russia, Francophone countries > in Africa, Middle East and Asian Countries. > > We will use three ways to contact volunteers who can help us: > > Contact with the management of DOAJ and its voluntary editorial staff > An email to The Global Open Access List (GOAL) > Direct e-mail to people we know > > If you feel you are in a position to provide us information, please > contact us by e-mail > > Cenyu Shen, Ph.D. Student > Principal researcher > cenyu.s...@hanken.fi > > Bo-Christer Björk, Professor > bo-christer.bj...@hanken.fi > > Mikael Laakso, Assistant Professor > mikael.laa...@hanken.fi > > Information Systems Science > Dept. of Management and Organisation > Hanken School of Economics > P.O. Box 479, 00101 Helsinki, Finland > > > > ___ > 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] Re: The open access movement slips into closed mode
Thank you, David. Non disclosure agreements, closed meetings with political institutions and individuals, and no one says anything. A small, benign, conference with a few well-meaning researchers and librarians and anti-trust laws as well as conspiracy theories are brandished (respectively by Esposito and Poynder). Give me a break! In the old, wonderful, John Ford Western, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, there is, toward the end, a very funny political talk by a supporter of cattle rangers aiming to show that the hapless lawyer who is (mistakenly) known as Valance's slayer was a murderer. The reality, of course, was that Valance was about to finish off a man who could hardly hold a gun and already had a bullet in his right arm. And it was not he who killed Valance anyway. Now, in the case of Valance, we know why the speech is made. The man doing it was hoping for political favours. But in this case, why are Poynder and Esposito found riding such strange hobby horses? jcg -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 30 décembre 2015 à 10:24 +, David Prosser a écrit : > While we huff and puff about Berlin 12 and ridiculous suggestions that > the entire open access movement is slipping ‘into closed mode’, > Elsevier is having confidential meetings with UK Government Ministers > of State. Meetings that are apparently not covered by the Freedom of > Information Act: > > > > https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/302242/response/745563/attach/3/FOI%20Request%20ref%20FOI2015%2025797%20Meetings%20between%20BIS%20officials%20ministers%20and%20Elsevier%20Thompson%20Reuters.pdf > > > > I know which of these cases of ‘secrecy’ I find more concerning. > > > David > > > > On 21 Dec 2015, at 10:06, Richard Poynder <richard.poyn...@cantab.net> > wrote: > > > > > The 12th Berlin Conference was held in Germany on December 8th and > > 9th. The focus of the conference was on “the transformation of > > subscription journals to Open Access, as outlined in a recent white > > paper by the Max Planck Digital Library”. > > > > > > > > In other words, the conference discussed ways of achieving a mass > > “flipping” of subscription-based journals to open access models. > > > > > > > > Strangely, Berlin 12 was "by invitation only". This seems odd > > because holding OA meetings behind closed doors might seem to go > > against the principles of openness and transparency that were > > outlined in the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge > > in the Sciences and Humanities. > > > > > > > > Or is it wrong and/or naïve to think that open access implies > > openness and transparency in the decision making and processes > > involved in making open access a reality, as well as of research > > outputs? > > > > > > > > Either way, if the strategy of flipping journals becomes the primary > > means of achieving open access can we not expect to see > > non-transparent and secret processes become the norm, with the costs > > and details of the transition taking place outside the purview of > > the wider OA movement? If that is right, would it matter? > > > > > > > > Some thoughts here: > > http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/open-access-slips-into-closed-mode.html > > > > > > > > Richard Poynder > > > > > > > > > > > > ___ > > 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
[GOAL] Re: The open access movement slips into closed mode
Two points: 1. Confidentiality about who says what may be in order (on a case by case basis) for frank discussions; confidentiality about financial outcomes when public money is involved is simply unacceptable. 2. How people are selected, come forward, become leaders, etc. are complex questions. But how do you deal with representing "millions of authors" ? There is no parliament of science that I know of, and no election process exists on a world scale. And the OA community does not coincide with the researcher community (alas). -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 30 décembre 2015 à 17:07 +, Heather Morrison a écrit : > Thank you for raising the issue of secrecy in approach. It strikes me > that this is an appropriate critical question for the open access > movement. > > > Some thoughts follow. I was not invited to the conference, but have > mixed feelings. On the plus side, getting together those who pay for > subscriptions to figure out how to flip journals to OA strikes me as a > very healthy development, and having served as a consortial negotiator > in the past I understand the importance of confidentiality to > facilitate frank discussions. > > > On the other hand, if we agree on the principle of openness and > transparency in government, eg govt representatives and staff have an > obligation to publicly reveal their meetings, campaign contributions, > etc., why would this principle not also apply to people who work for > institutions involved in spending public money (presuming this applies > to the organizers and attendees of this event)? > > > From a strategic perspective, those who organize and/or attend an > event like this might want to consider the impact on those not > invited. If the attendance list was about 100 people, and there are > over 10,000 fully OA journals, thousands of repositories and millions > of authors who have chosen to make their work open access, as well as > many individual OA advocates, one can conclude that well over 99% of > the open access movement was excluded from this event. When my > government behaves in this fashion (eg secretive trade treaty > negotiations), I openly condemn such practices as un-democratic. I > cannot speak for anyone else, but note that my immediate reaction is > distrust, to assume that the reason for not allowing me to participate > or even know what is going on is to force changes that my government > knows I would oppose with a transparent approach. > > > Finally, limiting discussions to a few people seems highly likely to > limit the ideas and perspectives considered. > > > In summary, while overall I am inclined to see this initiative as a > positive step and sympathize with the need for confidentiality for > frank discussions, I think this is an opportune moment for the OA > movement to reconsider our commitment to open in the senses of > transparency and inclusion. > > > Happy holidays! > > > Heather Morrison > > On Dec 21, 2015, at 5:19 AM, "Richard Poynder" > <richard.poyn...@cantab.net> wrote: > > > > The 12th Berlin Conference was held in Germany on December 8th and > > 9th. The focus of the conference was on “the transformation of > > subscription journals to Open Access, as outlined in a recent white > > paper by the Max Planck Digital Library”. > > > > > > > > In other words, the conference discussed ways of achieving a mass > > “flipping” of subscription-based journals to open access models. > > > > > > > > Strangely, Berlin 12 was "by invitation only". This seems odd > > because holding OA meetings behind closed doors might seem to go > > against the principles of openness and transparency that were > > outlined in the 2003 Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge > > in the Sciences and Humanities. > > > > > > > > Or is it wrong and/or naïve to think that open access implies > > openness and transparency in the decision making and processes > > involved in making open access a reality, as well as of research > > outputs? > > > > > > > > Either way, if the strategy of flipping journals becomes the primary > > means of achieving open access can we not expect to see > > non-transparent and secret processes become the norm, with the costs > > and details of the transition taking place outside the purview of > > the wider OA movement? If that is right, would it matter? > > > > > > > > Some thoughts here: > > http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/open-access-slips-into-closed-mode.html &
[GOAL] Re: The open access movement slips into closed mode
I agree with Stevan Harnad's message where the following statement was included: (3) if funders and institutions simply "leave it to us" [publishers] to manage a "gradual transition" (certainly not a "flip." which publishers know full well would be highly unstable and impermanent, and would quickly transform into a "flop" because of institutional, funder and national defections) Imagine, back in 1475 or so, a bunch of scriptoria saying: leave this move to print to us... And then imagine the result! :-) "Kind regards" jcg Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 30 décembre 2015 à 08:34 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : > (3) if funders and institutions simply "leave it to us" [publishers] > to manage a "gradual transition" (certainly not a "flip." which > publishers know full well would be highly unstable and impermanent, > and would quickly transform into a "flop" because of institutional, > funder and national defections) ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua resign over Elsevier
Removing access simply means "stop subscribing". Libraries stop subscribing to journals all the time (in particular because they cannot pay for them). If stopping a subscription is equivalent to "book banning", then one can say anything in English (or any other language for that matter). And thank you to Stevan Harnad for using language correctly, as well as correctly underscoring the real meaning of my phrasing. Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 13 novembre 2015 à 10:05 -0430, Jacinto Dávila a écrit : > Mr Beall, as usual, picks his words as hostile as possible to address > this OA community. Calling Jean-Claude Guedon a book banner is like > calling Nelson Mandela a criminal. It is just not true and it tries to > ride the waves of a very disturbing discussion. I am asking him to > show some respect or to leave this email list. And he can call me a > list banner if he wants. > > > On 13 November 2015 at 09:37, Stevan Harnad <amscifo...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > "Remove Access" would of course be absurd, and completely > contrary to the spirit of OA (but that's not what J-CG meant). > > > > "Cease to Pay for Access," on the other hand, is a call for a > perfectly valid and longstanding judgment-call by library > serial acquisitions committees, in consultation with their > user community, as to how they spend their serials budget. > > > The valuable historical service Jeffery Beall is providing by > warning about scam Gold OA journals (though it would be even > more useful if extended to all journals, whether OA or > toll-access) is compromised by his inexplicable hostility to > OA itself and his equally inexplicable fealty to subscription > publishers and their M.O. > > > But calling an Open Access advocate the equivalent of a > book-banner takes the (vegan) cake... > > > SH > > > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 6:54 AM, Beall, Jeffrey > <jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu> wrote: > > I think that Guedon's advice to "Remove access to > Lingua going forward" is the moral equivalent of a > book banning. > > > > There's no moral difference between saying "Remove > access to Lingua" and saying "Remove the book Heather > Has Two Mommies." > > > > I understand that all book banners (and journal > banners) think they are doing the right thing and > helping society. > > > > I think it is shameful for anyone, especially a > librarian, to call for the removal of content from a > library. > > > > Guedon is the modern-day equivalent of a book banner. > He is pressuring libraries to ban serials, the same, > morally, as banning books. > > > > Jeffrey Beall > > University of Colorado Denver > > > > > From: goal-boun...@eprints.org > [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Richard > Poynder > Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2015 11:59 PM > To: 'Global Open Access List' <goal@eprints.org> > Subject: [GOAL] Inside Higher Ed: All six editors and > all 31 editorial board members of Lingua resign over > Elsevier > > > > > > I am posting this message on behalf of Jean-Claude > Guédon: > > > > > > The article below (thanks to Colin Steele) is an > example of a courageous move that must be supported by > the libraries. > > With regard to the Lingua (now Glossa) editorial > board
[GOAL] Re: Retirement from SHERPA Services
It is certainly an opportunity to thank not only Peter, but the whole Sherpa team for the extraordinary work they have done. The Sherpa list has been of immense help in providing answers to people (or even audiences) that expressed various forms of scepticism with regard to Open Access, or that expressed worries about ways to implement the Green Road. Many thanks, Peter, and your colleagues, for the great contribution to an important element of the emerging structure for OA. And the best to you personally, Jean-Claude -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mardi 01 septembre 2015 à 15:58 +, Peter Millington a écrit : > Hi, > > > > I will be retiring from SHERPA Services on the 6th September 2015. My > email address will be deactivated on that date, and I will therefore > be unsubscribing from this list. My last day in the office will be > Thursday 3rd September. > > > > I will be retaining an interest in open access, especially as my > personal research will be even more reliant on it. I am particularly > interested in how paywalls affect non-affiliated researchers. > > > > I have been part of the SHERPA Services team for the past 9 years. > While I did not create the original SHERPA/RoMEO and OpenDOAR, I was > responsible for redeveloping and extending them. I am proud of my role > in these services, as well as SHERPA/JULIET, SHERPA/FACT and the > forthcoming SHERPA/REF, not to mention our other projects such as RSP. > > > > SHERPA/RoMEO in particular continues to be heavily used by the open > access community worldwide. Not many developers can say they developed > an API that averages 200k requests per day. The SHERPA/RoMEO API > peaked at 1.5m requests per day before we made download files > available (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/downloads/). I only wish I could > have made more progress with our wish list of enhancements, but I have > to leave something for my successors to do! > > > > I would like to thank my colleagues both in the team and in the > international open access community for their friendship and good > company, not least at the annual Open Repositories and OAI > conferences. > > > > I wish you all well > > > > Peter Millington > > > > Retiring SHERPA Technical Development Officer > > Centre for Research Communications > > University of Nottingham, UK > > > > > > This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee > and may contain confidential information. If you have received this > message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. > > Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this > message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the > author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the > University of Nottingham. > > This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an > attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your > computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email > communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as > permitted by UK legislation. > ___ > 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] Re: libre vs open - general language issues
Patience, Stevan. Patience, please... jc -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 14 août 2015 à 12:28 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Perhaps it’s time for our newcomer, Nicolas Pettiaux, to stop posting for a while and do a little reading to inform himself about OA and its (short) history. Otherwise he is just making us recapitulate it for him. On Aug 14, 2015, at 12:03 PM, Nicolas Pettiaux nico...@pettiaux.be wrote: Dear I appreciate these discussions and clarifications. For me, and for most people who are nex to the subjects and I meet, Gold open access and green open access are confusing terms, even though they have been used for a long time in official documents. Green refers to nature and gold to expensive. What else for newcomers (= most people in fact) ? And nature is not necessarily cheap, while gold is most of the time expensive. What is cheap open access ? By cheap open access, I mean the full price of publishing a work (most of the time online only) in such a way that its overal price be as low as possible and ONLY reflect the actual costs ? The best method I can think of is forget about ANY journals, and consider as publication quality paper a work that is published anywhere online, be it on an institutional (open) repository or any website. Stop counting papers but only refer to their quality as measured for example effective evaluation of a committee made of human beings and not anymore by any accounting technique. Yes, this would suppose that on a per document base, or per person base, a committee would have to do actual work. But this is done already for most grant attribution or tenure selection processes. Maybe not yet by the actual reading of the papers and comments about his own papers an authors would write. Comments on a public website where the paper is published could also be taken into account in the evaluation. Many people agree today to consider that the peer review system does not work anymore due to a too large number of submitted papers and a too large number of journals/reviews. Is there any other solution than dumping the reviews, the journals, the papers as they are evaluated and listed today ? I am not the one proposing this . I have discussed the subject with Pierre-Louis Lions, a famous French mathematician, professor at the College de France and president of the board of the Ecole Normale supérieure who mentioned such a procedure he would appreciate and support. Best regards, Nicolas -- Nicolas Pettiaux, phd - nico...@pettiaux.be Open@work - Une Société libre utilise des outils libres ___ 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
[GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues
Many thanks for all this, Marc. DOAJ is doing all it can to provide solid information for over 10,000 legitimate titles. I continue to think that much of the vetting work could be organized as a distributed task by libraries all over the world. it is just a question of establishing standards, protocols, work flows perhaps, and spreading the task around. Can't the library associations work together to help DOAJ? This sounds like such an obvious and elementary question. To start with, ARL, CARL, LIBER, etc. could quickly confer to get the ball rolling. DOAJ needs and deserves your support. As for Jeffrey Beall, his position would be so much more appreciated if he approached this issue positively. He too could help if he wanted to. And his reputation would be much better if he did. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 14 août 2015 à 20:44 +, Couture Marc a écrit : Hi all, The problem is that the two following peer-reviewed papers (both published in 2012, by the way, so I had thought it was one of them) conclude that the majority of OA journals don’t charge APC’s. David J Solomon, D. J. Björk, B.-C. (2012). A Study of Open Access Journals Using Article Processing Charges. JASIST, 63(8), 1485-1495. Manuscript (accepted version) retrieved from http://www.openaccesspublishing.org/apc2/preprint.pdf Laakso, M. Björk, B.-C. (2012). Anatomy of open access publishing: A study of longitudinal development and internal structure. BMC Medicine, 10, 124. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/124 I had previously read them in depth, and hadn’t found any flaw in their methodology. Neither did the reviewers, obviously. However, to get a more complete picture, one must also consider the proportion of articles published each year. According to Laakso and Björk (2012), a slight majority of OA articles published in 2011 required APCs (the exact figure is hard to tell, for reasons I understood fully after a private discussion with one of the authors). So, to minimize any risk of misleading, one could safely say that: - A fair majority of OA journals don’t ask APCs. - APCs are paid for a majority of OA papers (assuming waivers are not widely granted). By the way, it seems that APC figures in DOAJ website are being updated (along with all the new metadata), so one can’t get any reliable data there for the time being (the figure is 6% with APCs, but with very partial coverage as reveals a quick inspection of the available spreadsheet). Marc Couture De : Beall, Jeffrey [mailto:jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu] Envoyé : 14 août 2015 15:30 À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc : Couture Marc Objet : RE: [GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues Dr. Couture is correct that the passage I cited does not itself cite the 2012 SOAP study, and I apologize for this error. Here is what I really should have included: The overwhelming majority (nearly 70%) of OA journals charge no APCs. Moreover, when they do charge APCs, the fees are usually paid by funders (59%) or by universities (24%). Only 12% of the time are they paid by authors out of pocket. See Table 4 of the comprehensive Study of Open Access Publishing (SOAP). http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.5260; This passage is from Dr. Peter Suber's blog here:https://plus.google.com/+PeterSuber/posts/K1UE3XDk9E9 I also got the year of the SOAP study wrong; it was 2011, not 2012. Dr. Suber's blog post quoted above is from April 5, 2013. Jeffrey Beall From:goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Couture Marc Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 12:56 PM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues Hi all, Well, I don’t know exactly what part of Jeffrey Beall’s post Dana Roth agrees with, but I’m wondering about that part of the same post: most peer-reviewed open access journals charge no fees at all. [1] This misleading statement is based on a 2012 study that examined a non-representative subset of open-access journals, a limited cohort, so conclusions that apply to all OA journals cannot, and should not, be drawn from it. I found no link to or mention of a 2012 study in the cited blog post (by Peter Suber). Before we go any further (if need be), perhaps we should ask Mr Beall to tell us what study he alludes to, so that we can judge by ourselves the validity of conclusions such as the one in the excerpt quoted. Marc Couture De :goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] De la part de Dana Roth Envoyé : 14 août 2015 13:40 À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Objet : [GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language
[GOAL] Re: Elsevier: Trying to squeeze the virtual genie back into the physical bottle
Like Stevan, I would not characterize the green road as parasitic; or, if I were, I would do so only in the sense that when some mushrooms parasite other mushrooms, they make them much more comestible... Green and Gold are a bit like the two fists of a boxer: you parry with one and hit with the other, and either fist is just as good to fulfil either task. Stevan has always been clear about the fact that what he demands first is not the ultimate objective, but only a necessary first step. No one wants to stop efforts at the level of gratis OA, but getting at least gratis OA is a valuable first step. CC-BY-NC-ND is indeed terribly restrictive, but, again, it is better than nothing. APC-Gold is better than nothing, but it too has downsides: it opens the door to predatory journals; it certainly stimulated the thinking behind a truly terrible system - namely the hybrid journals -, and, like subscription journals, it discriminates against poorer institutions and/or countries (and exceptions made for poorer countries are not entirely satisfactory either). Subsidized mega-journals would be the best system because: 1. Being subsidized, they would offer gratis access to authors and libre access to users. They could choose a CC-by licence. 2. Being subsidized, they would remind all of us that the publishing phase of research is an integral part of research (which is subsidized, and would not be sustainable without subsidies), and they would move the financing of publishing research with the financing of research; 3. Because they are mega-journals, they would decouple quality from editorial orientations: issues of marginal, peripheral, curiosity-driven, interests would be treated on an equal footing with hot issues, whatever the source of heat. We might have had better and earlier answers to Ebola with such a system, just to use this example; 4. Repositories could be transformed into mega-journals by accepting papers that go nowhere else and by organizing peer review. By reducing acquisition budgets by so much percent per year, libraries could find resources to support the organization of peer review over their collections of unrefereed submissions; 5. Repositories could go for papers of good scientific quality that lead to negative results. Such papers are precious, yet are presently being lost; 6. Repositories could guarantee the free (and libre) capability of linking data sets to papers, as well as data and text mining of any kind; 7. Ultimately, the evaluation of research would come primarily from these networks of repositories acting as mega-journals, and would be based on a set of criteria that would totally by-pass the impact factor. 8. With decreasing revenues from libraries, and a loosening grip on the criteria of quality control, the large commercial corporations would have to shape up, or shape out. The devil, as usual, is in the details, but here is a workable scenario that starts from two bases - green OA plus gratis-libre-Gold. It builds on Stevan's vision, and it also builds on the visions inherent on platforms such as Redalyc and Scielo. It retains many lessons from PLoS ONE. Finally, this perspective also integrates the rising data issue, the linkages between research papers and data, and the issues related to both data and text mining. It focuses on the needed first steps, but it also provides a roadmap for the healthy development of a scientific communication system that would work on a world scale and be inclusive and poly-centric rather than hierarchic and oligarchic. Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mardi 26 mai 2015 à 12:03 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Mike, I will respond more fully on your blog: http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1710 To reply briefly here: 1. The publisher back-pedalling and OA embargoes were anticipated. That’s why the copy-request Button was already created to provide access during any embargo, nearly 10 years ago, long before Elsevier and Springer began back-pedalling. 2. Immediate-deposit mandates plus the Button, once adopted universally, will lead unstoppably to 100% OA, and almost as quickly as if there were no publisher OA embargoes. 3. For a “way forward,” it is not enough to “look past the present to the future”: one must provide a demonstrably viable transition scenario to get us there from here. 4. Green OA, mandated by institutions and funders, is a demonstrably viable transition scenario. 5. Offering paid-Gold OA journals as an alternative and waiting for all authors to switch is not a viable transition sceario, for the reasons I described again yesterday in response to Éric Archambault: multiple journals, multiple subscribing institutions, ongoing access needs, no coherent “flip” strategy, hence double-payment (i.e., subscription fees for incoming institutional access to external institutional output plus Gold publication fees
[GOAL] Re: Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on peer review?
Defamatory means attacking the reputation of something or someone. Mr. Beall's phrasing intimated that a bad choice made by DOAJ in one case was symptomatic of the whole enterprise: I was not surprised... etc.). I believe that Francis Bacon would have objected to such a cavalier use of induction to attack a worthy project. That is why I used the term defamatory, and I believe, even though English is not my first language, that it is an appropriate use of the adjective. DOAJ, in the past, has not been either clueless or reluctant to act in the case of questionable journals. DOAJ has simply lacked the resources to do its job better. We, the members of the community of people concerned about the quality of OA journals might consider giving a hand to that organization, rather than criticize it out of hand. I return to the example of Wikipedia that I used yesterday in a different message: do not attack the device; correct the content! Jeffrey Beall's list has been and remains very useful. I even tried to help him a tiny little bit, once, to identify the nature of a questionable journal. What I do not like about Jeffrey Beall's attitude is how he uses the rogue, predatory or questionable journals as a way to tarnish the entire OA goal. For him, as it appears to me, the presence of rogue journals is enough to characterize open access as noxious. Actually, this kind of obsession is beside his (important) point, and it probably weakens his effectiveness by setting the problem of questionable journals in a questionable framework. The issue of rogue, predatory and/or questionable journals is tied to APC's. By organizing a business model on the basis of upstream financing by the authors or proxies, one removes the risks associated with publishing, and then looking for subscribers. Unwittingly, the APC business model opened the door to these questionable practises. This is an excellent example of an unintended consequence. This said, the OA movement is both green and gold, and APC-Gold is only a fraction of the whole Gold set. OA is much broader than just APC-Gold. Ideally, on the Gold side of things, OA journals should be gratis for authors and free (e.g. CC-by) on the readers' side. This raises the issue of how to pay for such a set-up. The solution relies on thinking out of the commercial box as a transactional model. Research itself costs billions and billions of dollars and is totally unsustainable in commercial terms. That is why governments support it, and have done so just about forever, even before the so-called Scientific Revolution. In the US, NIH alone spends around 16-8 billion dollars per year, while the cost of all scientific journals for the whole world is around 10-12 billion dollars. My personal thesis about this is simple: 1. The publishing phase of scientific research is an integral part of scientific research, not a separate phase; 2. The cost of scientific publishing should be wrapped into the cost of supporting research; 3. The cost of publishing scientific research is no more than about 2% of the cost of research (and this 2% includes the profits made by the large publishing multinationals we all know); 4. The issue now becomes how to allocate this 2% while ensuring editorial autonomy and freedom. The answer lies in consortia of university presses and libraries, set up on an international basis to provide robustness to the whole system and put it out of reach of any single government, should it turn rogue in this regard. The Scielo model, despite some issues affecting part of its operations, provides an interesting starting point to think about the way to organize this allocation of resources. The modalities of this allocation could include a degree of competition between consortia, but this competition would be part of the Great Conversation of science: at last, the system of communication that researchers (and others) need would be under the control of research institutions. The devil, of course, is in the proverbial details, but having a clear vision and a clear road map may be helpful. This is my take on this level of our collective thinking. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 14 mai 2015 à 21:12 +, Dana Roth a écrit : I fail to see how identifying a presumed defect (i.e., DOAJ's listing of a questionable journal) is defamatory. Since DOAJ, in the past, was essentially clueless (or reluctant to act) about questionable journals, isn't Jeffery Beal is doing the community a very important service by alerting us to what might be an unresolved problem? 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
[GOAL] Re: Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on peer review?
In his blog, Jeffrey Beall writes: I am not too surprised to find a journal that advertises fake impact factors and does a four-day peer review included in DOAJ:.. This is totally mean spirited. This is small. DOAJ relies on all of us, and in fact regularly asks for people to review the quality of journals. If Mr. Beall devoted a small fraction of his admirable energy to helping DOAJ weed out bad journals, rather than bask in total negativism, we would all be better off. Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mardi 12 mai 2015 à 21:17 +, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : In the interest of presenting different viewpoints on this topic, I too would like to share the blog post I published today. My blog post is about a gold open-access journal that claims it has no article processing charges but, when you read the fine print, you will discover that it demands a maintenance fee from authors whose work is accepted for publication. The blog post is here: http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/05/12/low-quality-no-author-fee-oa-journal-has-hidden-charges/ Also, the journal promises to carry out peer review in 3-4 days. It's included in DOAJ, which incorrectly reports that the journal does not charge any author fees. The journal also boldly displays fake impact factors from six different companies. I believe that this journal will also be of interest to historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists. Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor Auraria Library University of Colorado Denver 1100 Lawrence St. Denver, Colo. 80204 USA -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 2:39 PM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on peer review? In the early days as many on this list will no doubt remember, open access advocates spent a lot of time defending OA from the ludicrous argument that peer review somehow was dependent on subscription-based publishing. Have we over-reacted, and are we now placing far too much emphasis on the technicalities of peer review? This post draws on an example of a journal that is now fully open access and peer reviewed, which emerged from a conference a few decades ago after a 5-year stint as a newsletter, and asks whether we have gone too far in separating the peer-reviewed article from the broader scholarly communication / community of which the article logically forms just one part: http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/12/from-conference-to-newsletter-to-journal-a-challenge-to-the-emphasis-on-peer-review/ I've added two sections to the Research Questions page in the Open Access Directory: http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Research_questions Open access in the context of scholarly communication and community flows from the challenge to narrow emphasis on peer review described above. There are questions here that might interest historians, anthropologists, or other social scientists. The open versus private section may engage scholars from a variety of humanities and social sciences; there are interesting theoretical and empirical questions in relation to all of the open movements. 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 ___ 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] Re: Has the OA movement over-reacted to challenges on peer review?
