[GOAL] Re: [BOAI10] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"

Tue May 15 17:48:36 BST 2012

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 5:12 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon <
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:

Excellent points - and I will simply amplify some.

**
> With due respect to Eric, I will disagree with at least the devolution of
> the first two tasks
>
> This is critical. If 100% of the scholarly record were archived in 1500
Inst. Repos it would be largely undiscoverable and of relatively small
value. I know others disagree with me on this, but I cite the example of
chemistry theses in the UK. It is impossible to find them systematically.
Yes if I know that X has written a thesis and what university they were at
I have a chance. But there are >> 100,000 theses a year (I have no idea of
the real figure and I doubt anyone has). The same is true of self-archived
material - without a search engine it's undisoverable in bulk - and bulk is
essential to many of us, if only to filter it for others.

>
> The quest for "alternative comprehensive systems" is exactly what Elsevier
> attempts to build with Scopus. In so doing, Elsevier picks up on the vision
> of Robert Maxwell when the latter did everything he could, from cajoling to
> suing, to get the Science Citation Index away from Garfield's hands. Is
> this really what we want? If it were open, and open access, Eric's idea
> would make sense; otherwise, it becomes a formidable source of economic
> power that will do much harm to scientific communication. In effect, with a
> universal indexing index and more than 2,000 titles in its stable, Elsevier
> could become judge and party of scientific value.
>
> It is almost trivial to build an Open index of the current electronic
scholarly literature. We have developed a tool - PubCrawler - which has
crawled the web for crystallography. It scales to any article in any
journal of any known publisher. The ONLY barrier are publishers who might
report that publishing it violated the sui generis database. Is #scholpub
the only thing on the web we are not allowed to index?

P.

>   --
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> Professeur titulaire
> Littérature comparée
> Université de Montréal
>
>
>
>
> Le lundi 14 mai 2012 à 11:38 -0700, Eric F. Van de Velde a écrit :
>
>  To Alicia:
>
>  Here are what I consider the positive contributions by commercial
> publishers. For any of the positive qualities I mention, it is easy find
> counterexamples. What matters is that, on the average, the major publishers
> have done a good job on the following:
>
>
>
>  - Select good editorial boards of leading scholars.
>
>  - Develop effective systems for organizing peer review.
>
>  - Produce articles/journals that look professional commensurate with the
> importance of the scholarship.
>
>  - Produce an archivable historical record of scholarship.
>
>
>
>  Publishers only receive a marginally passing grade for producing
> searchable databases of the scholarly record and journals. In the age of
> iTunes, Netflix, etc., it is inexcusable that to search through scholarship
> one must buy separate products like the Web of Knowledge in addition to the
> journal subscriptions. Publishers need to work together to produce
> alternative comprehensive systems.
>
>
>
>  Most commercial publishers and some society publishers (like ACS)
> receive failing grades on cost containment. Because of their importance to
> academia, scholarly publishers have been blessed with the opportunity to
> reinvent themselves for the future without the devastating disruption other
> kinds of publishers faced (newspapers, magazines, etc.). However, instead
> of taking advantage of this opportunity, scholarly publishers are
> squandering it for temporary financial gain. Every price increase brings
> severe disruption closer. On the current path, your CEOs are betting the
> existence of the company every year.
>
>
>
>  About the only company who understands the current information market is
> Amazon, and everything they do is geared towards driving down costs of the
> infrastructure. Your competition will not come from Amazon directly, but
> from every single academic who will be able to produce a high-quality
> electronic journal from his/her office. There may be only one success for
> every hundred failed journals in this system, but suppose it is so easy
> 100,000 try...  Your brand/prestige/etc. will carry you only so far.
> (Amazon is focusing on e-books production now, but it is only a matter of
> time when they come out with a journal system.)
>
>
>
>  To Jean-Claude:
>
>  Blaming commercial enterprises for making too much money is like blaming
> scholars for having too many good ideas. Making money is their purpose.
> They will stop raising prices if doing so is in their self-interest.
>
>
>
>  The real question is why the scholarly information market is so screwed
> up that publishers are in a position to keep raising prices. I am blaming
> site licenses (
> http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2011/07/what-if-libraries-were-problem.htmland
> http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/publishers-dilemma.html), but
> I am open to alternative explanations.
>
>
>
>  --Eric.
>
>  http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com
>
>
> Google Voice: (626) 898-5415
>
>  Telephone:      (626) 376-5415
> Skype chat, voice, or web-video: efvandevelde
> E-mail: eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com
>
>
>
>
>  On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> Jean-Claude,
> This is a great analysis and says almost exactly some of what I was
> planning to say.
>
> We cannot de facto trust the publishers to work in our interests. There
> was a time when this was posssible - but no longer.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
>
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-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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