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Budapest Open Access Initiative: BOAI Forum Archive [BOAI] [Forum Home] [index] [options] [help]boaiforum messages[BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum AT gmail.com>
[Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ]
With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting Yourself
Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps"
http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/
is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy
that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded
already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been
seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried:
• Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to
publications owned by for-profit firms.
• Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or
article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a
for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial
publisher.
• Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under the
control of a commercial publisher.
• Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being
published by a for-profit publisher.
• Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially
published journals or book series.
In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a
boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals
if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access
(OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html
Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of
course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that
the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the
researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their
journals failed to comply.
The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott
threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent
PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that
there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The
experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since
spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of
a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not.
But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that
providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish
in them instead of in their established journals, with their
track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the author
publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since
they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very
slow and uncertain process.
There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually
today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the
top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors want
to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite).
There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but most
-- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi
journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence
most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the
signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most
researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their
preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more
often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or
their publication charges are a deterrent.
Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either
threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the
planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers who
were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could
instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed
research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA
repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make
them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the
journals in which they were published.
Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since
at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly (interoperably)
since at least 2000.
But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor
in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning
publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves.
There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed
exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not
more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change
their policies or their economics. It is for researchers' institutions
and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own
refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in
OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make
them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the
journals in which they were published.
I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA
advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their
own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching
more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what
researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they should
deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.)
OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research community
to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution
that has been within its grasp all along.
Stevan Harnad
--
To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f
Re: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Noel, Robert E." <rnoel AT INDIANA.EDU>
Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers ↵
arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven ↵
Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other ↵
cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about ↵
"Getting Yourself out of the Business"; perhaps he read the ↵
"Wrong Advice" message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't ↵
know.
It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC ↵
endorsed "Algebraic and Geometric Topology", and "Geometry and ↵
Topology") were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as ↵
opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial ↵
publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been ↵
constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, "Fleeced"). The ↵
message of that opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's ↵
points, and not so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions ↵
of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? ↵
The resignation of that Board was motivated by "Getting yourself out of ↵
the Business". Similarly, the price of "Nuclear Physics B" ↵
(Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that ↵
literature regard that as a positive thing. Many variables have driven that ↵
drop in price, and it's presumptuous to think that none of them have to do with ↵
Jackson's points.
Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I ↵
have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies ↵
from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, ↵
but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, and that access ↵
itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought. It's tantamount to ↵
engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind ↵
energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, ↵
but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, ↵
and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, ↵
and in fact counterproductive.
Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how civilization ↵
should communicate and share information?
Bob Noel
Swain Hall Library
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
-----Original Message-----
From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:boai-forum-bounces AT ↵
ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM
To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum
Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
[Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ]
With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting Yourself
Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps"
http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/
is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy
that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded
already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been
seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried:
* Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to
publications owned by for-profit firms.
* Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or
article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a
for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial
publisher.
* Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under the
control of a commercial publisher.
* Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being
published by a for-profit publisher.
* Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially
published journals or book series.
In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a
boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals
if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access
(OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html
Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of
course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that
the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the
researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their
journals failed to comply.
The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott
threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent
PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that
there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The
experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since
spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of
a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not.
But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that
providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish
in them instead of in their established journals, with their
track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the author
publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since
they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very
slow and uncertain process.
There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually
today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the
top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors want
to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite).
There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but most
-- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi
journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence
most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the
signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most
researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their
preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more
often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or
their publication charges are a deterrent.
Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either
threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the
planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers who
were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could
instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed
research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA
repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make
them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the
journals in which they were published.
Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since
at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly (interoperably)
since at least 2000.
But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor
in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning
publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves.
There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed
exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not
more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change
their policies or their economics. It is for researchers' institutions
and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own
refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in
OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make
them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the
journals in which they were published.
I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA
advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their
own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching
more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what
researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they should
deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.)
OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research community
to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution
that has been within its grasp all along.
Stevan Harnad
--
To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f
[BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Noel, Robert E." <rnoel AT indiana.edu>
Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers ↵
arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven ↵
Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other ↵
cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about ↵
"Getting Yourself out of the Business"; perhaps he read the ↵
"Wrong Advice" message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't ↵
know.
It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC ↵
endorsed "Algebraic and Geometric Topology", and "Geometry and ↵
Topology") were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as ↵
opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial ↵
publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been ↵
constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, "Fleeced"). The ↵
message of that opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's ↵
points, and not so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions ↵
of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? ↵
The resignation of that Board was motivated by "Getting yourself out of ↵
the Business". Similarly, the price of "Nuclear Physics B" ↵
(Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that ↵
literature regard that as a positive thing. Many variables have driven that ↵
drop in price, and it's presumptuous to think that none of them have to do with ↵
Jackson's points.
Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I ↵
have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies ↵
from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, ↵
but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, and that access ↵
itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought. It's tantamount to ↵
engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind ↵
energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, ↵
but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, ↵
and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, ↵
and in fact counterproductive.
Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how civilization ↵
should communicate and share information?
Bob Noel
Swain Hall Library
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
-----Original Message-----
From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:boai-forum-bounces AT ↵
ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM
To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum
Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself
[Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ]
With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting Yourself
Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps"
http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/
is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy
that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded
already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been
seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried:
* Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to
publications owned by for-profit firms.
* Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or
article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a
for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial
publisher.
* Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under the
control of a commercial publisher.
* Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being
published by a for-profit publisher.
* Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially
published journals or book series.
In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a
boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals
if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access
(OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html
Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of
course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that
the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the
researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their
journals failed to comply.
The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott
threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent
PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that
there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The
experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since
spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of
a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not.
But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that
providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish
in them instead of in their established journals, with their
track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the author
publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since
they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very
slow and uncertain process.
There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually
today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the
top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors want
to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite).
There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but most
-- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi
journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence
most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the
signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most
researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their
preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more
often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or
their publication charges are a deterrent.
Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either
threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the
planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers who
were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could
instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed
research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA
repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make
them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the
journals in which they were published.
Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since
at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly (interoperably)
since at least 2000.
But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor
in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning
publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves.
There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed
exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not
more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change
their policies or their economics. It is for researchers' institutions
and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own
refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in
OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make
them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather
than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the
journals in which they were published.
I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA
advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their
own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching
more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what
researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they should
deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.)
OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research community
to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution
that has been within its grasp all along.
Stevan Harnad
--
To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f
--
To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page:
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f
[BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum AT gmail.com>
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. <rnoel AT indiana.edu> ↵ wrote: > Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers > arrive at Open Access? How they do it does not matter if they do arrive at OA. But it makes every difference if they don't. > the price of "Nuclear Physics B" (Elsevier) has been going down ↵ in recent years > and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing Lower journal prices does not mean OA. > It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, > but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal No, OA is the primary goal and lowering journal subscription prices is not a path toward that goal. (And journal boycott threats, even if motivated by OA rather than journal pricing, are ineffectual, as the PLoS boycott has shown.) Robert Noel is conflating the journal affordability problem and the research accessibility problem. Stevan Harnad On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. <rnoel AT indiana.edu> ↵ wrote: > Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers ↵ arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which Steven ↵ Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding other ↵ cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about ↵ "Getting Yourself out of the Business"; perhaps he read the ↵ "Wrong Advice" message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't ↵ know. > > It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC ↵ endorsed "Algebraic and Geometric Topology", and "Geometry and ↵ Topology") were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as ↵ opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial ↵ publishers' journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been ↵ constructive action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, "Fleeced"). The ↵ message of that opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's ↵ points, and not so much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions ↵ of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? ↵ The resignation of that Board was motivated by "Getting yourself out of ↵ the Business". Similarly, the price of "Nuclear Physics B" ↵ (Elsevier) has been going down in recent years and many users of that ↵ literature regard that as a positive thing. Many variables have driven that ↵ drop in price, and it's presumptuous to think that none of them have to do with ↵ Jackson's points. > > Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I ↵ have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other strategies ↵ from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, ↵ but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, and that access ↵ itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought. It's tantamount to ↵ engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers that solar and wind ↵ energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, ↵ but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and clean coal is utter nonsense, ↵ and reducing individual energy consumption by changing lifestyles is a sham, ↵ and in fact counterproductive. > > Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how civilization ↵ should communicate and share information? > > Bob Noel > Swain Hall Library > Indiana University > Bloomington, IN 47405 > > -----Original Message----- > From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:boai-forum-bounces AT ↵ ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad > Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM > To: American Scientist Open Access Forum > Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum > Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself > > [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at: > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ] > > With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting ↵ Yourself > Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps" > ↵ http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/ > is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy > that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded > already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been > seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried: > > * Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to > publications owned by for-profit firms. > * Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or > article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a > for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial > publisher. > * Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under ↵ the > control of a commercial publisher. > * Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being > published by a for-profit publisher. > * Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially > published journals or book series. > > In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a > boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals > if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access > (OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html > > Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of > course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that > the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the > researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their > journals failed to comply. > > The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott > threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent > PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that > there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The > experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since > spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of > a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not. > > But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that > providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish > in them instead of in their established journals, with their > track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the author > publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since > they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very > slow and uncertain process. > > There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually > today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the > top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors want > to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite). > > There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but most > -- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi > journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence > most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the > signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most > researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their > preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more > often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or > their publication charges are a deterrent. > > Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either > threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the > planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers who > were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could > instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed > research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA > repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make > them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather > than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the > journals in which they were published. > > Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since > at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly (interoperably) > since at least 2000. > > But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor > in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning > publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves. > > There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed > exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not > more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change > their policies or their economics. It is for researchers' institutions > and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own > refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in > OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make > them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather > than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the > journals in which they were published. > > I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA > advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their > own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching > more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what > researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they should > deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.) > > OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research community > to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution > that has been within its grasp all along. > > Stevan Harnad > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Fran=E7oise_Salager=2DMeyer?= <francoise.sm AT gmail.com>