Surprisingly, Dr. Schwartz has not yet noticed that a rather open and vigorous debate about OA has been going on for the better part of two decades, including debates among OA supporters. Mr. Beall is absolutely welcomed in this debate, so long as he debates (as opposed to taking potshots, for example). Furthermore, what I was doing was not intervening in an OA debate; it was simply reacting to Mr. Beall's defamatory comment about DOAJ (I am not too surprised... etc.). DOAJ is an open, transparent, organization that tries to put some good information about OA journals. It has limited resources and it relies on a number of volunteers; in short, it does its best in a very honest fashion. It is not perfect, but few things are perfect in this vale of tears... Those who see mistakes in the DOAJ list should do as those who see mistakes in Wikipedia: rather than criticize the device, help correct the content. As for the alleged bullying dimension of my statement, I could not even begin to comment. I do not have the psychiatric credentials of Dr. Schwartz, and would not know how to handle categories that seem to change significantly every decade or so. Let me be clear, however, on one crucial point: bullying (as I understand this term - i.e. a strong individual imposing his/her will on another individual ) was not among my intentions. I was simply rising to the defence of an organization that was inappropriately attacked. It may just be that one's vigour is felt by the other as bullying, but then what about a vigorous ... debate? In conclusion, thank you for the powerful partisan characterization: this is an evaluation I would never have dared make about myself. :-) -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 14 mai 2015 à 09:14 -0500, Michael Schwartz a écrit : Jean-Claude Guédon's comment on Jeffrey Beall's Blog is totally mean spiritedsmall. The many ongoing changes, consolidations, and innovations associated with open access require vigorous, open, and respectful debate. Presently in today's OA, we see the good...the bad...and the ugly. There is no slam dunk here. And, sadly, there is precious little debate. I wonder why... Critics such as Jeffrey Beall should be welcomed, not shamed. Gratuitous insulting comments about their character are inappropriate, to say the least. And the more powerful and influential the bully the more inappropriate. As long as powerful partisan's hammer away from their bully pulpit - without reproach, a really vigorous and open debate - which MUST occur for all sorts of reasons - cannot and will not happen. How sad Michael Schwartz Michael Schwartz, MD Clinical Professor of Psychiatry Texas AM Health Science Center College of Medicine Founding Editor, Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine Sent from my iPhone On May 14, 2015, at 8:12 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: In his blog, Jeffrey Beall writes: I am not too surprised to find a journal that advertises fake impact factors and does a four-day peer review included in DOAJ:.. This is totally mean spirited. This is small. DOAJ relies on all of us, and in fact regularly asks for people to review the quality of journals. If Mr. Beall devoted a small fraction of his admirable energy to helping DOAJ weed out bad journals, rather than bask in total negativism, we would all be better off. Jean-Claude Guédon ___ 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] Re: Fair Golf vs. Fools Gold
We are back here on an old debate between Stevan and myself. My take on all this is: 1. Authors seek ways to obtain prestige and visibility; currently, journals are about the only way to achieve this; 2. Prestige and visibility of researchers are linked to journals that act as logos. The impact factor is the present method to evaluate the visibility of a journal. This is madness, but it has some degree of purchase socially and institutionally, however irrational the foundation for this kind of evaluation may be; 3. The mandated green road provides access to some version (depending on the publishing house and its whims) of published documents; as such it is a useful first step to achieve open access. But it is only a first step. Because it is a very incomplete and imperfect first step, a significant fraction of researchers have difficulties in seeing the value of this approach and practise inertia. This is what stands behind the need for mandates; 4. Open access journals, provided that they are free for the reader (free as in the BOAI of 2016), and gratis for the authors offer alternative publishing vehicles that compete with existing journals. As such they are useful. And if they are free and gratis as explained above, they will not help the rise of rogue or hybrid journals. Bringing prestige and visibility to these journals is very important. However, OA journals that are prestigious tend to be based on APC's, while free and gratis journals tend to be less visible and less prestigious. Note that visibility and prestige are not to be confused with inherent quality of the work published. Note that some parts of the world, particularly in latin America, are moving in that direction (Scielo and Redalyc); 5. Repositories, to the extent that they add services similar to those of journals (peer review in particular) begin to converge with OA journals and they are also useful in helping configure the future communication system of science in a healthy way. They too will not give rise to rogue journals or hybrid journals. They will give rise to better methods to evaluate the quality of work; 6. Far from insisting on a time-dependent series of steps, pushing simultaneously for basic Green OA, enhanced Green (with more services) and free and gratis-Gold is the optimal strategy. We need all these pathways to make headway and achieve true OA; 7. Paying for APC's, particularly for hybrid journals makes no sense at all. This practise has opened the door to rogue journals (in the case of APC-Gold) and it has led to double-dipping and worse in the case of hybrid journals; 8. Given all the money already available for acquisition of licences and materials in academic libraries, there is more money than needed to support a world system of scientific communication that is fully under the control of the research world; 9. If Google Scholar (or another search engine) could quickly and precisely index the documents in open access, be they in repositories, or in OA journals, it would help the OA movement enormously. Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 14 mai 2015 à 14:07 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : The subject header should of course have read Fair Gold vs Apologies for the typo. (Someone will surely find a punny in there...) On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com wrote: Predictably, I won’t try to calculate how much a fair Gold OA fee should be because (as I have argued and tried to show many times before) I do not think there can be a Fair Gold OA fee until Green OA has been universally mandated and provided: Pre-Green Gold is Fools Gold. Before universal Green OA, there is no need for Gold OA at all — not, at least , if the purpose is to provide OA, rather than to spawn a pre-emptive fleet of Gold OA journals (indcluding many “predatory” ones), or a supplementary source of revenue for hybrid (subscription/gold) OA publishers. The reason is that today — i.e., prior to universally mandated Green OA — both subscription journals and Gold OA journals continue to perform (and fund) functions that will be obsolate after universal Green OA: Peers review for free. Apart from that non-expense, here is what has been mentioned “for a small journal publishing only 20 peer-reviewed articles per year”: (a) “top-of-the-line journal hosting”: Obsolete after universal Green OA. The worldwide distributed network of Green OA institutional repositories hosts its own paper output, both pre and post peer review and acceptance by the journal. Acceptance is just a tag. Refereeing is done
[GOAL] Number of Open Access journals
I have repeatedly criticized the numbers of journals used to describe scientific and scholarly publishing in the world. I have also regularly criticized the use of lists such as the Web of Science, Scopus and Ulrich's as being largely centred on the North Atlantic and/or OECD countries.As a counter to such numbers, I have pointed out that Latin America alone, as indicated by the Latindex vetted list, can sport over 6,000 titles. Presumably, if Asia and Africa did the same kind of work, numbers of 25-27,000 titles for the whole world would look funny. Another way to look at this is through disciplines or study areas. No one, I suspect, would argue that Classics (Latin and Greek) is a large speciality in the world of learning. Typically, classics departments are small and tend to disappear. Nonetheless, one can find a list of 1498 journal in this field, and that list is limited to open access journals. http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.ca/2012/07/alphabetical-list-of-open-access.html The list dates from the summer of 2012. There may be a few more or a few less since, but the least one may add is that such a number reveals a publishing activity that reaches well beyond expectations (at least mine). Conclusion: scholarly journal publishing is a lot more complex than what is provided by most scientometric studies. And a final question: who is advantaged by the illusory simplicity of the publishing landscape? -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ 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
With regard to Jeffrey Beall's arguments against CC licences, let me respond as follows: 1. What is the evidence about the claim that there is much disagreement about what the licences mean? We might see some disagreement about which licence to use, but each licence is about as clear as any, well-constructed, legal document. 2. The legalese is indeed complex, but so is the legalese of a transfer of rights: that is because both kinds of documents translate into a local jurisdiction what the plain English terms mean. Any legal document will suffer from this. That is why we speak of legalese. 3. The simplicity of copyright? This must be a joke. Think about the tension between copyright and authors' rights (with its associated moral rights). Think about copyright preserving only the order of words, but not the ideas, yet protecting derived works... How does fair use work in the US? How about outside the US? And I am not even a copyright specialist... If someone is happy with giving all his/her rights away, this is a personal decision. However, I cannot refrain from adding that some people enjoy pain: they are generally known as masochists. Happily giving everyone of one's rights away could be associated with masochism. As for the statement, my transaction was easy to understand, unambiguous, and clear, I have to agree with this: giving everything away is also one of the seductive dimensions (for some) of vows of poverty. Meanwhile the so-called high-quality publishers fulfil their real objective, which is high profit rather than high quality. Finally, if a thief threatens my life to get my wallet, I have also to admit that the transaction was easy to understand, unambiguous, and clear. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le lundi 13 avril 2015 à 14:45 +, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : 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 ___ 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] Re: The Qualis and the silence of the Brazilian researchers
If some academics find it difficult publicly to denounce what obviously are rogue journals, others obviously will. It is only a question of perseverance. Furthermore, we need academics only to endorse journals that they know to be legitimate. Those without the ability to have five open sponsors will simply stand out in the list (that for colleagues who might be scared of being sued). Besides, Mr. Tuffani, all you have to do is publish the list of the 200 doubtful titles and ask who would be willing to put his/her good name behind any of these journals. If it turns out that some are actually legitimate, we shall soon know. They will have no difficulty in garnering five sponsors who can be easily identified and queried as to their decision to support a particular title. Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 02 avril 2015 à 17:28 -0300, Mauricio Tuffani a écrit : I will write about the suggestions of Mrs. Morrison and Mr. Guédon to CAPES. But I sent them previously for this Brazilian federal agency, as I reported in my post yesterday, whose translation is available in the page of the link below. The Qualis and the silence of the Brazilian researchers http://mauriciotuffani.blogfolha.uol.com.br/the-qualis-and-the-silence-of-the-brazilian-researchers/ Best regards, *** Maurício Tuffani Journalist, science writer São Paulo, SP, Brazil Mobile: +55 11 99164-8443 Phone: +55 11 2366-9949 http://folha.com/mauriciotuffani mauri...@tuffani.net *** ___ 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] Re: Deal in France, no deal in The Netherlands
We should all get behind the Dutch universities and tell them to stand firm, and tell them that we are going to do all that is possible to help them. And the French should have done the same. This would have generated a spirit of resistance that would have quickly spread across Europe and beyond. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 05 novembre 2014 à 08:28 +, Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen) a écrit : Over last few days we witnessed Elsevier reaching a new 5-year deal with French Universities, for 33,4 M euro’s per year: http://scoms.hypotheses.org/293. The deal is also said to have a data mining paragraph. Almost at the same time news broke that Dutch universities did not accept Elsevier’s offer for a new deal for the years ahead: http://www.vsnu.nl/news/newsitem/11-negotiations-between-elsevier-and-universities-failed.html. The Dutch required major steps towards Open Access, but apparently Elsevier did not want to move enough to satisfy the Dutch negotiators. According to the press release by VSNU, the Dutch association of universities, researchers are now likely faced to have no access to Elsevier journals from January 2015. In a dutch newspaper, De Volkskrant, the negotiators said that perhaps scholars will need to email authors to get access, or to use versions available in repositories. I think this is a major test case: a full small country (although medium sized in research output) having no access to new content in Elsevier journals. Jeroen Bosman ___ 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] Re: FW: Cambridge policy change
These changes in policy, appearing in a surreptitious way, not entirely clear, etc., had to be anticipated: they are, alas, one of the most potent weapons against the Green road because they keep confusing the landscape. Rogue publishers achieve a similar goal on the Gold side of things. Publishers do not even have to coordinate among themselves. In fact, the more chaotic the process is, the better it is from their perspective. In my opinion, all mandates should immediately include immediate collection into a dark archive with a button. Then articles could be moved from and to the dark archive as needed. Ideally, some form of metadata should be able to register the changes of policy in such a way that all affected articles in a given repository would be transferred automatically when such changes would be noticed. In fact, more effective metadata, covering more ground than is the case now (for example re-use rights), and more thoroughly implemented in the repositories appears to be urgently needed. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 02 octobre 2014 à 18:31 +0100, Richard Poynder a écrit : Forwarding from the JISC-REPOSITORIES mailing list. -Original Message- From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Gray, Andrew D. Sent: 02 October 2014 16:55 To: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk Subject: Cambridge policy change Hi all, Just spotted this today: Cambridge Journals have apparently changed their overall green OA policy sometime in the past few months (there's no date on the new policy that I can see to indicate when it was brought in, and I can't find an announcement) July: http://web.archive.org/web/20140714210504/http://journals.cambridge.org/acti on/displaySpecialPage?pageId=4608 Now: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displaySpecialPage?pageId=4608 You used to be able to post the version of record to an institutional repository with a twelve-month embargo, but this has been altered to abstract only. The AAM used to have no embargo, and this has now been altered to six months after publication. The new policy is undated, and they haven't updated the Copyright and Repositories agreement, which still lists the old terms: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displaySpecialPage?pageId=4676 It's still RCUK-compliant, but it's a bit frustrating - Cambridge had had one of the better self-deposit policies. - Andrew Gray an...@bas.ac.uk // 01223 221 312 Library, British Antarctic Survey ___ 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] Re: Library Vetting of Repository Deposits
Beware of categories such as librarians or publishers or even researchers. Let us remember also that librarians were behind the creation of repositories back around 2003-4. Without them, their work and, often, their money and resources, we simply would not have these repositories. That some librarians should try to enforce very strict rules, etc. is not all that surprising: the profession is built on care, precision and rigorous management of an unwieldy set of objects. However, we should not paint the profession with too broad a brush. There is more to this: researchers often adopt a dismissive attitude with regard to librarians. They treat them as people delivering a service, i.e. as servants. Nothing could be more wrong. Librarians help us navigate the complex world of information. They are extremely important partners in the process of doing research. In some universities - and I believe this is the right attitude - some librarians acquire academic status and do research themselves. One thing that always surprises me is that, sometimes, it feels as if librarians were viewed as culprits and publishers as angels - the very term has been used. The use of global categories in either case is wrong, but the most exacting librarian that is vetting very precisely every item going into his/her repository will never skew and warp the fabric of scientific communication as some large publishers do. Let us keep things in perspective, please. This said, it is true that some librarians see their task as a procurement exercise, and they work with one strange guiding principle: keep good relationships with the vendors, to use the dominant vocabulary. The Charleston conference that takes place every year is a perfect example of this trend: publishers and librarians meet with almost no researchers present. This amounts to a situation that is symmetrical to that of arrogant researchers. Researchers become customers of libraries, etc. And, of course, big publishers are only too happy to support such events. Librarians and researchers are natural allies. Elitist attitudes among researchers are anything but pleasant. Procurement objectives among librarians are obviously of the essence, but they should not become the sole guiding principle of librarians, and, IMHO, a great many librarians know this perfectly well. As for me, I love librarians. (disclosure: I married one... :-) ). -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 24 septembre 2014 à 09:35 +0900, Andrew A. Adams a écrit : Dana Roth wrote: Thanks to Stevan for reminding the list that working with librarians will, in the long run, be much more productive than denigrating their efforts. I am all in favour or working with librarians when those librarians are working to promote Open Access. When librarians work in ways which inhibit my view of the best route to Open Access, I reserve the right to criticise those actions. There are many librarians who do get it and with who I'm happy to share common cause, and to praise their efforts. I have in the past said that the ideal situation for promoting open access at an institution is for a coalition of reseaerchers, manager and librarians to work at explaining the benefits to the institution (in achieving its mission and in gaining early adopter relative benefits) to the rest of the researchers, managers and librarians. Unfortunately, in too many cases, librarians (often those who were not the original OA evangelist librarians) apply a wrong-headed set of roadblocks to institutional repository deposit processes which delays OA, makes deposit more frustrating and more difficult for researchers, and weakens the deposit process. It is these librarians that I wish to get out of the way, not librarians in general. ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Quis Custodiet?
Le mercredi 24 septembre 2014 à 09:02 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : No barriers to tear down other than those of incomprehension. Stevan, I wish it were that simple. You argue the way philosophers of language thought they could resolve the dilemmas of quantum physics through a simple clarification of language. See where we are forty years later. Lavoisier, Hassenfratz and a good many members of the Cameralist school in Austria also entertained such dreams. Alas, you do not resolve social and institutional processes that are fundamentally agonistic simply by using a cleaned-up language. Doing so helps, of course, but it is not a sufficient condition (I will leave the issue of whether it is even a necessary condition aside as it would draw us too far afield). The reality is that, around Open Access, there are various groups with differing perspectives. Each group expresses itself with its own set of discourse structures. When we are discussing various aspects of open access, we are part of a battle of words where logic necessarily has to accommodate rhetoric. Librarians represent the category of people that are most exposed to all the various forms of rhetoric floating around Open Access. A scientist, by contrast, sitting on top of his logic, finds it easier to assert the deductions stemming from his logic, but one's own sense of certainty is not always a good indicator of one's efficacy, particularly in mixed groups. Jean-Claude Guédon ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
Thank you, Bernard. I should have said, more precisely, that Liège does not force anything; that it has a mandate and that it is backed up, as you point out, by the procedures used for in-house research assessment. This form of enforcement is very different from that of directly applying penalties for not conforming, or whatever else has been used elsewhere. What you are doing, cleverly, is say: if you do not comply, you will suffer from bad results in your personal research assessment. I also believe that this mandate applies to more than journal articles, or am I wrong? Books and book chapters, so very important for SSH disciplines, cannot be easily disregarded, and assessing SSH personnel purely on the basis of journal articles would be a (bad) joke. A dark archive can take care of all difficulties, and the celebrated button allows working around most difficulties. And getting close to 90% is indeed outstanding. Jean-Claude -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 19 septembre 2014 à 19:46 +0200, brent...@ulg.ac.be a écrit : Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know; it only looks into the local repository (Orbi) to see what is in it, and it does so to assess performance or respond to requests for promotions or grant submissions. (JC. Guédon) Oh no, Jean-Claude, Liège mandates everything. It is a real mandate and it took me a while to get almost every ULg researcher to realise that it is to his/her benefit. Linking the deposits to personal in-house assessment was the trick to get the mandate enforced in the first place. As well as a few positive incentives and a lot of time consuming persuasion (but it was well worth it). Last Wednesday, the Liège University Board has put an ultimate touch of wisdom on its mandate by adding immediately upon acceptance, even in restricted access in the official procedure. Actually, a nice but to some extent useless addition because, with time (the mandate was imposed in 2007), ULg authors have become so convinced of the increase in readership and citations that two thirds of them make their deposits between the date of acceptance and the date of publication. All this explains why we are getting close to 90% compliance, an outstanding result, I believe. Le 18 sept. 2014 à 23:40, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca a écrit : A reasonably quick response as I do not want to go into discursive tsunami mode... 1. Stevan admits that his evaluation of compliance is an approximation, easy to get, but not easy to correct. This approximation varies greatly from one institution to another, one circumstance to another. For example, he admits that language plays a role; he should further admit that the greater or smaller proportion of SSH researchers in the research communities of various institutions will also play a role. in short, comparing two institutions by simply using WoS approximations appears rash and unacceptable to me, rather than simply quick and dirty (which I would accept as a first approximation). The impact factor folly was mentioned because, by basing his approximation on the WoS, Stevan reinforces the centrality of a partial and questionable tool that is, at best, a research tool, not a management tool, and which stands behind all the research assessment procedures presently used in universities, laboratories, etc. 2. Stevan and I have long differed about OA's central target. He limits himself to journal articles, as a first step; I do not. I do not because, in the humanities and social sciences, limiting oneself to journal articles would be limiting oneself to the less essential part of the archive we work with, unlike natural scientists. Imagine a universe where a research metric would have been initially designed around SSH disciplines and then extended as is to STM. In such a parallel universe, books would be the currency of choice, and articles would look like secondary, minor, productions, best left for later assessments. Then, one prominent OA advocate named Stenan Harvard might argue that the only way to proceed forward is to focus only on books, that this is OA's sole objective, and that articles and the rest will be treated later... Imagine the reaction of science researchers... 3. Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know; it only looks into the local repository (Orbi) to see what is in it, and it does so to assess performance or respond to requests for promotions or grant submissions. If books and book chapters are more difficult to treat than articles, then place them in a dark archive with a button. This was the clever solution invented by Stevan and I agree with it. 4. To obtain mandates, you need either faculty to vote a mandate on itself (but few universities have done so), or you need administrators
[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
I will let readers evaluate whether Stevan's answers are satisfactory or not. Except for the Liège mandate where I did not express myself sufficiently precisely, I disagree with points I--III, V-VI. I agree that point VII deserves being studied more precisely. For point VIII, part of the 30% (however it is calculated - is it 30% of WoS articles?) comes from the Gold road, and, therefore, falls under a different kind of argument. This said, I believe that Liège's solution is the best one presently available, if you can get it. In countries where university autonomy is far from being the norm (e.g. France), the clout of in-house assessments of performance is perforce very limited. Promoting the Liège solution is also what I do, and I do so everywhere, but promoting OA publishing platforms (such as Redalyc and, with some caveats, Scielo) that are both free and gratis is also what I do. IMHO, this is superior to promoting only and exclusively the Green road: it adds to the Green road without subtracting anything from it. This was also the spirit of BOAI. Finally, I do not need any fancy statistical footwork to agree that the ways and means of the Liège mandate are the best. Common sense is enough for me. Let us get the Liège form of mandate wherever we can (which I am presently trying to do in my own university), and let us also do all we can to promote OA for all (including all disciplines). And I will stop this thread here. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le vendredi 19 septembre 2014 à 13:17 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : I. A Web-of-Science-based estimate of Green OA mandate effectiveness — i.e., of the annual percentage of institutional journal article output that is being self-archived in the institutional repository — is fine. So is one based on SCOPUS, or on any other index of annual journal article output across disciplines. II. The fact that books are more important than journals in SSH (social science and humanities) in no way invalidates WoS-based estimates of Green OA mandate effectiveness. The mandates apply only to journal articles. III. Green OA mandates to date apply only to journal articles, not books, for many obvious reasons. IV. Jean-Claude writes: “Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know.” Cf: “The University of Liege policy is mandatory… the Administrative Board of the University has decided to make it mandatory for all ULg members: - to deposit the bibliographic references of ALL their publications since 2002; - to deposit the full text of ALL their articles published in periodicals since 2002…” http://roarmap.eprints.org/56/ V. The fact that research metrics are currently mostly journal-article based has nothing to do with the predictive power of estimates of Green OA mandate effectiveness. VI. The WoS-based estimate of Green OA mandate effectiveness has nothing to do with “impact factor folly.” VII. Jean-Claude writes:“SSH authors are less interested in depositing articles than STM researchers.” As far as I know, there is not yet any objective evidence supporting this assertion. In fact, we are in the process of testing it, using the WoS data. VIII. Status quo: OA to journal articles is around 30% today. Our practical solution: Green OA mandates (and tests for which kinds of mandate are most effective) so they can be promoted for adoption. Other practical solutions? Stevan Harnad On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: A reasonably quick response as I do not want to go into discursive tsunami mode... 1. Stevan admits that his evaluation of compliance is an approximation, easy to get, but not easy to correct. This approximation varies greatly from one institution to another, one circumstance to another. For example, he admits that language plays a role; he should further admit that the greater or smaller proportion of SSH researchers in the research communities of various institutions will also play a role. in short, comparing two institutions by simply using WoS approximations appears rash and unacceptable to me, rather than simply quick and dirty (which I would accept as a first approximation). The impact factor folly was mentioned because, by basing his approximation on the WoS, Stevan reinforces the centrality of a partial and questionable tool that is, at best, a research tool, not a management tool, and which stands behind all the research assessment procedures presently used in universities, laboratories, etc. 2. Stevan and I have long differed about OA's central target. He
[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
