[BOAI] Re: Parallel journals

[Stevan Harnad]

On 5-Oct-09, at 3:44 AM, Kuil, van der Annemiek wrote:

> Apparently there are differences between countries (although  
> acadamia goes beyond borders) and therefore it is difficult to  
> generalise and say that ....
>
>> "(4) The difference between the publisher's PDF and the author's  
>> self-archived final refereed, revised draft are completely trivial.  
>> This is not something a researcher would worry about. Researchers  
>> are worried about access denial, not PDF."
>
> ... this is certainly not the case in the Netherlands. What I hear  
> from people in the field  (and among them are important  
> decsionmakers) is that a large group of researchers does not want to  
> bother with different versions. There is only one version they are  
> concerned with, and that is the publisher's PDF.

This fundamental misunderstanding has arisen, and been discussed, many  
times before.

There are no differences whatsoever among researchers -- either in  
terms of country or in terms of discipline -- when one puts the  
question correctly (i.e., in terms of actual access needs, conditions  
and contingencies today, rather than some other ideal contingency):

INCORRECT, OPEN-ACCESS-IRRELEVANT WAY TO PUT THE QUESTION:

-- INCORRECT USER VERSION: Would you rather have access to the  
published PDF or to the author's self-archived final refereed postprint?

-- INCORRECT AUTHOR VERSION: Would you rather users have access to the  
published PDF of your article or to your self-archived final refereed  
draft (postprint)?

It is the above kind of questions that have been asked in the past,  
and the replies are predictable and of no particular interest or  
relevance to Open Access strategy, policy, or options.

CORRECT (OPEN-ACCESS-RELEVANT) WAY TO PUT THE QUESTION:

-- CORRECT USER VERSION: If you have no access to the published PDF,  
would you rather have access to the author's self-archived final  
refereed draft (postprint), or no access at all?

-- CORRECT AUTHOR VERSION: If they have no access to the published  
PDF, would you rather users have access to your self-archived final  
refereed postprint, or no access at all?

As far as I know, no survey has ever put the questions thus correctly  
to authors and users. I am pretty confident about what the outcome  
will be (the response is almost as predictable as the response to the  
irrelevant questions), but if someone doubts this, let them conduct  
the survey with the questions formulated correctly, and post their  
outcomes. Put correctly, the questions go the the very heart of the  
Open Access problem; put incorrectly, they simply miss both the real  
problem and its immediately reachable solution.

Aside: The very same user and author questions and contingencies can  
also be posed substituting "a Gold OA version" [in place of "the  
published PDF"] and "the author's GREEN OA version" [in place of "the  
author's self-archived final refereed draft"].

Just as free access to the published PDF of any given article is rare  
today, hence for all users who don't have paid subscription access  
today the only real choice is between the author's (Green) OA version  
or waiting in vain for publishers to provide or allow free access to  
their PDF, so, because the option of a Gold OA version of any given  
article being Gold OA is rare today,  the only real choice is between  
the author's (Green) OA version today or waiting in vain for all  
journals to convert to Gold OA.

In other words, "waiting for the published PDF" and "waiting for Gold"  
is not a viable option for the researcher who needs access (or  
impact!) today. The issue is not ideal preferences for PDF (or Gold  
OA), all else being equal (hence equally available).

Putting the question realistically to researchers is also important  
because it makes the real causal contingencies transparent: Providing  
access to the published PDF or providing Gold OA are matters that are  
in the hands of publishers, and for the 2.5 million articles published  
annually today, the proportions are low, as is also their annual rate  
of growth. (Before someone cites the "fast rate of growth" in the  
annual number of Gold OA journals -- now perhaps 20% and perhaps  
increasing by about 10% per year -- not only are users who need access  
today not in a position to wait 7+ years more for a response to their  
click, but the percentage of Gold OA is much lower among the journals  
that are most in demand by users and authors, and there the unsettled  
question of author publication fees also looms large.)

In contrast, providing Green OA today by self-archiving their final  
refereed drafts (postprints) is entirely in the hands of authors  
themselves, today, and also within the immediate prerogative of their  
institutions and funders to mandate that they do it, today.

