[BOAI] Re: DOAJ, SPARC Europe Seal

Thu Jan 13 19:17:03 GMT 2011

Dear friends,

When offering work on the web for free, making a rule in a license that requires a permission to use work commercially is eminently reasonable even if it's not seen as ideal, so why should SPARC restrict it's Seal from those who use a different CC license? Makes no sense to me.  Makes no difference 99.9% of the time (using the statistic figuratively here) to people who want to access research.  Point is that they can obtain the article and use it for their study, research or teaching and make it availabe to others without infringing copyright. Point is they can get to it in the first place, it's free on-line.

Bruno may write in broken english with a blue font, but he speaks the truth.  I'm sad too.

Drives me mad to think of an Open Access Seal that is given to journals that create barriers for a great many authors by charging them money, and does not go to journals that publish OA and don't charge authors, simply because they didn't pick the right license.  

Bruno is right to point out that there are different angles.  There is a different POV from readers, authors, publishers and librarians. Some say we shouldn't bother with Gold OA, that green OA is all that matters.  But, if I'm to start publishing a journal today and I support OA, what sense does it make to go with subscriptions? Zero. Particularly if I actually want the same kind of result as the reader, unfettered access to research without price barriers. From the point of view of the publisher who supports OA, it makes sense to publish a Gold OA journal.  

But I would want to decide on what type of license.  I would choose the least restrictive because my idea of publishing does not include chasing people legally.  I would encourage authors to retain copyright anyway.  Bruno, I think that is the best way you can have your author's feel protected. 

And, If I want authors from all around the world, (not just from wealthy universities and countries that have funds for author-fees), and I want to keep a strict independence and separation from the business side of the journal in my editorial decisions about what and whom to publish, how can I possiby justify the charging of author fees?  

If I can publish quality articles and I can forego author-fees and reader-fees, I should be rewarded with the highest prestige the OA community can offer.  

The credibility of author-pay-to-publish articles has been soured by abuses. Even when abuse is not the question, it is easy to see that rejecting an article from a journal for financial reasons compromises the editorial integrity of journal publishing. 

Time to start thinking of a Third Way, and rewarding the journals who do it.  I call the model for no-author fee, no reader-fee OA 360º, or the black route to OA.  This is the future of publishing led by the "South" (the rest of the world outside NA-Europe-Aus). 

Arif Jinha
University of Ottawa

ps I am interested in creating a South-based publising company under a OA 360º, if there is interest let me know.  

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bruno Granier 
  To: boai-forum at ecs.soton.ac.uk 
  Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 12:30 PM
  Subject: [BOAI] Re: DOAJ, SPARC Europe Seal

  I get Peter Suber's points 
  I mean he is probably right but he is thinking on the readers' side only
  BUT
  I am on both side readers' and authors': authors from 4th and 3rd (even 2nd) world countries can hardly fully support the author-side fees...
  the fact that there are no fee attached to my journal (either on the authors' or readers' side) does not mean that I do not understand the need for economical models (the "author-side fees" for instance).

  see my "sad" conclusion...

  FIRST PETER SUBER

  A 13/01/2011 -0500 11:27, Peter Suber a écrit :
  Dear Bruno,

  There seem to be two questions here:  (1) whether journals that charge author-side fees can be OA, and (2) whether SPARC Europe and the DOAJ are justified in limiting the Seal of Approval to journals that use the CC-BY license.  

  My answer is "yes" to both.  

  1.  While most OA journals charge no author-side fees, and while I want the no-fee model to be more widely recognized, charging author-side fees is completely compatible with OA.  (It's *reader*-side fees that would constitute access barriers incompatible with OA.)  Charging author-side publication fees is a legitimate business model for OA journals, and is entirely compatible with the public definitions of OA from Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin.

  2.  I support the SPARC Europe and DOAJ judgment that the CC-BY license is best license for an OA journal.  This judgment is shared, by the way, by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and SURF.  The CC-BY license puts the fewest restrictions on a work, and thereby makes the work as usable and useful as possible.  

  I can add that the SPARC Europe and DOAJ Seal of Approval program is not intended to recognize every journal that fits into the definition of OA.  It's intended to recognize best practices, and use of the CC-BY license is a much better practice for OA research articles than the use of any more restrictive license.  I strongly support the Seal of Approval program and the criteria it uses.

  Please feel free to share my reply with anyone.

       Best wishes,
       Peter

  Peter Suber
  Berkman Fellow, Harvard University
  Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
  Senior Researcher, SPARC
  Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge
  www.earlham.edu/~peters

  SECOND MY disappointed REPLY 

  Thank you Peter 
  That is a bit disappointing on the authors' side

  I mean ... my colleagues don't worry of giving away all their rights to publish in an Elsevier journal (for instance)
  they already hardly publish in OA journals
  they will "never" publish in a OA journal if it is a CC-BY
  at least they will never publish in mine particularly if it turns to the CC-BY

  ((((Regarding research evaluation - until very recently and with very exceptions* - French CNRS did not want to consider publications in journals where the author paid to be published (which as some meaning particularly considering some commercial practices ...)
  * for instance with Copernicus publications ... but the "real" reason why they agreed to get these journals ranked is that some CNRS people get a position in their editorial boards))))

  Back to the topic:

  Installing such restrictive rules will not encourage people (publishers, societies) to join DOAJ ... 

  I thought I was doing the best I could, my journal is listed in DOAJ, I posted -more or less regularly- information on the DOAJ content, ... considering the work done and the time spent I am not going to leave DOAJ to protest against this sort of segregation

  BUT I will not encourage allied journals* to join, to publish their content (it is additional work and does not really pay), to update their data, ...

  *http://paleopolis.rediris.es/geosciences/

  :(  Bruno

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