A reasonably quick response as I do not want to go into discursive tsunami mode... 1. Stevan admits that his evaluation of compliance is an approximation, easy to get, but not easy to correct. This approximation varies greatly from one institution to another, one circumstance to another. For example, he admits that language plays a role; he should further admit that the greater or smaller proportion of SSH researchers in the research communities of various institutions will also play a role. in short, comparing two institutions by simply using WoS approximations appears rash and unacceptable to me, rather than simply quick and dirty (which I would accept as a first approximation). The impact factor folly was mentioned because, by basing his approximation on the WoS, Stevan reinforces the centrality of a partial and questionable tool that is, at best, a research tool, not a management tool, and which stands behind all the research assessment procedures presently used in universities, laboratories, etc. 2. Stevan and I have long differed about OA's central target. He limits himself to journal articles, as a first step; I do not. I do not because, in the humanities and social sciences, limiting oneself to journal articles would be limiting oneself to the less essential part of the archive we work with, unlike natural scientists. Imagine a universe where a research metric would have been initially designed around SSH disciplines and then extended as is to STM. In such a parallel universe, books would be the currency of choice, and articles would look like secondary, minor, productions, best left for later assessments. Then, one prominent OA advocate named Stenan Harvard might argue that the only way to proceed forward is to focus only on books, that this is OA's sole objective, and that articles and the rest will be treated later... Imagine the reaction of science researchers... 3. Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know; it only looks into the local repository (Orbi) to see what is in it, and it does so to assess performance or respond to requests for promotions or grant submissions. If books and book chapters are more difficult to treat than articles, then place them in a dark archive with a button. This was the clever solution invented by Stevan and I agree with it. 4. To obtain mandates, you need either faculty to vote a mandate on itself (but few universities have done so), or you need administrators to impose a mandate, but that is often viewed negatively by many of our colleagues. Meanwhile, they are strongly incited to publish in prestigious journals where prestige is measured by impact factors. From an average researcher's perspective, one article in Nature, fully locked behind pay-walls, is what is really valuable. Adding open access may be the cherry on the sundae, but it is not the sundae. The result? OA, as of now, is not perceived to be directly significant for successfully managing a career. On the other hand, the OA citation advantage has been fully recognized and accepted by publishers. That is in part why they are finally embracing OA: with high processing charges and the increased citation potential of OA, they can increase revenues even more and satisfy their stakeholders. This is especially true if funders, universities, libraries, etc., are willing to pay for the APC's. This is the trap the UK fell into. 5. SSH authors are less interested in depositing articles than STM researchers because, for SSH researchers, articles have far less importance than books (see above), and, arguably, book chapters. 6. I am not citing rationales for the status quo, and Stevan knows this well. This must be the first time that I have ever been associated with the status quo... Could it be that criticizing Stevan on one point could be seen by him as fighting for the status? But that would be true only if Stevan were right beyond the slightest doubt. Hmm! I personally think he is right on some points and not so right on others. Also, I am simply trying to think about reasons why OA has been so hard to achieve so far, and, in doing so, I have come to two conclusions: too narrow an objective and too rigid an approach can both be counter-productive. This said, trying to have a method to compare deposit rates in various institutional and mandate circumstances would be very useful. I support Stevan's general objective in this regard; I simply object to the validity of the method he suggests. Alas, I have little to suggest beyond my critique. I also suggest that a better understanding of the sociology of research (not the sociology of knowledge) is crucial to move forward. Finally, I expect that if I saw Stevan self-archive his abundant scientific production, I would be awed by the lightning speed of his keystrokes. But are they everybody's keystrokes? Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le jeudi 18
[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
Most interesting dialogue. I will focus on two points: 1. Using the Web of Science collection as a reference: this generates all kinds of problems, particularly for disciplines that are not dominated and skewed by the impact factor folly. This is true, for example, of most of the social sciences and the humanities, especially when these publications are not in English. Stevan has also and long argued about limiting oneself to journal articles. I have my own difficulties with this limitation because book chapters and monographs are so important in the disciplines that I tend to work in. Also, I regularly write in French as well as English, while reading articles in a variety of languages. Most of the articles that are not in English are not in the Web of Science. A better way to proceed would be to check if the journals not in the WoS, and corresponding to deposited articles, are peer-reviewed. The same could be done with book chapters. Incidentally, if I limited myself to WoS publications for annual performance review, I would look rather bad. I suspect I am not the only one in such a situation, while leading a fairly honourable career in academe. 2. The issue of rules and regulations. It is absolutely true that a procedure such as the one adopted at the Université de Liège and which Stevan aptly summarizes as (with a couple of minor modifications): henceforth the way to submit refereed journal article publications for annual performance review is to deposit them in the [appropriate] IR . However, obtaining this change of behaviour from an administration is no small task. At the local, institutional, level, it corresponds to a politically charged effort that requires having a number of committed OA advocates working hard to push the idea. Stevan should know this from his own experience in Montreal; he should also know that, presently, the Open Access issue is not on the radar of most researchers. In scientific disciplines, they tend to be mesmerized by impact factors without making the link between this obsession and the OA advantage, partly because enough controversies have surrounded this issue to maintain a general feeling of uncertainty and doubt. In the social sciences and humanities where the citation rates are far less meaningful - I put quotation marks here to underscore the uncertainty surrounding the meaning of citation numbers: visibility, prestige, quality? - the benefits of self-archiving one's articles in open access are less obvious to researchers, especially if they do not adopt a global perspective on the importance of the grand conversation needed to produce knowledge in an optimal manner, but rather intend to manage and protect their career. Saying all this is not saying that we should not remain committed to OA, far from it; is is simply saying that the chances of success in reaching OA will not be significantly improved by simply referring to huge benefits at the cost of only a few extra keystrokes. This is rhetoric. The last time I deposited an article of mine, given the procedure used in the depository I was using, it took me close to half an hour to enter all the details required by that depository - a depository organized by librarians, mainly for information science specialists. All these details were legitimate and potentially useful. However, while I was absolutely sure I was doing the right thing, I could well understand why a colleague less sanguine about OA than I am might push this task to the back burner. In fact, I did so myself for several months. Shame on me, probably, but this is the reality of the quotidian. In conclusion, i suspect that if Stevan focuses on such a narrowly-defined target - journal articles in the STM disciplines - this is because he gambles on the fact that making these disciplines fully OA would force the other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to follow suit sooner or later. Perhaps, it is so, but perhaps it is not. Meanwhile, arguing in this fashion tends to alienate practitioners of the humanities and the social sciences, so that the alleged advantages of narrowly focusing on a well-defined target are perhaps more than negatively compensated by the neglect of SSH disciplines. yet, the latter constitute about half, if not more, of the researchers in the world. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 17 septembre 2014 à 07:07 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Begin forwarded message: From: Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Subject: Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster Date: September 16, 2014 at 5:28:48 PM GMT-4 To: jisc-repositor...@jiscmail.ac.uk On Sep 16, 2014, at 2:46 PM, Paul Royster proyst...@unl.edu wrote: At the risk of stirring up more sediment and further muddying the waters of scholarly communications, but in response to direct questions posed in this venue earlier this month, I shall
[GOAL] Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster, Coordinator of Scholarly Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
It seems to me that, in definitional discussions, we should clearly distinguish between ultimate objectives and intermediate steps. The definitions crafted back in 2001-3 were certainly imperfect, if only because much had yet to be understood and discovered at that time. Yet, they did include essential items that we should not abandon. And shifting ground in mid-course does not appear altogether wise to me. Yet, they defined a clear objective, a vision, a dream perhaps. And, as such, they are just fine. But an objective, a vision, or a dream, is not a reality. At the same time, I understand Stevan's points very well and, like him, get concerned when I see people all tangled up in definitions rather than pushing for open access, step by step. As a result, I would suggest keeping the original definitions, but treat them as if they were somewhat analogous to the North that a compass points to: we want to move in some direction related to the North, but we know that the North given by the compass is not entirely accurate, and we know that it is an ultimate end point that cannot be reached without many detours, if only because we meet obstacles. In short, we need to have some general, fixed reference, and then we progress as best we can in the direction we want. In short, we should treat the original definitions as a strategic vision, but not let the definitions block our tactical steps. From a strategic perspective, a tactical move will appear imperfect and incomplete. However, this is not a very useful way to judge the tactical step. Instead, the strategist should aim the following kind of judgement: is a particular tactical step susceptible of impeding further steps in the (more or less) right direction? If it is, then, it is time to stop, reconsider, and modify. If not, let us accept it, even if it appears far from perfection. And I would push the argument just a little further by reminding Stevan (and perhaps some others) that the idea of a perfect tactical schedule is as elusive as the perfect objective. Having the vision for perfect tactics may usefully inform decision-making in concrete situations, but it should not be mistaken for absolute necessity and it cannot justify rigid recommendations. The terrain offered by various disciplines, countries and institutions is much too varied to permit a single approach to every situation. In short, confusing strategic visions with tactical steps is a complicated way of saying that perfection can be the enemy of the good. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mardi 02 septembre 2014 à 11:07 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : For the record: I renounce (and have long renounced) the original BOAI (and BBB) definition of Open Access (OA) (even though I was one of the original co-drafters and co-signers of BOAI) in favour of the revision as Gratis OA (free online access) and Libre OA (free online access plus certain re-use rights, e.g., CC-BY). The original BOAI definition was improvised. Over a decade of further evidence, experience and reflection have now made it clear that the first approximation was needlessly over-reaching and (insofar as Green OA self-archiving was concerned) incoherent (except if we were prepared to declare almost all Green OA — which was and still is by far the largest body of OA — as not being OA!). The original BOAI/BBB definition has since also become an obstacle to the growth of (Green, Gratis) OA as well as a point of schism and formalism in the OA movement that have not been to the benefit of OA (but of benefit to the opponents of OA, or the publishers that want to ensure that the only path to OA was one that preserved their current revenue streams). I would like to agree with Ruchard Poynder that OA needs some sort of authoritative organization, but of whom would that organization consist? My inclination is that it should be the providers of the OA research itself, namely peer-reviewed journal article authors, their institutions and their funders. Their “definition” of OA would certainly be authoritative. Let me close by emphasizing that I too see Libre OA as desirable and inevitable. But my belief (and it has plenty of supporting evidence) is that the only way to get to Libre OA is first for all institutions and funders to mandate Gratis Green OA — not to quibble or squabble about the BOAI/BBB “definition” of OA. My only difference with Paul Royster is that the primary target for OA is peer-reviewed journal articles, and for that it is not just repositories that are needed, but Green OA mandates from authors’ institutions and funders. Stevan Harnad On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 12:52 PM, Stevan Harnad har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: On Sep 1, 2014, at 11:19 AM, Stephen Downes step...@downes.ca wrote: Some really important discussion here. In particular, I
[GOAL] Re: Question why journals in DOAJ are being listed as 'Australian'
Beall's remark about the importance of the country where a publication is located, if he is right, fully demonstrates how stupid the evaluation process has become. The next step, I suppose, is to create a ranking of countries and thus establish their status with regard to scientific publishing. It also leads to really weird forms of reasoning such as: a press in Brazil, or India, or China, or Russia, is obviously not as good as a press in the US, in Britain, in Holland, etc... What about Italy? Greece? Portugal? What about Mexico? What about South Africa? What about the rest of Africa? Is Australia OK? How many implicit forms of racism or cultural arrogance are hidden in such a perspective? Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 25 mars 2014 à 17:42 -0600, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : Danny, I have been monitoring this publisher closely recently. I regularly receive inquiries about it -- researchers asking me whether it is predatory or not. I currently do not have it included on the list of predatory publishers. Contrary to an opinion expressed earlier, for many, the country of publication is very important. Researchers in many countries get more academic credit towards tenure, promotion, and the annual evaluation when they publish in a journal based in a western country. (This is why many predatory publishers often pretend to be from western countries). I recently posted an inquiry on this list seeking comments about this company's peer-review portability policy (it allows authors themselves to transfer peer reviews from the rejecting publisher to Ivyspring.) Ivyspring until recently said it was based in Wyoming, NSW. Now they've changed their official address to this: Ivyspring International Publisher Pty Ltd Level 32, 1 Market Street Sydney, NSW 2000 Australia That address matches the address of Alliance Business Centers, a virtual office company. Also, according to an Australian business directory, the publisher's owner is Jinxin Jason Lin. I think it's safe to say this company lacks needed transparency. Who owns it? Where are they based? What experience do the owners have with scholarly publishing? Why are they using a virtual office as their headquarters address? What is the extent of this company's connection to Australia? To other countries? --Jeffrey Beall From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Danny Kingsley Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 10:46 PM To: 'goal@eprints.org' Subject: [GOAL] Question why journals in DOAJ are being listed as 'Australian' Hello all, I recently looked at the DOAJ list of Australian journals to determine how many Australian OA journals charge an APC. Of the list of 115 journals on the DOAJ, 12 charge an APC. However on investigation seven of these 12 do not appear to be Australian journals at all. There is no definitive list of Australian OA journals – the AOASG page http://aoasg.org.au/open-access-in-action/australian-oa-journals/ lists 150 (compared to the smaller DOAJ list) and before I investigated this it did not include the five genuinely OA Australian journals that charge an APC. My questions are: · Does anyone know why these journals would be appearing on DOAJ as ‘Australian’? · Five of them are published by Ivyspring International Publishers – does anyone know anything about this publisher? Thanks Danny Journal Publisher APC Notes Journal of Genomics Ivyspring International Publisher No publication charge during the current promotional period of this journal Not published in Australia and only one Australian listed in the Editorial Board. Theranostics Ivyspring International Publisher $100AUD Not published in Australia and there are no Australians listed in the Editorial Board International Journal of Electronics, Engineering and Computer Systems International Research Publication House $150USD Not published in Australia and there are no Australians listed in the Editorial Board Asian Journal of Crop Science Asian Network for Scientific Information $370AUD There is no direct website for the journal and it is difficult to determine the countries the Editorial Board come from Journal of Cancer Ivyspring International Publisher $1100AUD Not published in Australia and only one Australian listed in the Editorial Board. International Journal of Biological Sciences Ivyspring International Publisher $1450AUD Not published in Australia and only two Australians listed in the Editorial Board. International Journal of Medical Sciences Ivyspring International Publisher $1450AUD Not published in Australia and only two
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
Le lundi 16 décembre 2013 à 14:34 +, Graham Triggs a écrit : On 14 December 2013 20:53, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: Which terms have been introduced by the publishing industry? The majority of the terms that I see regularly were introduced - or at least claimed to have been - by scholars. Who introduced hybrid journals? who introduced delayed open access - an oxymoron if there ever was one? What about Elsevier's universal access? etc. etc. The publishing industry has been fairly quick to make use of the variety of terms though - some in attempting to best engage with and understand the needs and desires of the academic community; others to preserve their business models for as long as possible. Fairly quick indeed! :-) [snip (because irrelevant] Profits alone are not a good measure of whether the public purse is being pillaged or not. They are just the difference between revenue and costs. At which point: 1) Publisher revenue does not just come from the public purse - sales to privately funded institutions, personal subscriptions, reprints, advertising... 2) For everything that they do (which may or may not be appropriate), the publishing industry is very, very good at reducing costs. Ultimately, the public purse is not necessarily disadvantaged by engaging with for-profit industries; although it could benefit from ensuring there are competitive markets. You can argue that the publishing industry could stand to reduce it's profits by charging less - but there is no guarantee that an alternative would take less money overall from the public purse. Profits alone begin to indicate where the problem lies, just by comparison between publishers. Enough money comes from the public purse in many countries (Canada, for example, or most European countries) to justify my anger. As for point 2, it is quite laughable. Why does not Elsevier reduce its profit rate then? The answer is that each journal is a small monopoly in itself. And in monopoly situations, what is the incentive to reduce pricing? From free and low cost access programmes, through APC waivers, and charitable partnerships, the publishing industry does a lot more for developing nations than the picture you are painting. Having looked fairly closely at programmes like HINARI, I beg to differ. The publishing industry is very creative when it comes to growing fig leaves. Is it perfect? No. Could more be done? Probably. Can the industry do it alone? No. It would be a lot cheaper if the industry got out of the way. If you want to see the situation improve, then it's going to take funders and researchers to work with the publishing industry. I would rather see funders support publicly supported efforts such as Scielo or Redalyc in Latin America. The publishing industry does not need yet another subsidy to begin expanding its potential markets. Or you could try and ignore the industry entirely. But simply depositing research in institutional repositories does not necessarily solve developing nation's access problems, and does not necessarily solve their publishing problems. Your last point is correct, at least until now. Laws such as the one recently passed in Argentina may help further. But you are right: in developing nations, the best way is to avoid the industry entirely and develop evaluation methods that are a little more sophisticated than the impact factor misapplied to individuals. Jean-Claude Guédon ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal attachment: face-smile.png___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
Sally, Re-use and text mining are not the same thing. If I distribute my own articles in my own classroom, this is re-use and it relies only on eye contact, not machine-reading. That scholars are not yet focused on text-mining is simply the result, of inertia and force of habit. It is coming, but it is coming slowly. However, slowness does not prevent from thinking ahead, and many publishers certainly are. The executable paper bounty offered by Elsevier a couple of years ago shows another publishing angle which, for the moment, is not much on the scholars' radars, but it will be. Creating new societies of texts through various kinds of algorithms will be the same. Publishers are thinking about these issues. Some OA advocates are doing the same, not on the basis of surveys that tend to emphasize the past and the familiar, but rather in a future-looking perspective. Regarding an earlier post of your that seemed to complain that OA advocates are using too narrow and too strict a definition of open access, you might consider that the publishing industry, for its part, has done its utmost to confuse issues by throwing all kinds of new terms. Muddying the waters and making the whole scene as illegible to regular scientists as is possible, all the while raising the fear of various legal interventions in the background (e.g. Michael Mabe recently in Berlin, alluding to the possibility of ant-trust actions in reaction to libraries coordinating too well for the industry's taste) cannot be treated as if it did not happen or had not been planned and engineered with one aim: slow down acceptance by all possible means, and try taking control of the movement to exploit it the publishers' way. Also, this is the first time that I see people being criticized simply for trying to be precise and unambiguous. I guess mathematicians must be extremely rigid, unreasonable, and uncooperative people... Finally, the focus of OA is not to destroy the publishing industry. Saying this amounts to some form of paranoia. Some OA advocates, including myself, are very angry at some members of the publishing industry, but these are individuals, not the OA movement. Some OA supporters try to imagine alternatives to the present publishing system. This means competition, I guess. But it may be that the publishing industry does not like competition, true competition. Some os us strongly feel that research communication comes first, and the publishing industry a distant second, so that the publishing industry should not consider scholarly communication as if it were a gold mine ready to be pillaged at will (45% profit, to my mind, is pillaging, and pillaging a lot of public money, to boot). But perhaps I am a little too precise here... :-) As for scholars, they do not have to be forced by mandates. Just tell them, as was done in Belgium, that you will be evaluated on the basis of only what is available in the right depository, and everything will fall into place. Now, researchers paid by universities or research centres cannot object to being evaluated, and to reasonable rules of evaluation such as deposit your publications in this box if you want to have them taken into account. Open access is beneficial to researchers, and that is obvious. But being obvious is not necessarily self-evident. To be obvious, one needs to look at studies on citation advantages, assess them, etc. But if local evaluations do not pay attention to these advantages, why should a scholar pay great attention so long as promotions and grants keep coming on the basis of fallacious metrics such as impact factors of journal titles. To meditate further on the distinction between obvious and self-evident, one only needs to rehearse all the arguments that were being adduced by opponents to both the American and French revolutions: democracy was obviously better than absolute monarchy, at least for most people; but the elites threw enough arguments into the air to make it less than self-evident for quite a while. Finally, I would like you to think seriously and deeply about what Jacinto Dávila wrote in response to you. Developing nations are hit in a number of nasty ways by a communication system that seems to think that knowledge is not fit for Third World brains, or that Third World brains are good enough only if they focus on problems defined by rich countries. Make no mistake about this: the anger in those parts of the world where 80% of humanity lives is rising and what the consequences of this anger will be, I cannot foretell, but they will likely be dire and profound. If I were in your shoes, I would be scared. Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 13 décembre 2013 à 13:14 +, Sally Morris a écrit : I don't deny that re-use (e.g. text mining) is a valuable attribute of OA for some scholars; interestingly, however, it is rarely if ever mentioned in surveys which ask scholars for their own unprompted definition of OA. That suggests to me
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises CredibilityofBeall's List
Thank you, Jan. Very well put.
Jean-Claude Guédon
Le jeudi 12 décembre 2013 à 13:44 +, Jan Velterop a écrit :
But Sally, so-called 'green' and 'gold' are the means. The BOAI
definition is an articulation of the end, the goal. Of course, if you
navigate the ocean of politics and vested interests of science
publishing, you need to tack sometimes to make progress against the
wind. That's permissible, even necessary. But it doesn't change the
intended destination on which a good sailor keeps his focus. If that's
religion, anything is. (Which may be the case :-)).
One mistake made by some OA advocates is to elevate the means to the
goal. Another one is to confuse the temporary course of tacking with
the overall course needed to reach the destination.
In the larger picture, OA itself is but a means, of course. To the
goal of optimal scholarly knowledge exchange. And so on, Russian doll
like. But that's a different discussion, I think
Jan Velterop
On 12 Dec 2013, at 12:03, Sally Morris
sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk wrote:
What I'm saying is that OA may have done itself a disservice by
adhering so rigidly to tight definitions. A more relaxed focus on
the end rather than the means might prove more appealing to the
scholars for whose benefit it is supposed to exist
Sally
Sally Morris
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13
3UU
Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286
Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On
Behalf Of David Prosser
Sent: 12 December 2013 08:37
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises
CredibilityofBeall's List
Let me get this right, Jean-Claude mentioning the Budapest Open
Access Initiative to show that re-use was an integral part of the
original definition of open access and not some later
('quasi-religeous') addition as Sally avers. And by doing so he is
betraying some type of religious zeal?
One of the interesting aspect of the open access debate has been the
language. Those who argue against OA have been keen to paint OA
advocates as 'zealots', extremists, and impractical idealists. I've
always felt that such characterisation was an attempt to mask the
paucity of argument.
David
On 11 Dec 2013, at 22:30, Sally Morris wrote:
I actually think that J-C's response illustrates very clearly how
OA has been mistaken for a religion, with its very own 'gospel'.
This, IMHO, is part of its problem!
Sally
Sally Morris
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13
3UU
Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286
Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
__
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org]
On Behalf Of Jean-Claude Guédon
Sent: 10 December 2013 15:26
To: goal@eprints.org
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises
Credibility ofBeall's List
In response to Sally, I would remind her that re-use was part of
the original BOAI declaration. Scholars and teachers need more
than eye-contact with articles. So, this is not a secondary
point.
The immediacy issue concerns deposit; it is simply a pragmatic and
obvious point: capturing an article at time of acceptance is
optimal for exposure and circulation of information. If the
publisher does not allow public exposure and imposes an embargo -
thus slowing down the circulation of knowledge -, the private
request button allows for eye contact, at least. This button
solution is not optimal, but it will do on a pragmatic scale so
long as it is needed to circumvent publishers' tactics.
Cost savings are not part of BOAI; it is a request by
administrators of research centres and their libraries. This said,
costs of OA publishing achieved by a platform such as Scielo are
way beneath the prices practised by commercial publishers
(including non-profit ones). And it should become obvious that if
you avoid 45% profit rates, you should benefit.
The distinction between nice and nasty publishers is of
unknown origin and I would not subscribe to it. More
fundamentally, we should ask and ask again whether scientific
publishing is meant to help scientific research, or the reverse.
Seen from the former perspective, embargoes appear downright
absurd.