>I agree that the only solution is aN INSTITUTIONAL MANDATE. My question is: In view of the fact that all researchers want to publish in top-notch jornals (the 5.000 core journals), isnt' there an incompatibility between the pre-print publishing of peer-reviewed papers and the subsequent publishing of the papers in one such journal? Will the publisher agree that the pre-print be published? I have a problem, for example, with the commercial publisher Peter Lang. It does NOT allow me to put in my institutional repository the papers (post-print) that have been published in Peter Lang books. Elsevier acccepts the post-print publication under the conditon that one does not use the Elsevier logo. Can anymore please answer the pre-print question: will a commercial publisher accept that one put on one's institution IR the pre-prints of the papers to be later published in their journals? Thankx a lot. Françoise Salager-Meyer (Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida. Venezuela) I am about to give a lecture on Open Access in developing countries and I would very much like to have a reply to my question! **** >On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. <rnoel AT ↵ indiana.edu> wrote: > >> Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and ↵ readers >> arrive at Open Access? > >How they do it does not matter if they do arrive at OA. But it makes >every difference if they don't. > >> the price of "Nuclear Physics B" (Elsevier) >>has been going down in recent years >> and many users of that literature regard that as a positive thing > >Lower journal prices does not mean OA. > >> It makes me think that open access is not the primary goal, >> but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal > >No, OA is the primary goal and lowering journal subscription prices is >not a path toward that goal. (And journal boycott threats, even if >motivated by OA rather than journal pricing, are ineffectual, as the >PLoS boycott has shown.) > >Robert Noel is conflating the journal affordability problem and the >research accessibility problem. > >Stevan Harnad > > >On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 9:45 AM, Noel, Robert E. <rnoel AT ↵ indiana.edu> wrote: >> Does it make that much difference how >>universities, scholars, and readers arrive at >>Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the >>lengths to which Steven Harnad goes to advance >>a specific path, while very deliberately >>excluding other cogent, seemingly sensible >>ideas. I have not talked to Jackson about >>"Getting Yourself out of the Business"; perhaps >>he read the "Wrong Advice" message below and >>now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know. >> >> It seems the efforts of Berkeley's >>mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC >>endorsed "Algebraic and Geometric Topology", >>and "Geometry and Topology") were largely >>seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as >>opposed to any other strategy. Kirby has been >>concerned about commercial publishers' journal >>prices and took action that seems to me to have >>been constructive action (see Notices of the >>AMS, 2004, "Fleeced"). The message of that >>opinion piece again seems to me to be related >>to Jackson's points, and not so much to the >>Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions >>of Prof. Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board >>roughly a decade ago a failure? The >>resignation of that Board was motivated by >>"Getting yourself out of the Business". >> Similarly, the price of "Nuclear Physics B" >>(Elsevier) has been going down in recent years >>and many users of that literature regard that >>as a positive thing. Many variables have >>driven that drop in price, and it's >>presumptuous to think that none of them have to >>do with Jackson's points. > > >> Anyway, others have devoted much more time and >>energy to this topic than I have, but I'm >>skeptical of recommendations that bluntly >>reject other strategies from the outset. It >>makes me think that open access is not the >>primary goal, but that a specific path to open >>access is the primary goal, and that access >>itself is a convenient result, but still an >>afterthought. It's tantamount to engineers and >>scientists recommending to policy makers that >>solar and wind energy are viable alternatives >>that will reduce a country's dependence on oil, >>but research into biofuels, maglev trains, and >>clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing >>individual energy consumption by changing >>lifestyles is a sham, and in fact >>counterproductive. > > >> Does anyone on the planet have this much >>foresight as to how civilization should >>communicate and share information? >> >> Bob Noel >> Swain Hall Library >> Indiana University >> Bloomington, IN 47405 >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk >>[mailto:boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk] On >>Behalf Of Stevan Harnad >> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM >> To: American Scientist Open Access Forum >> Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum >> Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself >> >> [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at: >> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ] >> >> With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting ↵ Yourself >> Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps" >> >>http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/ >> is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy >> that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded >> already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been >> seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried: >> >> * Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other ↵ works to >> publications owned by for-profit firms. >> * Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or >> article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a >> for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial >> publisher. >> * Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or ↵ under the >> control of a commercial publisher. >> * Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series ↵ being >> published by a for-profit publisher. >> * Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of ↵ commercially >> published journals or book series. >> >> In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a >> boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their ↵ journals >> if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open ↵ Access >> (OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html >> >> Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, ↵ of >> course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that >> the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the >> researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their >> journals failed to comply. >> >> The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the ↵ boycott >> threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent >> PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that >> there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The >> experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since >> spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) ↵ of >> a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not. >> >> But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that >> providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish >> in them instead of in their established journals, with their >> track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the ↵ author >> publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since >> they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very >> slow and uncertain process. >> >> There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually > > today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the >> top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors ↵ want >> to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite). >> >> There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but ↵ most >> -- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi >> journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence >> most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the >> signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most >> researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their >> preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more > > often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, ↵ or >> their publication charges are a deterrent. >> >> Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either >> threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the >> planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers ↵ who >> were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could >> instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed >> research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA >> repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make >> them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather >> than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to ↵ the >> journals in which they were published. >> >> Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since >> at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly ↵ (interoperably) >> since at least 2000. >> >> But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor >> in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning >> publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves. >> >> There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed >> exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not >> more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change >> their policies or their economics. It is for researchers' ↵ institutions >> and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own >> refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in >> OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make >> them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather >> than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the >> journals in which they were published. >> >> I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA >> advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their >> own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching >> more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what >> researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they ↵ should >> deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.) >> >> OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research ↵ community >> to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution >> that has been within its grasp all along. >> >> Stevan Harnad >> >> >> -- >> To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: >> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f >> > > >-- >To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: >http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Prof. Tom Wilson" <t.d.wilson AT sheffield.ac.uk>
No one knows exactly how the 'open access' movement will pan out but I think that some things are fairly clear. 1, scholarly publishers are facing very similar problems to the newspaper industry - changes in technologies are making them redundant. 2, anything that props up the industry will simply delay the inevitable and institutional repositories prop up the industry - indeed, why else would publishers give permission for authors' works to be archived? Strong advocacy of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly communication. 3, at least in the UK, universities seem to have other things on their minds (like potential bankruptcies in a number of cases) to be too concerned about such things as mandating repositories. 4, scholars are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and producing free OA journals on some kind of subsidy basis and any economist will tell you that social benefit is maximised by this form of OA. 5, change is difficult when status and promotion are made dependent upon publication in journals that are highly cited in Web of Knowledge, consequently, it is only when free OA journals make their way into the upper quartile of the rankings that they will begin to attract as many submissions as the established fee-based journals (whether subscription or author-charged). Some OA journals are already in that position. 6, however, 5 above may be overtaken as scholarly communication methods continue to evolve. The present situation is not the end of the line, but a somewhat confused intermediate stage of development. Cherished features of such communication, such as peer review, may disappear, to be replaced by post-publication comments. These may be stronger affirmations of quality than citation - particularly as we usually have no idea as to why a paper has been cited. In brief - any strategy evolved today on the assumption that the future is likely to be the same as the past is probably going to fail. Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD Publisher/Editor in Chief Information Research InformationR.net e-mail: t.d.wilson AT shef.ac.uk Web site: http://InformationR.net/ ___________________________________________________ Quoting "Noel, Robert E." <rnoel AT indiana.edu>: > Does it make that much difference how universities, scholars, and readers > arrive at Open Access? I'm a little puzzled by the lengths to which ↵ Steven > Harnad goes to advance a specific path, while very deliberately excluding > other cogent, seemingly sensible ideas. I have not talked to Jackson ↵ about > "Getting Yourself out of the Business"; perhaps he read the ↵ "Wrong Advice" > message below and now agrees with Mr. Harnad, I don't know. > > It seems the efforts of Berkeley's mathematician Rob Kirby (launched SPARC > endorsed "Algebraic and Geometric Topology", and "Geometry ↵ and Topology") > were largely seeded by the spirit of Jackson's strategy as opposed to any > other strategy. Kirby has been concerned about commercial publishers' > journal prices and took action that seems to me to have been constructive > action (see Notices of the AMS, 2004, "Fleeced"). The message ↵ of that > opinion piece again seems to me to be related to Jackson's points, and not ↵ so > much to the Harnad solution. In what ways are the actions of Prof. > Bruynooghe and JLP's editorial board roughly a decade ago a failure? The > resignation of that Board was motivated by "Getting yourself out of ↵ the > Business". Similarly, the price of "Nuclear Physics B" ↵ (Elsevier) has been > going down in recent years and many users of that literature regard that ↵ as a > positive thing. Many variables have driven that drop in price, and it's > presumptuous to think that none! > of them have to do with Jackson's points. > > Anyway, others have devoted much more time and energy to this topic than I > have, but I'm skeptical of recommendations that bluntly reject other > strategies from the outset. It makes me think that open access is not the > primary goal, but that a specific path to open access is the primary goal, > and that access itself is a convenient result, but still an afterthought. > It's tantamount to engineers and scientists recommending to policy makers > that solar and wind energy are viable alternatives that will reduce a > country's dependence on oil, but research into biofuels, maglev trains, ↵ and > clean coal is utter nonsense, and reducing individual energy consumption ↵ by > changing lifestyles is a sham, and in fact counterproductive. > > Does anyone on the planet have this much foresight as to how civilization > should communicate and share information? > > Bob Noel > Swain Hall Library > Indiana University > Bloomington, IN 47405 > > -----Original Message----- > From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk > [mailto:boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad > Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 8:35 AM > To: American Scientist Open Access Forum > Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum > Subject: [BOAI] Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself > > [Apologies for Cross-Posting: Hyperlinked version is at: > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/641-guid.html ] > > With every good intention, Jason Baird Jackson -- in "Getting ↵ Yourself > Out of the Business in Five Easy Steps" > http://jasonbairdjackson.com/2009/10/12/getting-yourself-out-of-the-business-in-five-easy-steps/ > is giving the wrong advice on Open Access, recommending a strategy > that has not only been tried and has failed and been superseded > already, but a strategy that, with some reflection, could have been > seen to be wrong-headed without even having to be tried: > > * Choose not to submit scholarly journal articles or other works to > publications owned by for-profit firms. > * Say no, when asked to undertake peer-review work on a book or > article manuscript that has been submitted for publication by a > for-profit publisher or a journal under the control of a commercial > publisher. > * Do not seek or accept the editorship of a journal owned or under ↵ the > control of a commercial publisher. > * Do not take on the role of series editor for a book series being > published by a for-profit publisher. > * Turn down invitations to join the editorial boards of commercially > published journals or book series. > > In the year 2000, 34,000 biological researchers worldwide signed a > boycott threat to stop publishing in and refereeing for their journals > if those journals did not provide (what we would now call) Open Access > (OA) to their articles. http://www.plos.org/about/letter.html > > Their boycott threat was ignored by the publishers of the journals, of > course, because it was obvious to them if not to the researchers that > the researchers had no viable alternative. And of course the > researchers did not make good on their boycott threat when their > journals failed to comply. > > The (likewise well-intentioned) activists who had launched the boycott > threat then turned to another strategy: They launched the excellent > PLoS journals (now celebrating their 5th anniversary) to prove that > there could be viable OA journals of the highest quality. The > experiment was a great success, and many more OA journals have since > spawned, some of them (such as the BMC -- now Springer -- journals) of > a quality comparable to conventional journals, some not. > > But what also became apparent from the (now 9-year) exercise was that > providing OA by creating new journals, persuading authors to publish > in them instead of in their established journals, with their > track-records for quality, and finding the funds to pay for the author > publication fees that many of the OA journals had to charge (since > they could no longer make ends meet with subscriptions) was a very > slow and uncertain process. > > There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals published annually > today, including a core of perhaps 5000 journals that constitute the > top 20% of the journals in each field, the ones that most authors want > to publish in, and most users want to access and use (and cite). > > There are now about 5000 OA journals too, likewise about 20%, but most > -- unlike the PLoS journals (and perhaps the BMC/Springer and Hindawi > journals) -- are far from being among the top 20% of journals. Hence > most researchers in 2009 face much the same problem that the > signatories of the 2000 PLoS boycott threat faced in 2000: For most > researchers, it would mean a considerable sacrifice to renounce their > preferred journals and publish instead in an OA journal: either (more > often) OA journals with comparable quality standards do not exist, or > their publication charges are a deterrent. > > Yet ever since 2000 (and earlier) there has been no need for either > threats or sacrifice by researchers in order to have OA to all of the > planet's peer-reviewed research output. For those same researchers who > were signing boycott threats that they could not carry out could > instead have used those keystrokes to make their own peer-reviewed > research OA, by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in OA > repositories as soon as they were accepted for publication, to make > them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather > than just to those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the > journals in which they were published. > > Researchers could have made all their research OA spontaneously since > at least 1994. They could have done it OAI-compliantly (interoperably) > since at least 2000. > > But most researchers did not make their own research OA in 1994, nor > in 2000, and even now in 2009, they seem to prefer petitioning > publishers for it, rather than providing it for themselves. > > There is a solution (and researchers themselves have already revealed > exactly what it was when they were surveyed). That solution is not > more petitions and more waiting for publishers or journals to change > their policies or their economics. It is for researchers' institutions > and funders to mandate that their researchers provide OA to their own > refereed research by depositing their final, peer-reviewed drafts in > OA repositories as soon as they are accepted for publication, to make > them freely accessible online to all would-be users webwide, rather > than just to those whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the > journals in which they were published. > > I would like to suggest that Jason Jackson (and other well-meaning OA > advocates) could do incomparably more for global OA by lobbying their > own institutions (and funders) to adopt OA mandates than by launching > more proposals to boycott publishers who decline to do what > researchers can already do for themselves. (And meanwhile, they should > deposit their articles spontaneously, even without a mandate.) > > OA Week 2009 would be a good time for the worldwide research community > to come to this realization at long last, and reach for the solution > that has been within its grasp all along. > > Stevan Harnad > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
On 31-Oct-09, at 10:21 AM, Françoise Salager-Meyer wrote: > I agree that the only solution is AN INSTITUTIONAL MANDATE. My > question is: > > In view of the fact that all researchers want to publish in top- > notch jornals (the 5.000 core journals), isnt' there an > incompatibility between the pre-print publishing of peer-reviewed > papers and the subsequent publishing of the papers in one such > journal? Will the publisher agree that the pre-print be published? (1) One *publishes* in a journals and one *deposits* in an Open Access (OA) institutional repository (IR) (2) OA Mandates are to deposit the author's final, peer-reviewed draft in the IR immediately upon acceptance for publication. (This is the refereed postprint, not the unrefereed preprint). (3) Sixty-three percent of journals (including most of the top journals in each field) already endorse immediate OA deposit of the refereed postprint and a further 32% endorse the immediate OA deposit of the preprint. http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php (4) For embargoed deposits, the IRs have the "Almost OA" "email ↵ eprint request" Button: ↵ http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html So all postprints can be deposited immediately, the majority can be made OA immediately, and for the rest the "Almost OA" Button can take ↵ care of any user needs during any embargo (until embargoes all die their natural and well-deserved deaths under mounting OA pressure from the research community). > I have a problem, for example, with the commercial publisher Peter > Lang. It does NOT allow me to put in my institutional repository the > papers (post-print) that have been published in Peter Lang books. I don't know about Lang, but OA is first and foremost for journal and conference articles, not books. But you can always deposit and rely on the Button till Lang updates its policy. > Elsevier acccepts the post-print publication under the conditon that > one does not use the Elsevier logo. I don't understand. What needs to be deposited is the postprint, not the logo. And Elsevier is completely green on immediate OA self- archiving of both postprints and preprints. > Can anymore please answer the pre-print question: will a commercial > publisher accept that one put on one's institution IR the pre-prints > of the papers to be later published in their journals? The preprint predates even submission to the journal. It does not need the publisher's endorsement. Hope this helps. Stevan Harnad > > Thankx a lot. > Françoise Salager-Meyer (Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida. Venezuela) > > I am about to give a lecture on Open Access in developing countries > and I would very much like to have a reply to my question! > > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
On 31-Oct-09, at 12:05 PM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > No one knows exactly how the 'open access' movement will pan out but > I think > that some things are fairly clear. > > 1, scholarly publishers are facing very similar problems to the > newspaper > industry - changes in technologies are making them redundant. Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. > 2, anything that props up the industry will simply delay the > inevitable and > institutional repositories prop up the industry - indeed, why else > would > publishers give permission for authors' works to be archived? > Strong advocacy > of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly > communication. The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to refereed research articles. > 3, at least in the UK, universities seem to have other things on > their minds > (like potential bankruptcies in a number of cases) to be too > concerned about > such things as mandating repositories. The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a (virtually cost- free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and funding. > 4, scholars are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and > producing > free OA journals on some kind of subsidy basis and any economist > will tell you > that social benefit is maximised by this form of OA. Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their own hands is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles in their university's OA Repository. > 5, change is difficult when status and promotion are made dependent > upon > publication in journals that are highly cited in Web of Knowledge, > consequently, it is only when free OA journals make their way into > the upper > quartile of the rankings that they will begin to attract as many > submissions as > the established fee-based journals (whether subscription or author- > charged). > Some OA journals are already in that position. No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just deposit all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon acceptance. > 6, however, 5 above may be overtaken as scholarly communication > methods > continue to evolve. The present situation is not the end of the > line, but a > somewhat confused intermediate stage of development. Cherished > features of such > communication, such as peer review, may disappear, to be replaced by > post-publication comments. These may be stronger affirmations of > quality than > citation - particularly as we usually have no idea as to why a paper > has been > cited. The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research from access- barriers, not to free it from peer review. > In brief - any strategy evolved today on the assumption that the > future is > likely to be the same as the past is probably going to fail. The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's target content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and institution/funder self-archiving mandates. Stevan Harnad > > Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD > Publisher/Editor in Chief > Information Research > InformationR.net > e-mail: t.d.wilson AT shef.ac.uk > Web site: http://InformationR.net/ > ___________________________________________________ -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: holl AT konkoly.hu (Andras Holl)
Dear Francoise, First of all, You have to be aware of the fact that the OA community uses "pre-print" and "post-print" meaning ↵ "pre-refereed" and "Post-refereed", respectively. Secondly, publisher's policies are different. An author facing the question whether she/he could reposit a particular paper might consult the SHERPA ROMEO service (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/) which lists publisher's policies on self-archiving. Thirdly, as a general advice, authors need not worry that much about their rights. Most publishers allow some form of self archiving, and even more will be allowed in the future - publishers must accommodate self archiving, or else they will go out of business. Authors might choose an OA journal, or one with a more liberal publisher. Andras Holl -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Prof. Tom Wilson" <t.d.wilson AT sheffield.ac.uk>
Quoting Françoise Salager-Meyer <francoise.sm AT gmail.com>:
> >I agree that the only solution is aN INSTITUTIONAL MANDATE. My ↵
question is:
>
> In view of the fact that all researchers want to
> publish in top-notch jornals (the 5.000 core
> journals), isnt' there an incompatibility between
> the pre-print publishing of peer-reviewed papers
> and the subsequent publishing of the papers in
> one such journal? Will the publisher agree that
> the pre-print be published?
What is 'core' changes over time - the more you support free OA journsls, the
more likely it is that they will enter the core.
> I have a problem, for example, with the
> commercial publisher Peter Lang. It does NOT
> allow me to put in my institutional repository
> the papers (post-print) that have been published
> in Peter Lang books.
Don't publish with publishers that won't allow post-print archiving - go with
those that will. Or, better, publish in true OA journals.
> Elsevier acccepts the post-print publication
> under the conditon that one does not use the
> Elsevier logo.