Based on multiple properly formulated surveys, authors are ready to  
self-archive, but because of (groundless) worries (about legality),  
they are willing to do it only if their institutions and/or funders  
mandate it.

These are the real contingencies facing the scholarly and scientific  
community today, not red herrings about PDF (or Gold OA).

Stevan Harnad

Ceterum censeo: If one is minded toward wishful thinking rather than  
immediate action, there are far better formats to to wish for than the  
published PDF!


>
> Met vriendelijke groet,
> Annemiek
>
>
> From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK 
> ] On Behalf Of leo waaijers
> Sent: vrijdag 2 oktober 2009 19:24
> To: JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
> Subject: Re: Parallel journals
>
> Sorry that I did have an idea of my own.
>
> Stevan Harnad wrote:
>>
>> (1) We don't need "parallel journals": we just need parallel ACCESS  
>> to the articles in the journals that already exist.
>>
>> (2) That's what green OA self-archiving of the author's final  
>> refereed, revised draft provides.
>>
>> (3) Green OA does not provide "parallel articles" either. It just  
>> provides parallel access to the same journals.
>>
>> (4) The difference between the publisher's PDF and the author's  
>> self-archived final refereed, revised draft are completely trivial.  
>> This is not something a researcher would worry about. Researchers  
>> are worried about access denial, not PDF.
>>
>> (5) A journal issue is just a hodge-podge of mostly unrelated  
>> articles; no need to "reconstruct" that; open access to all the  
>> articles plus good boolean search power is all that's needed.
>>
>> (6) The PostGutenberg journal is just a peer-review service  
>> provider, for quality assurance, plus a tag (the journal name)  
>> certifying the outcome as having met the quality standards for  
>> which the journal has an established track record.
>>
>> (7) The rest is just the journal-tagged, peer-reviewed file,  
>> sitting safely in the author's institutional repository (suitably  
>> backed up, mirrored, preserved, etc.), plus central harvesters  
>> providing powerful search capability across the entire distributed  
>> corpus.
>>
>> (8) Gutenberg print editions, and even para-Gutenberg publisher- 
>> PDFs will only last as long as there is still a user demand for  
>> them; with 100% Green OA, I promise you that that demand will not  
>> be coming from researchers, nor from students...
>>
>> Stevan Harnad
>>
>>
>> On 2-Oct-09, at 12:50 PM, J.W.T.Smith wrote:
>>
>>> Leo,
>>> You can approximate this by using Google Scholar Advanced Search.  
>>> Search for a specific journal title and limit to a time period.
>>> The result of a search for articles in “Journal of biological  
>>> chemistry” for 2008 looks like this:
>>>
>>> http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=&as_publication=%22Journal+of+biological+chemistry%22&as_ylo=2008&as_yhi=2008&btnG=Search
>>>
>>> Of course the results are not clustered by issue but ranked by  
>>> number of citations. However I am sure there are people reading  
>>> this list who could write some code to reorder this results list  
>>> and cluster by issue or page number range. A little more coding  
>>> and maybe we could cluster by issue and then by page number within  
>>> each issue thus giving exact copies of contents pages.
>>>
>>> What could we call this new form of journal, ah yes, it would be a  
>>> ‘Reconstructed Journal’ :-) .
>>>
>>> John.
>>>
>>> From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK 
>>> ] On Behalf Of leo waaijers
>>> Sent: 02 October 2009 14:39
>>> To: JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>>> Subject: Parallel journals
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Today, thinking hard again about the (dis)advantages of Green OA  
>>> the following idea flashed through my mind. Green OA leads to  
>>> ‘parallel articles’, i.e. the post prints of the pdf’s in official  
>>> journals. Why not having ‘parallel journals’ as well? It’s not so  
>>> difficult I think. Someone has to generate a list of journal  
>>> titles and issues with empty article records. And then every  
>>> repository can complete these records with the metadata of the  
>>> post prints that they hold. Just like we created union catalogs in  
>>> the old days.
>>> As I see it, the main advantage is that we can integrate the  
>>> worlds of Gold and Green OA at journal level. Wouldn’t that be a  
>>> relief to readers, funders and authors?
>>> Cheers,
>>> Leo.
>>>
>>