As for why OA has not been widely accepted now, the answer is not
difficult to find: researchers are evaluated; the evaluation,
strangely enough, rests on journal reputations rather than on the
intrinsic quality of articles. Researchers simply adapt
[GOAL] Re: Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu
I will go one step further: I believe that all the instances noted by Peter are not simply oversights; I believe they are part of a kind of benign neglect aimed at creating as much confusion as possible. The result is that researchers do not know which way to and, therefore, abstain. At least, if I were a strategist within one of these big publishers, this is what I would strive to do: avoid direct confrontation and muddy the waters as much as you can while optimizing the revenue stream from whatever source. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 10 décembre 2013 à 13:05 +, Peter Murray-Rust a écrit : There is a general point: the Elsevier site(s) are riddled with Open Access inconsistencies. I have discovered at least: * open access articles behind paywalls * articles advertised as open access but not labelled anywhere * (private correspondence) articles paid for as open access but never posted as such (espite correspondence by authors) * articles without any statement of open access (IMO both the HTML and PDF should have clear statements) * articles with conflicting messages (CC-BY and All rights reserved) There are other serious deficiencies: * the licence is often many pages down the paper (e.g. just before the references and very difficult to locate). It must be on the visible section of page 0. * the Rightslink is seriously broken. All this gives the consistent impression (over at least a year) of an organisation which doesn't care about doing it properly and/or isn't competent to do it. It is clearly a case of retrofitting something that hasn't been prepared for, and without enough investment. The whole area Open-access provided by Toll-Access publishers cries out for a body which creates acceptable practice guidelines, monitors compliance, fines offenders and restores mispaid APCs to authors. If an author pays 5000 USD for a product they deserve better than this. Elsevier are the worst offender that I have investigated, followed by Springer who took all my Open Access images, badged them as (C) SpringerImages and offered them for resale at 60 USD per image. Just because OA is only 5% of your business doesn't mean practice can be substandard. On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Heather Morrison heather.morri...@uottawa.ca wrote: Thank you for the clarification, Alicia and Graham. However, on the Elsevier copyright when publishing open access page, it states that under the Exclusive License Agreement used with open access journals, Elsevier is granted...An exclusive right to publish and distribute an article. From: http://www.elsevier.com/about/open-access/open-access-policies/author-agreement Also the graph on this page shows a one-way distribution from publisher to user. Whoever created this graph obviously does not understand open access. There is no author to publisher (for final version) to repository to whoever option illustrated, for example, and no publisher to user to downstream user who receives article from someone other than the publisher. Open access means that anyone can distribute the article. Even with CC restricted licenses, the restrictions are specific to certain types of uses (e.g. can distribute but not for commercial gain - NC; can distribute but not change - ND; can distribute and create derivatives but derivatives must have the same license - SA). An article that cannot be distributed by others is not open access. It would be helpful to review the actual author's agreement. I don't see a link from the Elsevier site - can you point me to a link? best, Heather Morrison On 2013-12-10, at 5:26 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) wrote: Thank you, Graham – all correct, and more clear and concise than I would have been! With kind wishes, Alicia 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 From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Graham Triggs Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 1:31 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Elsevier is taking down papers from Academia.edu On 9 December 2013 00:20, Heather Morrison heather.morri...@uottawa.ca wrote: Alicia, According to your statement below, with CC-BY the only restriction placed
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
Many thanks, Jeroen. I am asking around about ways to take up Beall's list and make it fully legitimate. It is a very useful list, but Beall's appears to have put himself in an untenable situation now, either by excess cleverness, or sheer awkwardness (no to say worse). Simply speaking, he has discredited himself. I will report to the list if any positive developments arise. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 10 décembre 2013 à 10:28 +, Gerritsma, Wouter a écrit : http://www.qoam.eu/ -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility ofBeall's List
In response to Sally, I would remind her that re-use was part of the original BOAI declaration. Scholars and teachers need more than eye-contact with articles. So, this is not a secondary point. The immediacy issue concerns deposit; it is simply a pragmatic and obvious point: capturing an article at time of acceptance is optimal for exposure and circulation of information. If the publisher does not allow public exposure and imposes an embargo - thus slowing down the circulation of knowledge -, the private request button allows for eye contact, at least. This button solution is not optimal, but it will do on a pragmatic scale so long as it is needed to circumvent publishers' tactics. Cost savings are not part of BOAI; it is a request by administrators of research centres and their libraries. This said, costs of OA publishing achieved by a platform such as Scielo are way beneath the prices practised by commercial publishers (including non-profit ones). And it should become obvious that if you avoid 45% profit rates, you should benefit. The distinction between nice and nasty publishers is of unknown origin and I would not subscribe to it. More fundamentally, we should ask and ask again whether scientific publishing is meant to help scientific research, or the reverse. Seen from the former perspective, embargoes appear downright absurd. As for why OA has not been widely accepted now, the answer is not difficult to find: researchers are evaluated; the evaluation, strangely enough, rests on journal reputations rather than on the intrinsic quality of articles. Researchers simply adapt to this weird competitive environment as best they can, and do not want to endanger their career prospects in any way. As a result, what counts for them is not how good their work is, but rather where they can publish it. Open Access, by stressing a return to intrinsic quality of work, implicitly challenges the present competition rules. As such, it appears at best uncertain or even threatening to researchers under career stress. So long as evaluation rests on journal titles, the essential source of power within scientific publishing will rest with the major international publishers. They obviously believe research was invented to serve them! The interesting point about mega journals, incidentally, is that they are not really journals, but publishing platforms. Giving an impact factor to PLoS One is stupid: citation cultures vary from discipline to discipline, and the mix of disciplines within PLoS One varies with time. Doing a simple average of the citations of the whole is methodologically faulty: remember that scientists in biomed disciplines quote about four times as much as mathematicians. What if, over a certain period of time, the proportion of mathematical articles triples for whatever reason? The raw impact factor will go down. Does this mean anything in terms of quality? Of course not! Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 10 décembre 2013 à 13:36 +, Sally Morris a écrit : At the risk (nay, certainty) of being pilloried by OA conformists, let me say that – whatever ithe failings of his article – I thank Jeffrey Beall for raising some fundamental questions which are rarely, if ever, addressed. I would put them under two general headings: 1) What is the objective of OA? I originally understood the objective to be to make scholarly research articles, in some form, accessible to all those who needed to read them. Subsequent refinements such as 'immediately', 'published version' and 'free to reuse' may have acquired quasi-religious status, but are surely secondary to this main objective. However, two other, financial, objectives (linked to each other, but not to the above) have gained increasing prominence. The first is the alleged cost saving (or at least cost shifting). The second - more malicious, and originally (but no longer) denied by OA's main proponents - is the undermining of publishers' businesses. If this were to work, we may be sure the effects would not be choosy about 'nice' or 'nasty' publishers. 2) Why hasn't OA been widely adopted by now? If – as we have been repetitively assured over many years – OA is self-evidently the right thing for scholars to do, why have so few of them done so voluntarily? As Jeffrey Beall points out, it seems very curious that scholars have to be forced, by mandates, to adopt a model which is supposedly preferable to the existing one. Could it be that the monotonous rantings of the few and the tiresome debates about the fine detail are actually confusing scholars, and may even be putting them off? Just asking ;-) I don't disagree that the subscription model is not going to be able to address the problems we face in making the growing volume of research available to those who need it; but I'm not convinced that OA (whether Green, Gold or any combination) will either. I
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
Interesting twist on a plot good enough to draw the attention of a revived Monty Python... Will the real Jeffrey Beall stand up? And, as a question to the whole community, if you had written such a paper, would you claim it? :-) Jean-Claude Guédon Le lundi 09 décembre 2013 à 21:14 +, Gerritsma, Wouter a écrit : Dear all. Has this article really been written by Jeffrey Beall? He has been victim of a smear campaign before! I don’t see he has claimed this article on his bloghttp://scholarlyoa.com/ or his tweet stream @Jeffrey_Beall (which actually functions as his RSS feed). I really like to hear from the man himself on his own turf. Wouter From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: maandag 9 december 2013 16:04 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access. TripleC Communication, Capitalism Critique Journal. 11(2): 589-597 http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514 This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall is doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! OA is all an anti-capitlist plot. (Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeff's article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but maybe this is a good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as kooky as this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine predatory junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting Jeff's work altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing lobby some good sound-bites, but they use them at their peril, because of all the other nonsense in which they are nested!) Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to set the stage: JB: ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science. JB: [F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA advocates... demand that for-profit, scholarly journal publishers not be involved in scholarly publishing and devise ways (such as green open-access) to defeat and eliminate them... JB: OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for mandates, focusing only on the supposed economic benefits of open access and ignoring the value additions provided by professional publishers. The arguments imply that publishers are not really needed; all researchers need to do is upload their work, an action that constitutes publishing, and that this act results in a product that is somehow similar to the products that professional publishers produce…. JB: The open-access movement isn't really about open access. Instead, it is about collectivizing production and denying the freedom of the press from those who prefer the subscription model of scholarly publishing. It is an anti-corporatist, oppressive and negative movement, one that uses young researchers and researchers from developing countries as pawns to artificially force the make-believe gold and green open-access models to work. The movement relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats... JB: The open-access movement is a failed
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
One should never underestimate Jeffrey Beall's sense of humour... :-) And we all admire his capacity for predictions and categorizations. This said, I would love to hear about those who did the peer review for Beall's article. Are there any? If not, perhaps the journal Triple-C could qualify to enter a certain Jeffrey Beall's list, even though this decision might give rise to a conflict of disinterest... Of course, my earlier suggestion to fork Beall's list and place it in responsible hands (such as DOAJ supported by a consortium of libraries) would allow moving past the conflict of disinterest. If Woody Allen ever should come across this (admittedly picayune) discussion, it could lead to some really funny moments in a good movie. Oh, Jeffrey Beall, what would we do without you? How dull the world! Does it take a mile-high city to create this kind of thinking? Oxygen, anyone? Jean-Claude Guédon Le lundi 09 décembre 2013 à 14:45 -0700, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : Wouter, Hello, yes, I wrote the article, I stand by it, and I take responsibility for it. I would ask Prof. Harnad to clarify one thing in his email below, namely this statement, OA is all an anti-capitlist plot. This statement's appearance in quotation marks makes it look like I wrote it in the article. The fact is that this statement does not appear in the article, and I have never written such a statement. Prof. Harnad and his lackeys are responding just as my article predicts. Jeffrey Beall From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Gerritsma, Wouter Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 2:14 PM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List Dear all. Has this article really been written by Jeffrey Beall? He has been victim of a smear campaign before! I don’t see he has claimed this article on his blog http://scholarlyoa.com/ or his tweet stream @Jeffrey_Beall (which actually functions as his RSS feed). I really like to hear from the man himself on his own turf. Wouter From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: maandag 9 december 2013 16:04 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access. TripleC Communication, Capitalism Critique Journal. 11(2): 589-597 This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall is doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! OA is all an anti-capitlist plot. (Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeff's article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but maybe this is a good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as kooky as this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine predatory junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting Jeff's work altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing lobby some good sound-bites, but they use them at their peril, because of all the other nonsense in which they are nested!) Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to set the stage: JB: ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science. JB: [F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA advocates... demand that for-profit, scholarly journal publishers not be involved in scholarly publishing and devise ways (such as green open-access) to defeat and eliminate them
[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List
There is another puzzling element in all of this: Triple C, when you look at it until around 2012 (I have not done a thorough verification), through individual articles, refers to Cognition, Communication, Cooperation. Yet, these articles appear through a new template that reads: Communication, Capitalism, Critique. One further twist in the plot: did Beall highjack a journal in Austria, on the model of what he suspected in the case of a Swiss journal a while back (October 29th is the date of Beall's question). In the latter case, i even tried to help him a little, but he never responded to my mail, if only to thank me. So we might have a highjacked journal with Beall inserting a spoofed piece to make OA advocates react. A new Sokal affair, in short, or a new sting inspired by the recent Science caper... So, if this theory is true, what does it prove? Nothing more than it should have been published on April 1st, as was my initial reaction. And, as I said, we should never underestimate Jeffrey Beall's sense of humour... Jean-Claude Guédon Le lundi 09 décembre 2013 à 14:45 -0700, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : Wouter, Hello, yes, I wrote the article, I stand by it, and I take responsibility for it. I would ask Prof. Harnad to clarify one thing in his email below, namely this statement, OA is all an anti-capitlist plot. This statement's appearance in quotation marks makes it look like I wrote it in the article. The fact is that this statement does not appear in the article, and I have never written such a statement. Prof. Harnad and his lackeys are responding just as my article predicts. Jeffrey Beall From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Gerritsma, Wouter Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 2:14 PM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List Dear all. Has this article really been written by Jeffrey Beall? He has been victim of a smear campaign before! I don’t see he has claimed this article on his blog http://scholarlyoa.com/ or his tweet stream @Jeffrey_Beall (which actually functions as his RSS feed). I really like to hear from the man himself on his own turf. Wouter From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: maandag 9 december 2013 16:04 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access. TripleC Communication, Capitalism Critique Journal. 11(2): 589-597 http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514 This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff Beall is doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk OA journals, but I now realize that he is driven by some sort of fanciful conspiracy theory! OA is all an anti-capitlist plot. (Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeff's article is rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but maybe this is a good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as kooky as this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine predatory junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting Jeff's work altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing lobby some good sound-bites, but they use them at their peril, because of all the other nonsense in which they are nested!) Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to set the stage: JB: ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports to be about making scholarly content open-access, its true motives are much different. The OA movement is an anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers, mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic futures of young scholars and those from developing countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that is published as if it were authentic science. JB: [F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA advocates... demand that for-profit, scholarly
[GOAL] Re: The Journal Publisher Lobby in the UK Netherlands: Part I
Could we make sure that we do not use Gold too quickly as a synonym for author-pay Gold. I meet ever more frequently with this confusion and I think it deeply affects the quality of our analyses and strategies. Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 17 novembre 2013 à 17:38 -0500, Peter Suber a écrit : I hope that Dutch researchers will seize the opportunity that Wouter Gerritsma describes, and save the Netherlands from repeating the mistake of the UK. Note, however, that the Netherlands has flirted with gold OA mandates at least twice before, and in both cases prior to the Finch report in the UK. 1. In a November 2009 interview, Henk Schmidt, Rector of Erasmus University Rotterdam, described his plans to require OA, with a preference for gold over green. I intend obliging our researchers to circulate their articles publicly, for example no more than six months after publication. I'm aiming for 2011, if possible in collaboration with publishers via the 'Golden Road' and otherwise without the publishers via the 'Green Road'. http://web.archive.org/web/20100213075122/http://www.openaccess.nl/index.php?option=com_vipquotesview=quoteid=30 However, in September 2010, he announced the university's new OA policy, which is green. http://rechtennieuws.nl/30283/als-je-niet-gelezen-wordt-bestaat-je-werk-niet-erasmus-universiteit-zet-in-op-open-access-publiceren.html http://roarmap.eprints.org/295/ 2. In January 2011, J.J. Engelen, Chairman of the NWO (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek), described his preference for a future gold OA policy. These goals of scientic publishing are best reached by means of an open access publishing business modelOpen access publishing should become a requirement for publicly funded research. In order to make open access publishing a success, the enthusiastic cooperation of the professional publishing companies active on the scientific market is highly desirable. http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/ISU-2011-0622 Peter Peter Suber bit.ly/petersuber On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 5:48 PM, Gerritsma, Wouter wouter.gerrit...@wur.nl wrote: @Stevan, Yes Stevan the Dutch secretary of educationhis letter has quite a bit of the Finch tone in it. But there are also some opportunities in his letter for repositories. Dekker actually asks for exact figures on OA in the Netherlands. To obtain insight into the situation I request the universities, KNAW and NWO to provide numbers on Open Access publications through the various clearly defined variants of OA. In the Netherlands we have of course Narcis http://www.narcis.nl already, a comprehensive repository of nearly all OA publications in the Netherlands. But counting OA publications only is not sufficient. That is a small mistake in Dekker his letter. What is less well known is that all Dutch universities have to report to ministry of Education all the scientific output as well. This happens through the VSNU http://www.vsnu.nl/files/documenten/Feiten_en_Cijfers/Scientific_Research_Agreed_Definitions__def_2011_IRRH-20110624.pdf If due to this letter of Dekker it was decided that all reports on the output of the Dutch Science system to the ministry would be based on the full registration of all output registered in Narcis, on top of all OA publications it already registers, the underlying repositories would be in a much better position. If only Narcis takes up its responsibility and makes reports along the lines I did nearly 2 years ago http://wowter.net/2012/02/10/a-census-of-open-access-repositories-in-the-netherlands/ the repository infrastructure in the Netherlands would be reinforced as well. So apart from the fact that OA is on the political agenda in the Netherlands, there is an important momentum for Dutch repositories to seize right now. All the best Wouter Wouter Gerritsma Team leader research support Information Specialist – Bibliometrician Wageningen UR Library PO box 9100 6700 HA Wageningen The Netherlands ++31 3174 83052 wouter.gerrit...@wur.nl wageningenur.nl/library @wowter wowter.net From: goal-boun...@eprints.org
[GOAL] Scielo citation index
An announcement has been made showing that Scielo's citation index will be incorporated inside the Web of Science, at least in parts. See http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/scielo/?elq=054bc3957acf48778c9621d4d08ebbf5elqCampaignId=7595 Jean-Claude Guédon PS The consequences of this move are twofold: much greater visibility, and presumably, prestige for Scielo journals, but also much greater vulnerability to the moves by international publishers interested in picking up potentilly lucrative Scielo publications. We shall see. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Scholars jobs not publisher profits
And the result of this effective market is that wealth will become an important factor in the determination of scientific prestige. In fact, this coupling of prestige and financing is exactly what the Grand Conversation of science should never accept or accommodate. If, moreover, you measure prestige through impact factors, you sink into a completely absurd world. There is a French song that would fit this scenario perfectly: Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise... Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 06 octobre 2013 à 08:28 +1100, Arthur Sale a écrit : I fully agree Sally. Where there is an APC for fully Gold journals (or free which is simply a limiting case) in a fully Gold publication industry, the normal economic processes will kick in to make an effective market. They don’t with institutional subscription journals where the payers are non-beneficiaries, or only at second remove. Arthur Sale University of Tasmania From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Sally Morris Sent: Sunday, 6 October 2013 5:12 AM To: 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' Subject: [GOAL] Re: Scholars jobs not publisher profits Dear Heather The point I was trying to make is that - unlike with subscriptions - there is a direct connection between the person who benefits from the value offered (the author) and the publisher. Thus the marketplace should operate normally. 'Profits' are not in themselves bad - they are what businesses (including nonprofits) need to keep going Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk __ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: 05 October 2013 17:48 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Scholars jobs not publisher profits There's nothing odd about companies wanting to profit off of the work of others. What is unusual about scholarly publishing is that the costs are not connected with the impact of the costs in an obvious way. For example it would be most surprising if, at the University of Alberta, discussions about the deep cuts and the need to cut academic programs and jobs occurred at the same meetings where people at the university need to figure out how to pay even more for the big deals of publishers already enjoying 30-40% profit margins in an inelastic market where the deep cuts to their authors, reviewers, and customers have no impact on their bottom line. The situation for universities today really is difficult. That is why I am working to help us all connect the dots. If a university is looking for voluntary severance from faculty members while at the same time paying even more above inflationary cost increases to publishers with high profit margins, that is wrong and needs to stop. Many not-for-profit publishers never did gouge universities. At one time, Sally, you were the Executive Director of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, and represented the interests of this group. best, Heather Morrison On 2013-10-05, at 11:25 AM, Sally Morris sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk wrote: Many of you have argued that Gold OA - at last - creates a genuine marketplace between publishers and authors. In any marketplace, sellers price according to what they consider their offer is worth to buyers. Some journals are worth more than others to authors (indeed, publishers generally follow this principle when pricing subscriptions - I don't know of any publishers who price all their subscription journals the same). So what's odd about it? Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk __ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Dana Roth Sent: 04 October 2013 20:00 To: 'Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)' Subject: [GOAL] Re: Scholars jobs not publisher profits In defense of Jeffrey Beall
[GOAL] Re: Disruption vs. Protection
I find myself fully in full agreement with both Danny Kingsley and Fred Friend. In a previous message, I mentioned the PEER project funded by the European Commission. The final report is available at http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/20120618_PEER_Final_public_report_D9-13.pdf . One interesting report coming from this project to read is http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER_Economics_Report.pdf. A bit strangely, it reintroduces the issue of Gold author-pay journals within a project that ostensibly aimed at judging the possible impact of repositories on the business models of publishers. That detail alone is symptomatic of the fact that publishers were intent on foregrounding author-pay, Gold, publishing at the expense of depositories, even though the real objective of the project was the study of repositories. Interestingly, the commercial publishers that were involved in PEER had apparently hoped to demonstrate what Dana Roth reflects in her message - namely a negative impact of repositories on their business models - but the outcome did not work out that way, and they proceeded to move away from the objective of the project and immediately revert to the author-pay gold model as the only viable road to Open Access. Since then, commercial publishers have strenuously tried to promote this flavour of OA publishing and have even tried to make it pass for the whole of Gold (thus excluding entities such as Scielo and Redalyc in latin America that are Gold, libre for readers and libre for readers).. And the conclusion remains: despite long and sometimes costly efforts, studies of repositories that involve all parties (librarians, publishers, etc.) strengthen the point that the feared consequences really belong to the realm of fantasies, not facts. The fears are psychological states among some players. They reflect the risk evaluation mentality of entrepreneurs, and not the realities of the world. Furthermore, while speaking of realities, one may wonder whether these fears are real, or whether they are rhetorical... Jean-Claude Guédon Le samedi 14 septembre 2013 à 11:06 +, Friend, Fred a écrit : This is an excellent contribution from Danny Kingsley, and it would be interesting to have some real information about subscription loss from publishers, and not only from the two publishers she mentions. Very occasionally we do hear stories about a few journals ceasing publication, but the number appears very low by comparison with the total number of research journals published, and the causal link with repository deposit is obscure. A reduction in the quality of a journal (and I do not mean impact factor) or a reduction in library funding could be more influential factors than green open access. Presumably for commercial reasons publishers have not been willing to release information about subscription levels, but if they are to continue to use green open access as a threat they have to provide more evidence. Likewise if they expect to be believed, publishers have to provide more information about sustainability. They speak about repositories not being a sustainable model for research dissemination, by which they appear to mean that their journals will not be sustainable in a large-scale repository environment. Most institutional repositories are fully-sustainable, their sustainability derived from the sustainability of the university in which they are based. If any research journals are not sustainable, the reasons may have nothing to do with repositories. Those reasons are currently hidden within the big deal model, the weak journals surviving through the strength of other journals. Rather than blame any lack of sustainability upon green open access, perhaps publishers should take a harder look at the sustainability of some of their weaker journals. Repositories are sustainable; some journals may not be. Fred Friend Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL __ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org goal-boun...@eprints.org on behalf of Danny Kingsley danny.kings...@anu.edu.au Sent: 14 September 2013 08:39 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Disruption vs. Protection It is not that there is not sufficient data, it is that the 'threat' does not exist. The only 'evidence' to support the claim that immediate green open access threatens the 'sustainability' (read: profit) of commercial publishers comes in the form of the exceptionally questionable ALPSP survey sent out early last year to librarians http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/ALPSPPApotentialresultsofsixmonthembargofv.pdf . Heather Morrison wrote a piece on the methodological flaws with that survey http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/publishers-association-survey-on.html And yet, when questioned earlier
[GOAL] Re: Disruption vs. Protection
I believe that Stevan is logically right on all counts, but one problem remains that is not addressed here: people decide upon the behaviour on the basis of a mixed bag of facts and conjectures. Facts are used to constrain conjectures within the general perimeter of a risk analysis. Each category of players (researchers, librarians, publishers) follows its own kind of risk analysis. In short, facts are distinct from conjectures, but acts also differ from adventures... How people decide to act or not cannot avoid risk analysis aka conjectures Stevan's analysis covers the logical side of the argument flawlessly; whether it covers the psychology of the players is a different matter. In particular, I worry that this starkly logical approach may not be the best way to convince people. If it were, we would no longer need rhetoric and life might be simpler, but this is an unrealistic assumption. Jean-Claude Guédon Le samedi 14 septembre 2013 à 15:09 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk wrote: PM-R: Stevan Harnad's goal [is] that Green OA will destroy the subscription market (http://poynder.blogspot.ch/2013/07/where-are-we-what-still-needs-to-be.html ) My only goal is (and always has been) 100% OA: no more, no less. The means of attaining that goal is Green OA mandates from funders and institutions. The mandates require authors (1) to deposit their final, refereed drafts in their institutional repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication and (2) to set access to the immediate-deposit as OA as soon as possible and (3) to rely on the repository's facilitated copy-request Button to provide Almost-OA during any embargo/ The rest (about disruption, etc.) is all conjecture. PM-R: On the one hand the advocates of Green OA seem to be telling the publishers please give us Green OA mandates - they won't hurt you and on the other Green OA is going to disrupt your business. No. Green OA advocates are asking funders and institutions please give us Green OA mandates. What is asked from publishers is to endorse setting access to the immediate-deposit as OA immediately -- -- as over 60% of publishers already do-- rather than after an embargo. The rest (about disruption, etc.) is all conjecture. PM-R: Why should any publisher provide for deposition of something that is designed to disrupt their business? The immediate-deposit in the repository has nothing to do with the publisher. What is helpful from publishers is to endorse setting access to the immediate-deposit as OA immediately -- as over 60% of publishers already do. The rest (about disruption, etc.) is all conjecture. Stevan Harnad From:goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: Friday, September 13, 2013 8:39 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Disruption vs. Protection End of the gold rush? (Yvonne Morris, cilip): In the interest of making research outputs publicly available; shorter and consistent or no embargo periods are the desired outcome. However, publishers… have argued that short embargo periods make librarians cancel subscriptions to their journals… The BIS report finds no evidence to support this distinction. __ I have long meant to comment on a frequent contradiction that keeps being voiced by OA advocates and opponents alike: I. Call for Disruption: Serial publications are overpriced and unaffordable; publisher profits are excessive; the subscription (license) model is unsustainable: the subscription model needs to be disrupted in order to force it to evolve toward Gold OA. II. Call for Protection: Serials publications are threatened by (Green) OA, which risks making the subscription model unsustainable: the subscription model needs to be protected in order to allow it to evolve toward Gold OA. Green OA mandates do two things: (a) They provide immediate OA for all who cannot afford subscription access, and (b) they disrupt the subscription model. Green OA embargoes do two things: (c) They withhold OA from all who cannot afford subscription access, and (d) they protect the subscription model from disruption. Why do those OA advocates who are working for (a) (i.e., to provide immediate OA for all
[GOAL] Re: Disruption vs. Protection
My take on point I, Call for disruption would place a full stop after evolve and leave the whole statement at that. But disruption we certainly need, and both the Gold and Green roads can provide a fair bit of it. The gold road assumes that journals will always be needed. I hope they will not, and I doubt they will. But temporarily, both the Green and Gold (not the author-pay model) roads are needed As for II, we all know that that fear has never been properly documented by anyone. The PEER project in Europe appears (no pun intended) to have left large commercial publishers most unsatisfied. Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 13 septembre 2013 à 11:38 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : End of the gold rush? (Yvonne Morris, cilip): In the interest of making research outputs publicly available; shorter and consistent or no embargo periods are the desired outcome. However, publishers… have argued that short embargo periods make librarians cancel subscriptions to their journals… The BIS report finds no evidence to support this distinction. __ I have long meant to comment on a frequent contradiction that keeps being voiced by OA advocates and opponents alike: I. Call for Disruption: Serial publications are overpriced and unaffordable; publisher profits are excessive; the subscription (license) model is unsustainable: the subscription model needs to be disrupted in order to force it to evolve toward Gold OA. II. Call for Protection: Serials publications are threatened by (Green) OA, which risks making the subscription model unsustainable: the subscription model needs to be protected in order to allow it to evolve toward Gold OA. Green OA mandates do two things: (a) They provide immediate OA for all who cannot afford subscription access, and (b) they disrupt the subscription model. Green OA embargoes do two things: (c) They withhold OA from all who cannot afford subscription access, and (d) they protect the subscription model from disruption. Why do those OA advocates who are working for (a) (i.e., to provide immediate OA for all who cannot afford subscription access) also feel beholden to promise (d) (i.e. to protect the subscription model from disruption)? University of Liège and FRSN Belgium have adopted -- and HEFCE and BIS have both proposed adopting -- the compromise resolution to this contradiction: Mandate the immediate repository deposit of the final refereed draft of all articles immediately upon acceptance for publication, but if the author wishes to comply with a publisher embargo on Green OA, do not require access to the deposit to be made OA immediately: Let the deposit be made Closed Access during the allowable embargo period and let the repository's automated eprint-request Button tide over the needs of research and researchers by making it easy for users to request and authors to provide a copy for research purposes with one click each. This tides over research needs during the embargo. If it still disrupts serials publication and makes subscriptions unsustainable, chances are that it's time for publishers to phase out the products and services for which there is no longer a market in the online era and evolve instead toward something more in line with the real needs of the PostGutenberg research community. Evolution and adaptation never occur except under the (disruptive) pressure of necessity. Is there any reason to protect the journal publishing industry from evolutionary pressure, at the expense of research progress? Stevan Harnad ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Promoting Open Access amongst young researchers