>
> Can anymore please answer the pre-print question:
> will a commercial publisher accept that one put
> on one's institution IR the pre-prints of the
> papers to be later published in their journals?
That is a decision for the individual publisher - there is no general answer.
Some will, some won't.
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[BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Prof. Tom Wilson" <t.d.wilson AT sheffield.ac.uk>
> > No one knows exactly how the 'open access' movement will pan out but ↵ > > I think > > that some things are fairly clear. > > > > 1, scholarly publishers are facing very similar problems to the > > newspaper > > industry - changes in technologies are making them redundant. > > Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in any event, it is the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the publisher. Free OA journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial publisher, since it is without cost in either case. > > 2, anything that props up the industry will simply delay the > > inevitable and > > institutional repositories prop up the industry - indeed, why else > > would > > publishers give permission for authors' works to be archived? > > Strong advocacy > > of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly > > communication. > > The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the > publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to refereed > research articles. The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the scholarly ↵ community to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case originally. Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has made redundant. > > 3, at least in the UK, universities seem to have other things on > > their minds > > (like potential bankruptcies in a number of cases) to be too > > concerned about > > such things as mandating repositories. > > The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a (virtually cost- > free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and funding. The only way it is cost free is through the publication of free OA journals - anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with withdrawal of permission to archive. > > 4, scholars are increasingly taking matters into their own hands and ↵ > > producing > > free OA journals on some kind of subsidy basis and any economist > > will tell you > > that social benefit is maximised by this form of OA. > > Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their own hands > is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles > in their university's OA Repository. No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to develop and publish in free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the publishers and that can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes evident. > > 5, change is difficult when status and promotion are made dependent > > upon > > publication in journals that are highly cited in Web of Knowledge, > > consequently, it is only when free OA journals make their way into > > the upper > > quartile of the rankings that they will begin to attract as many > > submissions as > > the established fee-based journals (whether subscription or author- > > charged). > > Some OA journals are already in that position. > > No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just deposit > all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon > acceptance. I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is happening now - ↵ there is no reason why a dual strategy cannot be applied. The focus upon repositories at the expense of adopting free OA publishing supports the status quo, which, in any event cannot survive the changes taking place. > > 6, however, 5 above may be overtaken as scholarly communication > > methods > > continue to evolve. The present situation is not the end of the > > line, but a > > somewhat confused intermediate stage of development. Cherished > > features of such > > communication, such as peer review, may disappear, to be replaced by > > post-publication comments. These may be stronger affirmations of > > quality than > > citation - particularly as we usually have no idea as to why a paper ↵ > > has been > > cited. > The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research from access- > barriers, not to free it from peer review. I'm not arguing that publication should be freed from peer review - I'm saying that the developments in such things as social networking, etc. make it possible that non-peer-review open publication is one of the possibilties. > > In brief - any strategy evolved today on the assumption that the > > future is > > likely to be the same as the past is probably going to fail. > > The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's target > content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the planet's > 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and > institution/funder self-archiving mandates. Impossible to achieve - arguing for a single strategy when that strategy is not achievable is to bury one's head in the sand. Changes in communication methods will continue to take place and it is likely that multiple methods of OA publishing will evolve > > Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD > > Publisher/Editor in Chief > > Information Research > > InformationR.net > > e-mail: t.d.wilson AT shef.ac.uk > > Web site: http://InformationR.net/ > > ___________________________________________________ > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Steve Hitchcock <sh94r AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
On 31 Oct 2009, at 16:05, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote:
> 2, anything that props up the industry will simply delay the
> inevitable and
> institutional repositories prop up the industry - indeed, why else
> would
> publishers give permission for authors' works to be archived?
> Strong advocacy
> of repositories is strong advocacy of the status quo in scholarly
> communication.
There is, ironically, a degree of truth in this. Some see the issue as
OA vs subscription journals, but in fact green OA is pivotal for non-
OA journals in allowing them to participate in OA. Strategically it
has been helpful to both, resulting in services such as Romeo and in
mandates.
Has it produced enough OA content? Clearly not yet, since the goal is
100% (all published research papers) open access. So the question
becomes how to achieve the objective, bearing in mind that the target
of 100% is quantitatively and qualitatively different from some OA and
should focus minds on a clear strategy rather than the piecemeal
approach that this discussion reveals some people wish for. We have at
least been at this long enough to learn that.
For those that believe IRs are the way forward to OA, the answer is to
increase the primacy of institutional open access repositories by
focussing on the terms institutional and access. The terms I seem to
hear too often in this context are repositories and prices. That is
what's propping up the industry, as Tom Wilson puts it: obfuscation
and unfocussed advocacy, rather than strong advocacy. Focussing on the
former will lead to a clearer analysis of the motivations of
institutions and authors of target papers, to the services they
require, to more OA, and more likely to 100% OA.
The platform to do this is there and waiting.
Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r AT ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
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[BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
On 1-Nov-09, at 10:21 AM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: >> SH: Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. > > TW: Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in any > event, it is > the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the > publisher. Free OA > journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial > publisher, > since it is without cost in either case. Irrelevant to what? I would say that it is the details of peer review that are irrelevant, when what we are seeking is access to peer- reviewed journal articles, all annual 2.5 million of them, published in all the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- of which only about a 5th at most, and mostly not the top 5th, are OA journals. If researchers -- as authors and users -- want OA, it borders on the absurd for them to keep waiting for journals to convert to OA, rather than providing it for themselves, by self-archiving their journal articles, regardless of the economic model of the journal in which they were published -- but especially for the vast majority of journals that are not OA journals. (And it is equally absurd for researchers' institutions and funders to keep dawdling in doing the obvious, which is to mandate OA self-archiving. And posting to unrefereed content to a "social network" is no ↵ solution to the problem. Among the many dawdles that never seem to relent diverting our attention from this (and our fingertips from doing it) are irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and publishing reform. And whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact keep burning to ash... >> SH: The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down the >> publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to >> refereed >> research articles. > > TW: The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the > scholarly community > to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case > originally. > Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has made > redundant. In "any true sense"? What on earth does that mean? The only sense in ↵ which articles are truly free online is if we make them free online. Waiting for publishers to do it in our stead has been the sure way of *not* accomplishing it. >> SH: The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a >> (virtually cost- >> free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and funding. > > TW: The only way it is cost free is through the publication of free > OA journals - > anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with withdrawal of > permission to archive. Truly astonishing: Charging author/institutions publication fees today is decidedly not cost-free, especially while the potential funds to pay it are still locked up in subscriptions to journals whose articles authors are not self-archiving to make them free! The cost per article of an Institutional Repository and a few author keystrokes is risible. And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" canard, I expect that people can and keep invoking it, against all sense and evidence, for 10 more decades as yet another of the groundless grounds for keeping fingers in that chronically idle state of Zeno's Paralysis: http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ >> SH: Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their own >> hands >> is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal articles >> in their university's OA Repository. > > TW: No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to develop > and publish in > free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the > publishers and that > can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes > evident. Repeating the Poisoned Apple canard does not make it one epsilon more true. Fifteen percent of articles are being self-archived, yet 63% of journals have already endorsed immediate OA self-archiving -- and for the rest, there is the immediate option of deposit plus the "Almost OA" via the IR's email eprint request button (for those authors who wish to honor publisher embargoes). http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html These are all just the same old, wizened Zeno's canards, being repeated over and over again, year in and year out. http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries I've lately even canonized them all as haikus -- ↵ http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/648-guid.html -- upgraded from koans: http://bit.ly/1CfGir But it doesn't work; they seem to be imperishable, and just keep being reborn, as my voice goes hoarse from making the same rebuttals and my fingertips decline into dystonia... >> SH: No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just >> deposit >> all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon >> acceptance. > > TW: I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is > happening now - there > is no reason why a dual strategy cannot be applied. The focus upon > repositories > at the expense of adopting free OA publishing supports the status > quo, which, > in any event cannot survive the changes taking place. You may not think you are arguing for waiting, but what you have been doing is invoking the main classical canards that have kept people waiting (instead of depositing, and mandating) for well over a decade now (including Gold (OA) Fever). I'd say 4000 Gold OA journals vs. 100 Green OA mandates is a a symptom of attention deficit, not focus. The total amount of OA provided via spontaneous Green OA self-archiving is and always has been greater than the amount provided by Gold OA publishing, but that (15%) is no consolation, considering that the other 85% is and has always been within reach all along too, whereas publishers' economic models are not. >> SH: The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research from >> access- >> barriers, not to free it from peer review. > > TW: I'm not arguing that publication should be freed from peer > review - I'm saying > that the developments in such things as social networking, etc. make > it > possible that non-peer-review open publication is one of the > possibilties. I would say that keystrokes and keystroke mandates, for the existing peer-reviewed literature, such as it is -- the one OA is trying to free -- are a far better bet (for OA) than speculations about the future of peer review. >> SH: The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's target >> content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the planet's >> 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and >> institution/funder self-archiving mandates. > > TW: Impossible to achieve - arguing for a single strategy when that > strategy is not > achievable is to bury one's head in the sand. Changes in > communication methods > will continue to take place and it is likely that multiple methods > of OA > publishing will evolve Impossible to achieve? Perhaps only in the sense that overcoming Zeno's Paralysis may not be possible to achieve. But certainly not because of the validity of any of the several Zeno rationales that you have invoked. And changes in "communication methods" are not what is at issue, when ↵ the target is to communicate validated peer-reviewed research rather than simply posting or blogging in a social network. (The latter is a supplement, not a substitute.) http://cogprints.org/1581/ Stevan Harnad -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "BANDARA,Swarna" <swarna.bandara AT uwimona.edu.jm>
This is an interesitng question. > Elsevier acccepts the post-print publication > under the conditon that one does not use the > Elsevier logo. > Elsevier has cleaer guidelines for preprint archival for most of their ↵ journals. Here is the extract and the link "An author may post his version of the final paper on his personal Web ↵ site and on his institution's Web site (including its institutional ↵ repository). Each posting should include the article's citation and a link to ↵ the journal's home page (or the article's DOI)," "The author does not need our permission to do this, but any other posting ↵ (e.g., to a repository elsewhere) would require our permission. By ‘his ↵ version' we are referring to his Word or Tex file, not a PDF or HTML downloaded ↵ from Science Direct—but the author can update his version to reflect changes ↵ made during the refereeing and editing process.” http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleID=16436 > Can anymore please answer the pre-print question: > will a commercial publisher accept that one put > on one's institution IR the pre-prints of the > papers to be later published in their journals? A paper can be archived in an IR as a technical report before the publication. ↵ In fact this give the author the opportunity to add more details as there is no ↵ restriction on the length of the paper. Some scietists look in IR for detailed ↵ technical reports when they fund an interesting artcle that is published. When ↵ the article is published one can alwasy archive the preprints as well, if the ↵ publisher allows that. I agree that no one should publish with the publishers who would not allow ↵ institutional archvial. Thanks Swarna Bandara _______________________________________ From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk [boai-forum-bounces AT ↵ ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Prof. Tom Wilson [t.d.wilson AT sheffield.ac.uk] Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 3:09 AM To: boai-forum AT ecs.soton.ac.uk Subject: [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself Quoting Françoise Salager-Meyer <francoise.sm AT gmail.com>: > >I agree that the only solution is aN INSTITUTIONAL MANDATE. My ↵ question is: > > In view of the fact that all researchers want to > publish in top-notch jornals (the 5.000 core > journals), isnt' there an incompatibility between > the pre-print publishing of peer-reviewed papers > and the subsequent publishing of the papers in > one such journal? Will the publisher agree that > the pre-print be published? What is 'core' changes over time - the more you support free OA journsls, the more likely it is that they will enter the core. > I have a problem, for example, with the > commercial publisher Peter Lang. It does NOT > allow me to put in my institutional repository > the papers (post-print) that have been published > in Peter Lang books. Don't publish with publishers that won't allow post-print archiving - go with those that will. Or, better, publish in true OA journals. > Elsevier acccepts the post-print publication > under the conditon that one does not use the > Elsevier logo. > > Can anymore please answer the pre-print question: > will a commercial publisher accept that one put > on one's institution IR the pre-prints of the > papers to be later published in their journals? That is a decision for the individual publisher - there is no general answer. Some will, some won't. -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Prof. Tom Wilson" <t.d.wilson AT sheffield.ac.uk>
Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>: > On 1-Nov-09, at 10:21 AM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > > >> SH: Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. > > > > TW: Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in any ↵ > > event, it is > > the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the > > publisher. Free OA > > journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial > > publisher, > > since it is without cost in either case. > > Irrelevant to what? I would say that it is the details of peer review > that are irrelevant, when what we are seeking is access to peer- > reviewed journal articles, all annual 2.5 million of them, published > in all the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- of which only > about a 5th at most, and mostly not the top 5th, are OA journals. Irrelevant to the processes of technological and social change that are now taking place > If researchers -- as authors and users -- want OA, it borders on the > absurd for them to keep waiting for journals to convert to OA, rather > than providing it for themselves, by self-archiving their journal > articles, regardless of the economic model of the journal in which > they were published -- but especially for the vast majority of > journals that are not OA journals. (And it is equally absurd for > researchers' institutions and funders to keep dawdling in doing the > obvious, which is to mandate OA self-archiving. Why do you assume that I advocate 'waiting for journals to convert' - that is not my position. I am arguing for diverse approaches to the problem of making available the results of research. Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals are another. My position is not against the former, it is simply that one approach alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, subsidised OA journals bring the maximum social benefit. > And posting to unrefereed content to a "social network" is no ↵ solution > to the problem. Who says it is? But it is an approach that may evolve within specific sub-disciplines, if the researchers concerned find that it is a mode of communication that suits them. > Among the many dawdles that never seem to relent diverting our > attention from this (and our fingertips from doing it) are irrelevant > preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and > publishing reform. And whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact > keep burning to ash... ? > >> SH: The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down ↵ the > >> publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to > >> refereed > >> research articles. > > > > TW: The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the > > scholarly community > > to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case > > originally. > > Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has made > > redundant. > > In "any true sense"? What on earth does that mean? The only ↵ sense in > which articles are truly free online is if we make them free online. > Waiting for publishers to do it in our stead has been the sure way of > *not* accomplishing it. I do not argue that we should wait for publishers to convert to OA - I argue ↵ for the scholarly community to take control of the scholarly communication process - one way of doing that is by self-archiving, the other way is by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals. What we have been waiting for is not for publishers to do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for publishers to agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not dependent upon the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. > >> SH: The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a > >> (virtually cost- > >> free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and ↵ funding. > > > > TW: The only way it is cost free is through the publication of free > > OA journals - > > anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with withdrawal of > > permission to archive. > > Truly astonishing: Charging author/institutions publication fees today > is decidedly not cost-free, especially while the potential funds to > pay it are still locked up in subscriptions to journals whose articles > authors are not self-archiving to make them free! You misunderstand - author charging is not 'free OA' - 'free OA' is free of author charging and free of subscription. > The cost per article of an Institutional Repository and a few author > keystrokes is risible. That is to assume that all the other costs - e.g., of author charging are irrelevant. > And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" canard, I ↵ expect > that people can and keep invoking it, against all sense and evidence, > for 10 more decades as yet another of the groundless grounds for > keeping fingers in that chronically idle state of Zeno's Paralysis: > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned > http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ Ten years old it may be, but the problem remains - regardless of how much self-referencing you make. > >> SH: Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their ↵ own > >> hands > >> is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal ↵ articles > >> in their university's OA Repository. > > > > TW: No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to develop > > and publish in > > free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the > > publishers and that > > can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes > > evident. > > Repeating the Poisoned Apple canard does not make it one epsilon more > true. Fifteen percent of articles are being self-archived, yet 63% of > journals have already endorsed immediate OA self-archiving -- and for > the rest, there is the immediate option of deposit plus the "Almost > OA" via the IR's email eprint request button (for those authors who > wish to honor publisher embargoes). > http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html > > These are all just the same old, wizened Zeno's canards, being > repeated over and over again, year in and year out. > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries > > I've lately even canonized them all as haikus -- > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/648-guid.html > -- > upgraded from koans: http://bit.ly/1CfGir > > But it doesn't work; they seem to be imperishable, and just keep being > reborn, as my voice goes hoarse from making the same rebuttals and my > fingertips decline into dystonia... Simply because the publishers at present see it as in their own self-interest ↵ to go along with self-archiving does not mean that they will see it so indefinitely. Things change, and you appear to deny the possibility of change in the status quo. Curious. Will the world remain forever the same as it is now? > >> SH: No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just ↵ > >> deposit > >> all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon > >> acceptance. > > > > TW: I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is > > happening now - there > > is no reason why a dual strategy cannot be applied. The focus upon > > repositories > > at the expense of adopting free OA publishing supports the status > > quo, which, > > in any event cannot survive the changes taking place. > > You may not think you are arguing for waiting, but what you have been > doing is invoking the main classical canards that have kept people > waiting (instead of depositing, and mandating) for well over a decade > now (including Gold (OA) Fever). I'd say 4000 Gold OA journals vs. 100 > Green OA mandates is a a symptom of attention deficit, not focus. The > total amount of OA provided via spontaneous Green OA self-archiving is > and always has been greater than the amount provided by Gold OA > publishing, but that (15%) is no consolation, considering that the > other 85% is and has always been within reach all along too, whereas > publishers' economic models are not. I am invoking nothing other than the will of the scholarly community to take ↵ the communication process into its own hands - I keep repeating this, but you appear to ignore it: one way is through self-archiving, another way is through the creation of free OA journals. There is no reason why the two cannot go together - except in your mind which appears to take any alternative proposition as a personal affront. > >> SH: The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research ↵ from > >> access- > >> barriers, not to free it from peer review. > > > > TW: I'm not arguing that publication should be freed from peer > > review - I'm saying > > that the developments in such things as social networking, etc. make ↵ > > it > > possible that non-peer-review open publication is one of the > > possibilties. > > I would say that keystrokes and keystroke mandates, for the existing > peer-reviewed literature, such as it is -- the one OA is trying to > free -- are a far better bet (for OA) than speculations about the > future of peer review. I we do not speculate how can we be prepared for the future? It's a curious position to take - it seems to say, 'Do not give me an argument because I am right and all other possibilities cannot exist'. In any event, there is no argument - I agree that self-archiving is desirable, it is one way of achieving OA - I am simply saying that it is not the only way. And more than one approach can be pursued at the same time. > >> SH: The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's ↵ target > >> content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the ↵ planet's > >> 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and > >> institution/funder self-archiving mandates. > > > > TW: Impossible to achieve - arguing for a single strategy when that > > strategy is not > > achievable is to bury one's head in the sand. Changes in > > communication methods > > will continue to take place and it is likely that multiple methods > > of OA > > publishing will evolve > > Impossible to achieve? Perhaps only in the sense that overcoming > Zeno's Paralysis may not be possible to achieve. But certainly not > because of the validity of any of the several Zeno rationales that you > have invoked. Impossible to achieve because it is a Utopian ideal - and I have never yet met ↵ a Utopian ideal that was capable of being realised. > And changes in "communication methods" are not what is at issue, ↵ when > the target is to communicate validated peer-reviewed research rather > than simply posting or blogging in a social network. (The latter is a > supplement, not a substitute.) http://cogprints.org/1581/ That's a very odd position to take - self-archiving IS a change in scholarly communication methods, and other changes are taking place. And if researchers find that posting to a social network is an appropriate way to communicate with their colleagues they will do so. In fact they already do it - within certain sub-fields of science researchers already communicate with their colleagues in this way - making working papers available, receiving comments, even taking the commentators into the authorship of a paper. E-science almost depends upon this happening. I do not argue that this is a desirable change - I simply say that to ignore the way science is changing and the way scientific communication is changing is not sensible. I am extremely unlikely to be around to see what the situation is in 25 years time, but, given the changes I have seen in the last 50, I am pretty sure that the what we have then will be very different to what we have now. This debate seems to boil down to two opposite propositions: Yours: self-archiving is the only way to achieve OA Mine: self-archiving is one way of achieving OA, but given the changes taking place in the scientific communication world, not the only way and not the final way. Tom Wilson > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Jean-Claude =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gu=E9don?= <jean.claude.guedon AT umontreal.ca>
In reading Tom Wilson's response to Stevan harnad, I had the feeling of déjà vu (as you say in English)... I totally, fully agree with Tom Wilson. He says it perfectly. But wasn't this said before? I have had lengthy, contentious debates with Stevan on exactly these points, and that was a couple of years ago at least. One point I would like to bring out (once more) and that Tom Wilson brings out perfectly: OA journals are not limited to author-pay schemes, and the freest of OA journals are the subsidized journals that are free from both the author and the reader perspective. SciELO is the perfect example of Gold OA. I have never heard Stevan say one word about SciELO. It simply does not seem to matter or even exist for him. Oh well. A case of tunnel vision perhaps... Meanwhile, let us do all we can to help Green OA and Gold OA and let us even see how these two roads can help each other. Simple common sense. And thank you Tom. Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 08 novembre 2009 à 15:00 +0000, Prof. Tom Wilson a écrit : > Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>: > > > On 1-Nov-09, at 10:21 AM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > > > > >> SH: Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. > > > > > > TW: Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in ↵ any > > > event, it is > > > the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the > > > publisher. Free OA > > > journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial ↵ > > > publisher, > > > since it is without cost in either case. > > > > Irrelevant to what? I would say that it is the details of peer review ↵ > > that are irrelevant, when what we are seeking is access to peer- > > reviewed journal articles, all annual 2.5 million of them, published ↵ > > in all the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- of which only > > about a 5th at most, and mostly not the top 5th, are OA journals. > > Irrelevant to the processes of technological and social change that are ↵ now > taking place > > > If researchers -- as authors and users -- want OA, it borders on the ↵ > > absurd for them to keep waiting for journals to convert to OA, rather ↵ > > than providing it for themselves, by self-archiving their journal > > articles, regardless of the economic model of the journal in which > > they were published -- but especially for the vast majority of > > journals that are not OA journals. (And it is equally absurd for > > researchers' institutions and funders to keep dawdling in doing the > > obvious, which is to mandate OA self-archiving. > > Why do you assume that I advocate 'waiting for journals to convert' - that ↵ is > not my position. I am arguing for diverse approaches to the problem of ↵ making > available the results of research. Self-archiving is one approach, free, > subsidised OA journals are another. My position is not against the former, ↵ it > is simply that one approach alone is not likely to be successful and, on ↵ top of > that, subsidised OA journals bring the maximum social benefit. > > > And posting to unrefereed content to a "social network" is ↵ no solution > > to the problem. > > Who says it is? But it is an approach that may evolve within specific > sub-disciplines, if the researchers concerned find that it is a mode of > communication that suits them. > > > Among the many dawdles that never seem to relent diverting our > > attention from this (and our fingertips from doing it) are irrelevant ↵ > > preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and > > publishing reform. And whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact > > keep burning to ash... > > ? > > > >> SH: The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock ↵ down the > > >> publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access ↵ to > > >> refereed > > >> research articles. > > > > > > TW: The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the ↵ > > > scholarly community > > > to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case > > > originally. > > > Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has ↵ made > > > redundant. > > > > In "any true sense"? What on earth does that mean? The only ↵ sense in > > which articles are truly free online is if we make them free online. ↵ > > Waiting for publishers to do it in our stead has been the sure way of ↵ > > *not* accomplishing it. > > I do not argue that we should wait for publishers to convert to OA - I ↵ argue for > the scholarly community to take control of the scholarly communication ↵ process > - one way of doing that is by self-archiving, the other way is by ↵ publishing, > editing and refereeing for free OA journals. What we have been waiting for ↵ is > not for publishers to do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for > publishers to agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not ↵ dependent > upon the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. > > > >> SH: The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a > > >> (virtually cost- > > >> free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and ↵ funding. > > > > > > TW: The only way it is cost free is through the publication of ↵ free > > > OA journals - > > > anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with ↵ withdrawal of > > > permission to archive. > > > > Truly astonishing: Charging author/institutions publication fees ↵ today > > is decidedly not cost-free, especially while the potential funds to > > pay it are still locked up in subscriptions to journals whose ↵ articles > > authors are not self-archiving to make them free! > > You misunderstand - author charging is not 'free OA' - 'free OA' is free ↵ of > author charging and free of subscription. > > > The cost per article of an Institutional Repository and a few author ↵ > > keystrokes is risible. > > That is to assume that all the other costs - e.g., of author charging are > irrelevant. > > > And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" canard, ↵ I expect > > that people can and keep invoking it, against all sense and evidence, ↵ > > for 10 more decades as yet another of the groundless grounds for > > keeping fingers in that chronically idle state of Zeno's Paralysis: > > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned > > http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ > > Ten years old it may be, but the problem remains - regardless of how much > self-referencing you make. > > > >> SH: Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in ↵ their own > > >> hands > > >> is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal ↵ articles > > >> in their university's OA Repository. > > > > > > TW: No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to ↵ develop > > > and publish in > > > free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the > > > publishers and that > > > can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes > > > evident. > > > > Repeating the Poisoned Apple canard does not make it one epsilon more ↵ > > true. Fifteen percent of articles are being self-archived, yet 63% of ↵ > > journals have already endorsed immediate OA self-archiving -- and ↵ for > > the rest, there is the immediate option of deposit plus the ↵ "Almost > > OA" via the IR's email eprint request button (for those authors ↵ who > > wish to honor publisher embargoes). > > http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php > > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html > > > > These are all just the same old, wizened Zeno's canards, being > > repeated over and over again, year in and year out. > > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries > > > > I've lately even canonized them all as haikus -- > > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/648-guid.html > > -- > > upgraded from koans: http://bit.ly/1CfGir > > > > But it doesn't work; they seem to be imperishable, and just keep ↵ being > > reborn, as my voice goes hoarse from making the same rebuttals and my ↵ > > fingertips decline into dystonia... > > Simply because the publishers at present see it as in their own ↵ self-interest to > go along with self-archiving does not mean that they will see it so > indefinitely. Things change, and you appear to deny the possibility of ↵ change > in the status quo. Curious. Will the world remain forever the same as it ↵ is > now? > > > >> SH: No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. ↵ Just > > >> deposit > > >> all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately ↵ upon > > >> acceptance. > > > > > > TW: I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is > > > happening now - there > > > is no reason why a dual strategy cannot be applied. The focus ↵ upon > > > repositories > > > at the expense of adopting free OA publishing supports the ↵ status > > > quo, which, > > > in any event cannot survive the changes taking place. > > > > You may not think you are arguing for waiting, but what you have been ↵ > > doing is invoking the main classical canards that have kept people > > waiting (instead of depositing, and mandating) for well over a decade ↵ > > now (including Gold (OA) Fever). I'd say 4000 Gold