Today, ACM Publications and the ACM Digital Library platform are funded by
selling "read" or "access" licenses to approximately 2,700 universities,
government research labs, and corporations from around the world. The
income generated from the sale of these licenses [...] is approximately
$20M+ annually
with ~1,000 institutions, which is roughly 1/3 of the institutions that
license “access” to the ACM Digital Library. So, the main challenge for ACM
is how to generate roughly the same income from 1/3 the number of
institutions over the long term, as ACM transitions from selling
institutional "access" to an institutional "OA publication" model and more
and more of the articles published in the ACM DL are published in front of
the subscription paywall.
Thanks Gabriel for bringing this to this list: it was indeed shocking to
see ACM
(and many other learned societies) in the list of signatories of this
letter.
The fact that many small learned societies do not feel ready to jump into
a pure
open access model right away does not justify their signature on a letter
containing highly debatable (that's an euphemism) statements like the ones
you pinpoint.
By a curious coincidence, I got almost at the same time an ACM newlsetter
(Blue
Diamond) containing among other announcements, this one:
ACM OPEN: A New Transformative Model for Open Access Publication
Over the past year ACM Publications staff have been working
collaboratively with
a group of large research universities in the United States to
develop an
entirely new and innovative model for Open Access publication that
has the
potential to transition ACM into a predominantly Open Access
publisher over the
next decade or sooner.
You can find details of the proposed model at
https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess#acmopen
Cheers
--
Roberto
On Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 02:53:05PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
[ The Types Forum,
http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
Dear types-list and SIGPLAN,
I have long been of the opinion that our scientific publications
should be Open Access, and that editors should not request more than
a fair price (cost of publication, which Dasgtuhl estimates at $60
per article). In particular, I believe that copyright transfer
agreements, as imposed by most editors including the ACM, is deeply
unethical: the publishers are not the authors of our scientific
production and they should not force us to give our copyright to
them. A non-exclusive publishing agreement should be enough.
Whether or not you agree with this position, you may be interested in
the content of the following letter to the US White House that
a coalition of scientific publishers, *including the ACM*, signed and
support.
https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1508/coalitionletteropposinglowerembargoes12.18.2019-581369.pdf
press release from the coalition of editors:
https://newsroom.publishers.org/researchers-and-publishers-oppose-immediate-free-distribution-of-peer-reviewed-journal-articles
(This letter was written in the context of a proposed US legislation
to force more scientists to publish their work in Fair Open Access
venues. I haven't been able to find a precise link to a discussion of
this proposed legislation.)
The following parts of the letter co-signed by the ACM are
particularly juicy:
[We] have learned that the Administration may be preparing to step
into the private marketplace and force the immediate free distribution
of journal articles financed and published by organizations in the
private sector, including many non-profits. This would effectively
nationalize the valuable American intellectual property that we
produce and force us to give it away to the rest of the world for
free.
This mandate [...] would make it very difficult for most American
publishers to invest in publishing these articles. As a consequence,
it would place increased financial responsibility on the government
through diverted federal research grant funds or additional monies
to underwrite the important value added by publishing. In the coming
years, this cost shift would place billions of dollars of new and
additional burden on taxpayers.
In my discussion with many of us, I regularly hear that the ACM is
"not evil" (the SIGPLAN, of course, is pure good!) and that placating
its weird views (for example, that it really does cost $700 or $900 to
publish an article as Open Source) is good for our research
community. It do not see how this argument is compatible with the ACM
signing this letter.
I believe that many of our activities, which we collectively trained
ourselves to see as harmless administrative details of our research
work, are in fact empowering the ACM to make those claims. Should we
accept to give away our copyright, or payน unreasonable
Gold Access author processing charges (APCs)?
น: The SIGPLAN decision to cover APC costs for PACMPL articles is
shielding many of us from paying APCs. But many of the smaller
conferences, symposiums or workshops in our community whose
proceedings are handled by the ACM are still limited to "pay
$900" (or "pay $25 per page") as the only Open Access option, with
copyright transfer as the only free choice, which is effectively
keeping those proceedings Closed-Access.
--
Roberto Di Cosmo
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