Dear Ms. Chakrabarti, One important notion to add is the issue of the centre/periphery divide. On the surface, the universality of science seems to deny this divide, but universality only applies to concepts, theories, and methods; it does not apply to problem choice, and, of course, the dissemination of scientific knowledge is anything but equal: some researchers are a lot more equal than others, to use a well-known phrase from Orwell. Related to this issue is the question of power within science: how does it play out? To whose advantage? Who holds the trump cards? Etc. All these concerns could fall under Process of scholarly communication, of course, but they are sufficiently crucial to be singled out and studied in themselves. In a sense, they deal with the political dimension of open access (as distinguished from policy). Best regards, Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 09 août 2013 à 15:03 +0530, Barnali Chakrabarti a écrit : After getting feedback from you all (in our personal mail and mailing list), we revealed some important topics to articulate Researchers Curriculum. These are... 1. Process of Scholarly Communication 2. Understanding Open Access 3. Open Access Journals and Open Access Repositories - DOAJ - DOAR - Open DOAR - ROAR 4. Increasing Impact of your research 5. Tools to promote Open Access (SHERPA, ROMEO, GOAP, ROARMAP) I look forward to more comments in this week. Thanks Again, Regards, Barnali Roy Choudhury Project Associate (Open Access) Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia 13/14 Sarv Priya Bihar New Delhi 110016 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: FW: [SCHOLCOMM] Message from Emerald for Librarians
And this is my response: And concerned you should be. Personally, I will avoid publishing in your journals. This decision simply demonstrates that at Emerald, business trumps scholarship and its needs. But then, who should be surprised when for-profit outfits meddle with the great conversation of knowledge construction? Their objective is money, not knowledge. Their objective is wealth for a few as against knowledge for all. And do not let the alleged distributive powers of the invisible hand fool you! Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 21 juin 2013 à 13:51 +0100, Richard Poynder a écrit : Forwarding from the Scholcomm mailing list. *Apologies for cross-posting* The staff and directors at Emerald have naturally been concerned about the feedback to the launch of its Gold Open Access model and the approach to self-archived content that is subject to a mandate. Emerald has demonstrated a long-term commitment to the LIS community and we recognize that our policy has marked an important part of this relationship. Emerald has had a Green Open Access policy for over a decade. We support authors who personally wish to self-archive the pre- or post-print version of their article on their own website or in a repository; authors can do this immediately upon official publication of their paper. This principle continues to underpin our Green OA policy and remains unchanged. Our understanding is that a large proportion of our authors who wish to make their post-prints open access are currently accommodated through this approach. In more recent times the need to provide a Gold route for all authors has emerged in some countries, and we have responded to this with the introduction of a Gold OA model in April 2013. This has provided an alternative route to OA for researchers who are mandated to make their papers Open Access immediately, or after a specified period. We also set the Article Processing Charge (APC) at a relatively low level to assist authors. We do recognize this is an evolving landscape with policies and advice changing rapidly around the world, and as such we wish to work with our communities to develop models that are in the best interests of both our authors and the titles. Due to the recognized half-life of social science research, Emerald has followed guidance in reviewing its approach, and has requested that authors wait 24 months before depositing their post-prints if a mandate is in place. Where a mandate exists for deposit immediately on publication or with a shorter mandate but no APC fund is provided, we invite all authors to contact us. There has not been an author or repository manager request to place a post-print in a repository that we have not agreed to, but we now need to monitor and fully assess the long-term impacts upon the titles. In the second half of 2013 we are putting together an advisory group of editors and authors from across the disciplines in which we publish to help shape our approach in this dynamic environment in the future. We are also continuing to support our communities through innovative solutions such as the agreement with IFLA whereby papers that have their origins in an IFLA conference or project have the opportunity to be published in one of Emerald’s LIS journals and become freely accessible nine months after publication, as well as a number of other collaborations currently in the pipeline. We are committed to finding solutions that are both beneficial for our authors and ensure the sustainability of research communication in the subject disciplines we serve. Therefore, we will regularly review our global approach going forwards, in consultation with this advisory group of editors and authors. The full policy can be found at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/openaccess.htm. On behalf of Rebecca Marsh Director of External Relations and Services | Emerald Group Publishing Limited Tony Roche Publishing Director | Emerald Group Publishing Limited Howard House | Wagon Lane Bingley, BD16 1WA | UK Tel: +44 (0) 1274 00 | Fax: +44 (0)1274 785200 ape...@emeraldinsight.com | www.emeraldinsight.com Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Registered Office: Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley, BD16 1WA United Kingdom. Registered in England No. 3080506, VAT No. GB 665 3593 06 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: CHORUS: Yet Another Trojan Horse from the Publishing Industry
Thank you, Stevan. Spot on! Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 06 juin 2013 à 10:59 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : The OSTP should on no account be taken in by the Trojan Horse that is being offered by the research publishing industry's CHORUS. CHORUS is just the latest successor organisation for self-serving anti-Open Access (OA) lobbying by the publishing industry. Previous incarnations have been the PRISM coalition and the Research Works Act. 1. It is by now evident to everyone that OA is inevitable, because it is optimal for research, researchers, research institutions, the vast RD industry, students, teachers, journalists and the tax-paying public that funds the research. 2. Research is funded by the public and conducted by researchers and their institutions for the sake of research progress, productivity and applications -- not in order to guarantee publishers' current revenue streams and modus operandi: Research publishing is a service industry and must adapt to the revolutionary new potential that the online era has opened up for research. 3. That is why both research funders (like NIH) and research institutions (like Harvard) -- in the US as well as in the rest of the world -- are increasingly mandating (requiring) OA: See ROARMAP. 4. Publishers are already trying to delay the potential benefits of OA to research progress by imposing embargoes of 6-12 months or more on research access that can and should be immediate in the online era. 5. The strategy of CHORUS is to try to take the power to provide OA out of the hands of researchers so that publishers gain control over both the timetable and the insfrastructure for providing OA. 6. Moreover, the publisher lobby is attempting to do this under the pretext of saving precious research funds for research! 7. It is for researchers to provide OA, and for their funders and institutions to mandate and monitor OA provision by requiring deposit in their institutional repositories -- which already exist, for multiple purposes. 8. Depositing in repositories entails no extra research expense for research, just a few extra keystrokes, from researchers. 9. Institutional and subject repositories keep both the timetable and the insfrastructure for providing OA where it belongs: in the hands of the research community, in whose interests it is to provide OA. 10. The publishing industry's previous ploys -- PRISM and the Research Works Act -- were obviously self-serving Trojan Horses, promoting the publishing industry's interests disguised as the interests of research. Let the OSTP not be taken in this time either. Giles, J. (2007) PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access. Nature 5 January 2007. Linked version of this posting: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1009-.html ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Gold OA infrastructure
I agree with Fred's comments below. In effect, the Finch report tries to pit Gold vs. Green despite the fact that these two road to OA complement each other. It has turned out to be also a clever and destructive divisive move against the OA community. One element that has hampered the Green road has not been mentioned strongly enough in the past. It is that filling repositories through mandates is still not enough. The Liège model which links internal evaluation to the actual presence of documents in the repository is the gold (pun intended) standard here. But being visible and being accessible still does not ensure being used by researchers. Repositories must also become indispensable in any research heuristic strategy, and that, they have not yet achieved. To achieve this must consult status, it takes more than OAI-PMH and Google. It takes an ability for repositories to create value independently of the value created around journals by impact factors, and even competing with it. The trend toward article-level metrics pushed by PLoS and others is very good in this regard. Repositories could network to create forms of article-level metrics that would converge with other article-level metrics stemming from the Gold corner of OA. In this manner, the evaluation of scientific research could take a new and healthier turn. If we take a city's commercial centre as a metaphor, researchers go to the streets where the Gucci Gucci stores stand. That is where good company is supposed to be found. After all, they all wear Hermès scarves... And Hermès, we all know, has a high impact... Well, some exceedingly good places also exist elsewhere. They are not even stores; they are openly accessible counters, and the offering is for the taking, but they are not on the right street and they do not benefit from advertising in glossy-paper magazines. We have to move these open access counters to the main street, or, alternatively, make their street look like a main street. For this, you need symbolic value. The present standard for symbolic value is the impact factor. It is a sham, a horrendous sham (can anyone justify three decimals?). Building alternative metrics around depositories (and depository-like collections of gold OA journals) will contribute to achieving this goal. More still may be needed, but this is a first, clear, and precise objective, the goal being to place value-creation back in the hands of the research communities, and not in the hands of Thomson-Reuters (Web of Science) or Elsevier (Scopus). The OpenAire network sponsored by the European Union is a good place to start this kind of work and there are strong OA personalities in its midst. Meanwhile, working hard on other governments not to be tricked like the UK government is obviously another front to be opened; there again, I fully agree with Fred. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 04 juin 2013 à 11:28 +, Friend, Fred a écrit : The wide range of activities reported on the gold oa blog illustrate the priority now given to APC-funded gold OA by Government and other Establishment agencies in the UK, and the second-class status being given to repositories and other green OA developments by those same agencies. After many protests following the Finch Report, the role of repositories has been given greater recognition in the policies of RCUK and HEFCE, but this welcome recognition cannot disguise the fact that within the UK Establishment repositories are now not to be encouraged. Both gold and green OA are the twin sisters born of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and across the globe they have been allowed to grow unhindered, indeed actively supported by many governments and official bodies. And so it was it in the UK until the summer of 2012, when powerful lobbying by vested interests achieved their aim of banishing the green sister to the back of the political house. One result of the second-class status now granted to green OA is that there are now few UK projects to support the development of repositories. So much could be done to illustrate the sustainability of the repository route to OA, or to develop new services based upon repository content, but such developments no longer find favour with agencies committed to gold OA. Fortunately, while the UK Government and Government-funded agencies are content to leave repositories in their partially-developed state and pour taxpayer funds into APC-funded gold OA, many UK universities remain as committed to their institutional repositories as they were before the Finch Report. The problem they face is that while they are expected to prioritise funding for APCs, few universities can afford to fund the developments which would show the true value of repositories as the most cost-effective route to OA for publicly-funded research outputs. Fortunately the UK Government's misguided policy in prioritising APC-funded gold OA at the cost of supporting green OA is unlikely
[GOAL] Re: Paid Gold vs. Free Gold
As Jan Velterop says, it makes little economic sense to develop such a business plan; yet it exists. We should probably ask why. One obvious but unlikely answer would be stupidity. A more likely answer is that it is to the advantages of the publishers, collectively, constantly to bring new , so-called innovative solutions to e-publishing. This is part of their competitive games, of course, but, more fundamentally, it muddies the waters of open access and it slows down acceptance. In this regard, Stevan is quite right: we do need a simple, clear message to the world. But this message must be simple, not simplistic. Jean-Claude Guédon PS David Prosser is right, Green and Gold are enough. Free Gold is perfectly clear. Le vendredi 19 avril 2013 à 17:20 +0900, Andrew A. Adams a écrit : Jan is right. It appears my institution has a subscription that I didn't know about - when trying to access the papers from home, I now get directed to a paywall. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Paid Gold vs. Free Gold
Thank you to Stevan for outlining his views as clearly as he does. I also acknowledge his desire to frame a message in terms as clear and simple as possible in order to seek optimal effectiveness in penetrating people's minds. However, this quest for conceptual simplicity through linguistic and analytical rigour must also remain close to reality. To this end, allow me to make the following points: 1. The proposed distinction between green and gold ignores the fact that the Green Road needs a publisher's agreement to work. The button for access to dark archives is a work around,. It is important and useful, but it complicates the OA landscape. 2. Conflating green and gold makes little sense; however, envisioning reasons why they should ultimately converge is useful to map out strategies that are not simply static (mandate, mandate, mandate...), but, on the contrary, can innovate in useful ways. 3. OK 4. The reference to free Gold journals covered by subscriptions is not clear to me. Is this a reference to SCOAP3? 5-11 OK 12. Free Gold will be financially viable - I do not like the commercial connotation of sustainable - when the public funders who subsidize scientific research integrate the cost of scientific communications fully into their financing scheme. Already, many examples exist of partial or total acceptance of this principle. 13. While fully accepting the needs for strong pragmatic approaches to OA, I should underscore that, right now, and after years of campaigning, repositories still do not cut it as obvious research tools for researchers. Mandates begin to answer this, but, as the wonderful case of Liège shows, it takes more than a strong mandate to make Green successful; it also takes strong implementation. The politics of these goals must also enter into the equation of the pragmatics of OA. 14 OK 15. See 13 above. 16. Not really, as implementation requires administrators that get it (e.g. Bernard Rentier at Liège) and who are willing to make rules that will lead researchers to comply. To this extent, the Green Road also needs more than researchers, for example a realistic implementation of the mandate. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 18 avril 2013 à 07:45 +0100, Stevan Harnad a écrit : 1. The Green/Gold Open Access (OA) distinction concerns whether it is the author or the publisher that provides the OA. 2. This distinction was important to mark with clear terms because the conflation of the two roads to OA has practical implications and has been holding up OA progress for a decade and a half. 3. The distinction between paid Gold and free Gold is very far from being a straightforward one. 4. Free Gold can be free (to the author) because the expenses of the Gold journal are covered by subscriptions, subsidies or volunteerism. 5. The funds for Paid Gold can come from the author's pocket, the author's research grant, the author's institution or the author's funder. 6. It would be both absurd and gratuitously confusing to mark each of these economic-model differences with a color-code. 7. Superfluous extra colors would also obscure the role that the colour-code was invented to perform: distinguishing author-side OA provision from publisher-side OA provision. 8. So, please, let's not have diamond, platinum and titanium OA, despite the metallurgical temptations. 9. They amplify noise instead of pinpointing the signal, just as SHERPA/Romeo's parti-colored Blue/Yellow/Green spectrum (mercifully ignored by almost everyone) does. 10. OA is about providing Open Access to peer-reviewed journal articles, not about cost-recovery models for OA publishing (Gold OA). 11. The Gold that publishers are fighting for and that researcher funders are subsidizing (whether pure or hybrid) is paid Gold, not free Gold. 12. No one knows whether or how free Gold will be sustainable, any more than they know whether or how long subscription publishing can co-exist viably with mandatory Green OA. 13. So please leave the economic ideology and speculation out of the pragmatics of OA policy making by the research community (institutions and funders). 14. Cost-recovery models are the province of publishers (Gold OA). 15. What the research community needs to do is mandate OA provision. 16. The only OA provision that is entirely in the research community's hands is Green OA. And, before you ask, please let's not play into the publishers' hands by colour-coding OA also in terms of the length of the publisher embargo: 3-month OA, 6-month OA, 12-month-OA, 24-month-OA, millennial OA: OA means immediate online access. Anything else is delayed access. (The only quasi-exception is the Almost-OA provided by the author via the institutional repository's email-eprint-request Button when complying with publisher embargoes -- but that too is clearly not OA, which is immediate, free online access.) And on no account
[GOAL] Re: [accesouvert] Important JASIST Simulation Study of Transition to OA
There is no reason to support one method over the other in particular, simply because the success of any strategy is also highly dependent upon local conditions. There are situations where the passage to green OA is not practicable. In such a case, the alternative is simple: either try the Gold road, or give up on that site. The latter term is anything but exciting. Better keep the two strategies at hand and use them pragmatically in each situation in order to maximise results. This is just plain old common sense. As for models of scholarly communication in general, allow me to express a fair amount of skepticism. I have trouble reconciling the economists' love for global models with their repeated inability to predict anything: how many of us did know that a grave economic crisis was about to strike at the end of 2008 despite many models available? Let us be honest and modest about these models and their claims. Jean-Claude Guédon Le samedi 23 février 2013 à 12:02 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Bernius, S., Hanauske, M., Dugall, B. and König, W. (2013), Exploring the effects of a transition to open access: Insights from a simulation study. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.. doi: 10.1002/asi.22772 The Open Access (OA) movement, which postulates gratis and unrestricted online access to publicly funded research findings, has significantly gained momentum in recent years. The two ways of achieving OA are self-archiving of scientific work by the authors (Green OA) and publishing in OA journals (Gold OA). But there is still no consensus which model should be supported in particular. The aim of this simulation study is to discover mechanisms and predict developments that may lead to specific outcomes of possible market transformation scenarios. It contributes to theories related to OA by substantiating the argument of a citation advantage of OA articles and by visualizing the mechanisms of a journal system collapsing in the long-term due to the continuation of the serials crisis. The practical contribution of this research stems from the integration of all market players: Decisions regarding potential financial support of OA models can be aligned with our findings, as well as the decision of a publisher to migrate his/her journals to Gold OA. Our results indicate that for scholarly communication in general, a transition to Green OA combined with a certain level of subscription-based publishing and a migration of few top journals is the most beneficial development. -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Fwd: German government proposes copyright amendment granting a right of secondary publication (green road)
This looks like a very interesting model that could be proposed, transposed and perhaps even tweaked (six months instead of twelve) in other legislatures. The idea of half publicly funded by public money is also very interesting as a basic criterion. It potentially points to the fact that an increasing number of politicians are getting it about Open Access. Let us hope this law fares well in the Bundestag, and finds imitations in other jurisdictions. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 21 février 2013 à 08:47 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Begin forwarded message: From: Christoph Bruch bruch---zedat.fu-berlin.de Subject: [BOAI] German government proposes copyright amendment granting a right of secondary publication (green road) Date: 21 February, 2013 6:33:23 AM EST Dear All, Yesterday the German government released a draft version for an amendment to the German Copyright Act (Urheberrechtsgesetz), s. attachment. The amendment covers several issues, one of those is of special interest for this list: a regulation concerning the green road to open access The German research community and the German Länder (states) have been advocating this “right of secondary publication” for several years. The faith of the bill is unclear as the current legislature ends in September already. The draft bill has not been formally introduced in parliament (Bundestag) yet and the governing coalition is divided on the issue. Regards Christoph Paragraph to be added to section 38 of the German copyright act (4) Der Urheber eines wissenschaftlichen Beitrags, der im Rahmen einer mindestens zur Hälfte mit öffentlichen Mitteln finanzierten Lehr- und Forschungstätigkeit entstanden und in einer periodisch mindestens zweimal jährlich erscheinenden Sammlung erschienen ist, hat auch dann, wenn er dem Verleger oder Herausgeber ein ausschließliches Nutzungsrecht eingeräumt hat, das Recht, den Beitrag nach Ablauf von zwölf Monaten seit der Erstveröffentlichung in der akzeptierten Manuskriptversion öffentlich zugänglich zu machen, soweit dies keinem gewerblichen Zweck dient. Die Quelle der Erstveröffentlichung ist anzugeben. Eine zum Nachteil des Urhebers abweichende Vereinbarung ist unwirksam. 4) Even if copyright was transferred exclusively to the publisher, the author of a scientific contribution, which stems from at least half publicly funded research and teaching activities and published in a periodical which is at least published twice yearly, has the right to make the accepted manuscript version of the contribution publicly available (internet)after the expiration of twelve months after the first publication, provided this serves no commercial purpose and the source of the original publication is indicated. A deviating agreement to the disadvantage of the author is invalid. Please find the full bill attached. Regards, Christoph Christoph Bruch Helmholtz Association Helmholtz Open Access Coordination Office M: christoph.br...@oa.helmholtz.de W: http://oa.helmholtz.de P: +49 (0)471 - 48 31 23 25 -- ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: open access and monographs - ARC and wider
___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Please distinguish what is and is not relevant to mandating Green OA self-archiving
No quarrel with all this. I just wanted to point out that an OA journal, technically, is very close to a repository, at least at its basic level. Modular functions can be added, of course, but they can also move across platforms without much trouble. As for the vocabulary: repository, archive, depository, whatever... We might want to make this terminology a bit more rigorous, but it is not a major issue Imho. Incidentally, from what I have just said, it is not difficult to understand why I believe that OA journals and repositories will converge (mixing and matching). I see the emergence of mega-journals as a potent sign of this. Best, Jean-Claude Guédon Le lundi 21 janvier 2013 à 11:42 +1100, Arthur Sale a écrit : I think we are now getting into an off-target area: not open access but archiving. It is really unfortunate that open access repositories were ever called archives. Heather is right. In the past print publishers of books and journals just had to print them onto papyrus, vellum, or paper, using a non-ephemeral ink, and rely on dissemination (and libraries) to do the preservation. Preservation in the digital era is a different matter, having to cope with ephemeral media and error-resistant information (the opposite of the Gutenberg era). But this is not central open access stuff, important though it is. Of course, to forestall comment by someone who wants to carp, the lifetime of research outputs does vary. In some disciplines it is of the order of a year or two on average, in others perhaps of centuries, to use the extremes. Arthur Sale Tasmania, Australia -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: Monday, 21 January 2013 10:11 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Please distinguish what is and is not relevant to mandating Green OA self-archiving On 20-Jan-13, at 2:25 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: (excerpt) Some forms of Gold do not require any more payment than what is needed to maintain a repository. In fact, an OA Gold journal is a repository of its own articles. Comment: a gold OA journal serves as a repository, however it is important to understand that any journal, or the open access status of a journal, may be ephemeral in nature. Journals are archived and preserved by libraries, not by journals and publishers. This is important to understand because gold open access without open access archives is highly vulnerable. Journals can simply disappear, or be sold by open access publishers to toll access publishers. For this reason I argue that open access archives are absolutely essential to sustainable open access. best, Heather ___ 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 -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Please distinguish what is and is not relevant to mandating Green OA self-archiving
Le dimanche 20 janvier 2013 à 16:52 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : 1. Mandatory Green OA self-archiving in Stevan's meaning is fine for the disciplines to which it applies; It applies to (the refereed journal articles of) *all* disciplines: No exceptions. Indeed, but in a number of disciplines, articles are second-rate publications. So this amounts to excluding such disciplines by making Green OA of little relevance he specialists working in these disciplines. [snip] Paying for Gold without first mandating Green is always not-fine. Some forms of Gold do not require any more payment than what is needed to maintain a repository. In fact, an OA Gold journal is a repository of its own articles. The costs of an OA journal, especially when using tools such as the Open Journal System are in the same ball park as repositories. So Gold can be achieved with as much financial effort as Green. In fact, a repository could and ought to host local journals. Repositories and journals managed in the same institution could easily work together. [snip] 3. Pursuing OA with tactics that amount to leaving most HSS disciplines aside is not acceptable, even when presented as a first step. Green OA self-archiving of all journal articles first needs to be mandated, by all institutions and funders, in all disciplines (ID/OA). OK. This is clear. This is precisely the point where we disagree. You insist on a rigidly defined first step; I argue in favour of your first step, or other first steps, depending on situations, circumstances and opportunities. [snip] 4. Books can be self-archived, even if it be limited to a dark archive. Definitely! Books can be deposited in institutional repositories as Closed Access deposits. Good. The same issue exists with articles when publishers refuse self-archiving, or require a long embargo. The crucial and consequential differences being that: (1) all article authors (but not all book authors -- perhaps even far from all book authors) will want to use the repository's reprint-request Button to provide a free copy to all individual requesters. True if the repository does not provide the author with a private digital copy of his/her own book. But this should not be too difficult to achieve. Otherwise, authors of scholarly books will want maximum visibility, just like article authors. and (2) all article authors (but not all book authors -- perhaps even far from all book authors) will want the OA embargo to be none, or as short as possible. That I do not understand. Except for the rare monographs where economic rewards are real, removing the embargo would be beneficial to the authors, as is the case for the articles. Books are pulped by publishers rather quickly after publication, because storage is expensive. Authors know this, and they know that this procedure essentially kills their book. OA would solve this problem for both sides, and this is one of the arguments that OAPEN usedin favour of its programme. Jean-Claude Guédon Stevan Harnad ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Please distinguish what is and is not relevant to mandating Green OA self-archiving
Good point about the instability of journals, Heather, but the same instability applies to repositories. The CIHR policy change in Canada, that you recently pointed out, extending the embargo to 12 months, is a case in point. The rules under which one may archiver are at the discretion of publishers, alas. Journals were archived by libraries in the print world. In digital formats, this has become a contentious terrain. I agree that Gold is strengthened by Green's repositories; Green has its own vulnerabilities, such as moving from gratis to libre. Together, Gold and Green can help each other. Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 20 janvier 2013 à 15:10 -0800, Heather Morrison a écrit : On 20-Jan-13, at 2:25 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: (excerpt) Some forms of Gold do not require any more payment than what is needed to maintain a repository. In fact, an OA Gold journal is a repository of its own articles. Comment: a gold OA journal serves as a repository, however it is important to understand that any journal, or the open access status of a journal, may be ephemeral in nature. Journals are archived and preserved by libraries, not by journals and publishers. This is important to understand because gold open access without open access archives is highly vulnerable. Journals can simply disappear, or be sold by open access publishers to toll access publishers. For this reason I argue that open access archives are absolutely essential to sustainable open access. best, Heather ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
to doubt whether the ARC intends such undesirable consequences, and if it has thought this through. I just mention newspaper articles, video recordings, music scores, film and play scripts, photographs, architectural designs, computer programs, patents, and silicon chip designs, without going into detail. I will not speculate on whether ARC has thought the issue through or not, but it is true that scholarly publishing will eventually move across the whole gamut of document types one can imagine, plus the data behind it. However, a scholarly video will maintain with a commercial video the same kind of relationship that a scholarly book maintains with a novel or a cookbook: although superfically alike, they enter entirely different economic circuits and should, therefore, be treated accordingly. Conflating all kinds of codices into one lump does not help thinking through the digital mutation we are experiencing. In fact, if we pushed the argument further, we could say that because scientists use writing in their work, it should be treated like any other form of writing, from a laundry bill to a D. Steele novel. Moving down that road will quickly lead us into absurdities. In conclusion, I am not saying that the ARC policy is perfect; but I am saying that policy formulations that do include scholarly books and anthologies make a lot of sense if one is interested in thinking about Open Access as an important tool for the great conversation of knowledge, be it in the STM disciplines, or in SSH. And, once and for all, let us forget about this artificial red line dealing with the royalty issue. In fact, all subsidized, scholarly, books should exclude the possibility of royalties. Incidentally, mandates for depositing research publications into institutional/central/thematic repositories should clearly extend to SSH publications in whatever form, codex, journals, etc.. Best, Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 18 janvier 2013 à 00:41 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Many thanks to Arthur Sale for posting this. When I saw these (obvious) howlers in the ARC Policy I assumed the policy-makers (or the policy-writers) had fallen asleep at the wheel (and I gave up). Let's hope that Arthur's firm and confident corrective will be noticed and heeded. The ARC gaffe is nothing compared to the UK's Finch/RCUK gaffe, which was done -- and has since been defended -- with eyes wide shut... Stevan Harnad On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Arthur Sale a...@ozemail.com.au wrote: Danny I believe this AOASG statement contains an error. It states that the ARC policy applies to all research outputs of an ARC project, including books. While this can be inferred from the text, it is an extraordinary claim which will be ineffective and cannot have been intended by the ARC. Books do not have “less developed mechanisms for open access copyright clearance than journal articles”. They have better developed mechanisms for copyright transfer, and greater justification for closed access. There is no simple parallel between scholarly book publishing and scholarly journal publishing. The industries are very different, and convergence is slow in coming though we may be starting on that path. If the ARC policy extends to books, and according to the AOASG statement also to ibooks and ebooks, and to a lesser extent but still importantly book contributions (chapters), then it is easy to predict: 1. Very few books will be published as the outcomes of a research project. Book publishers incur real costs (editorial, printing, stock and distribution), especially research or review books, and require closed access to recover costs over much longer timeframes than articles. They will simply refuse to publish books that are to be made open access, unless heavily subsidized. 2. Very few ibooks will be published as outcomes of a research project. Although the iTunes policy is that free ibooks (ie open access) are accepted, most people wanting to publish a research output as an ibook (.iba format for iPad) will want to recover some of their development cost. This will be less significant in the less interactive .pub format. One has to doubt whether the ARC intends such undesirable consequences, and if it has thought this through. I just mention newspaper articles, video recordings, music scores, film and play scripts, photographs, architectural designs, computer programs, patents, and silicon chip designs, without going into detail. The statement
[GOAL] Re: If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences
The idea of a PLOHSS is one I have discussed with at least one person who works for PLOS. Personally, I believe the PLOS solution is extremely important in that it contributes to separating scholarship quality from journal editorial lines. In other words, in a PLOS-like journal, if the work is well done, it does not matter whether it is a popular, or a hot, or frivolous, or a locally relevant, topic, and so on. The main issue with a PLOS-HSS journal is that HSS journals are strongly tied to editorial lines. In HSS journals, the editorial line is often as important as quality concerns. Quite often, HSS Journals are flag-bearers of interpretive perspectives or schools. One way, perhaps, to overcome this difficulty is to create a PLOS-HSS journal that would federate many editorial boards of as many journals. Each editorial board would thus retain its journal-like identity. When an article would be submitted to the PLOS-HSS megajournal, every editorial board could decide whether to evaluate it or not. The result is that the article could be peer reviewed from a variety of perspectives including several editorial boards. If accepted, the article would be published with an acknowledgement of the boards involved. Any article published with the peer-review of one person chosen by one particular editorial board would automatically be part of the content of that journal. As a result, an article could be associated with several journals, but would appear only once in the mega-journal. Of course, each journal could repackage the articles it owns to publish a separate journal (without quotation marks). This possibility might limit the pains of losing one's editorial identity in a big mega-journal, but, ultimately, the mega journal would simply federate boards that would reflect a wide variety of trends, tendencies, and theoretical choices. Given the continuing importance of national languages in the HSS, one possible principle of aggregation or federation could be based on language. In this fashion, HSS studies would begin to reorganize themselves in large linguistic groups. Then further refinements can appear such as translations of the best papers in the main trade languages of the world (e.g. English, Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, etc.). In this fashion, the globalization of HSS studies could begin in earnest. Of course, there are many devils lurking in many detail crannies, but some good thinking should allow overcome most if not all of them. Jean-Claude Guédon Le vendredi 18 janvier 2013 à 12:29 -0500, Omega Alpha|Open Access a écrit : If the sciences can do it… PLOHSS: A PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences http://wp.me/p20y83-BF The Public Library of Science (PLOS) was founded in 2000 as an advocacy group promoting open access to scientific literature in the face of increasingly prohibitive journal costs imposed by scientific publishers. The group proposed the formation of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form. ... Why not create a PLOS-style mega journal for the humanities and social sciences? Admittedly, this is new thinking, especially for humanities scholars whose academic traditions are deep and slow to change. But if it is correct to assert that scholars (do and should) create their own reputation, and if in this online era it is the disaggregated but fully discoverable article not the journal that is really the currency of scholarly communication and reputation, maybe a hosting platform otherwise capable of providing credible peer review would suffice for exposing research to anyone who is interested, in the scholarly community or beyond. While it may not be able to entirely avoid using APCs, it would not make ability to pay a pre-condition to publication. Soliciting institutional sponsorships from monies already in the system, and leveraging the scale of a shared multi-disciplinary online service could make operations sustainable and per article costs low. ... Late last week I received a tweet from Dr. Martin Paul Eve, a lecturer in English Literature at University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. You may recall back in July I gave a hat tip to Martin for his excellent Starting an Open Access Journal: a step-by-step guide. The tweet linked to a post on his blog soliciting participants to help build a Public Library of Science model for the Humanities and Social Sciences. … Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess at gmail dot com @OAopenaccess ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal
[GOAL] Re: Statement: Australian Open Access Support Group applauds new ARC open access policy
