[BOAI] Re: PURE self-interest and exploitation

[Stevan Harnad]

> On Nov 12, 2015, at 8:17 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) <A.Wise at ELSEVIER.COM> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
>  
> Pure enables universities and researchers to comply with the HEFCE open access policy. For more information on Pure, please refer tohttps://www.elsevier.com/solutions/pure <https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/pure>.
>  
> Elsevier sharing policies are also consistent with the HEFCE policy.  Gold open access articles can of course be shared immediately.  Subscription articles are made available via Green open access.  In the UK we have lowered embargo periods for authors as part of the balanced package of moves toward OA brokered amongst stakeholders by the Finch Group.  This is made perfectly clear on our website, and I invite list readers to read this text for themselves.  Go to  https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/open-access/agreements <https://www.elsevier.com/about/open-science/open-access/agreements> and select ‘United Kingdom’ from the pull-down list. 

If the British research community, universities, and government heed the siren call of all the disinformation summed up by Elsevier above, what can one say but that we deserve everything that’s coming to us?

Every single talking point above is the exact opposite of the truth, and of what is best for the research community, researchers and the British tax-paying public in the online era. 

And it takes only a little critical reflection to see exactly how and why.

I will not repeat here, yet again, all the points to which I’ve tried — unsuccessfully — to alert the research community across the years <http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/intpub.html>.

It should be enough to just ask ourselves: 

“Why on earth is the journal publishing industry — which has made a fortune by appropriating our intellectual property during the years when the costs and constraints of print and its distribuiation left us no choice — now to be allowed not only to retain its stranglehold but to strengthen it in the online era that would have allowed us at last to free ourselves (and our property, and our actions) from its gratuitous and greedy grip?”

We don’t need Elsevier (or any publisher) and its PURE Trojan Horse to handle the archiving, access-provision, accounting and assessment of our research output! We only need publishers to manage the peer review (which we also provide ourselves).

Why on earth do we want to willingly and knowingly renew and even reinforce this Faustian Bargain?

It is not that I am too exhausted to keep fighting. 

It is that the research community’s gormless gullibility (not Elsevier) is starting to look unconquerable, incorrigible.

Stevan Harnad


>  
> With kind wishes,
> Alicia
>  
>  
> Dr Alicia Wise
> Director of Access and Policy
> Elsevier I The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB
> M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: a.wise at elsevier.com <mailto:a.wise at elsevier.com>
> Twitter: @wisealic
>  
>  


> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>
> Date: November 11, 2015 at 11:10:47 AM GMT-5
> To: jisc-repositories <JISC-REPOSITORIES at jiscmail.ac.uk>
> Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum <SPARC-OAForum at arl.org>, "scholcomm at ala.org" <scholcomm at ala.org>, BOAI Forum <boai-forum at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Subject: [BOAI] PURE Nonsense (and Mischief)
> 
> 
> PURE is a Trojan Horse from Elsevier <https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/pure> that (some) UK institutions have allowed to enter their portals. It is a trick, by Elsevier, to insinuate themselves into and retain control of everything they can: access, timing of access, fulfillment of mandates, research assessment, everything. The ploy was to sneak in via CRIS’s, which are systems for institutions wishing to manage and monitor their metadata on all their functions.
> 
> Notice that the following passage from KCL's OA Policy <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/governancezone/Assets/InformationPolicies/Open%20Access%20Policy.pdf> makes no mention of timing:
> 
>> In internal evaluation procedures it will be expected that all publications considered as part of appraisal or promotional assessments, will have a metadata record in the Research Information System, Pure, with either the full text article attached and downloadable from the Research Portal, or a link to the Open Access article on the journal’s web site. 
> 
> What Pure is in reality designed to do is to make sure that the full text is not openly accessible until after the publisher embargo on Open Access.
> 
> In point of fact, the battle for OA has long shifted to the arena of timing: The 1-year (or longer) embargo is the one to beat. Access after the embargo elapses is a foregone conclusion (publishers have already implicitly conceded on it, without overtly saying so). But access embargoed for 12 months is not OA. Publishers want to make sure (1) there is no OA before the embargo elapses, (2) the embargo is as long as possible, and even after the embargo, (3) access should be via the publisher website, or at least controlled in some way by the publisher.
> 
> That’s exactly what PURE + CRIS does.
> 
> And (some) UK institutions (under pressure from Finch’s fatal foolishness — likewise originating from the publisher lobby) have been persuaded that PURE will not only provide all the OA they want, but will take a lot of other asset-management tasks off their shoulders.
> 
> It’s a huge scam, masquerading as OA, and its only real function is to strengthen the perverse status quo — of ceding the control of university research access to publishers — even more than they had before.
> 
> It won’t succeed, of course, because HEFCE/REF2020 has nailed down the timing of full-text deposit as having to be made within 3 months of acceptance (not publication) for eligibility for REF2020, which a metadata promissory note from Elsevier will not fullfill. My hope is that universities will be as anxious as they have been for 30 years now not to risk REF ineligibility by failing to comply with this very specific requirement.
> 
> (And the institution’s copy-request Button <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1110-Importance-of-Request-Copy-Button-in-Implementing-HEFCEREF-Immediate-Deposit-Policy.html> will take care of the rest, as long as all full-texts are deposited within Acceptance + 3.)
> 
> (I think it was a mistake on HEFCE/REF’s part to state formally that there is no need to archive the dated acceptance letter that defines the acceptance date, but again I trust in the anxiety of universities to comply with REF2020 eligibility requirements to draw the rational conclusion that is indeed within 3 months of acceptance that deposit must be done for eligibility, and not 12 months after publication.)
> 
> As you will see from the ROARMAP data below, KCL’s OA policy <http://roarmap.eprints.org/690/> alone is not compliant with the requirement for REF2020 eligibility, and the above extract does not change that one bit!
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Stevan
> 
> 
> King's College London
> General
> Country:	Europe > Northern Europe > United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland <http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/country/826.html>
> Policymaker type:	Research organisation (e.g. university or research institution)
> Policymaker name:	King's College London
> Policymaker URL:	http://www.kcl.ac.uk/index.aspx <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/index.aspx>
> Policy URL:	http://www.kcl.ac.uk/governancezone/InformationPolicies/Open-Access-Policy.aspx <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/governancezone/InformationPolicies/Open-Access-Policy.aspx>
> Repository URL:	https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/ <https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/>
> Policy adoption date:	16 July 2012
> Source of policy:	Administrative/management decision
> Policy Terms
> Deposit of item:	Required
> Locus of deposit:	Institutional Repository
> Date of deposit:	When publisher permits
> Content types specified under the mandate:	Peer-reviewed manuscripts
> Journal article version to be deposited:	Not Specified
> Can deposit be waived?:	Not specified
> Making deposited item Open Access:	Required
> Can making the deposited item Open Access be waived?:	Not Specified
> Date deposit to be made Open Access:	When publisher permits
> Other Details
> Is deposit a precondition for research evaluation (the 'Liège/HEFCE Model')?:	Yes
> Rights holding:	Not Mentioned
> Can rights retention be waived?:	Not specified
> Can author waive giving permission to make the article Open Access?:	Not specified
> Policy's permitted embargo length for science, technology and medicine:	6 months
> Policy's permitted embargo length for humanities and social sciences:	12 months
> Can maximal allowable embargo length be waived?:	Yes
> Open licensing conditions:	Other
> Gold OA publishing option:	Permitted alternative to Green self-archiving
> Funding for APCs where charged by journals:	Funder provides specific additional funding for APCs
> APC fund URL (where available):	http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/openaccess/funding.aspx <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/researchsupport/openaccess/funding.aspx>
>> 
>> 
> 
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