[GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"

Sat May 12 15:46:31 BST 2012

All -

I have been following the several threads of argument with interest.  As I see it recent postings on this list are mixing up several issues/objectives, confusions, mechanisms for access and utilisation and mechanisms to achieve any kind of OA.  

Issues and Objectives
---------------------

1. how do we get gratis OA (free access to eyeball) for all researchers (and others including the public) everywhere;

2. how do we get libre OA (including data mining and other machine processing of articles) for all researchers (and others including the public) everywhere;

3. how do we get libre OA (including processing of datasets associated with a publication using associated software or other software) for all researchers (and others including the public) everywhere;

Confusions
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Confusing each of these objectives is the position (or more accurately different and evolving positions) of the commercial publishers - including the OA publishers - and the learned societies in role publisher.  Many allow (1) but Elsevier has the unfortunate 'not if mandated' clause.

Attempting to expedite these objectives are mandates by research institutions and funding organisations.  However even here there is no clear recommendation emerging on either green (subscription-based) or gold (author pays) for each of (1),(2).  It appears clear that gold is more expensive - at least for now - for high production research institutions.  There is no settled position yet on whether green or gold for publications are applicable to (3).

The situation in each case is not assisted by current legislation in each country on copyright and database right.

(3) in the academic environment is becoming convolved with the 'data.gov' agenda and citizen access.

The rights of the public to have gratis/libre access to publicly-funded research products is a moralistic backdrop to the whole argument.

The commercial publishers understandably wish to preserve their (very profitable) business model as there is a (slow) transition from subscription access to some other model(s) such as author pays access.  In a world where ICT is making (re-engineered) processes in business much more effective (including increased offerings), efficient and less costly it is surprising one does not see similar improvements in scholarly communication.  

Access and Utilisation
----------------------

There are requirements (a) to find the article or dataset (with software) of interest and (b) to utilise it effectively (including text-mining or deeper mining of publications and data processing of datasets). Furthermore, in general there are requirements to do this locally (for specific institutional or funder purposes) or globally (find all articles on left-handed widgets'). In all cases metadata is required for effective (in the sense of accuracy/relevance and recall) retrieval and usage although brute force text indexing (e.g. Google) provides an alternative mechanism for text publications (things get more complex with figures, tables etc although there are various 'scraping and structuring' tools).

Effective access to and utilisation of (3) requires metadata: for discovery (DC, eGMS, CKAN etc), for context including rights handling (CERIF or similar http://www.eurocris.org/Index.php?page=CERIFreleases&t=1 ) and for machine processing (detailed metadata standards, domain specific such as CSMD http://code.google.com/p/icatproject/wiki/CSMD  (among literally hundreds of 'standards') needed to connect the software to the dataset).

Depending on the structures within the article, one may need the same for (2) but for simple text-mining only the discovery and contextual metadata.  Many would argue for (1) only discovery metadata is required but personally I believe context metadata is also required to understand the article in context (persons, organisations, projects, funding, facilities and equipment, products/patents/publications related, events...).

Achieving OA
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As Stevan correctly reminds us constantly, we currently have available only a small proportion of the potentially available material in any form of OA. The barriers include FUD (fear uncertainty doubt) caused by commercial publishers (especially in (2) and (3) but also to some extent in (1)) and academics suffering from confused messages (not least from a heavily divided 'in favour of OA' community) and inertia.

A major influence in achieving OA is mandating (by funders and/or institutions) and demands for formal assessment of research from public administrations (such as the RAE/REF in UK).

The key changes needed are (1) reduction in the effort to make available research products; (2) reduction in the effort to utilise available research products (including for webpages, CVs, bibliographies); (3) a move to quality measures (e.g. citation, access, download) on the individual research product, NOT the channel (i.e. impact factors); (4) clarity on rights issues - ideally their removal for publicly-funded research products; (5) recognition and reward for making research products available fully OA; 

But above all a consistent, clear, simple message to all from the 'in favour of OA' community.

Best
Keith

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Keith G Jeffery      Director International Relations       STFC
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-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 12 May 2012 14:03
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"

On 2012-05-12, at 8:42 AM, Dan Brickley wrote:

> Thought experiment: what if authors posted to their personal sites, but with enough metadata (e.g. http://schema.org/ScholarlyArticle) for generic (rather than topical/institutional) search engine discovery to be feasible?

1. If 100% of authors posted (self-archived) the full-text of their articles, free for all, on their websites, we would have 100% OA; there would be no need to post to topical or institutional repositories, and google-style full-text indexing would do the rest.

2. The trouble is that 80% of authors do not post the full-text of their articles, free for all, *anywhere*.

3. That's why we need Institutional Repositories, and (Green, Gratis) OA self-archiving (posting) mandates from institutions and funders.

4. And that's why it matters what we put on out wish-list for well-intentioned publishers.

5. Metadata have next to nothing to do with it: It's about the posting (anywhere, free online) of the full-text.

> On 2012-05-11, at 6:47 PM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> 
>> Alicia Wise already knows my reply - she has had enough email from me. The publishers should withdraw contractual restrictions on content-mining. That's all they need to do.
>> 
>> If Alicia Wise can say "yes" to me unreservedly, I'll be happy.
> 
> So let's all forget about OA... 

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