Le samedi 19 janvier 2013 à 10:14 +1100, Arthur Sale a écrit : Thanks Jean-Claude Guédon and Falk Reckling for your comments. It is difficult to answer them succinctly, but I will try. 1. There is a substantial difference between books and articles in the current situation. Almost no researcher reads the printed copy of a journal article any more: they access the online version. Journal publishers who continue to print paper journals are largely wasting money, or doing it for archival purposes. On the other hand, until very recently, no-one read a book in any other format than paper. This is beginning to change with Kindle, iPad and other tablets, but the paradigm change is far from complete. The reading situation you describe is not yet the dominant situation in HSS. As for publishers who continue to publish on paper, I agree, they are wasting money, but this is not the point of this discussion. They are doing so, however, in part to respond to a real demand from significant fractions of their readership. This may be a generational thing, but the generalization above is inaccurate in HSS. 2. Editorial work on journal articles is mimimal (and often counter-productive), while refereeing (selectivity of articles) is a major issue. With books the situation is reversed. Editorial work is often extensive, and acceptance (the parallel for refereeing) is largely in-house and there are fewer proposals. Again, you generalize too fast. Editorial work is still important in SSH journals, in part because articles do not obey any particular templates. It is comparable to book editing. Many academic publishers use external referees to evaluate book manuscripts ( I have done such work on a number of occasions). Granting agencies that support the publishing of academic books use external referees extensively, if only to have ready justification for their decision-making results. 3. I used ibooks as my example because they offer the best example of where electronic books are going: interactive. The conventional ebook that one can see in novels or .pub format is just a slightly souped-up pdf of text and a few pictures. An ibook is an interactive object, albeit at present in a proprietary format. I could also have cited Wolfram’s CDF (Computable Document Format). Have you used an ibook or CDF? Tried to write one? I have done both and the experience tells me that this is going to be an influential development. I obviously do not have your expertise on this topic, but this was only a very minor, marginal point in my counter-argument. 4. Why do academic presses produce open access books? Because they are subsidized to do so, and their performance indicators are not profit-oriented, but academic prestige. I know that Jean-Claude realizes this, because he says so. The same for some professional societies. Good for them too, but it is not the norm. The norm is that academic presses that produce books are generally subsidized. The are subsidized by either by their own institution or by external, governmental, agencies. This is true of OA books, but it is also true of books for sale. OA books, and I agree with you, are not the norms among academic presses, but various projects (e.g. OAPEN in Europe) point in that direction. The subsidies from institutions have gone down and this has led a number of academic presses to become more like commercial presses. In turn, this situation has produced a crisis for the career management of many SSH disciplines. Both Robert Darnton (historian) and Stephen Greenblatt (literature) have, as presidents of their respective associations, published their concern about this. It demonstrates, in passing, the central importance of books in those disciplines. 5. Printing, stock and distribution is largely wasted effort for journals. My own university library frequently simply trashes unwanted print copies sent to them as not worth the costs of cataloguing or shelving. But It just happens, to repeat myself, that many SSH journals are still being distributed in paper form, if only because a number of (presumably) old farts want to read them that way. Personally, I don't, but many of my colleagues do. And the type of reading needed to study a 30-page SSH article is a lot easier when print is available. In SSH disciplines, people, when they use on-line journals, download and print to read. Try reading Derrida on a screen... :-) 6. A book is not just a long article, any more than the Golden Gate Bridge is just a long log across a creek. Scale changes things. Every engineer knows this. So do the publishing industries. Books have much smaller purchasing groups and much greater costs, in general, than a journal house. They also are not serials and cannot rely on continuing business. Again, this is way too general and too fast. Book series exist, as do thematic journal that really are book series in disguise
[GOAL] Re: Interview with Harvard's Stuart Shieber
Thank you, David and Alma. I fully agree with both definitions you give, and both caveats. The OA community has defined green and gold very well, but a number of so-called stake-holders, particularly publishers, have been very good at muddying the waters and confusing the issues to create appearances of uncertainty and risk for the researchers (and others as well). Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 12 décembre 2012 à 07:28 +, Alma Swan a écrit : David Prosser wrote: APCs make up just one business model that can be used to support Gold OA. Gold is OA through journals - it makes no assumption about how the costs of publication are paid for. I think it is helpful to ensure that we do not equate Gold with APCs. Seconded. And there is also an inclination in some quarters to call Green OA ‘delayed OA’, even though 60+% of journals allow immediate OA by self-archiving. We should also ensure that Green OA is not equated with embargoes. Alma Swan On 3 Dec 2012, at 18:51, Richard Poynder wrote: Stuart Shieber is the Welch Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, Faculty Co-Director http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/sshieber of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/sshieber , Director of Harvard’s Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/ ), and chief architect of the Harvard Open Access (OA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access ) Policy — a 2008 initiative that has seen Harvard become a major force in the OA movement. http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-oa-interviews-harvards-stuart.html ATT1..txt __ ___ 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 -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
Jan, I do not think it does, provided that the *wherever* quest for libre that you suggest does not get confused with the *absolute need* to get libre and nothing else. What I think concerns Stevan is that some people get so hung up on libre as a result of the systematic nature of the *wherever* that they downgrade gratis to the level of an ugly, ultimately unacceptable, compromise. At that point, perfection becomes the enemy of the good. Peter Suber has written some good pages in his book on Open Access, by the way. Also, if libre is not currently realistically possible, why go for it, except to reassert a principle? And going for gratis does not prevent reasserting the ultimate goal of libre, while accepting the temporary gain of gratis. Finally, there are negotiating situations where speaking only in terms of gratis is probably wise to achieve at least gratis. Lawyer-style minds are often concerned about the toe-into-the-door possibility. In such situations, the libre imperative could indeed work against the gratis. I suspect may librarian/publisher negotiations would fall in this category and I suspect many publishers approach the whole issue of open access with a cautionary mind. That is the the best I can do on your question. It is a tough question because each category of actors (researchers, librarians, publishers, administrators) will have a different take on it. Best, Jean-Claude Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 à 21:53 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit : Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 21:04, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I believe that what I wrote is not ambiguous or difficult to understand. Ot, to put it differently: No, it does not mean... etc. Jean-Claude Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 13:51 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jean-Claude, Does this mean that you think trying for ideal OA and settling for Gratis Ocular Access where ideal OA is not yet possible, is acting against the ideal goal? If so, on what basis? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 18:25, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: I have been observing this discussion from afar. It has always seemed to me that Stevan was distinguishing between ideal OA and reachable OA. Gratis OA, if I understand him right, is but the first step, and he argues (rightly in my own opinion) that we should not forfeit gratis simply because we do not reach the ideal solution right away. The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. Jean-Claude Guédon Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 12:07 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Stevan is not trying to achieve open access. (Although, admittedly, the definition of open access is so much subject to revision, that it depends on the day you looked what it, or one of its flavours, actually means or can mean - for the avoidance of doubt, my anchor point is the definition found here). What Stevan is advocating is just gratis 'ocular' online access (no machine-access, no text- or data-mining, no reuse of any sort - cross). If that is the case, I have no beef with him. We're just on different ships to different destinations which makes travelling in convoy impossible. The destination of the ship I'm on was mapped out at the BOAI in December 2001. I find it important to stay on course. The trouble arises where he regards the course of the ship that I am on as a threat to the course of his ship. That is misguided. Jan Velterop On 10 Oct 2012, at 14:49, Stevan Harnad wrote: ** Cross-Posted ** This is a response to a proposal (by some individuals in the researcher
[GOAL] A special issue on Open Access in Latin America
I would like to point out a recent issue of Educación Superior y Sociedad that was put together by one of the finest observers of Latin American science policy, Dra. Hebe Vessuri, that deals with Open Access. http://ess.iesalc.unesco.org.ve/index.php/ess The issue includes articles by members of the OJS team, among others. it also gives an interesting glimpses into the level of discussions on OA as it evolves in latin America. One article is in English and Spanish. The rest is only in Spanish. The Latin American scene is interesting in that it foregrounds an issue that has not been discussed often in OA circles: while OA helps promote the visibility of researchers (the OA advantage) as studied in the case of repositories), it can also help promote research that has been placed in a peripheral and invisible position by the present two-tier system of science communication (inside or outside the web of science and Scopus, for example). Quality of research is related only partially to inclusion in these bibliographic tools and citation trackers, despite some claims to the contrary. There is quality, a lot of it, outside these citation trackers. Much research of quality is thus forgotten or neglected. It is lost science. Promoting research from regions such as Latin America, but also Africa, Asia, etc., is another benefit of open access, but it must be designed in a different and complementary way: research in these regions should be made sufficiently visible and prestigious as to prevent it from being safely ignored by labs and researchers in countries that produce most of the research in the world. Repositories help insofar as visibility is concerned, but they are not sufficient because peripheral research, so to speak, lacks branding (not quality, but rather branding). Journals can provide this, and OA journals do it best. This is not a statement against repositories; they too are needed, very needed. But in peripheral (so-called) regions, the problem is compounded by a lack of prestige and branding ability. OA journals try to respond to this need. How best to achieve this is still a matter of discussions and explorations, but SciELO and RedALyC are attempts aiming straight at these problems. I cannot refrain concluding with a statement from an African novelist who, while dealing with literature, says things that can be easily transposed in the area of knowledge and science: As for now, caught between condescendance and generous curiosity, African literatures find it difficult to insert their mediocrity inside the others' mediocrity, and their magnificence inside the others' magnificence. They are condemned to living among each other. Sami Tchak, Désir d'Afrique (Paris, Gallimard, 2002), p. 312. Thanks to Alice Le Filleul who, unwittingly, attracted my attention to this splendid analysis. My own translation. Good reading. Jean-Claude Guédon PS I have not read and checked every last article of this collection as I became aware of it recently, so that I cannot be sure that I agree with all the content. But I am sure the content is relevant to OA advocates and can help shape their strategic thinking in this particular arena. ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] LA Referencia |
A Latin American consortium of institutional repositories that is of importance: http://lareferencia.redclara.net/rfr/ Jean-Claude Guédon ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Publications managed by scholarly communities/institutions
More precisely, reviews are financed in part by the institutions that harbour the reviewers. Reviewers are not paid; they simply can transform this work into symbolic capital if their institution includes this kind of activity in their annual report. To that extent, it can be said that the institution acts as a fairy godmother (what an expression!!! Whoever came with that one?) by counting review time as institutional work. This said, researchers rarely work on fixed schedules. Thinking, reading, etc., does not go on from 9 to 5. Ad researchers will review, whatever their institution decides for their annual report. All this must amount to at least a seventh-degree effect, if not more. Jean-Claude Le vendredi 10 août 2012 à 06:34 +0200, Laurent Romary a écrit : But indeed, most reviewers +are+ paid. Reviewing is part of the academic day job and the activity is part of the reporting made to their institutions. This is the whole point here: how far may an institution go in acting as a fairy godmother to scholarly publishing. Laurent Le 9 août 2012 à 16:35, David Prosser a écrit : I didn't say they were paid or that they should be. I merely pointed out that each and ever scholarly journal has at least some of its costs covered by 'fairy godmothers'. They all benefit from massive subsidies. The journals we are talking about here just extend those subsidies a little. David On 9 Aug 2012, at 14:56, Sally Morris wrote: As far as I am aware, peer reviewers are almost never paid under any model (I am aware of one publisher that used to reward rapid responses). I believe there were surveys (sorry, no reference to hand) which indicated that everyone involved felt that it would be inappropriate to pay peer reviewers. Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk __ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of David Prosser Sent: 09 August 2012 12:08 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Publications managed byscholarly communities/institutions Of course, to a greater or lesser extent all journals are supported by the 'fairy godmother' model. With peer reviewers playing the part of the fairy godmothers! David Prosser On 9 Aug 2012, at 11:50, Sally Morris wrote: These are all examples of the 'fairy godmother' payment model Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Reckling, Falk, Dr. Sent: 09 August 2012 10:53 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: Laurent Romary Subject: [GOAL] Re: Publications managed byscholarly communities/institutions I would add some journal form economics: a) E-conomics (institutional funding): http://www.economics-ejournal.org/ b) Theoretical Economics (society based funding): http://econtheory.org/ c) 5x IZA journals published with SpringerOpen (institutional funding by IZA): http://journals.iza.org/ d) Journal of Economic Perspective (a former subscription journal but now society based funding): http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/index.php b) and d) have an impact factor, a) and c) are new ___ Falk Reckling, PhD Humanities Social Science Strategic Analysis, Open Access Department Head Austrian Science Fund Sensengasse 1 A-1090 Vienna Tel: +43-1-505 67 40-8301 Mobile: +43-699-19010147 Email: falk.reckl...@fwf.ac.at http://www.fwf.ac.at/en/contact/personen/reckling_falk.html image003.jpg Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] Im Auftrag von Bo-Christer Björk Gesendet: Donnerstag, 09. August 2012 11:43 An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: Laurent Romary Betreff: [GOAL] Re: Publications managed by scholarly communities/institutions Good idea, Here are four such journals, all of which have been there since the 1990s: Information Research Journal of Information Technology in Construction Journal of Electronic Publishing First Monday best regards Bo-Christer Björk
[GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access
I basically agree with Eric's outline. This would be the way to wrap up the cost of publishing within the cost of research. I have repeatedly stated that this should be the case. Publishing is an integral part of research, and its financing does not have to follow business plans largely dictated by print age constraints. There is nothing wrong with subsidizing publishing (it is already the case in many countries), especially if one considers that research would not be sustainable without huge subsidies from governments. Can anyone tell me how private interests would have tracked the Higgs Boson? The only issue to deal with is how to keep the funders at arm's length from the publications while retaining an interest in quality. However, this problem is far less troubling than the relationship of commercial publishers and editorial boards (including editors, especially when the latter are compensated in one fashion or another). Examples of good behaviour abound and should be followed. International setups or multi-institutional alliances between charities would largely alleviate this limited worry. So, basically, systematically creating funder-supported journals in all major disciplines, perhaps following the super-journal model of PLoS One, would be the optimal way to go on the gold side of things. If this solution were to be implemented, a degree of competition would nevertheless remain by virtue of regional or national ambitions: Europeans would want their journal, as would probably the Chinese, the Indians, Latin Americans, Africans, etc... This would ensure a continuous flow of innovations in the publishing processes and mechanisms. Large collections of journals such as SciELO and RedALyC in Latin America could explore how to mutate into a few super-journals. They might need transitional funds from some willing foundation to do so, but I believe it is feasible. There is a lot to think about here. Jean-Claude Guédon PS And, just for equilibrium's sake, this is only on the Gold side. Much work remains to be done on the Green side as well. Ultimately, we will have to work on their convergence. Le jeudi 26 juillet 2012 à 11:39 -0700, Eric F. Van de Velde a écrit : For funders that already have set up a Green OA mandate with an funder-sponsored repository, it would be a relatively small additional investment to sponsor journals. They would not have to manage it themselves. They could put out a periodic Request for Proposals to manage journals on their behalf. Any scholarly publisher or start-up could compete for that business, thereby ensuring the management is done at minimal cost. The only thing the funder would have to do is put together editorial boards. This is something they already do when they put together proposal-review panels. The result would be Gold Libre OA without author-paid fees. The cost to research funders is likely minimal, and they would gain a significant quality-assessment tool. In fact, these are Gold OA journals that would not have the vanity-press incentive built-in when Gold OA is paid for by authors (the so-called predatory Gold OA journals). Would such a model be workable? Any unintended consequences? Has it been tried anywhere? --Eric. http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com Google Voice: (626) 898-5415 Telephone: (626) 376-5415 Skype: efvandevelde -- Twitter: @evdvelde E-mail: eric.f.vandeve...@gmail.com On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 10:49 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: Like Stevan Harnad, I say: enough with colours! The important thing to remember is that gold OA is not, repeat *NOT* limited to author-pay schemes. There are indeed many journals that are gratis to authors and libre to readers (e.g. SciELO and RedALyC journals in latin America and beyond). To my mind, this is the optimal version of Gold. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 26 juillet 2012 à 06:16 -0600, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : I make the distinction between gold open-access and platinum open-access. Author fees + free to reader = gold open access No author fees + free to reader = platinum open access This discussion, I think, demonstrates that this distinction is significant and worthy of a separate appellation. Jeffrey Beall, Metadata Librarian / Associate Professor Auraria Library University of Colorado Denver 1100 Lawrence St. Denver, Colo. 80204 USA (303) 556-5936 jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Reckling, Falk, Dr. Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 4:53 AM To: Global Open Access List
[GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access
Like Stevan Harnad, I say: enough with colours! The important thing to remember is that gold OA is not, repeat *NOT* limited to author-pay schemes. There are indeed many journals that are gratis to authors and libre to readers (e.g. SciELO and RedALyC journals in latin America and beyond). To my mind, this is the optimal version of Gold. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 26 juillet 2012 à 06:16 -0600, Beall, Jeffrey a écrit : I make the distinction between gold open-access and platinum open-access. Author fees + free to reader = gold open access No author fees + free to reader = platinum open access This discussion, I think, demonstrates that this distinction is significant and worthy of a separate appellation. Jeffrey Beall, Metadata Librarian / Associate Professor Auraria Library University of Colorado Denver 1100 Lawrence St. Denver, Colo. 80204 USA (303) 556-5936 jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Reckling, Falk, Dr. Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 4:53 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access I think there is still a misunderstanding with Gold OA. Running a OA journal does not necesserily mean to charges article fees! Take Economics as an example: meanwhile there are some good OA journals, most of them are new but with very prominent advisory boards (which is a good predictor of being successful in the long run) a) E-conomics (institutional funding): http://www.economics-ejournal.org/ b) Theoretical Economics (society based funding): http://econtheory.org/ c) 5x IZA journals published with SpringerOpen (institutional funding): http://journals.iza.org/ d) Journal of Economic Perspective (a former subscription journal but now society based funding): http://www.aeaweb.org/jep/index.php All of them are without APCs, and that model also works in many other fields. What is needed is a very good editorial board and a basic funding by an institution/society, or by a consortium of institutions or by a charity or ... Or why not considering a megajournal in the Humanities and apply a clever business model as PEERJ tries it right now in the Life Science?: http://peerj.com/ In the end, it is up to the community to develop models which fit their needs ... Best Falk Am 26.07.2012 um 12:09 schrieb l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk: The question isn't whether they're free or not, but whether they play major roles as venues and outlets for important Humanities scholarship. And also it's still the case that traditional print journals involve long print cues and delays in publication. And also it's the case that university libraries paying ridiculous subscription charges for journals in the Sciences have less funding for monographs (still the gold standard in Humanities), and even put pressure on Humanities to cut their journals. Finally, there is the concern that the current move to gold OA with pages charges, etc., will adversely affect Humanities scholars. So, please, no snap and simple replies. Let's engage the problems. Larry Hurtado Quoting Jan Szczepanski jan.szczepansk...@gmail.com on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 22:53:06 +0200: Is more than sixteen thousand free e-journals in the humanities and social sciences of any importance in this discussion? http://www.scribd.com/Jan%20Szczepanski Jan 2012/7/25 l.hurt...@ed.ac.uk: Webster concisely articulates the concerns that I briefly mooted a few days ago. Larry Hurtado Quoting Omega Alpha Open Access oa.openacc...@gmail.com on Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:03:30 -0400: Hat Tip: Let's not leave Humanities behind in the dash for open access http://wp.me/p20y83-no Nice article this morning by Peter Webster on the Research Fortnight website entitled Humanities left behind in the dash for open access. http://www.researchresearch.com/index.php?option=com_newstemplate =rr_2colview=articlearticleId=1214091 Check it out. Webster observes that much of the current conversation around the growth of open access focuses on the sciences and use of an author-pays business model. He feels inadequate attention in the conversation has been given to the unique needs of humanities scholarship, and why it may be harder for humanist scholars to embrace open access based on the author-pays model. There is no Public Library of History to match the phenomenally successful Public Library of Science. . Your comments are welcome. Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com oa.openaccess @ gmail.com | @OAopenaccess
[GOAL] Re: Chemistry and the Green Door
I agree with Jan in the part of his intervention that I kept below. I should have said that researchers, in looking for literature, should find themselves naturally and quickly led to repositories (and OA journals). That is where the real OA advantage would begin to show up. We are far from this. In the case of repositories, how do we do this? I now go back to Peter's suggestion of a high-level meeting. Action, please! Jean-Claude Le vendredi 13 juillet 2012 à 15:28 +0200, Jan Velterop a écrit : [snip] As for 2), we must realise that researchers won't turn to repositories to search the literature. They use search engines. So the relevant contents of repositories must be prominently visible in the search results of search engines. If articles in repositories cannot be easily found and used and re-used in a way that can reasonably be expected from true open access material, the exercise is useless, from a user's perspective. Jan On 13 Jul 2012, at 13:58, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: The discussion presently going on is divisive and not useful. Both Gold and Green are useful. Every little bit helps. Everybody is doing as well as he/she can, and we all know it is not enough. Let us at least trust each others' motives, please. Let us, therefore, go back to the basic idea of Peter, regarding the possibility of convening a high-level group of administrators of universities and research institutions. I would add high-level people from granting agencies; researchers should also be involved, especially those who, like Stuart Shieber, have managed getting faculty-initiated mandates. Such a meeting has never been done before. The BIOAI10 meeting in Budapest last February focused on broad strategies rather than concrete strategic moves. Stevan has mentioned the group Enabling Open Scholarship led by Bernard Rentier. First, Bernard is the perfect person to start the move toward a meeting of the kind suggested by Peter by virtue of his institutional standing. Perhaps this group is the right anchor for such a move. How can we join this group, or how can we work with it? We hear about it episodically, but nothing much seems to have come out of it so far. Would this not be the best occasion to really get this organization off the ground? The goal: convene a limited but high-power group of administrators and researchers to develop a policy aiming at effective, immediate implementation of the green road, and do so in a unified manner. The implementation details should constitute a major part of this meeting: we seem to know broadly what we want, but we have not yet fully agreed on the the means to make it 100% effective. If researchers are evaluated only from what is in repositories, they will deposit. Now, why are so few institutions ready to implement such a policy? Are funders of research really ready to apply similar rules to the evaluation of applicants? Questions like these should be at the centre of this meeting. The green road will have succeeded when researchers spontaneously turn to repositories to search the literature. We are very far from this and mandates are only one step in the right direction. The goal of this meeting is to build decisive momentum. Anyone on board? Jean-Claude Le vendredi 13 juillet 2012 à 10:00 +0200, Jan Velterop a écrit : If ever one needed an argument in favour of 'gold' OA, here it is. Jan On 13 Jul 2012, at 09:48, brent...@ulg.ac.be wrote: Le 13 juil. 2012 à 09:32, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk a écrit : What is the percentage of full-text ACS papers pubished by Liege which are visible at time of publication? None, of course! Just ask for an e-print when you are in thé ORBi web site and we'll send it at once. It's Green, not Gold! ___ 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 ___ 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] Re: Reaching for the Reachable
I think we are going somewhere here. Could we manage, with the help of some foundation, manage to bring together a number of top university administrators from all over the world (minimum 20) to hash out exactly what could be done in a coordinated fashion? Moving en masse to a mandate would create a real momentum that could no longer be ignored. Who wants to work on this? I do! Jean-Claude Le jeudi 12 juillet 2012 à 10:15 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk wrote: Fairy Tale: * The top 20 vice-chancellors (provosts, heads of institutions) in the world meet for 2 days (obviously somewhere nice). * They bring along a few techies (I'd go). * They agree that they will create copies of all the papers their faculty have published. (this is trivial as they are already collecting them for REF, etc. And if they can't , then I can provide software). * They reformat them to non-PDF. * They put them up on their university website. * They prepare to fight the challenge from the publishers. and * they win the law suit. Because it's inconceivable that a judge (except in Texas) will find for the publishers. * Other universities will take the model and do it. Rather than asking universities, unrealistically, to risk a lawsuit, needlessly (even though I agree completely with PM-R that it would be lost), as in PM-R's fairy tail, why not, realistically, do almost the same thing: * The top 20 vice-chancellors (provosts, heads of institutions) in the world meet for 2 days * They agree that they will mandate that copies of all the papers their faculty are deposited in their institutional repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication * They adopt the optimal mandate: ID/OA, together with the email-eprint-request Almost-OA Button for embargoed deposits. * Other universities will take the model and do it. This is called Green Gratis OA self-archiving. No one is proposing to forfeit either Gold OA or Libre OA (re-use rights), just to accord priority to the more important and urgent, and also easier and more reachable goal of mandating Green Gratis OA first, because it is within reach and already underway. The Libre OA and Gold OA will follow the universal mandating of Green Gratis OA as surely as the publishers' lawsuit would lose if PM-R's fairy tale came true. But next to nothing at all will happen if we keep on failing to reach first for the reachable, and keep insisting instead on the unreachable. Stevan Harnad On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 3:36 AM, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk wrote: I think JC identifies the key point: On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 11:04 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: Gold OA will not get in the way of Green OA if it is explained correctly; and forfeiting gold OA will do more harm to the OA movement than the harm gold OA could ever and putatively make to green OA. If, among OA advocates, we could get this behind us, we could achieve four important results: 1. We would be far more united, and, therefore, more powerful; Yes. But JC does not go far enough. Here's my diagnosis and a fairy-tale * The OA movement is fragmented, with no clear unified objective. We (if I can count myself a member of anything) resemble the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front (Monty Python). Every time I am lectured on why one approach is the only one I lose energy and the movement - if it is a movement - loses credibility. Until we get a unified body that fights for our rights we are ineffective. * Most people (especially librarians) are scared stiff of publishers and their lawyers. * There is a huge pot of public money (tens of billions in sciences) and it's easier to pay off the publishers than standing against them. There is no price control on publishing - publishers charge what they can get away with. * The contract between publishers and academics has
[GOAL] Re: Reaching for the Reachable
Let us get back to basics instead of bickering among ourselves. How about trying to organize a high-level meeting of administrators and see what agreement could be achieved to move forward as a group and not through individual moves that keep on differing a little from each other. We need a group definition and implementation of some form of mandate with teeth. Obviously, Bernard Rentier and the rector from Minho could give their viewpoint on this issue in support of such a move. Obviously, Stuart Shieber and others who have managed faculty self-mandating should also be present. Anyone listening? Anyone willing to cooperate on this? Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 12 juillet 2012 à 18:11 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Peter Murray-Rust pm...@cam.ac.uk wrote: *** The faculty ignore the mandates. This is the reality - Wellcome, who have the sanction of withholding grants and put huge efforts into promoting, still only get 55% compliance. You have spent 10 years trying to get effective mandates and they are hardly working. The compliance in chemistry is 0%. ZERO. Really? You'll have to tell that to your colleagues at, for example, U. Liege: There seem to be 3,620 chemistry papers deposited there: http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/151 And that's the optimal ID/OA mandate (Liege model) that I recommended. Wellcome could raise their compliance rate to 100% if they were willing to listen to advice. (Admirably [indeed pioneeringly] early in adopting an OA mandate, they have nevertheless since been deaf to advice for years, insisting on institution-external deposit, allowing publisher deposit, and wasting scarce research money on paying for Gold OA instead of shoring up their Green OA mandate.) Other funders are listening, however, and integrating their mandates with institutional mandates, to make them mutually reinforcing: Integrating Institutional and Funder Open Access Mandates: Belgian Model http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/864-.html How to Maximize Compliance With Funder OA Mandates: Potentiate Institutional Mandates http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/891-.html There is no way in my or your liftetime that senior chemists will self-archive. And that goes for many other disciplines. What are the VCs going to do? Sack them ? they bring in grant money? No: draw their attention to the financial benefits, as Alma Swan John Houghton have been doing, for Green and Gold OA: http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/610/2/Modelling_Gold_Open_Access_for_institutions_-_final_draft3.pdf Yes - and probably 5% of VCs care about it. You are right that the mandate percentage is still far too small (and the effective mandate percentage is still smaller). But the benefits are large, and the costs are next to nothing: just effective policy-making and implementation. My argument - or fairy story - is that nothing will happen if we continue as we are. We have to get much tougher. And university mandates are seen as next to useless - universities can't police them and it alienates the faculty. The attraction of the fairy story is that it's vastly simpler and quicker to carry out. It even builds on the apathy of the faculty - the less they care, the easier it is. I am not against green OA - I am arguing that the OA community should unite and take decisive action. I'm for reality rather than fairy tales. And reaching for the reachable, now, rather than fulminating about the unreachable (especially when reaching for the reachable, now, is eventually likely to bring more of the unreachable within reach). Stevan Harnad ___ 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] Re: The OA Interviews: Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado Denver
Gold OA will not get in the way of Green OA if it is explained correctly; and forfeiting gold OA will do more harm to the OA movement than the harm gold OA could ever and putatively make to green OA. If, among OA advocates, we could get this behind us, we could achieve four important results: 1. We would be far more united, and, therefore, more powerful; 2. We could present a better, clearer, definition of acceptable OA that would clearly spell out what green and gold OA mean, and thus could fight back more effectively against obfuscating strategies that are thrown in the path of OA by all kinds of opponents; 3. We could begin to imagine how green and gold OA can support and reinforce each other. 4. Finally, we would find it easier to dispel the false notion that OA is only gold OA, an error made even worse when gold OA is equated with author-pay schemes as if science publishing, while requiring financial support, could not imagine it outside a commercial scheme of some sort. This said, and very loudly this time: 1. Let me reiterate that I am not happy with author-pay schemes even though I believe PLoS is doing a great job on a number of fronts crucial for OA. 2. Let me say that hybrid journals are commercial tricks imagined to increase revenue streams from all possible sources, including, this time, funders. They should be rejected outright. 3. Mandating green OA is fundamental and all funders should move to do so, including with research results that appear in book form, as is often the case in SHS. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 11 juillet 2012 à 16:25 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : GOLD FEVER AND FINCH FOLLIES The biggest risk from Gold OA (and it's already a reality) is that it will get in the way of the growth of Green OA, and hence the growth of OA itself. That's Gold Fever: Most people assume that OA means Gold OA, and don't realize that the fastest, surest and (extra-)cost-free way to 100% OA is to provide (and mandate) Green OA. The second biggest risk (likewise already a reality, if the Finch Follies are Followed) is that Gold Fever makes sluggish, gullible researchers, their funders, their governments and even their poor impecunious universities get lured into paying for pre-emptive Gold OA (while still paying for subscriptions) instead of providing and mandating Green OA at no extra cost. The risk of creating a market for junk Gold OA journals is only the third of the Gold OA risk factors (but it's already a reality too). Gold OA's time will come. But it is not now. A proof of principle was fine, to refute the canard that peer review is only possible on the subscription model. But paying for pre-emptive Gold OA now, instead of mandating and providing Green OA globally first will turn out to be one of the more foolish things our sapient species has done to date (though by far not the worst). Stevan Harnad On 2012-07-11, at 3:48 PM, Richard Poynder wrote: Jeffrey Beall, a metadata librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, maintains a list of what he calls “predatory publishers”. That is, publishers who, as Beall puts it, “unprofessionally exploit the gold open-access model for their own profit.” Amongst other things, this can mean that papers are subjected to little or no peer review before they are published. Currently, Beall’s blog list of predatory publishers lists over 100 separate companies, and 38 independent journals. And the list is growing by 3 to 4 new publishers each week. Beall’s opening salvo against predatory publishers came in 2009, when he published a review of the OA publisher Bentham Open for The Charleston Advisor. Since then, he has written further articles on the topic, and has been featured twice in The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work on predatory publishers has caused Beall to become seriously concerned about the risks attached to gold OA. And he is surprised at how little attention these risks get from the research community. As he puts it, “I am dismayed that most discussions of gold open-access fail to include the quality problems I have documented. Too many OA commenters look only at the theory and ignore the practice. We must ‘maintain the integrity of the academic record’, and I am doubtful that gold open-access is the best long-term way to accomplish that.” An interview with Jeffrey Beall is available here: http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-interviews-jeffrey-beall-university.html ___ 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] Re: citability of the list...