OA journals vs. ↵ 100 > > Green OA mandates is a a symptom of attention deficit, not focus. The ↵ > > total amount of OA provided via spontaneous Green OA self-archiving ↵ is > > and always has been greater than the amount provided by Gold OA > > publishing, but that (15%) is no consolation, considering that the > > other 85% is and has always been within reach all along too, whereas ↵ > > publishers' economic models are not. > > I am invoking nothing other than the will of the scholarly community to ↵ take the > communication process into its own hands - I keep repeating this, but you > appear to ignore it: one way is through self-archiving, another way is ↵ through > the creation of free OA journals. There is no reason why the two cannot ↵ go > together - except in your mind which appears to take any alternative > proposition as a personal affront. > > > >> SH: The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed ↵ research from > > >> access- > > >> barriers, not to free it from peer review. > > > > > > TW: I'm not arguing that publication should be freed from peer > > > review - I'm saying > > > that the developments in such things as social networking, etc. ↵ make > > > it > > > possible that non-peer-review open publication is one of the > > > possibilties. > > > > I would say that keystrokes and keystroke mandates, for the existing ↵ > > peer-reviewed literature, such as it is -- the one OA is trying to > > free -- are a far better bet (for OA) than speculations about the > > future of peer review. > > I we do not speculate how can we be prepared for the future? It's a ↵ curious > position to take - it seems to say, 'Do not give me an argument because I ↵ am > right and all other possibilities cannot exist'. In any event, there is no > argument - I agree that self-archiving is desirable, it is one way of ↵ achieving > OA - I am simply saying that it is not the only way. And more than one > approach can be pursued at the same time. > > > >> SH: The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA ↵ movement's target > > >> content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the ↵ planet's > > >> 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving ↵ and > > >> institution/funder self-archiving mandates. > > > > > > TW: Impossible to achieve - arguing for a single strategy when ↵ that > > > strategy is not > > > achievable is to bury one's head in the sand. Changes in > > > communication methods > > > will continue to take place and it is likely that multiple ↵ methods > > > of OA > > > publishing will evolve > > > > Impossible to achieve? Perhaps only in the sense that overcoming > > Zeno's Paralysis may not be possible to achieve. But certainly not > > because of the validity of any of the several Zeno rationales that ↵ you > > have invoked. > > Impossible to achieve because it is a Utopian ideal - and I have never yet ↵ met a > Utopian ideal that was capable of being realised. > > > And changes in "communication methods" are not what is at ↵ issue, when > > the target is to communicate validated peer-reviewed research rather ↵ > > than simply posting or blogging in a social network. (The latter is a ↵ > > supplement, not a substitute.) http://cogprints.org/1581/ > > That's a very odd position to take - self-archiving IS a change in ↵ scholarly > communication methods, and other changes are taking place. And if ↵ researchers > find that posting to a social network is an appropriate way to communicate ↵ with > their colleagues they will do so. In fact they already do it - within ↵ certain > sub-fields of science researchers already communicate with their ↵ colleagues in > this way - making working papers available, receiving comments, even ↵ taking the > commentators into the authorship of a paper. E-science almost depends upon ↵ this > happening. I do not argue that this is a desirable change - I simply say ↵ that > to ignore the way science is changing and the way scientific communication ↵ is > changing is not sensible. I am extremely unlikely to be around to see what ↵ the > situation is in 25 years time, but, given the changes I have seen in the ↵ last > 50, I am pretty sure that the what we have then will be very different to ↵ what > we have now. > > This debate seems to boil down to two opposite propositions: > > Yours: self-archiving is the only way to achieve OA > > Mine: self-archiving is one way of achieving OA, but given the changes ↵ taking > place in the scientific communication world, not the only way and not the ↵ final > way. > > Tom Wilson > > > > -- > > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "BANDARA,Swarna" <swarna.bandara AT uwimona.edu.jm>
I agree with Tom Wilson. Not only that so called Gold Road is not the only way ↵ to OA, but other ways as well, as it is now self archiving is the other major ↵ option. We do not know what else may come up. There is already a platform where ↵ health science researchers exchange information. Tunnel vision can only ↵ restrict any progress for OA. Jean, you are so correct, SciELo (www.scielo.org<http://www.scielo.org/>) ↵ is a good example of OA journals. In the North SciELo is not seen because, it ↵ is coming from the South, mostly Spanish/Portuguese, therefore foreign ↵ language!!, I suppose irrelevant to OA. In fact, this initiative has made a huge progress in access to and ↵ dissemination of information within the region, especially in the health ↵ sciences. ISI ignored these journals for a long time, until SciELO’s own ↵ citation counts emerged to prove that some of these journals are in fact, have ↵ been very useful in the region, but was never recognized, because there was no ↵ ISI citation count. SciElo is also a good example of how the cost is managed. The publisher (mostly ↵ academic and professional organizations) of the journal is responsible for ↵ compiling the journal for print/e-publish, but if the publisher for whatever ↵ the reason, unable to handle e-publishing SciELo take the responsibility. West ↵ Indian Medical Journal which is the only peer-reviewed health science journal ↵ published by the University of the West Indies is prepared for traditional ↵ publishing and e-files are sent to SciELo at BIREME Office in Brazil. The ↵ Project is funded by PAHO. This Project started in 1997 with a few Brazilian journals and was a result of ↵ the vision of Abel Packer who head BIREME a PAHO Office for health science ↵ information for Latin America and the Caribbean. Today SciELo has 650 ↵ Journals, 14,183 Issues, 209,506 Articles with, 176,793 Citations. These are ↵ all current peer-reviewed journals. I am glad that you brought it up. Swarna Bandara Head, Medical Library VHL National Coordinator ETD/DSpace Project Coordinator, Mona Campus University of the West Indies, Mona Campus Kingston 7, Jamaica (W.I.) Telephone: (876) 927-1073 Fax: (876) 970-0819 UWI Library’s website: ↵ http://www.mona.uwi.edu/library/index.html UWI Mona Campus Website: http://www.mona.uwi.edu/ UWI Website: http://www.uwi.edu/ “he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me”. (Thomas Jefferson) ________________________________ From: boai-forum-bounces AT ecs.soton.ac.uk [boai-forum-bounces AT ↵ ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Jean-Claude Guédon [jean.claude.guedon AT ↵ umontreal.ca] Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 12:56 AM To: boai-forum AT ecs.soton.ac.uk Subject: [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating Itself In reading Tom Wilson's response to Stevan harnad, I had the feeling of déjà vu ↵ (as you say in English)... I totally, fully agree with Tom Wilson. He says it perfectly. But wasn't this ↵ said before? I have had lengthy, contentious debates with Stevan on exactly ↵ these points, and that was a couple of years ago at least. One point I would like to bring out (once more) and that Tom Wilson brings out ↵ perfectly: OA journals are not limited to author-pay schemes, and the freest of ↵ OA journals are the subsidized journals that are free from both the author and ↵ the reader perspective. SciELO is the perfect example of Gold OA. I have never ↵ heard Stevan say one word about SciELO. It simply does not seem to matter or ↵ even exist for him. Oh well. A case of tunnel vision perhaps... Meanwhile, let us do all we can to help Green OA and Gold OA and let us even ↵ see how these two roads can help each other. Simple common sense. And thank you Tom. Jean-Claude Guédon Le dimanche 08 novembre 2009 à 15:00 +0000, Prof. Tom Wilson a écrit : Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:harnad AT ↵ ecs.soton.ac.uk>>: > On 1-Nov-09, at 10:21 AM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > > >> SH: Newspapers do not provide the service of peer review. > > > > TW: Irrelevant - they are all subject to the same forces and, in any > > event, it is > > the scholarly community that provides peer review, not the > > publisher. Free OA > > journals can provide peer review just as well as the commercial > > publisher, > > since it is without cost in either case. > > Irrelevant to what? I would say that it is the details of peer review > that are irrelevant, when what we are seeking is access to peer- > reviewed journal articles, all annual 2.5 million of them, published > in all the planet's 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- of which only > about a 5th at most, and mostly not the top 5th, are OA journals. Irrelevant to the processes of technological and social change that are now taking place > If researchers -- as authors and users -- want OA, it borders on the > absurd for them to keep waiting for journals to convert to OA, rather > than providing it for themselves, by self-archiving their journal > articles, regardless of the economic model of the journal in which > they were published -- but especially for the vast majority of > journals that are not OA journals. (And it is equally absurd for > researchers' institutions and funders to keep dawdling in doing the > obvious, which is to mandate OA self-archiving. Why do you assume that I advocate 'waiting for journals to convert' - that is not my position. I am arguing for diverse approaches to the problem of making available the results of research. Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals are another. My position is not against the former, it is simply that one approach alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, subsidised OA journals bring the maximum social benefit. > And posting to unrefereed content to a "social network" is no ↵ solution > to the problem. Who says it is? But it is an approach that may evolve within specific sub-disciplines, if the researchers concerned find that it is a mode of communication that suits them. > Among the many dawdles that never seem to relent diverting our > attention from this (and our fingertips from doing it) are irrelevant > preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright reform, and > publishing reform. And whilst we keep fiddling, access and impact > keep burning to ash... ? > >> SH: The purpose of the Open Access movement is not to knock down ↵ the > >> publishing industry. The purpose is to provide Open Access to > >> refereed > >> research articles. > > > > TW: The only way to accomplish this in any true sense is for the > > scholarly community > > to take over the publication process - as indeed was the case > > originally. > > Commercial publishers provided a service that the technology has made > > redundant. > > In "any true sense"? What on earth does that mean? The only ↵ sense in > which articles are truly free online is if we make them free online. > Waiting for publishers to do it in our stead has been the sure way of > *not* accomplishing it. I do not argue that we should wait for publishers to convert to OA - I argue ↵ for the scholarly community to take control of the scholarly communication process - one way of doing that is by self-archiving, the other way is by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals. What we have been waiting for is not for publishers to do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for publishers to agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not dependent upon the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. > >> SH: The enhanced research impact that OA will provide is a > >> (virtually cost- > >> free) way of enhancing a university's research profile and ↵ funding. > > > > TW: The only way it is cost free is through the publication of free > > OA journals - > > anything else has either a charge or, potentially, with withdrawal of > > permission to archive. > > Truly astonishing: Charging author/institutions publication fees today > is decidedly not cost-free, especially while the potential funds to > pay it are still locked up in subscriptions to journals whose articles > authors are not self-archiving to make them free! You misunderstand - author charging is not 'free OA' - 'free OA' is free of author charging and free of subscription. > The cost per article of an Institutional Repository and a few author > keystrokes is risible. That is to assume that all the other costs - e.g., of author charging are irrelevant. > And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" canard, I ↵ expect > that people can and keep invoking it, against all sense and evidence, > for 10 more decades as yet another of the groundless grounds for > keeping fingers in that chronically idle state of Zeno's Paralysis: > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned > http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ Ten years old it may be, but the problem remains - regardless of how much self-referencing you make. > >> SH: Hardly makes a difference. The way to take matters in their ↵ own > >> hands > >> is to deposit the refereed final drafts of all their journal ↵ articles > >> in their university's OA Repository. > > > > TW: No - the way to take matters into their own hands is to develop > > and publish in > > free OA journals - archiving is with the permission of the > > publishers and that > > can be withdrawn at any time the cost to the publisher becomes > > evident. > > Repeating the Poisoned Apple canard does not make it one epsilon more > true. Fifteen percent of articles are being self-archived, yet 63% of > journals have already endorsed immediate OA self-archiving -- and for > the rest, there is the immediate option of deposit plus the "Almost > OA" via the IR's email eprint request button (for those authors who > wish to honor publisher embargoes). > http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html > > These are all just the same old, wizened Zeno's canards, being > repeated over and over again, year in and year out. > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries > > I've lately even canonized them all as haikus -- > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/648-guid.html > -- > upgraded from koans: http://bit.ly/1CfGir > > But it doesn't work; they seem to be imperishable, and just keep being > reborn, as my voice goes hoarse from making the same rebuttals and my > fingertips decline into dystonia... Simply because the publishers at present see it as in their own self-interest ↵ to go along with self-archiving does not mean that they will see it so indefinitely. Things change, and you appear to deny the possibility of change in the status quo. Curious. Will the world remain forever the same as it is now? > >> SH: No need whatsoever to switch to or wait for OA journals. Just > >> deposit > >> all final refereed drafts of journal articles immediately upon > >> acceptance. > > > > TW: I'm not arguing for waiting - and no one is waiting, it is > > happening now - there > > is no reason why a dual strategy cannot be applied. The focus upon > > repositories > > at the expense of adopting free OA publishing supports the status > > quo, which, > > in any event cannot survive the changes taking place. > > You may not think you are arguing for waiting, but what you have been > doing is invoking the main classical canards that have kept people > waiting (instead of depositing, and mandating) for well over a decade > now (including Gold (OA) Fever). I'd say 4000 Gold OA journals vs. 100 > Green OA mandates is a a symptom of attention deficit, not focus. The > total amount of OA provided via spontaneous Green OA self-archiving is > and always has been greater than the amount provided by Gold OA > publishing, but that (15%) is no consolation, considering that the > other 85% is and has always been within reach all along too, whereas > publishers' economic models are not. I am invoking nothing other than the will of the scholarly community to take ↵ the communication process into its own hands - I keep repeating this, but you appear to ignore it: one way is through self-archiving, another way is through the creation of free OA journals. There is no reason why the two cannot go together - except in your mind which appears to take any alternative proposition as a personal affront. > >> SH: The goal of the OA movement is free peer-reviewed research ↵ from > >> access- > >> barriers, not to free it from peer review. > > > > TW: I'm not arguing that publication should be freed from peer > > review - I'm saying > > that the developments in such things as social networking, etc. make > > it > > possible that non-peer-review open publication is one of the > > possibilties. > > I would say that keystrokes and keystroke mandates, for the existing > peer-reviewed literature, such as it is -- the one OA is trying to > free -- are a far better bet (for OA) than speculations about the > future of peer review. I we do not speculate how can we be prepared for the future? It's a curious position to take - it seems to say, 'Do not give me an argument because I am right and all other possibilities cannot exist'. In any event, there is no argument - I agree that self-archiving is desirable, it is one way of achieving OA - I am simply saying that it is not the only way. And more than one approach can be pursued at the same time. > >> SH: The only strategy needed for 100% OA to the OA movement's ↵ target > >> content -- the 2.5 million articles a year published in the ↵ planet's > >> 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- is author self-archiving and > >> institution/funder self-archiving mandates. > > > > TW: Impossible to achieve - arguing for a single strategy when that > > strategy is not > > achievable is to bury one's head in the sand. Changes in > > communication methods > > will continue to take place and it is likely that multiple methods > > of OA > > publishing will evolve > > Impossible to achieve? Perhaps only in the sense that overcoming > Zeno's Paralysis may not be possible to achieve. But certainly not > because of the validity of any of the several Zeno rationales that you > have invoked. Impossible to achieve because it is a Utopian ideal - and I have never yet met ↵ a Utopian ideal that was capable of being realised. > And changes in "communication methods" are not what is at issue, ↵ when > the target is to communicate validated peer-reviewed research rather > than simply posting or blogging in a social network. (The latter is a > supplement, not a substitute.) http://cogprints.org/1581/ That's a very odd position to take - self-archiving IS a change in scholarly communication methods, and other changes are taking place. And if researchers find that posting to a social network is an appropriate way to communicate with their colleagues they will do so. In fact they already do it - within certain sub-fields of science researchers already communicate with their colleagues in this way - making working papers available, receiving comments, even taking the commentators into the authorship of a paper. E-science almost depends upon this happening. I do not argue that this is a desirable change - I simply say that to ignore the way science is changing and the way scientific communication is changing is not sensible. I am extremely unlikely to be around to