[GOAL] Re: STM welcomes UK Government Endorsement of Finch Report

Mon Jul 30 12:43:37 BST 2012

On 2012-07-29, at 9:28 PM,  Stella Dutton  wrote:

> Stevan;  Like many publishers, we are genuinely trying to find a way
> in the long run for our subs based journals to transition from a subs
> based business model to a gold OA model, if that is what the world
> wants.

Stella,

What the (research) world needs and wants is OA, not a new business
model.

One of the two ways to provide OA is by a transition in the subs business
model to Gold OA publishing.

That way is uncertain, slow, and costly.

The other way is for researchers to provide OA by self-archiving their
refereed final drafts (Green OA) (and for their institutions and 
funders to mandate it).

Green OA can be provided swiftly, certainly and free of extra cost
(while institutional subscriptions are paying publication costs in full).

If (1) the refereed Green OA version is found to be sufficient for all user
needs, institutions will cancel subscriptions, inducing a transition
to Gold OA, paid for out of the subscription cancelation savings (rather
than out of scarce research funds, as now).

If (2) the refereed Green OA version is not found to be sufficient for all user
needs, institutions will not cancel subscriptions, and subscriptions will
continue to pay the cost of publication.

With (1) we have OA, now, and a transition to Gold OA later.

With (2) we have OA, now, and no transition to Gold OA.

>  It cannot be done by a flick of a switch without damaging the
> journals we have, which authors seem to value at the moment judging
> from the number of submissions we get.  

I agree completely. What needs to be done, today, is for funders and
institutions to mandate Green OA rather than pay extra, pre-emptively,
for Gold OA, out of scarce research funds, while institutional subscriptions 
are still paying publication costs in full (as the Finch Committee and
the RCUK have just recommended, unaccountably, in the UK).

And certainly not to just keep waiting for OA via a change in publisher
business model.

> Many/most of our authors
> simply don't have the funds to pay OA gold fees.  They are clinicians
> without research grants working in hospitals doing research on cohorts
> of patients.

I agree completely. And they should need not pay Gold OA fees. 

They can just keep publishing in subscription journals and can 
also provide Green OA.

But what has not been mentioned in this discussion so far is
publisher embargoes on Green OA.

BMJ is on the side of the angels in this, along with the other
60% of journals that formally recognize their authors' right to
provide immediate, un-embargoed Green OA.

What is holding things up is the publishers that lobby against
Green OA and Green OA mandates (and those publishers
are not limited to the 40% that embargo Green OA!)

Those publishers argue both that Green OA is inadequate
for users' needs and that Green OA mandates will destroy
their business.

The truth is that no one knows whether or not Green OA
will be sufficient for users' needs, but it is certainly
sufficient for users' OA needs. 

And if universal Green OA also proves sufficient
for all users' needs, it will not destroy publishing. It will
induce a global transition to Gold OA publishing, as 
well as releasing the subscription funds to pay it.

In other words, globally mandated Green OA provides
OA now and may eventually also induce a transition to
Gold OA.

Continuing to do without OA, and to wait instead for
a change in business model funded pre-emptively (and
hence very slowly and incompletely) out of scarce
research funds (as Finch and RCUK have lately been
persuaded to do) is the slowest and most uncertain
road to OA. (We've already been on it for a decade,
and Springer's projections indicate that it won't reach
100% OA till 2029.)
http://poynder.blogspot.ca/2011/06/open-access-by-numbers.html

The hope is that RCUK will now recognize the untoward
consequences of their new policy -- inducing publishers
to offer hybrid Gold and to increase their embargoes to
unacceptable lengths -- and revise their policy to drop
the requirement to choose Gold if it is offered.

If not, all indications are that the EC has recognized the
untoward consequences, and adopted the right Green OA
mandate...

Stevan Harnad

> 
> Stella Dutton
> Chief Executive Officer
> BMJ Publishing Group Limited
> BMA House
> Tavistock Square
> London  WC1H 9JR
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 00:23:16 -0400
> 
>> The route to green open access is not cost free.  Maybe reviewers are
>> not paid but the whole peer review process has to be managed, with
>> editors and staff paid to run it and that has costs associated with
>> it.
>> 
> While subscriptions are paying the cost of publication, Green OA is
> free. If/when universally mandated Green OA makes subscriptions
> unsustainable, then (and only then) journals can convert to (post-Green)
> Gold OA, paid for, per paper, out of the institutional windfall subscription
> cancelation savings.
> 
> Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition.
> In: Anna Gacs (ed). The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of
> the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.
> 
> Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal.
> In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic
> Journal. Chandos.
> 
> Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges:
> The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed.
> D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).
> 
> Harnad, S. (2011) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be
> Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving.
> Logos: The Journal of the World Book Community. 21(3-4): 86-93
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 
> 
> From: Stella Dutton <SDutton at bmjgroup.com>
> Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2012 08:24:22 +0100
> 
> I've watched the exchange of comments over the Finch report and the
> recent announcement  by the UK government on Open Access, and by the
> way the BMJ was one of the first journals back in the late 1990s to
> make its research papers open access.  I'd like to correct an error in
> a number of the postings and  if it seems an obvious comment then I
> apologise but  clearly it needs restating.
> 
> The route to green open access is not cost free.  Maybe reviewers are
> not paid but the whole peer review process has to be managed, with
> editors and staff paid to run it and that has costs associated with
> it.   By the way, most of our journals reject over 70-80% of the
> papers received with the BMJ rejecting over 95%.
> 
> Stella Dutton
> Chief Executive Officer
> BMJ Publishing Group Limited
> BMA House
> Tavistock Square
> London  WC1H 9JR
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Frederick Friend <ucylfjf at ucl.ac.uk>
> Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:12:38 +0100
> 
> I cannot let pass without challenge the STM Association's statement
> that "Green Open Access has no business model to support the
> publications on which it crucially depends". Firstly deposit of a
> research report by an author in an institutional or subject repository
> does not depend upon publication in a journal. It is a separate route
> to the dissemination of publicly-funded research and could operate
> world-wide whether or not any STM journals were published at all.
> Secondly green open access does have a business model which is
> entirely within research and higher education budgets. Repositories
> are supported by their institution or funding agency, and a fully
> peer-reviewed version of a research article could be supplied on open
> access using the time of reviewers currently supplied without charge
> to publishers.
> 
> A further quality stamp could be provided by the institution or
> organization funding the repository and appropriate metadata attached
> to the version to indicate that it could be regarded as a "version of
> record". Few people are currently advocating a total switch away from
> publishing in journals to a total reliance upon repositories (although
> it would be feasible), but as both the European Commission and
> Research Councils UK acknowledge in their policies the two models can
> live alongside one another. The UK Government, in accepting the
> unbalanced recommendations from the Finch Group, has made a decision
> which is bad for researchers and bad for taxpayers. It may not even be
> good for publishers in the long-term, once the full implications of
> the UK Government's decision are worked through.
> 
> Fred Friend
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uK