I agree with Keith, but is this not always the case? Even in a peer-reviewed article? Caveat lector is what I tell my students. Jean-Claude Le jeudi 21 juin 2012 à 15:09 +, keith.jeff...@stfc.ac.uk a écrit : Richard, Laurent, all – I have no problems with the open policy. My caution is that among this (list members) knowledgeable community comments can be interpreted correctly in context. Outside of the community comments on this list may be misunderstood or misinterpreted. Thus I believe quotations outside of the list community must be done with some care and perhaps with additional contextual information. Best Keith Keith G Jeffery Director International Relations STFC --- The contents of this email are sent in confidence for the use of the intended recipient only. If you are not one of the intended 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 fromhttp://dlitd.dl.ac.uk/policy/monitoring/monitoring% 20statement.htm. -- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Richard Poynder Sent: 21 June 2012 15:22 To: goal@eprints.org Cc: themailarch...@gmail.com Subject: [GOAL] Re: citability of the list... Dear Laurent, GOAL is an open group and its messages are archived openly on the internet here: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/. Moreover, thanks to the Mail Archive, there is now also a searchable archive here: http://www.mail-archive.com/goal@eprints.org/ As most list members will know, GOAL began life as the American Scientist Open Access Forum, or AmSci (http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html). With the kind assistance of the Mail Archive, we are hoping that in the near future the AmSci archive will be amalgamated with the GOAL archive. If this proves successful, we will have a searchable database going back to 1998, when Stevan Harnad first launched AmSci. This would provide a valuable historical resource for anyone wanting to track and/or research the development and growth of the Open Access movement. I regularly quote from contributions that have been made on the list. Best wishes, Richard Poynder GOAL Moderator -- Scanned by iCritical. ___ 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] Re: Agreement on Green OA not needed from publishers but from institutions and funders
What I really, and I mean *really* like about this exchange is that priorities are finally being set up right. The business of research is between researchers and the institutions supporting research. Researchers ought to communicate among themselves as they choose, and not as external players (such as publishers) might desire. I really like what all my colleagues have been saying below, and they are all researchers. As for Dr. Wise, her statements amount to reasserting or seeking a role for publishers, but she should understand that the point of research is not publishers, and what researchers need is some form of publication, not publishers. The problem publishers have in this new digital world is that they have trouble justifying their role. To wit: 1. Peer review is performed by researchers, not publishers. Peer reviewers are selected by journal editors that are researchers, not publishers. Managing the flow of manuscripts in peer review often requires tools that publishers may or may not provide; however, free tools are available (e.g. OJS) and are evolving nicely all the time; 2. Linguistic and stylistic editing could provide a small role for publishers, except that they do it less and less for cost-cutting reasons (i.e. profit-seeking reasons). 3. Marketing of ideas is done wrong: it is done through journals and it is handled largely through the flawed notion of impact factors. More and more studies demonstrate a growing disconnect between impact factors and individual article impacts. Researchers do not need a marketing of journals; they need a marketing of their articles through some device that clearly and unambiguously reflects the quality of their visible (published) work. 4. To market their own articles, researchers should have recourse to OA repositories. Once better filled up through mandates, repositories can become platforms for the efficient promotion of articles. Such platforms are entirely independent of publishers. And Stevan is absolutely right: OA policy is not the publishers' business, but the business of institutions carrying on research. Fundamentally, the publishers' problem is that they claim to know the publication needs of researchers better than researchers themselves; they also claim a degree of control over the grand conversation of science. Obviously, both propositions are unacceptable. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 20 juin 2012 à 07:41 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On 2012-06-20, at 7:15 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) wrote: ...perhaps time to explore opportunities to work with publishers? No, precisely the opposite, I think: It's time for institutions to realize that institutional Green OA self-archiving policy is (and always has been) exclusively their own business, and not publishers' (who have a rather different business...) Negotiate subscription prices with publishers. But do not even discuss institutional OA policy with publishers. (And advise institutional researchers to ignore incoherent clauses in their copyright agreements: Anything of the form P but not-P -- e.g. you retain the right to self-archive, but not if you are required to exercise the right to self-archive -- implies anything at all, as well as the opposite of anything at all. Don't give it another thought: just self-archive. And institutions should set policy -- mandate immediate deposit, specify maximum allowable OA-embargo-length, the shorter the better, and keep publisher mumbo-jumbo out of the loop altogether. Ditto for funders, but, to avoid gratuitous extra problems as a 3rd-party site, stipulate institutional rather than institution-external deposit.) Stevan Harnad Dr Alicia Wise Director of Universal Access ElsevierI 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 From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of David Prosser Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:31 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Why should publishers agree to Green OA? Laurent makes an important point. OA policies are between the funders or institutions and the researchers. These agreements come before any agreement regarding copyright assignment between authors and publishers. So, it is the job of publishers to decide if they are willing to live with the deposit agreement between the funder/institution and researchers, not the job of funders and institutions to limit their policies to match the needs of publishers. David On 20 Jun 2012, at 11:04, Laurent Romary wrote: Not that I know
[GOAL] Re: Agreement on Green OA not needed from publishers but from institutions and funders
It is not a question of hating publishers; it is a question of placing them in their rightful place. David Prosser, very aptly, defined publishers as a service industry. This is excellent. Let publishers behave like a service industry, while recognizing that other kinds of actors and financial schemes may render the same services as well, or even better, than they do. Researchers value journals only because evaluation techniques in the universities narrowly rely on scientometric techniques that are themselves based on journals (and were designed to evaluate journals, not researchers). They have little choice in the matter. However, managers of research institutions, in particular universities, would do well to study how their evaluation procedures relate to the high prices libraries pay for subscriptions, and how poorly they relate to the quality of their researchers. As for what is added to research articles, it is done by peers or by editors (and both categories qualify as researchers). Style, clarity, layout are valuable additions, but this is secondary: researchers want access to content; they will gladly accept and even encourage good style, clarity, etc., but content is what they want. Finally, if publishers were really trying only to make scientific work accessible, there would be no quarrel. The real issue is that commercial publishers (and even some society publishers) are unable to imagine a financial scheme that could provide OA and also provide a satisfactory margin of profit. However, as OA is optimal for the communication of validated scientific research, it is the solution of choice for science (and scholarship more generally). If commercial publishers find it impossible to continue, so be it! Science will go on, and commercial publishers will join manuscript copyists on the junk pile of history. Researchers want access, communication, evaluation; publishers want profits. The two, however much one may believe in the miracles of the invisible hand, are not equivalent, and do not even converge, as the last forty years of price increases amply demonstrate. So, yes, let us have a more reasoned discussion. Let us do it, for example, by accepting that scientific communication is not an activity that is easily reconciled with commerce, share holders, and profit. Let us think a little bit out of the box of liberal economics. Perhaps a reading of Michael Sandel's book, What Money can't buy is in order here. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 20 juin 2012 à 15:22 +0100, Sally Morris a écrit : I find it very sad that the response on this list has been to denigrate both the Finch report's authors and publishers in general. It would seem that the (relatively small number of) primary contributors to this list take it as an article of faith that publishers are to be hated and destroyed; they do not want a balanced approach or a 'mixed economy' (e.g. of green, gold etc). However, if researchers themselves, both as authors and as readers, didn't value what journals, and their publishers, add to research articles, they would long ago have ceased publishing in, or reading, journals, and contented themselves with placing their articles directly in, and reading from, repositories. If that were to change, those that benefit from the proceeds of the current range of publishing models (not just shareholders, but also learned society members etc...) would indeed face a major challenge. But until it does, the challenge with which publishers are currently engaging is how to enable their authors' work to be as accessible as possible, without making it impossible to continue to do those things that authors and readers value in journals. I don't see how that makes publishers bad? Can't we grow up and have a rather more reasoned discussion? Sally Sally Morris South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286 Email: sa...@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk __ From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jean-Claude Guédon Sent: 20 June 2012 14:05 To: goal@eprints.org Subject: [GOAL] Re: Agreement on Green OA not needed from publishers but from institutions and funders What I really, and I mean *really* like about this exchange is that priorities are finally being set up right. The business of research is between researchers and the institutions supporting research. Researchers ought to communicate among themselves as they choose, and not as external players (such as publishers) might desire. I really like what all my colleagues have been saying below, and they are all researchers. As for Dr. Wise, her statements amount to reasserting or seeking a role for publishers, but she should understand that the point of research is not publishers, and what researchers need is some form of publication
[GOAL] Re: [BOAI10] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized
Thank you for this, Hélène. I may not have expressed my thought clearly enough. While doing what Hélène's mathematician was trying to do is probably difficult, organizing peer review around a journal has been going on for a long time. In the nineteenth century, the dominant model was that f scientific associations creating their journals and organizing the peer review out of their members. This is my implicit model for a peer review system that emerges out of scientific communities without the need for a publisher. The presence or existence of the journal is enough to form a viable editorial committee, and then each member of the editorial board can begin to farm out articles to relevant peer reviewers. In more conceptual terms, peer review succeeds when it produces some form of symbolic value that is widely recognized as such. What worries me is when publishers invest in a journal, then open positions for editorial members and proceed to fill them through a variety of informal contacts. That already shows encroachment on the scientific territory. Providing tools to manage the back-and-forth flow of manuscripts make the editors further dependent upon the publishing house and will make withdrawal all that more painful. Organizing the workflow to help produce desired formats 9e.g. specific forms of XML DTD's) feeds directly into the commercial need of a publisher that desires to transform its publishing site into some kind of attractor where people keep on discovering papers that may be relevant to their research, but that are certainly relevant to increasing the impact of these articles (and hence the impact factor of the publisher's journals). At that point, the mix of the research and economic imperatives reaches maximum intensity while creating, thanks to the limits on attention time, a warped landscape of the available literature. In short, one must think of a publisher's site as of a lens that remaps the reality of the scientific landscape into some transform that also favours commercial and profit-seeking goals. If the latter could be achieved without interfering with the former, the problem would be minimal, but this is not the case. Best regards, Jean-Claude -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mercredi 16 mai 2012 à 18:32 +0200, Hélène.Bosc a écrit : Jean-Claude said :I believe that they should be organized by researchers themselves. The same applies to the peer review comment. It would be interesting to know if such experiment has been tried, in some fields, somewhere in the world. I remember that ten years ago, a French mathematician (whose name I have forgotten) gave a talk about this subject. He was trying to set up this kind of organization of the peer review by researchers, in a very small field of mathematics. He said that it was very difficult. I think that he has not succeeded, because I never heard about it after. Hélène Bosc - Original Message - From: Jean-Claude Guédon To: Jan Velterop Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 4:23 PM Subject: [GOAL] Re: [BOAI10] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized Jan, I do not disagree with what you say, but I was disagreeing with what Eric was saying. He suggested publishers should select editorial boards. Like you, I believe that they should be organized by researchers themselves. The same applies to the peer review comment. As for searchability, I believe it goes beyond discoverability. Etc. etc. Jean-Claude -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le mardi 15 mai 2012 à 18:47 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit : On 15 May 2012, at 17:12, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: With due respect to Eric, I will disagree with at least the devolution of the first two tasks 1. The selection of editors should come from scientific communities themselves, not from commercial publishers. This is a good instance where commercial concerns (maximizing profits, etc.) can pollute research concerns. There is also something weird in having commercial publishers holding the key to what may amount to the ultimate academic promotion: being part of an editorial board means power over colleagues; being editor-in-chief even more so. At least, when journals were in the hands of scientific associations, the editorial choice
[GOAL] Re: [BOAI10] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized
With due respect to Eric, I will disagree with at least the devolution of the first two tasks 1. The selection of editors should come from scientific communities themselves, not from commercial publishers. This is a good instance where commercial concerns (maximizing profits, etc.) can pollute research concerns. There is also something weird in having commercial publishers holding the key to what may amount to the ultimate academic promotion: being part of an editorial board means power over colleagues; being editor-in-chief even more so. At least, when journals were in the hands of scientific associations, the editorial choice remained inside the community of researchers. What criteria, beyond scientific competence and prestige, may enter into the calculations of a commercial publisher while choosing an editor-in-chief, God knows... 2. Effective peer review should be organized by peers themselves, by scholars and scientists, not by publishers. Tools to organize this process should ideally be based on free software and available to all in a way that allows disciplinary or speciality tweaking. The Open Journal System, for example, is a good, free, tool to organize peer review and manuscript handling in the editorial phase. Such a tool should be favoured over proprietary tools offered to editors as a way to convince them to join a particular journal stable, and as a way to make them dependent on that tool - yet another way to ensure growing stables of journals. Professional looks can indeed be given away to commercial publishers. Layout, spelling, perhaps some syntaxic and stylistic help would be nice. But I would stop there. As for the archivable historic record, I would have to see more details to give my personal blessing to this. Remember how Elsevier pitted Yale against the Royal Dutch Library when the issue of digital preservation began to emerge a dozen or so years ago. I am not sure about the distinction between archived and archivable. For searchability, remember what Clifford Lynch declared years ago in the OA book edited by Neil Jacobs: no real open access without open computation. Elsevier and other publishers do code their articles in XML, but provide only impoverished, eye-ball limited, pdf or html files. When one uses Science Direct, all kinds of links pop up to guide us toward other articles, presumably from Elsevier journals. This is part of driving a competition based on impact factors. That is not the kind of searchability we want, even though it is of some value. The quest for alternative comprehensive systems is exactly what Elsevier attempts to build with Scopus. In so doing, Elsevier picks up on the vision of Robert Maxwell when the latter did everything he could, from cajoling to suing, to get the Science Citation Index away from Garfield's hands. Is this really what we want? If it were open, and open access, Eric's idea would make sense; otherwise, it becomes a formidable source of economic power that will do much harm to scientific communication. In effect, with a universal indexing index and more than 2,000 titles in its stable, Elsevier could become judge and party of scientific value. Finally, I am not blaming companies for trying to make money, except when they pollute their environment. Most do so in the physical environment, and they are regulated, or should be. The commercial publishers do it in their virtual environment by driving research competition through tools that also favour their commercial goals. The intense competition around publishing in prestigious journals - prestige being defined here as impact factors, although impact factors are a crazy way to measure or compare almost anything - leads to all kinds of practices that go against the grain of scientific research. The rise in retracted papers in the most prestigious journals - prestige being again measured here by IF - is a symptom of this pollution. The rise in journal prices was tentatively explained in my old article, In Oldenburg's Long Shadow that came out eleven years ago. It tries at least to account for the artificial creation of an inelastic market around core journals, the latter being the consequence of the methods used to design the Science Citation Index. Incidentally, the invention of the core journal myth - myth because it arbitrarily transforms an operational truncation needed for the practical handling of large numbers of citations into an elite-building club of journals - has been one of the most grievous obstacle to the healthy globalization of science publishing in the whole world. Speak to Brazilians like Abel Packer about this, and he will tell you tons of stories related to this situation. Scientific quality grows along a continuous gradient, not according to a two-tier division between core science, so-called, and the rest. Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le lundi 14 mai 2012 à 11:38 -0700, Eric F
[GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized
I object to the notion of sustainable applied to publications for two reasons : 1. Scientific research is unsustainable and has been so since at least the 17th century. 2. Peer-reviewing research results and making resulting version available to all interested is an integral part of the research process. Building on the shoulders of giants requires this. Therefore, why ask of the publishing phase to be sustainable when the rest of the research process is not sustainable? Let us have subsidized publishing to complete subsidized research. Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le samedi 12 mai 2012 à 17:11 +0100, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) a écrit : Hi all, I agree that we are mixing up several issues/objectives, and helpfully Keith has identified some of these. I can think of a few others and I suspect there are more strands in this knot which others will hopefully identify. * we are probably conflating needs/practices in different disciplines * we are certainly conflating temporal challenges - how we xxx or yyy in 2012 ma y be different from the way we do it in 2015 or 2020. Text mining is an example . * we sometimes construct the false dichotomy of an open access world vs. a subsc ription world - there is already a blend of gold, green, subscription, and other business models, and there will continue to be for awhile (possibly forever) * we conflate pragmatic and idealistic discussions and yet need both * we too often duck the important issue of funding - for example could the dynam ics of sustainable gold+green be different from the dynamics of sustainable subs cription+green? Could the price be different for gratis gold oa vs. libre gold oa? To refer back to my original query about what positive things are established sc holarly publishers doing to facilitate the various visions for open access and f uture scholarly communications that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized let me be cheeky and suggest one. The recent STM public statement that publish ers support sustainable open access (http://www.stm-assoc.org/publishers-support -sustainable-open-access/) is one thing I would suggest should be celebrated by others who are also interested in open access. With very kind wishes, Alicia Dr Alicia Wise Director of Universal Access Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB P: +44 (0)1865 843317 I M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.w...@elsevier.com I Twitter: @wisealic -Original Message- From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of ke ith.jeff...@stfc.ac.uk Sent: 12 May 2012 15:47 To: goal@eprints.org Subject: [GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: positive things from publishers that s hould be encouraged, celebrated, recognized All - I have been following the several threads of argument with interest. As I see i t recent postings on this list are mixing up several issues/objectives, confusio ns, mechanisms for access and utilisation and mechanisms to achieve any kind of OA. Issues and Objectives - 1. how do we get gratis OA (free access to eyeball) for all researchers (and oth ers including the public) everywhere; 2. how do we get libre OA (including data mining and other machine processing of articles) for all researchers (and others including the public) everywhere; 3. how do we get libre OA (including processing of datasets associated with a pu blication using associated software or other software) for all researchers (and others including the public) everywhere; Confusions -- Confusing each of these objectives is the position (or more accurately different and evolving positions) of the commercial publishers - including the OA publish ers - and the learned societies in role publisher. Many allow (1) but Elsevier has the unfortunate 'not if mandated' clause. Attempting to expedite these objectives are mandates by research institutions an d funding organisations. However even here there is no clear recommendation eme rging on either green (subscription-based) or gold (author pays) for each of (1) ,(2). It appears clear that gold is more expensive - at least for now - for hig h production research institutions. There is no settled position yet on whether green or gold for publications are applicable to (3). The situation in each case is not assisted by current legislation in each countr y on copyright and database right. (3) in the academic environment is becoming convolved with the 'data.gov' agenda and citizen access. The rights of the public to have gratis/libre access to publicly-funded research products is a moralistic backdrop to the whole argument. The commercial publishers understandably wish to preserve their (very profitable ) business model as there is a (slow) transition from subscription access to som e other model(s) such as author pays access. In a world where
[GOAL] Re: Open Access Priorities: Peer Access and Public Access
I have read with great interest this debate because, in essence, it summarizes a great deal of the disagreements I have had with Stevan over the years. We all share a common goal -- namely OA -- but we do not construe the function, situation and purpose of research in the same manner. There is an interesting contradiction in Stevan's argument: while he wants to have researchers provide access to their research results, these researchers do not find it in themselves to do so, at least not at a level that exceeds 20% of the lot. Hence the need for a mandate. However, the mandate, in the majority of cases, does not come from researchers. It comes from funders, administrators, etc., who see the importance of OA for reasons that may be the same as Stevan's, but that will also involve their institutions, and their position within it. These administrators, funders, etc., have to deal with public image, political problems, etc. and they modulate their arguments accordingly. At that level, the relationship with the general public, with lower levels of education, with civil servants in need of up-to-date information, with SME's, etc., comes into play. The total process is not logical, but rather discursive (discourse here is taken in the sense developed by Michel Foucault). Logic is not absent from this process, but it is only a part of it, and not always a dominant part. To map a strategy that is realistic, one needs to recognize this point. There is one situation where Stevan's attitude would retain a modicum of coherence, and that is the Harvard case where the faculty slapped a mandate on itself. In this case, the whole OA issue was handled by researchers alone, and one could imagine that the internal debate was conducted according to research values. However, any discussion with Stuart Shieber about the kind of footwork needed to achieve this result shows that it encompassed far more than pure research values. Even pure researchers, whoever they may be, have to stretch their arguments beyond pure science to convince each other about an OA mandate. Nothing surprising here! Jean-Claude Jean-Claude Gu?don Professeur titulaire Litt?rature compar?e Universit? de Montr?al Le lundi 30 avril 2012 ? 12:16 +0100, Peter Murray-Rust a ?crit : I feel I have to speak out against the opinions voiced by Stevan - I don't like to do this as there is - possibly - a common goal. But they are so exclusionary that they must be challenged, if only for those people people on the list and more widely who are looking for guidance. The idea that there is a set of researchers in Universities who deserve special consideration and for whom public funds must be spent is offensive. I fall directly into SH's category of the general public, whom he now identifies as of peripheral importance and thankful for the crumbs that fall from his approach.. I have worked in industry, work with industry and although I have been an academic am not now paid as one. The idea that I am de facto second-class is unacceptable, even if you accept the convoluted logic that this is necessary to achieve Green Open Access. There are no areas of science and more generally scholarship which are not in principle highly valuable to the general public. I am, for example, at present working in phylogenetics - not a discipline I have been trained in - and I and my software wishes to read 10,000 papers per year. Most of these papers could be of great interest to some people - they detail the speciation of organisms and are fully understandable by, say, those whose hobby is natural history or those with responsibility for decision making. SH's pronouncements do considerable damage to the OA movement. I am a supporter of publicly funded Gold OA and of domain repositories. I am not prepared for these to be dismissed ex cathedra. Both work well in the areas I am acquainted with - I am on the board of UK PubMedCentral and also on the board of a BOIA-compliant Open Access journal (where, by the way, half the papers come from outside academia and are every bit as competent and valuable). I have personally not many any scientists who are highly committed to Green OA and before stating their position as facts it would be useful to hear from them and listen. There is an increasing amount of scholarship taking place outside Universities and without the public purse. Wikipedia is, perhaps, the best example of this and could - if minds were open - act as an interesting approach to respositories. It's notable that uptake of publication-related tools such as WP, Figshare, Dryad, Mendeley, etc. is high, because people actually want them. I would like to see effort on information-saving and sharing tools that people need and community repositories. I'll stop there - I sincerely hope that SH's list does not get wider traction. -- Peter Murray-Rust emeritus Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
[GOAL] Re: A bit of advice with regards to the history of the OA movement
I fully agree with Stevan : Peter was the actual drafter of BOAI in 2001-2, and he has remained front and centre ever since. A little detail : thanks for mentioning Surfaces, but it started in 1991, and you should also mention Stevan's publication , Psycholoquy which started even earlier. Best, Jean-Claude -- Jean-Claude Gu?don Professeur titulaire Litt?rature compar?e Universit? de Montr?al Le jeudi 29 mars 2012 ? 15:32 +0300, Constantinescu Nicolaie a ?crit : Yes! good point. I should associate Mr. Peter Suber with the 2002 moment. Hmmm... in fact there was so much information lately, but working under pressure leads so many times to this kind of slip offs. Thank you Mr. Steven, a helping hand. Please, any other suggestion?! On 29 March 2012 15:05, Stevan Harnad harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote: Dear CN: Where is Peter Suber (the primary drafter of the BOAI and the de facto leader of the OA movement) in your design? Best wishes, Stevan On 2012-03-28, at 5:02 PM, Constantinescu Nicolaie wrote: Dear friends, Some colleagues here in Romania asked me to put together a very brief evolution path to the moment when ?Open Access? came to being. I came up with this design in a very short notice - http://www.flickr.com/photos/84345232 at N00/7024908289/ . I have taken another look at the timeline (http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Timeline), but I had to look from 10.000 feet. This is what came to be. Although the milestones explanations are in Romanian, all should be pretty self explanatory?! Is there any other big, big, big moment in time that slipped my eye? -- Constantinescu Nicolaie Information Architect http://www.kosson.ro ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL at eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL at eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Constantinescu Nicolaie Information Architect http://www.kosson.ro ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL at eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20120329/24c00b05/attachment.html