see what the situation is in 25 years time, but, given the changes I have seen in the last 50, I am pretty sure that the what we have then will be very different to what we have now. This debate seems to boil down to two opposite propositions: Yours: self-archiving is the only way to achieve OA Mine: self-archiving is one way of achieving OA, but given the changes taking place in the scientific communication world, not the only way and not the final way. Tom Wilson > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > TW: Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals are another. > My position is not against the former, it is simply that one approach > alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, subsidised OA > journals bring the maximum social benefit. The crux of our disagreement concerns speed, probability, and the limited attention (and action) span of the scholarly community. Subsidized OA journals would definitely bring "the maximum social benefit" -- if only they were within practical reach (i.e., if the subsidy funds were available, and the 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- i.e., the titles, editorial boards, referees and authors -- to whose annual 2.5 million articles the OA movement is seeking OA were ready and willing to migrate to subsidized OA). But there are only about 4000 Gold OA journals today (and mostly not the top journals overall.) And among the OA journals, the top ones tend to be paid Gold OA; the rest are either subsidized or subscription-based (or both). It is not within the hands of the content-provider community -- authors, their institutions and their funders -- to make all, most or many of the 25,000 peer reviewed journals either paid Gold OA (publication fees) or free Gold OA (subsidized) today. That option is a very slow and extremely uncertain one, because it is mostly in the hands of publishers today. Meanwhile, research access and impact continue to be lost, day after day, week after week, month after month, for year upon year upon year. In contrast, it is, today, entirely within the hands of the content- provider community -- authors, their institutions and their funders -- to make every single one of the 2.5 million articles they publish annually in those 25,000 journals either immediately Green OA (63%) or Almost-OA (37% -- through the use of the Institutional Repository's "email eprint request" button) by mandating the self-archiving of all ↵ refereed final drafts in the author's Institutional Repository (IR) immediately upon acceptance for publication. ↵ http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html Until those mandates -- which will provide at least 63% immediate OA plus 37% Almost-OA -- are adopted, it continues to be a waste of time and energy to focus on Gold OA (free or paid) -- or on peer review reform or social networking -- in the interests of OA, today. (There may be other reasons for pursuing those matters, but let us be clear that the immediate interests of OA today definitely are not among them, until and unless the Green OA self-archiving mandates are adopted. Till then, all time, attention and energy diverted toward these other pursuits *in the name of OA* is simply delaying and diverting from the progress of OA.) ↵ http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html > TW: [social networking and direct unrefereed posting] is an approach that > may evolve within specific sub-disciplines, if the researchers concerned > find that it is a mode of communication that suits them. Yes, that may (or may not) all happen. But right now, what is already fully within reach, indeed already long overdue, yet still not yet being grasped, is Green OA self-archiving and self-archiving mandates. Continuing to divert attention to hypothetical options (in the name of OA) while failing to implement the tried, tested and proven option is simply continuing to delay OA. Let me stress again: this exclusivism is exclusively because of the slowness with which the scholarly community has been getting around to doing the doable for over a decade. Continuing to split time, attention and energy with the far less doable just slows down the doable even longer; and it has already been slowed long enough. >> SH: irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright >> reform, and publishing reform... whilst we keep fiddling, access >> and impact keep burning... > > TW: ? (What I meant was that whilst speculations, long-shots and irrelevancies keep distracting and diverting us from doing and mandating self-archiving, access and impact just keep being lost, daily, weekly, monthly, year upon year upon year.) > TW: What we have been waiting for is not for publishers to > do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for publishers to > agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not dependent upon > the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. We are not dependent on the agreement of publishers. But for those of us who mistakenly think we are: We already have publishers' agreement for 63% of journals (including the top ones) yet we are only self- archiving 15% (and mandating 0.0001%). Mandates will immediately deliver at least 63% immediate OA (and for those who wrongly think self-archiving is dependent on publisher agreement, 37% Almost-OA, with the help of immediate deposit and the IR's "email eprint request" button). So what makes more sense: to mandate the moving our fingers for 100% deposit (and *then* head off to "take control of the scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals") or heading off to "take control of the scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals" (and 1001 other long-shots and irrelevancies) *without even first mandating the moving of our fingers, at long last*? That's what I'm banging on about. I'm not criticizing the pursuit of other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without first doing the doable, and already long overdue. > TW: author charging is not 'free OA' - 'free OA' is free of > author charging and free of subscription. I stand corrected: Some people are not moving or mandating their fingers because they prefer paid Gold OA, and others because they prefer subsidized Gold OA journals. Meanwhile, the fingers are not getting moved or mandated, and the access and impact are continuing to be lost, needlessly -- and all this in the interest of pluralism and "maximum social beneft" at the ↵ continuing expense of immediate, obvious (and tried and tested) practical action. >> SH: And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" ↵ canard... >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned > > TW: Ten years old it may be, but the problem remains - regardless > of how much self-referencing you make. The purpose of the referencing is to get the relevant FAQ read and understood. The canard is the prophecy that if researchers self-archive in sufficient numbers, publishers will rescind their endorsement of self- archiving. It is a canard because: It is not true that researchers need their publishers' a-priori agreement to self-archive their final drafts. Twenty years of uncontested self-archiving by physicists is ample evidence of that: Far from rescinding a-priori agreements that they never gave in the first place, publishers in the heavily self-archiving areas of physics have given their official agreements a-posteriori -- well after the irreversible fact of self-archiving was unstoppably in motion. That -- and not the endless repetition of the poisoned apple canard -- is the objective evidence on whether or not the canard (a self-fulfilling prophecy, if ever there was one) has the slightest truth to it: It is false, but it keeps holding us back, by dint of unreflective, unchallenged and (as usual) attention-diverting repetition. Recall again the more important datum: 63% of journals (including most of the top journals) have already given their official agreement for the OA self-archiving of the author's final draft immediately upon acceptance for publication -- yet only 15% of authors self-archive. Evidence (if more was needed) that the locus of the "problem" is in authors' heads (and fingers), and not in their publishers' policies. ↵ http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php Moreover, there is the option of immediate "Almost OA" even for the articles in the remaining 37% of journals that have not yet given their official agreement (and whose authors, unlike the physicists and the rest of the sensible 15%, elect to honor publisher OA embargoes). So, in fact, all refereed publications can be self-archived in some form, tiding over immediate user needs, and what on all sense and evidence will follow is not the "poisoned apple" fantasy -- of publishers rescinding a-priori agreements -- but the fall of the rest of the dominoes with the natural and well-deserved death of OA embargoes under pressure from the growing OA, OA mandates, and researcher reliance on OA, hence the granting of official publisher agreement a-posteriori by the remaining 37% of journals. This is evidence and reality speaking. The reply is merely the self- fulfilling doomsday prophecy (the "poisoned apple" canard), ritually ↵ reiterated, despite being contradicted by both sense and evidence, as it has been all along. > TW: Simply because the publishers at present see it as in their own > self-interest to go along with self-archiving does not mean that > they will see it so indefinitely. Ritual reiteration of the poisoned-apple canard... > TW: Things change, and you appear to deny the possibility of change > in the status quo. Curious. Will the world remain forever the same as it is > now? On the contrary, it's change I am seeking: I am hoping that a rising tide of self-archiving mandates by institutions and funders will soon cure the (at least) 34 etiologies of "Zeno's Paralysis" that have ↵ been deterring our digits (the "poisoned apple" canard being one of them), ↵ holding back change toward the optimal and inevitable outcome. http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ > TW: I am invoking nothing other than the will of the scholarly > community to take the communication process into its own hands - > I keep repeating this, but you appear to ignore it: one way is > through self-archiving, another way is through the creation of free > OA journals. There is no reason why the two cannot go together - There is in fact a very simple reason: because self-archiving is tried, tested, demonstrated effective, free, and fully within the reach of the research communities fingertips, through only a few keystrokes per paper -- keystrokes that are mostly *not being performed*, for well over a decade now -- because of self-imposed, self-fulfilling fanstasies. One of those fantasies is that what we need to do (for OA, now) is to scrap the subscription-based refereed- journal publishing system right now, and instead create a "free" one, ↵ funded by subsidy and voluntarism, and supplemented by unrefereed posting and feedback. In other words, it has been amply demonstrated (since at least 1994) that insofar as OA is concerned, "the will of the scholarly community to take the communication process into its own hands" is woefully weak and glacially slow, even when it comes to doing just a few keystrokes per article, let alone "taking control of the scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals." The virtue of the few keystrokes it takes to self-archive, however, is that where the will is weak (as it clearly is, for 85%), the keystrokes can be mandated. Not so for "taking control of the scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals." So the (OA) problem is no more nor less than to set those fingers into motion. And the way to do that is through institutional and funder keystroke mandates. But the keystrokes and mandates, long overdue already, are simply being further delayed by diversions and distractions from continuing to foster fantasies about creating free journals -- free not only of subscriptions, but even free of Gold OA fees, because they are funded by (unspecified) subsidies and (unspecified) subsidizers. Compare the sole hurdle to Green OA -- namely, a few author keystrokes per paper -- to the hurdle for "free journals" (namely, creating and funding those journals, and weaning authors from their established journals). It's rather like suggesting (to people who are only recycling waste at 15%) that there is an alternative: Make everything bio-degradable: A welcome long-term challenge to take on once recycling is safely mandated and in motion, but hardly one to tout while recycling mandates are still few on the ground, nor one to raise before a committee that is trying to decide whether and why recycling needs to be mandated immediately. > TW: I agree that self-archiving is desirable, it is one way of achieving > OA - I am simply saying that it is not the only way. And more than one > approach can be pursued at the same time. I will immediately stop criticizing other approaches, no matter how far-fetched, once the obvious, immediate one -- mandated self- archiving -- already tried, tested and proved effective, is safely and irreversibly in motion worldwide. But with only 15% self-archiving, and only 100 out of 10,000 institutions as yet mandating it after over a decade of contemplating all kinds of fanciful and untested options -- even though self-archiving is simple, cheap, tested, works and scales -- I will continue to try (so far unsuccessfully) to convey the pragmatic fact that it is a waste of time (and access and impact) to keep diverting our attention and energy to contemplating untested and unlikely speculations (today) instead of first applying simple, practical methods that have already been tested and shown to work (like recycling), and that are already fully within reach, but we are still failing to grasp them. > TW: Impossible to achieve because it is a Utopian ideal - and I have never > yet met a Utopian ideal that was capable of being realised. What is Utopian about self-archiving your final drafts, or institutions/funders mandating it? And isn't the ideal of getting the scholarly community to "take control of the scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA journals" -- when we can't even get them to do a few keystrokes -- rather more Utopian? Especially since there exists a simple, practical way to get them to do the one, but not the other? > TW: if researchers find that posting to a social network is an appropriate way to communicate > with their colleagues they will do so. Indeed they can and will and do. There is nothing to stop them, But that has nothing to do with OA. OA is about the barriers, today, that stop researchers from accessing the articles published in peer- reviewed journals, today, that their institutions can't afford to subscribe to. The hypothetical future of the (unopposed) practice of publicly posting unrefereed content today does not provide us with actual access to actual refereed content, today. >TW: In fact they already do it - within certain > sub-fields of science researchers already communicate with their colleagues in > this way - making working papers available, receiving comments, even taking the > commentators into the authorship of a paper. E-science almost depends upon this > happening. I do not argue that this is a desirable change - I simply say that > to ignore the way science is changing and the way scientific communication is > changing is not sensible. I hope you don't think that I have been ignoring the developments in -- and the potential of -- the self-archiving of pre-refereeing preprints! That's what got me into this OA time-warp when I was still but a naive and trusting lad: http://cogprints.org/1581/ http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/i-overture-the-subversive-proposal.shtml The relevant point here is that the self-archiving of pre-refereeing preprints (in some fields) is not the same as the self-archiving of refereed postprints (in all fields). Few fields (so far) wish to make their unrefereed drafts public. But all fields want to make their refereed postprints public: that's why they publish them. The token that has not dropped for them, however, is that (in the online era) publishing them is no longer enough: They need to self-archive their postprints too. And apparently that needs to be mandated, because over a decade has now gone idly by to show that we wait in vain if we await the exercise of "the will of the scholarly community to take [self- archiving] into its own hands." > TW: This debate seems to boil down to two opposite propositions: > > Yours: self-archiving is the only way to achieve OA > > Mine: self-archiving is one way of achieving OA, but given the changes taking > place in the scientific communication world, not the only way and not the final > way. I'll tell you what: once the momentum in exercising "the will of the scholarly community to take the communication process into its own hands" actually overtakes the momentum to do (and mandate) the few keystrokes that it takes to provide OA, I will happily switch to your fast track. Until then, singing the praises of making waste biodegradable to a community that is not yet even recycling, nor mandating it, is simply slowing progress toward immediate OA. All it does is draw their eyes off the ball that is within reach, yet again... Stevan Harnad -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: "Prof. Tom Wilson" <t.d.wilson AT sheffield.ac.uk>
I think the crux of our disagreement is not about the speed with which OA can ↵ be accomplished or the probability of success, but about the possibility of pursuing more than one goal simultaneously. I see nothing wrong in this and, in fact, this is what is happening: repositories are being established and mandated, free OA journals are being established and surviving and new modes of university press publishing, involving OA plus print-on-demand, are being created. This all seems very healthy to me. Given a number of things, such as any individual's right to pursue whatever course seems appropriate with regard to scholarly communication and, on the other hand, the inertia that limits the success of repositories, no one method is going to answer the OA problem completely. Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD Publisher/Editor in Chief Information Research InformationR.net e-mail: t.d.wilson AT shef.ac.uk Web site: http://InformationR.net/ ___________________________________________________ Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>: > On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > > > TW: Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals > are another. > > My position is not against the former, it is simply that one ↵ approach > > alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, > subsidised OA > > journals bring the maximum social benefit. > > The crux of our disagreement concerns speed, probability, and the > limited attention (and action) span of the scholarly community. > > Subsidized OA journals would definitely bring "the maximum social > benefit" -- if only they were within practical reach (i.e., if the > subsidy funds were available, and the 25,000 peer reviewed journals -- > i.e., the titles, editorial boards, referees and authors -- to whose > annual 2.5 million articles the OA movement is seeking OA were ready > and willing to migrate to subsidized OA). > > But there are only about 4000 Gold OA journals today (and mostly not > the top journals overall.) And among the OA journals, the top ones > tend to be paid Gold OA; the rest are either subsidized or > subscription-based (or both). > > It is not within the hands of the content-provider community -- > authors, their institutions and their funders -- to make all, most or > many of the 25,000 peer reviewed journals either paid Gold OA > (publication fees) or free Gold OA (subsidized) today. That option is > a very slow and extremely uncertain one, because it is mostly in the > hands of publishers today. Meanwhile, research access and impact > continue to be lost, day after day, week after week, month after > month, for year upon year upon year. > > In contrast, it is, today, entirely within the hands of the content- > provider community -- authors, their institutions and their funders -- > to make every single one of the 2.5 million articles they publish > annually in those 25,000 journals either immediately Green OA (63%) or > Almost-OA (37% -- through the use of the Institutional Repository's > "email eprint request" button) by mandating the self-archiving ↵ of all > refereed final drafts in the author's Institutional Repository (IR) > immediately upon acceptance for publication. > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html > > Until those mandates -- which will provide at least 63% immediate OA > plus 37% Almost-OA -- are adopted, it continues to be a waste of time > and energy to focus on Gold OA (free or paid) -- or on peer review > reform or social networking -- in the interests of OA, today. (There > may be other reasons for pursuing those matters, but let us be clear > that the immediate interests of OA today definitely are not among > them, until and unless the Green OA self-archiving mandates are > adopted. Till then, all time, attention and energy diverted toward > these other pursuits *in the name of OA* is simply delaying and > diverting from the progress of OA.) > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html > > > TW: [social networking and direct unrefereed posting] is an > approach that > > may evolve within specific sub-disciplines, if the researchers > concerned > > find that it is a mode of communication that suits them. > > Yes, that may (or may not) all happen. But right now, what is already > fully within reach, indeed already long overdue, yet still not yet > being grasped, is Green OA self-archiving and self-archiving mandates. > Continuing to divert attention to hypothetical options > (in the name of OA) while failing to implement the tried, tested and > proven option is simply continuing to delay OA. > > Let me stress again: this exclusivism is exclusively because of the > slowness with which the scholarly community has been getting around to > doing the doable for over a decade. Continuing to split time, > attention and energy with the far less doable just slows down the > doable even longer; and it has already been slowed long enough. > > >> SH: irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, copyright > >> reform, and publishing reform... whilst we keep fiddling, access > >> and impact keep burning... > > > > TW: ? > > (What I meant was that whilst speculations, long-shots and > irrelevancies keep distracting and diverting us from doing and > mandating self-archiving, access and impact just keep being lost, > daily, weekly, monthly, year upon year upon year.) > > > TW: What we have been waiting for is not for publishers to > > do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for publishers to > > agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not dependent upon > > the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. > > We are not dependent on the agreement of publishers. But for those of > us who mistakenly think we are: We already have publishers' agreement > for 63% of journals (including the top ones) yet we are only self- > archiving 15% (and mandating > 0.0001%). Mandates will immediately deliver at least 63% immediate OA > (and for those who wrongly think self-archiving is dependent on > publisher agreement, 37% Almost-OA, with the help of immediate deposit > and the IR's "email eprint request" button). > > So what makes more sense: to mandate the moving our fingers for 100% > deposit (and *then* head off to "take control of the scholarly > communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for > free OA journals") or heading off to "take control of the ↵ scholarly > communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for > free OA journals" (and 1001 other long-shots and irrelevancies) > *without even first mandating the moving of our fingers, at long last*? > > That's what I'm banging on about. I'm not criticizing the pursuit of > other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm > criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without first doing the > doable, and already long overdue. > > > TW: author charging is not 'free OA' - 'free OA' is free of > > author charging and free of subscription. > > I stand corrected: Some people are not moving or mandating their > fingers because they prefer paid Gold OA, and others because they > prefer subsidized Gold OA journals. > > Meanwhile, the fingers are not getting moved or mandated, and the > access and impact are continuing to be lost, needlessly -- and all > this in the interest of pluralism and "maximum social beneft" at ↵ the > continuing expense of immediate, obvious (and tried and tested) > practical action. > > >> SH: And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned Apple" ↵ canard... > >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned > > > > TW: Ten years old it may be, but the problem remains - regardless > > of how much self-referencing you make. > > The purpose of the referencing is to get the relevant FAQ read and > understood. > > The canard is the prophecy that if researchers self-archive in > sufficient numbers, publishers will rescind their endorsement of self- > archiving. > > It is a canard because: > > It is not true that researchers need their publishers' a-priori > agreement to self-archive their final drafts. Twenty years of > uncontested self-archiving by physicists is ample evidence of that: > Far from rescinding a-priori agreements that they never gave in the > first place, publishers in the heavily self-archiving areas of physics > have given their official agreements a-posteriori -- well after the > irreversible fact of self-archiving was unstoppably in motion. > > That -- and not the endless repetition of the poisoned apple canard -- > is the objective evidence on whether or not the canard (a > self-fulfilling prophecy, if ever there was one) has the slightest > truth to it: It is false, but it keeps holding us back, by dint of > unreflective, unchallenged and (as usual) attention-diverting > repetition. > > Recall again the more important datum: 63% of journals (including most > of the top journals) have already given their official agreement for > the OA self-archiving of the author's final draft immediately upon > acceptance for publication -- yet only 15% of authors self-archive. > Evidence (if more was needed) that the locus of the "problem" is ↵ in > authors' heads (and fingers), and not in their publishers' policies. > http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php > > Moreover, there is the option of immediate "Almost OA" even for ↵ the > articles in the remaining 37% of journals that have not yet given > their official agreement (and whose authors, unlike the physicists and > the rest of the sensible 15%, elect to honor publisher OA embargoes). > So, in fact, all refereed publications can be self-archived in some > form, tiding over immediate user needs, and what on all sense and > evidence will follow is not the "poisoned apple" fantasy -- of > publishers rescinding a-priori agreements -- but the fall of the rest > of the dominoes with the natural and well-deserved death of OA > embargoes under pressure from the growing OA, OA mandates, and > researcher reliance on OA, hence the granting of official publisher > agreement a-posteriori by the remaining 37% of journals. > > This is evidence and reality speaking. The reply is merely the self- > fulfilling doomsday prophecy (the "poisoned apple" canard), ↵ ritually > reiterated, despite being contradicted by both sense and evidence, as > it has been all along. > > > TW: Simply because the publishers at present see it as in their own > > self-interest to go along with self-archiving does not mean that > > they will see it so indefinitely. > > Ritual reiteration of the poisoned-apple canard... > > > TW: Things change, and you appear to deny the possibility of change > > in the status quo. Curious. Will the world remain forever the same > as it is > > now? > > On the contrary, it's change I am seeking: I am hoping that a rising > tide of self-archiving mandates by institutions and funders will soon > cure the (at least) 34 etiologies of "Zeno's Paralysis" that ↵ have been > deterring our digits (the "poisoned apple" canard being one of ↵ them), > holding back change toward the optimal and inevitable outcome. > http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries > http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ > > > TW: I am invoking nothing other than the will of the scholarly > > community to take the communication process into its own hands - > > I keep repeating this, but you appear to ignore it: one way is > > through self-archiving, another way is through the creation of free > > OA journals. There is no reason why the two cannot go together - > > There is in fact a very simple reason: because self-archiving is > tried, tested, demonstrated effective, free, and fully within the > reach of the research communities fingertips, through only a few > keystrokes per paper -- keystrokes that are mostly *not being > performed*, for well over a decade now -- because of self-imposed, > self-fulfilling fanstasies. One of those fantasies is that what we > need to do (for OA, now) is to scrap the subscription-based refereed- > journal publishing system right now, and instead create a "free" ↵ one, > funded by subsidy and voluntarism, and supplemented by unrefereed > posting and feedback. > > In other words, it has been amply demonstrated (since at least 1994) > that insofar as OA is concerned, "the will of the scholarly community ↵ > to take the communication process into its own hands" is woefully ↵ weak > and glacially slow, even when it comes to doing just a few keystrokes > per article, let alone "taking control of the scholarly communication ↵ > process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA ↵ journals." > > The virtue of the few keystrokes it takes to self-archive, however, is > that where the will is weak (as it clearly is, for 85%), the > keystrokes can be mandated. Not so for "taking control of the > scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and > refereeing for free OA journals." > > So the (OA) problem is no more nor less than to set those fingers into > motion. And the way to do that is through institutional and funder > keystroke mandates. But the keystrokes and mandates, long overdue > already, are simply being further delayed by diversions and > distractions from continuing to foster fantasies about creating free > journals -- free not only of subscriptions, but even free of Gold OA > fees, because they are funded by (unspecified) subsidies and > (unspecified) subsidizers. Compare the sole hurdle to Green OA -- > namely, a few author keystrokes per paper -- to the hurdle for "free ↵ > journals" (namely, creating and funding those journals, and weaning > authors from their established journals). > > It's rather like suggesting (to people who are only recycling waste at > 15%) that there is an alternative: Make everything bio-degradable: A > welcome long-term challenge to take on once recycling is safely > mandated and in motion, but hardly one to tout while recycling > mandates are still few on the ground, nor one to raise before a > committee that is trying to decide whether and why recycling needs to > be mandated immediately. > > > TW: I agree that self-archiving is desirable, it is one way of > achieving > > OA - I am simply saying that it is not the only way. And more than ↵ > one > > approach can be pursued at the same time. > > I will immediately stop criticizing other approaches, no matter how > far-fetched, once the obvious, immediate one -- mandated self- > archiving -- already tried, tested and proved effective, is safely and > irreversibly in motion worldwide. But with only 15% self-archiving, > and only 100 out of 10,000 institutions as yet mandating it after over > a decade of contemplating all kinds of fanciful and untested options > -- even though self-archiving is simple, cheap, tested, works and > scales -- I will continue to try (so far unsuccessfully) to convey the > pragmatic fact that it is a waste of time (and access and impact) to > keep diverting our attention and energy to contemplating untested and > unlikely speculations (today) instead of first applying simple, > practical methods that have already been tested and shown to work > (like recycling), and that are already fully within reach, but we are > still failing to grasp them. > > > TW: Impossible to achieve because it is a Utopian ideal - and I > have never > > yet met a Utopian ideal that was capable of being realised. > > What is Utopian about self-archiving your final drafts, or > institutions/funders mandating it? And isn't the ideal of getting the > scholarly community to "take control of the scholarly communication > process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA ↵ journals" > -- when we can't even get them to do a few keystrokes -- rather more > Utopian? Especially since there exists a simple, practical way to get > them to do the one, but not the other? > > > TW: if researchers find that posting to a social network is an > appropriate way to communicate > > with their colleagues they will do so. > > Indeed they can and will and do. There is nothing to stop them, > > But that has nothing to do with OA. OA is about the barriers, today, > that stop researchers from accessing the articles published in peer- > reviewed journals, today, that their institutions can't afford to > subscribe to. > > The hypothetical future of the (unopposed) practice of publicly > posting unrefereed content today does not provide us with actual > access to actual refereed content, today. > > >TW: In fact they already do it - within certain > > sub-fields of science researchers already communicate with their > colleagues in > > this way - making working papers available, receiving comments, > even taking the > > commentators into the authorship of a paper. E-science almost > depends upon this > > happening. I do not argue that this is a desirable change - I > simply say that > > to ignore the way science is changing and the way scientific > communication is > > changing is not sensible. > > I hope you don't think that I have been ignoring the developments in > -- and the potential of -- the self-archiving of pre-refereeing > preprints! That's what got me into this OA time-warp when I was still > but a naive and trusting lad: > http://cogprints.org/1581/ > http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/i-overture-the-subversive-proposal.shtml > > The relevant point here is that the self-archiving of pre-refereeing > preprints (in some fields) is not the same as the self-archiving of > refereed postprints (in all fields). Few fields (so far) wish to make > their unrefereed drafts public. But all fields want to make their > refereed postprints public: that's why they publish them. The token > that has not dropped for them, however, is that (in the online era) > publishing them is no longer enough: They need to self-archive their > postprints too. And apparently that needs to be mandated, because over > a decade has now gone idly by to show that we wait in vain if we await > the exercise of "the will of the scholarly community to take [self- > archiving] into its own hands." > > > TW: This debate seems to boil down to two opposite propositions: > > > > Yours: self-archiving is the only way to achieve OA > > > > Mine: self-archiving is one way of achieving OA, but given the > changes taking > > place in the scientific communication world, not the only way and > not the final > > way. > > I'll tell you what: once the momentum in exercising "the will of the ↵ > scholarly community to take the communication process into its own > hands" actually overtakes the momentum to do (and mandate) the few > keystrokes that it takes to provide OA, I will happily switch to your > fast track. Until then, singing the praises of making waste > biodegradable to a community that is not yet even recycling, nor > mandating it, is simply slowing progress toward immediate OA. All it > does is draw their eyes off the ball that is within reach, yet again... > > Stevan Harnad > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] Re: Wrong Advice On Open Access: History Repeating ItselfFrom: Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>
References: <efa24dc50910210535u2b929f10pb1a42a19e91d5c09 AT ↵ mail.gmail.com> ↵ <EMEW3|e21c41065dd1d93c5a3a33f4c806f395l9KNn212boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton.ac.uk|10210535u2b929f10pb1a42a19e91d5c09 AT mail.gmail.com> <A5AC397410A98E489EC2937920B8020103B88D9FE1 AT iu-mssg-mbx05.ads.iu.edu> <EMEW3|f0e7f908d9fc01fe0ab5836fe7b534ecl9YJRk12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton.ac.uk|A98E489EC2937920B8020103B88D9FE1 AT iu-mssg-mbx05.ads.iu.edu> <1257005105.4aec6031e8cc5 AT webmail.shef.ac.uk> <BLU0-SMTP9AEE03EF6B0828C44F6A8A1B50 AT phx.gbl> <EMEW3|5f8523bbb81d4d08c1b9b7fec4121884lA08Od12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton.ac.uk|AEE03EF6B0828C44F6A8A1B50 AT phx.gbl> <1257088861.4aeda75d3bf8d AT webmail.shef.ac.uk> <BLU0-SMTP148233222FA37D23B97FF3A1B10 AT phx.gbl> <EMEW3|a7cbb46bb4a9d61b9b4e75cf20e848a0lA5JCn12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton.ac.uk|48233222FA37D23B97FF3A1B10 AT phx.gbl> <1257692455.4af6dd278bef1 AT webmail.shef.ac.uk> <BLU0-SMTP19F51EE12FA6173ABBDAEEA1AC0 AT phx.gbl> <EMEW3|637cf2654c76a1a32bbc17c119a7163elA98Ux12boai-forum-bounces|ecs.soton.ac.uk|9F51EE12FA6173ABBDAEEA1AC0 AT phx.gbl> <1258319657.4b006f29d480e AT webmail.shef.ac.uk> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.936) X-OriginalArrivalTime: 16 Nov 2009 01:31:13.0977 (UTC) ↵ FILETIME=[7C2C1A90:01CA665C] On 15-Nov-09, at 4:14 PM, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: > I think the crux of our disagreement is not about the speed with > which OA can be > accomplished or the probability of success, but about the > possibility of > pursuing more than one goal simultaneously. I see nothing wrong in > this and, > in fact, this is what is happening: repositories are being > established and > mandated, free OA journals are being established and surviving and > new modes of > university press publishing, involving OA plus print-on-demand, are > being > created. This all seems very healthy to me. Given a number of > things, such as > any individual's right to pursue whatever course seems appropriate > with regard > to scholarly communication and, on the other hand, the inertia that > limits the > success of repositories, no one method is going to answer the OA > problem > completely. What limits the success of repositories is the failure of (85% of) researchers to deposit unless deposit is mandated by their institutions and/or funders. So Green OA self-archiving mandates are needed, from all institutions and funders. What slows the adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates is distraction and confusion from the premature promotion of Gold OA (or copyright reform, or publishing reform, or publisher boycott threats), often as if OA were synonymous with Gold OA. So the disagreement *is* about speed and probability: If we agree that (mandated) Green OA self-archiving is the fastest and surest way to reach 100% OA, then the speed/probability factor comes down to the distraction and confusion from the promotion of Gold OA that are slowing the promotion and adoption of Green OA mandates. It would just be harmless Green/Gold parallelism if there weren't this persistent cross-talk, but there is. Institutions wrongly imagine that they are doing their bit for OA if they sign COPE and pledge some of their scarce resources to pay for Gold OA -- without first mandating Green OA (because they're already doing their bit for OA....) (Individuals of course have the right to pursue any course they like. No one is talking about depriving anyone of rights. I am simply giving the reasons it is counterproductive -- if 100% OA, as quickly and surely as possible is the goal -- to promote Gold OA without first mandating Green OA. [My goodness, if I had that sort of magical power that could determine what people had a right to do, I would use it to conjure up universal Green OA mandates on the part of the planet's researchers institutions and funders: I certainly wouldn't waste it on hexing those who insist on chasing after iron pyrite today...] (Pursuing and paying Gold OA today also locks in the current costs of doing journal publishing the way it is being done today. Green OA will eventually lower those costs substantially, but I do not invoke this as a reason against pursuing and promoting Gold OA today -- *if* Green OA has first been mandated. Otherwise, however, it is not only dysfunctional but downright foolish.) Stevan Harnad > > Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD > Publisher/Editor in Chief > Information Research > InformationR.net > e-mail: t.d.wilson AT shef.ac.uk > Web site: http://InformationR.net/ > ___________________________________________________ > > > Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad AT ecs.soton.ac.uk>: > >> On Sun, 8 Nov 2009, Prof. Tom Wilson wrote: >> >>> TW: Self-archiving is one approach, free, subsidised OA journals >> are another. >>> My position is not against the former, it is simply that one >>> approach >>> alone is not likely to be successful and, on top of that, >> subsidised OA >>> journals bring the maximum social benefit. >> >> The crux of our disagreement concerns speed, probability, and the >> limited attention (and action) span of the scholarly community. >> >> Subsidized OA journals would definitely bring "the maximum social >> benefit" -- if only they were within practical reach (i.e., if ↵ the >> subsidy funds were available, and the 25,000 peer reviewed journals >> -- >> i.e., the titles, editorial boards, referees and authors -- to whose >> annual 2.5 million articles the OA movement is seeking OA were ready >> and willing to migrate to subsidized OA). >> >> But there are only about 4000 Gold OA journals today (and mostly not >> the top journals overall.) And among the OA journals, the top ones >> tend to be paid Gold OA; the rest are either subsidized or >> subscription-based (or both). >> >> It is not within the hands of the content-provider community -- >> authors, their institutions and their funders -- to make all, most or >> many of the 25,000 peer reviewed journals either paid Gold OA >> (publication fees) or free Gold OA (subsidized) today. That option is >> a very slow and extremely uncertain one, because it is mostly in the >> hands of publishers today. Meanwhile, research access and impact >> continue to be lost, day after day, week after week, month after >> month, for year upon year upon year. >> >> In contrast, it is, today, entirely within the hands of the content- >> provider community -- authors, their institutions and their funders >> -- >> to make every single one of the 2.5 million articles they publish >> annually in those 25,000 journals either immediately Green OA (63%) >> or >> Almost-OA (37% -- through the use of the Institutional Repository's >> "email eprint request" button) by mandating the ↵ self-archiving of all >> refereed final drafts in the author's Institutional Repository (IR) >> immediately upon acceptance for publication. >> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html >> >> Until those mandates -- which will provide at least 63% immediate OA >> plus 37% Almost-OA -- are adopted, it continues to be a waste of time >> and energy to focus on Gold OA (free or paid) -- or on peer review >> reform or social networking -- in the interests of OA, today. (There >> may be other reasons for pursuing those matters, but let us be clear >> that the immediate interests of OA today definitely are not among >> them, until and unless the Green OA self-archiving mandates are >> adopted. Till then, all time, attention and energy diverted toward >> these other pursuits *in the name of OA* is simply delaying and >> diverting from the progress of OA.) >> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html >> >>> TW: [social networking and direct unrefereed posting] is an >> approach that >>> may evolve within specific sub-disciplines, if the researchers >> concerned >>> find that it is a mode of communication that suits them. >> >> Yes, that may (or may not) all happen. But right now, what is already >> fully within reach, indeed already long overdue, yet still not yet >> being grasped, is Green OA self-archiving and self-archiving >> mandates. >> Continuing to divert attention to hypothetical options >> (in the name of OA) while failing to implement the tried, tested and >> proven option is simply continuing to delay OA. >> >> Let me stress again: this exclusivism is exclusively because of the >> slowness with which the scholarly community has been getting around >> to >> doing the doable for over a decade. Continuing to split time, >> attention and energy with the far less doable just slows down the >> doable even longer; and it has already been slowed long enough. >> >>>> SH: irrelevant preoccupations with peer review reform, ↵ copyright >>>> reform, and publishing reform... whilst we keep fiddling, ↵ access >>>> and impact keep burning... >>> >>> TW: ? >> >> (What I meant was that whilst speculations, long-shots and >> irrelevancies keep distracting and diverting us from doing and >> mandating self-archiving, access and impact just keep being lost, >> daily, weekly, monthly, year upon year upon year.) >> >>> TW: What we have been waiting for is not for publishers to >>> do something in our stead, but, to date, waiting for publishers to >>> agree to self-archiving. Pretending that we are not dependent upon >>> the agreement of publishers seems rather unrealistic. >> >> We are not dependent on the agreement of publishers. But for those of >> us who mistakenly think we are: We already have publishers' agreement >> for 63% of journals (including the top ones) yet we are only self- >> archiving 15% (and mandating >> 0.0001%). Mandates will immediately deliver at least 63% immediate OA >> (and for those who wrongly think self-archiving is dependent on >> publisher agreement, 37% Almost-OA, with the help of immediate >> deposit >> and the IR's "email eprint request" button). >> >> So what makes more sense: to mandate the moving our fingers for 100% >> deposit (and *then* head off to "take control of the scholarly >> communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for >> free OA journals") or heading off to "take control of the ↵ scholarly >> communication process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for >> free OA journals" (and 1001 other long-shots and irrelevancies) >> *without even first mandating the moving of our fingers, at long >> last*? >> >> That's what I'm banging on about. I'm not criticizing the pursuit of >> other options *in addition* to mandating self-archiving, I'm >> criticizing pursuing them *instead*, i.e. without first doing the >> doable, and already long overdue. >> >>> TW: author charging is not 'free OA' - 'free OA' is free of >>> author charging and free of subscription. >> >> I stand corrected: Some people are not moving or mandating their >> fingers because they prefer paid Gold OA, and others because they >> prefer subsidized Gold OA journals. >> >> Meanwhile, the fingers are not getting moved or mandated, and the >> access and impact are continuing to be lost, needlessly -- and all >> this in the interest of pluralism and "maximum social ↵ beneft" at the >> continuing expense of immediate, obvious (and tried and tested) >> practical action. >> >>>> SH: And as for the tired, 10-year-old "Poisoned ↵ Apple" canard... >>>> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned >>> >>> TW: Ten years old it may be, but the problem remains - regardless >>> of how much self-referencing you make. >> >> The purpose of the referencing is to get the relevant FAQ read and >> understood. >> >> The canard is the prophecy that if researchers self-archive in >> sufficient numbers, publishers will rescind their endorsement of >> self- >> archiving. >> >> It is a canard because: >> >> It is not true that researchers need their publishers' a-priori >> agreement to self-archive their final drafts. Twenty years of >> uncontested self-archiving by physicists is ample evidence of that: >> Far from rescinding a-priori agreements that they never gave in the >> first place, publishers in the heavily self-archiving areas of >> physics >> have given their official agreements a-posteriori -- well after the >> irreversible fact of self-archiving was unstoppably in motion. >> >> That -- and not the endless repetition of the poisoned apple canard >> -- >> is the objective evidence on whether or not the canard (a >> self-fulfilling prophecy, if ever there was one) has the slightest >> truth to it: It is false, but it keeps holding us back, by dint of >> unreflective, unchallenged and (as usual) attention-diverting >> repetition. >> >> Recall again the more important datum: 63% of journals (including >> most >> of the top journals) have already given their official agreement for >> the OA self-archiving of the author's final draft immediately upon >> acceptance for publication -- yet only 15% of authors self-archive. >> Evidence (if more was needed) that the locus of the ↵ "problem" is in >> authors' heads (and fingers), and not in their publishers' policies. >> http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php >> >> Moreover, there is the option of immediate "Almost OA" even ↵ for the >> articles in the remaining 37% of journals that have not yet given >> their official agreement (and whose authors, unlike the physicists >> and >> the rest of the sensible 15%, elect to honor publisher OA embargoes). >> So, in fact, all refereed publications can be self-archived in some >> form, tiding over immediate user needs, and what on all sense and >> evidence will follow is not the "poisoned apple" fantasy -- ↵ of >> publishers rescinding a-priori agreements -- but the fall of the rest >> of the dominoes with the natural and well-deserved death of OA >> embargoes under pressure from the growing OA, OA mandates, and >> researcher reliance on OA, hence the granting of official publisher >> agreement a-posteriori by the remaining 37% of journals. >> >> This is evidence and reality speaking. The reply is merely the self- >> fulfilling doomsday prophecy (the "poisoned apple" canard), ↵ ritually >> reiterated, despite being contradicted by both sense and evidence, as >> it has been all along. >> >>> TW: Simply because the publishers at present see it as in their ↵ own >>> self-interest to go along with self-archiving does not mean that >>> they will see it so indefinitely. >> >> Ritual reiteration of the poisoned-apple canard... >> >>> TW: Things change, and you appear to deny the possibility of ↵ change >>> in the status quo. Curious. Will the world remain forever the same >> as it is >>> now? >> >> On the contrary, it's change I am seeking: I am hoping that a rising >> tide of self-archiving mandates by institutions and funders will soon >> cure the (at least) 34 etiologies of "Zeno's Paralysis" that ↵ have >> been >> deterring our digits (the "poisoned apple" canard being one ↵ of them), >> holding back change toward the optimal and inevitable outcome. >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries >> http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/ >> >>> TW: I am invoking nothing other than the will of the scholarly >>> community to take the communication process into its own hands - >>> I keep repeating this, but you appear to ignore it: one way is >>> through self-archiving, another way is through the creation of ↵ free >>> OA journals. There is no reason why the two cannot go together - >> >> There is in fact a very simple reason: because self-archiving is >> tried, tested, demonstrated effective, free, and fully within the >> reach of the research communities fingertips, through only a few >> keystrokes per paper -- keystrokes that are mostly *not being >> performed*, for well over a decade now -- because of self-imposed, >> self-fulfilling fanstasies. One of those fantasies is that what we >> need to do (for OA, now) is to scrap the subscription-based refereed- >> journal publishing system right now, and instead create a ↵ "free" one, >> funded by subsidy and voluntarism, and supplemented by unrefereed >> posting and feedback. >> >> In other words, it has been amply demonstrated (since at least 1994) >> that insofar as OA is concerned, "the will of the scholarly ↵ community >> to take the communication process into its own hands" is woefully ↵ >> weak >> and glacially slow, even when it comes to doing just a few keystrokes >> per article, let alone "taking control of the scholarly ↵ communication >> process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA >> journals." >> >> The virtue of the few keystrokes it takes to self-archive, however, >> is >> that where the will is weak (as it clearly is, for 85%), the >> keystrokes can be mandated. Not so for "taking control of the >> scholarly communication process... by publishing, editing and >> refereeing for free OA journals." >> >> So the (OA) problem is no more nor less than to set those fingers >> into >> motion. And the way to do that is through institutional and funder >> keystroke mandates. But the keystrokes and mandates, long overdue >> already, are simply being further delayed by diversions and >> distractions from continuing to foster fantasies about creating free >> journals -- free not only of subscriptions, but even free of Gold OA >> fees, because they are funded by (unspecified) subsidies and >> (unspecified) subsidizers. Compare the sole hurdle to Green OA -- >> namely, a few author keystrokes per paper -- to the hurdle for ↵ "free >> journals" (namely, creating and funding those journals, and ↵ weaning >> authors from their established journals). >> >> It's rather like suggesting (to people who are only recycling waste >> at >> 15%) that there is an alternative: Make everything bio-degradable: A >> welcome long-term challenge to take on once recycling is safely >> mandated and in motion, but hardly one to tout while recycling >> mandates are still few on the ground, nor one to raise before a >> committee that is trying to decide whether and why recycling needs to >> be mandated immediately. >> >>> TW: I agree that self-archiving is desirable, it is one way of >> achieving >>> OA - I am simply saying that it is not the only way. And more ↵ than >> one >>> approach can be pursued at the same time. >> >> I will immediately stop criticizing other approaches, no matter how >> far-fetched, once the obvious, immediate one -- mandated self- >> archiving -- already tried, tested and proved effective, is safely >> and >> irreversibly in motion worldwide. But with only 15% self-archiving, >> and only 100 out of 10,000 institutions as yet mandating it after >> over >> a decade of contemplating all kinds of fanciful and untested options >> -- even though self-archiving is simple, cheap, tested, works and >> scales -- I will continue to try (so far unsuccessfully) to convey >> the >> pragmatic fact that it is a waste of time (and access and impact) to >> keep diverting our attention and energy to contemplating untested and >> unlikely speculations (today) instead of first applying simple, >> practical methods that have already been tested and shown to work >> (like recycling), and that are already fully within reach, but we are >> still failing to grasp them. >> >>> TW: Impossible to achieve because it is a Utopian ideal - and I >> have never >>> yet met a Utopian ideal that was capable of being realised. >> >> What is Utopian about self-archiving your final drafts, or >> institutions/funders mandating it? And isn't the ideal of getting the >> scholarly community to "take control of the scholarly ↵ communication >> process... by publishing, editing and refereeing for free OA >> journals" >> -- when we can't even get them to do a few keystrokes -- rather >> more >> Utopian? Especially since there exists a simple, practical way to get >> them to do the one, but not the other? >> >>> TW: if researchers find that posting to a social network is an >> appropriate way to communicate >>> with their colleagues they will do so. >> >> Indeed they can and will and do. There is nothing to stop them, >> >> But that has nothing to do with OA. OA is about the barriers, today, >> that stop researchers from accessing the articles published in peer- >> reviewed journals, today, that their institutions can't afford to >> subscribe to. >> >> The hypothetical future of the (unopposed) practice of publicly >> posting unrefereed content today does not provide us with actual >> access to actual refereed content, today. >> >>> TW: In fact they already do it - within certain >>> sub-fields of science researchers already communicate with their >> colleagues in >>> this way - making working papers available, receiving comments, >> even taking the >>> commentators into the authorship of a paper. E-science almost >> depends upon this >>> happening. I do not argue that this is a desirable change - I >> simply say that >>> to ignore the way science is changing and the way scientific >> communication is >>> changing is not sensible. >> >> I hope you don't think that I have been ignoring the developments in >> -- and the potential of -- the self-archiving of pre-refereeing >> preprints! That's what got me into this OA time-warp when I was still >> but a naive and trusting lad: >> http://cogprints.org/1581/ >> ↵ http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/i-overture-the-subversive-proposal.shtml >> >> The relevant point here is that the self-archiving of pre-refereeing >> preprints (in some fields) is not the same as the self-archiving of >> refereed postprints (in all fields). Few fields (so far) wish to make >> their unrefereed drafts public. But all fields want to make their >> refereed postprints public: that's why they publish them. The token >> that has not dropped for them, however, is that (in the online era) >> publishing them is no longer enough: They need to self-archive their >> postprints too. And apparently that needs to be mandated, because >> over >> a decade has now gone idly by to show that we wait in vain if we >> await >> the exercise of "the will of the scholarly community to take ↵ [self- >> archiving] into its own hands." >> >>> TW: This debate seems to boil down to two opposite propositions: >>> >>> Yours: self-archiving is the only way to achieve OA >>> >>> Mine: self-archiving is one way of achieving OA, but given the >> changes taking >>> place in the scientific communication world, not the only way and >> not the final >>> way. >> >> I'll tell you what: once the momentum in exercising "the will of ↵ the >> scholarly community to take the communication process into its own >> hands" actually overtakes the momentum to do (and mandate) the ↵ few >> keystrokes that it takes to provide OA, I will happily switch to your >> fast track. Until then, singing the praises of making waste >> biodegradable to a community that is not yet even recycling, nor >> mandating it, is simply slowing progress toward immediate OA. All it >> does is draw their eyes off the ball that is within reach, yet >> again... >> >> Stevan Harnad >> >> >> -- >> To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: >> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f >> > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] [Forum Home] [index] [options] [help]
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