Re: Impact-Seeking vs. Royalty-Seeking Work
I would like to support Stevan on this. The concepts of relative autonomy of the scientific community (Robert K. Merton) and of symbolic capital (Pierre Bourdieu) have been designed by these sociologists of science precisely to show that economic matters, if they appear at all in scientific matters, and research more generally, do so in a translated mode that is largely controlled by the values and rules of engagement of these communities. This is the reason why scientists can still pursue problems of no direct economic interest. This is what Merton called the scientific ethos (communalism, disinterestedness, organized skepticism, etc..) Commercial journals got involved in this process late in the game, and they became dominant even later (after the 60's). They are the only ones having something to do with the scientific process that speak from a strictly economic perspective, and that has messed up the process quite a bit, alas. Jean-Claude Guédon -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal Le lundi 07 novembre 2011 à 07:04 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On 2011-11-07, at 3:30 AM, Allen Kleiman wrote: Authors do not write for free. 1. Publication = Tenure = Promotion = Money! 2. Publication = Prestige = Speaking Engagements = Money! 3. Publication = Professorships = Money! 4. and etc. Not a single penny of that Money is paid to authors by *publishers*, in exchange for being *given* their paper, cost-free, to go ahead and sell. So it is *completely* irrelevant. That is the point you keep missing in your analogy to auto re-sale. When you sell a car that you designed and built to a vendor, the vendor pays you for it, in exchange for the right to sell it to someone else. If you happen to win an award for the auto design from your design institute, *that's not the vendor paying you for the right to sell your car.* The only essential service a journal provides is the one you kept referring to as verification of its reliability and safety by two or three mechanics of questionable qualifications and skill [likewise for free] -- Yet it's in exchange for that [peer review]-- and not for cash -- that authors give publishers their paper to sell, royalty-free. Green Open Access to the author's refereed final draft online is provided by the author as a supplement, so that his paper's research uptake, usage, citations and impact (which are what generate the Tenure, Promotion, Prestige, Speaking Engagements, Professorships -- and research progress) can be provided by *all* its would-be users, not only by those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the publisher's version of record. Scrap the car-sale analogy. It simply does not fit the subtle and unique case of refereed research publication of impact-seeking (not royalty-seeking) work. Stevan Harnad On 2011-11-06, at 4:08 PM, Allen Kleiman wrote: Is this a matter of 'commerce'? Yes indeed, but definitely not commerce along the lines of the analogy you describe below: Suppose I own a car and [1] offer it for sale to a rental company with [2] the verification of its reliability and safety by two or three mechanics of questionable qualifications and skill. However, [3] I want to include a condition of sale that the buyer will make the car available to all the poor people in my town for free since they can't afford to pay for the rental.  When a Publisher offers to print an article -- certified by referees of questionable repute -- and [4] absorbs the cost of publication, distribution, and etc., isn't he entitled to [5] retain the rights of sale? Now let me count the myriad ways your analogy fails:  [1] offer [car] for sale: No, authors don't sell but give their paper to the publisher. They don't ask or get a penny in return.  [2] verification of [car's] reliability: The referees, too, offer their services for free -- but to the publisher, not the author.  [3] condition[s] of sale: No sale, no sale conditions. Author gives the paper to the publisher for free. [4] cost of publication, distribution, and etc.  In exchange for managing and certifying the outcome of the refereeing (by referees of questionable repute), the author gives the publisher is given all rights to sell, on paper or online. [5] retain the rights of sale:  In exchange for managing and certifying the outcome of the refereeing (by referees of questionable repute), the author gives the
Re: Ranking of repositories
I fully agree with Isidro that Perhaps the problem is not with the Rankings themselves, but with authorities not applying quality criteria in the evaluation of such classifications. But feeding tools for ranking is also part of the problem. Witness this quotation from one of Eugene Garfield's papers: I myself deplore the quotation of impact factors to three decimal places. ISI uses three decimal places to reduce the number of journals with the identical impact rank. It matters very little whether the impact of JAMA is quoted as 21.5 rather than 21.455 (Garfield, Eugene, 2005, âThe Agony and the Ecstasy - The History and Meaning of the Journal Impact Factorâ, paper presented at the International Congress on Peer Review And Biomedical Publication, Chicago, September 16, 2005. Available on-line at http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jifchicago2005.pdf). [my emphasis, JCG] In other words, the ranking takes precedence over the meaning of the figures produced to support it. This is very strange to say the least, unless one considers that science is like a spectator sport and that we need to separate champions in every possible way (perhaps to intensify the excitement of the spectators). So, yes, the research administrators and university management teams should be a little wiser in their evaluation techniques and place quality back at the center of evaluations, but those providing the numbers should also carefully repeat and underscore the caveats attached to these numbers, even at the cost of losing themselves some impact as a consequence. In any case, impact factors with three decimals simply mean nothing. Finally, the rage to rank also dominates sports. It is the reason that sprinting events were clocked to the nearest one hundredth of a second so as to produce more world records faster (but a false start, curiously, is still measured at one tenth of a second after the signal is given). This looks suspiciously like three decimals in the impact factor. It is also the reason why steroids and other enhancement drugs are messing up sports everywhere. Interestingly, cheating is also on the rise in science. Could it have something to do with the obsession with ranking? Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 04 août 2011 à 08:43 +0200, Isidro F. Aguillo a écrit : Dear colleagues, In my country sometimes we said: the best is enemy of the good and certainly there are far better tools for analyzing empirically the OAI but at this moment the key objective is IMPACT and according to my personal experience several universities are promoting their institutional repositories for improving their position in the Rankings. Perhaps the problem is not with the Rankings themselves, but with authorities not applying quality criteria in the evaluation of such classifications. Only in this way can be explained that a lot of people believe that the unethical Times Higher Education Ranking is very prestigious. Best regards, El 03/08/2011 17:52, Jean-Claude Guédon escribió: Personally, I regret these constant efforts to create rankings leading to the identification of excellence. They completely distort the quality issues which, IMHO, are far more important. Would it not be much better to create evaluation thresholds corresponding to quality levels. This would encourage lower-level repositories to try moving up a category, and then perhaps two? Some may object that category classifications are nothing more than rough, crude ranking. This is not false, but there is a distinction to be observed, however: quality thresholds do not put competition at the center of everything, and it does not rely on competition to identify quality. Some may think that competition is a good way to create quality, but this is not the case. Just to give an example: the US health system is largely dominated by competitive rankings of all kinds. This leads to two opposite results: the US has many of the best health centers in the world and a great many Nobel prizes in medicine; yet, the US ranks about 35th in the world for life expectancy, which is shockingly low. If one were to choose between having the medical champions of the world, versus having a population with a better general health, one would tend to prefer the latter. At least that would be my choice. In other words, fighting for excellence as the over-arching principle of quality creation leads to the concentration of quality at the very top, and it often leads to the neglect of overall quality. I believe science needs quality
Re: Ranking of repositories
Personally, I regret these constant efforts to create rankings leading to the identification of excellence. They completely distort the quality issues which, IMHO, are far more important. Would it not be much better to create evaluation thresholds corresponding to quality levels. This would encourage lower-level repositories to try moving up a category, and then perhaps two? Some may object that category classifications are nothing more than rough, crude ranking. This is not false, but there is a distinction to be observed, however: quality thresholds do not put competition at the center of everything, and it does not rely on competition to identify quality. Some may think that competition is a good way to create quality, but this is not the case. Just to give an example: the US health system is largely dominated by competitive rankings of all kinds. This leads to two opposite results: the US has many of the best health centers in the world and a great many Nobel prizes in medicine; yet, the US ranks about 35th in the world for life expectancy, which is shockingly low. If one were to choose between having the medical champions of the world, versus having a population with a better general health, one would tend to prefer the latter. At least that would be my choice. In other words, fighting for excellence as the over-arching principle of quality creation leads to the concentration of quality at the very top, and it often leads to the neglect of overall quality. I believe science needs quality everywhere, and not just at the top. A bit of competition is also needed, but only at the very top, to stimulate the very best to go one step further. Competition everywhere does not work because those that cannot hope to come even close to the very best, the gold medals, simply give up. Incidentally, OA corresponds to a massive vote in favor of quality, as the many discussions about quality control and peer review that are appearing in its wake demonstrate. Excellence is all right if it is limited to the very top of science, where the paradigm shifts occur. But most of science is not about paradigm shifting, far from it. Let us value excellence, but let us keep it also in its proper place. Meanwhile, let us grow quality all over and Open Access is a powerful tool to that end. My two cents' worth. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mercredi 03 août 2011 à 10:04 -0400, Peter Suber a écrit : [Forwarding from Isidro F. Aguillo, via the AmSci OA Forum.  --Peter Suber.] The second edition of the 2011 Ranking Web of Repositories has been published at the end of July.  It is available from the Webometrics portal: http://repositories.webometrics.info/ The number of repositories is growing fast, especially in academic institutions from developing countries. As in previous editions the subject repositories still appear in the top positions, with large institutional ones following them. There are no relevant changes in this edition, but the editors are making a plea to the Open Access community regarding a few aspects related to intellectual property issues. The papers and other documents deposited in institutional repositories are probably the main asset of those institutions. As important as giving free access to others is the proper recognition of the authorship of the scientific documents. Unfortunately a few institutions are hosting their repositories in websites outside the main webdomain of its organization and many repositories are recommending to use systems like handle and others purl-like URLs for citing (linking) the deposited items. This means that moral rights regarding institutional authorship are ignored, relevant information about authors is missed and the semantic possibilities of the web address are not explored. Nowadays it is already common to add the URL address of the full text document in the bibliographic references of the published papers. Logically the link to the full text in the institutional repository can be used for that purpose, but researchers are facing options that ignore their institutional affiliation, with strange meaningless codes, prone to typos or other mistakes and pointing to metadata pages not to the full text documents. Obviously for authors it could be more profitable to host the papers in their personal pages instead doing it in institutional repositories whose naming policies have relevant copyright issues. Our position is that end-users should be taken into account, that web addresses are going to place in important role in citing behavior, that citations are the key tool for evaluation of authors, that institutions are investing large amounts of money in their repositories in exchange of prestige and impact and that providing
Re: Another Poynder Eye-Opener on Open Access
Le samedi 14 mai 2011 à 20:17 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 11:39 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: I am not talking about replacing the peer review process. I am talking about either complementing it with another system, or re-aiming the peer review process on publishing processes that rely on the repositories rather than the journals. Complementing peer review is fine, but the complement that's really urgent (and already long overdue) is OA. Indeed, and to get OA, you need some incentives. Creating complementary and alternative forms of value around repositories (including OA journals) will help. Just as getting mandates is helping. Getting a consortium of repositories to take over peer review means getting them to take over journal publishing. Good luck. Again, let us not confuse everything. If repositories complement the evaluation of already published articles, but with different emphases, and different objectives (quality rather than competition-based excellence, for example), this is not publishing, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. If repositories begin to accept articles whose peer review they organize themselves, then, indeed, it is publishing. Obviously, a credible peer review has to rest on more than one institution. This is the reason behind recommending the formation of repository networks, preferably across national boundaries. I would see the second hypothesis gradually evolving out of the first one. (But why? So far we haven't been very successful yet at getting most authors to provide OA to their published journal articles either by depositing them in their repositories or by submitting them to OA journals...) The lack of success may well be due to the fact that the present modes of evaluation, especially when used in the context of tenure and promotion processes, do not seem generally to lead to the conclusion that OA is really useful to one's career. Like Stevan, I truly believe there is an OA advantage measured by impact, but, alas, this conclusion has not penetrated the collective consciousness of scientists. My conclusion: let us work all together on all possible and credible hypotheses that can help OA, including, of course, the quest for mandates. Jean-Claude Guédon Stevan Harnad
Re: Another Poynder Eye-Opener on Open Access
Le samedi 14 mai 2011 à 09:26 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : On 2011-05-11, at 8:35 PM, jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: I said nothing about peer review, and I would also agree that peer review is indispensable. The new form of judgement that I allude to would be a form of peer review, but probably closer to jury review than to individual, isolated reviews. Peer review is indispensable for two reasons: (1) Peer review causes articles to be corrected and revised, interactively, as a *precondition* of publication. Indeed, and if a group of repositories carrying the collective good names of their institutions were to offer peer review as a pre-condition for being published in the repositories, the process would be exactly the same, except that this group of repositories would behave like a collection of journals In other words, peer review is neither just an accept/reject tag nor just a post-hoc grade or mark such as A, B, C, D. It is the result of an adjudication by experts to whose recommendations the author is answerable as a condition of being published. (What does resemble A/B/C/D is the journal hierarchy, where journal names and track-records attest to their quality standards. In other words, there are A/B/C/D journals, according to their quality standards. Users know this and weight articles accordingly.) Let us not mix up everything. My ABCD scheme was suggested as another evaluation focusing on quality levels rather than the weird ranking schemes stemming out of the misuse of impact factors. (2) Because it is an interactive precondition for publication, peer review provides a reliable quality filter for users (or at least a filter as reliable as the quality of the peer-reviewed literature today, such as it is). Yes. When meeting a journal's known peer review standards is a *precondition* for publication, users are not confronted with the need to make do with raw, unfiltered papers. Only editors and referees have to read unfiltered submissions. No one wants this unfiltered reading of whatever, least me. But the most important point to note is that peer review is active and answerable. Qualified but overworked peers do their duty to referee -- reluctantly, and selectively, depending both on the reputation and quality standards of the editor and journal inviting them to do so and on the relevance and interest of the submitted paper. They do so, confident that the author is answerable to the editor for acting upon those of their recommendations the editor judges to be appropriate. All that is true here about the way journals behave could be true of a group of repositories acting as a publishing site. It is extremely unlikely that unfiltered publications will find their qualified referees, bidden or unbidden, ready to devote their scarce time to reading and tagging them with a grade, even though the articles are already published, hence not answerable to the referee for corrections or revisions. And in any case, that's all too late and uncertain for the would-be user. It depends. There are many reasons behind the desire to evaluate. The grade is indeed on journals that will not change, but, incorporated in the metadata, it provides an extra-layer of filtering. If the evaluation is done for publication in a consortium of prestigious repositories, then it works just like journal peer-reviews. The too-late is not necessary either. The life-cycles of articles varies a great deal from discipline to discipline. The grades (i.e. through secondary evaluation) might be too slow for some very fast-reac ting disciplines, but they could easily work for the wholle of SSH, and many disci9plines such as astronomy, mathematics, geology, meteorology, etc. So, yes, it is indeed peer review and quality standards that are at issue when one speculates about replacing the current peer review system -- an interactive, answerable precondition for publications -- with an alternative post-hoc vetting and tagging system that has not even been tested for whether it could deliver a research literature of at least the quality and usability of the existing one. I am not talking about replacing the peer review process. I am talking about either complementing it with another system, or re-aiming the peer review process on publishing processes that rely on the repositories rather than the journals. [snip] Ranking amounts to having as many levels as there are entities being ranked. Levels, on the other hand, lump numbers of entities into the same category. Ranking favours only individualized competition; by contrast, levels stress thresholds of quality and do not try to identify the very best. Good systems, such as schools, for example, use both systems, and do not try to make just one approach carry the whole evaluation task. The granularity of grades leads to many students being lumped together. You are absolutely right. With peer review, all papers published by a given journal
Re: The First and Foremost PostGutenberg Distinction
Bernard, I will simply quote the Bethesda statement on OA: 1. Definition of Open Access Publication An Open Access Publication[1] is one that meets the following two conditions: 1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. 2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository). I hope this helps you sort out these ideas. OA is more than simple and cost-less access; it implies the same kinds of freedoms that a GPL ensures for software. Much of OA thinking was inspired by the free software movement. Jean-Claude Guédon Le mardi 16 novembre 2010 à 13:21 +0100, Bernard Lang a écrit : Is there a distinction between papers that are just openly accessible, and papers that can be freely reproduced on other sites, or other media in your classifications. I am trying o identifi the concept of an open work. If it is simply something that I can access, that qualifies the whole of the Internet. But can I make copies, preserve it or present it in some other form. Who has enough rights so that the conditions of work availability can evolve with the state of the art in documents access, presentation, organization. What we do now in not the end of progress in publication. My concern is the future. Why do I worry : because I spend much time working on orphan works issues. I am trying to determine when the rightsholder is needed to ensure adequate life and survival of a work. Being accessible for reading is just not enough. Bernard * Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca, le 14-11-10, a écrit: Indeed, Larry! And Stevan Harnad is quite right is refusing to equate Open Access with the Gold Road. In fact, Open Access is made up of two approaches: OA publishing or Gold Road and self-archiving or Green Road. And both roads are valuable, arguably equally (although differently) valuable. As for Wallace-Evans, one only has to see how he characterized Robert K. Merton (most pusillanimous... ???) to realize that the barbarians are at the gates. It is a pity to see a priodical like Nation fall this low. I used to like reading Nation when I was a student. Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 14 novembre 2010 à 10:21 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : One can sympathize with Larry Lessig's frustration in An Obvious Distinction: LL: In 2010, [for David Wallace-Evans] to suggest [in a 6000-word review in The Nation] that [the Creative Commons movement] 'exhort[s]⦠piracy and the plundering of culture'... betrays not just sloppy thinking [but] extraordinary ignorance⦠[and lack of] respect for what has been written⦠This terrain has been plowed a hundred times in the past decade⦠Reading is the first step to⦠respect for what has been written... Reading is what Wallace-Wells has not done well. Larry tries to correct Wallace-Evans's 6000 sloppy words with 878 carefully chosen ones of his own. Let me try to atone for my own frequent long-windedness by trying to put it even more succinctly (20 words): Creative Commons' goal is to protect creators' give-away rights -- not consumers' (or 2nd-party copyright-holders') rip-off rights. (Reader's of the American Scientist Open Access Forum may have a sense of déjà lu about this since at least as far back as December 2000: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1048.html ) __ Harnad, Stevan (2000/2001/2003/2004) For Whom the Gate Tolls? Published as: (2003) Open Access to Peer-Reviewed Research Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving: Maximizing Research Impact by Maximizing Online Access. In: Law, Derek Judith Andrews, Eds. Digital
Re: The First and Foremost PostGutenberg Distinction
Bernard, The Green Road is not generally conceived of as publishing unless you take the work publishing in a very general sense, such as making public. Stevan Harnad, in fact, has always carefully separated the Green Road (self-archiving - not self-publishing) from both vanity presses and publishing reforms. I agree with him on these two points, even though I also believe that repositories could make moves that would bring them much closer to a publisher-function (to transpose the author-function of Michel Foucault). But I do not want to re-open this can of worms here. When most of us speak about the Green or Gold Road to Open Access, we generally mean free access and free reuse within some well-defined limits (e.g. responsible use) that the Bethesda Declaration (among others) tried to spell out). In other words, OA is more than simply an ability to read at no costs. OA is an ability to reuse, incorporate, etc... Again, think about the GPL in free software and the meaning of free (as in free speech) in this context. The power of remixing is at the heart of the free software movement, and it is also at the heart of a healthy scientific effort. It extends to the notuion of a vigorous cultural evolution. The OA movement does not deal with orphan works in any central way. It deals with scholarly and scientific works where the issue of orphan works does not appear to be central (at least I have never seen it mentioned in this context). Your collecting societies in France obviously want to control both access and re-use of orphan works. However, as Larry Lessig has pointed out, this is not necessarily all bad provided that: 1. This helps clearly identify orphan works (and as a consequence, it also helps define the public domain); 2. This removes the problem of identifying rights owners; 3. The fees collected are modest or even minimal. My impression is that you should fight this battle with the use of Creative Common licenses, rather than with the OA example. This would provide more wiggle room to negotiate an acceptable solution for orphan works. And you might remind your negotiating partners that if France puts too many restrictions (economic or legal) on orphan works, it will simply make the projection of French culture worldwide that much more difficult. In other words, French authorities will shoot themselves in the foot. I know they are quite good at doing this regularly, to the point that i suspect some form of masochism is at work here, but nonetheless... Using a suitable CC license on orphan works could lead to free re-use of these works so long as it is not commercial. Fees could be collected for commercial re-use Jean-Claude Le mardi 16 novembre 2010 à 15:52 +0100, Bernard Lang a écrit : Thank you Jean-Claude But when you speak of the green and gold road, and their form of publishing, does it imply that the accessible works come with these rights granted ... or is it only seen as a way to get there. I means that if those rights are given, does it matter much how the work is initially made available. With apologies if my questions are silly. I am missing a link somewhere. I do need to clarify these issues, as France seems intent (I do hope they fail miserably) to have an orphan law, that would give control over works to collective societies, to manage and make money from (theoretically in the author's name). One of the explicit purposes is to kill free works as much as possible (unfair competition). This is already pretty bad. Next news is that the definition of orphan works ignores the existence of a licence or anything. Only reaching the author matters. In other words, the open access publications of an academic who has retired without leaving an address might cease to be open access. They did not say either that the law is only applicable to French works. So far it was only a law for still images, but they were very clear that the intents is to expend it to all things printable. Why still images .. because that gives them an excuse to get started, as photos are often used illegally by pretending the author cannot be found. But there are better way of solving that problem. As I want at least to have open access works excluded, I need a definition, that will be general enough without encompassing everything on the net. I have various references, but all in French. Bernard PS The promoter of that law explained to me that violating the moral rights of an author (by preventing use of his works without a mandate from the author) is OK if done with a state mandate, i.e., with legal permission. * Jean-Claude Guédon jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca, le 16-11-10, a écrit: Bernard, I will simply quote the Bethesda statement on OA: 1. Definition of Open Access Publication An Open Access Publication[1] is one that meets the following two conditions: 1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable,
Re: The First and Foremost PostGutenberg Distinction
Indeed, Larry! And Stevan Harnad is quite right is refusing to equate Open Access with the Gold Road. In fact, Open Access is made up of two approaches: OA publishing or Gold Road and self-archiving or Green Road. And both roads are valuable, arguably equally (although differently) valuable. As for Wallace-Evans, one only has to see how he characterized Robert K. Merton (most pusillanimous... ???) to realize that the barbarians are at the gates. It is a pity to see a priodical like Nation fall this low. I used to like reading Nation when I was a student. Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 14 novembre 2010 à 10:21 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit : One can sympathize with Larry Lessig's frustration in An Obvious Distinction: LL: In 2010, [for David Wallace-Evans] to suggest [in a 6000-word review in The Nation] that [the Creative Commons movement] 'exhort[s]⦠piracy and the plundering of culture'... betrays not just sloppy thinking [but] extraordinary ignorance⦠[and lack of] respect for what has been written⦠This terrain has been plowed a hundred times in the past decade⦠Reading is the first step to⦠respect for what has been written... Reading is what Wallace-Wells has not done well. Larry tries to correct Wallace-Evans's 6000 sloppy words with 878 carefully chosen ones of his own. Let me try to atone for my own frequent long-windedness by trying to put it even more succinctly (20 words): Creative Commons' goal is to protect creators' give-away rights -- not consumers' (or 2nd-party copyright-holders') rip-off rights. (Reader's of the American Scientist Open Access Forum may have a sense of déjà lu about this since at least as far back as December 2000: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1048.html ) Harnad, Stevan (2000/2001/2003/2004) For Whom the Gate Tolls? Published as: (2003) Open Access to Peer-Reviewed Research Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving: Maximizing Research Impact by Maximizing Online Access. In: Law, Derek Judith Andrews, Eds. Digital Libraries: Policy Planning and Practice. Ashgate Publishing 2003. [Shorter version: Harnad S. (2003) Journal of Postgraduate Medicine 49: 337-342.] and in: (2004) Historical Social Research (HSR) 29:1. [French version: Harnad, S. (2003) Cielographie et cielolexie: Anomalie post-gutenbergienne et comment la resoudre. In: Origgi, G. Arikha, N. (eds) Le texte a l'heure de l'Internet. Bibliotheque Centre Pompidou: 77-103. The persistent piracy canard calls to mind others like it, foremost among them being: OA ⡠Gold OA (publishing)... Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., Hilf, E. (2004) The green and the gold roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal
