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

Tue May 15 20:41:00 BST 2012

Here is my attempt at summarizing the discussion, and my attempt at getting
to where we need to go faster.

If Open Access is the only goal then all we need to do is follow Stevan's
advice. However, the goal of Open Access itself is to change the scholarly
information system into a system suitable for the 21st century. In this
sense, Green Open Access is an incremental change, which is expected to
lead to more fundamental changes over time. It is disheartening to witness
how hard it is to implement this incremental change.

However, it does not matter. Major disruption will come. When it comes, it
will be sudden and chaotic. We have witnessed it before. It has been
documented extensively. Most people in technology have read Clayton
Christensen's seminal work The Innovator's Dilemma, and whoever has not
should do as soon as possible. We are right in the run-up to a classical
disruption where a low-margin/low-overhead business replaces a
high-margin/high-overhead business. Initially, the low-margin business is
sneered at because it offers low quality. By the time the high-margin
business realizes it is in trouble it is too late.

The high-margin/high-overhead business in scholarly communication is the
publisher-library combination. Alicia's comment is indicative of this:

This upward pressure on prices is of course offset by efficiency gains, and
personally I think site licenses have been helpful in making the system
more efficient.  Libraries and their consortia are on the whole very
professional negotiators.

This year's system may be more efficient that last year's, but that is not
relevant. What matters is what is on the horizon and how you will compete
with that. For a window into what is going on at Amazon, read Eric
Hellman's blog:
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2012/04/publishings-amazon-powered-future.html

I do not doubt the professionalism of libraries and consortia as
negotiators. However, through no fault of their own, they have been
miserable failures in getting to reasonable results appropriate for the new
digital era. Libraries enter the negotiations knowing they have to have a
deal, and publishers know this. Moreover, the negotiations are about
trivial concessions on the edges. The starting point is last year's price
of the site license plus inflation plus increase in volume of content. No
other publisher has gotten through this disruptive era with that kind of
luxury. Ask newspapers, magazines, etc.

The real disruption will happen when universities realize that this whole
business model belongs in the last century. Universities pay for all of the
professional negotiators and negotiations on both sides. They pay for
libraries to run collection-development meetings, inter-departmental
meetings, consortia meetings. They pay (through the cost of site licenses)
for the publisher's negotiators. Why? To help students and faculty buy
digital content? Obviously, these present and future intelligentsia need
help with this, because every day they come to the library for their
iTunes, Netflix, Amazon, etc. accounts...

The idea of library-mediated digital lending seems reasonable only because
we are conditioned by the paper era. Site licenses make sense only if the
total cost of the site license, including the associated administrative
costs and the technical maintenance, is less than that what individual
researchers/scholars would be able to obtain. I sincerely doubt that.
Moreover, once the purchase decision is in the hands of individuals, they
will make price/value judgments. Libraries are much more limited to make
such judgements, because they have to make them on behalf of a community.
(In my blog, I detail what libraries should do instead. The end of lending
is NOT the end of libraries.)

This disruption (or one similar to it) is inevitable. The only question is
when it will happen, and the precise path it will take.

(BTW, I agree with both Jean-Claude and Jan regarding my positive points.
Publishers have stepped in where academics did not. When publishers stepped
in, they did a decent job on the points that I highlighted.)
--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 Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:50 AM, Peter Morgan <pbm2 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:****
>
> ** **
>
> "For searchability, remember what Clifford Lynch declared years ago in the
> OA book edited by Neil Jacobs: no real open access without open
> computation…"****
>
> ** **
>
> Here's the (self-archived) link:****
>
> http://old.cni.org/staff/cliffpubs/opencomputation.htm****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> --****
>
> Peter Morgan****
>
> Head of Medical and Science Libraries****
>
> Medical Library****
>
> Cambridge University Library****
>
> Addenbrooke's Hospital****
>
> Hills Road****
>
> Cambridge****
>
> CB2 0SP****
>
> UK****
>
> ** **
>
> email: pbm2 at cam.ac.uk****
>
> tel: +44 (0)1223 336757****
>
> fax: +44 (0)1223 331918****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Jean-Claude Guédon
> *Sent:* 15 May 2012 17:13
> *To:* goal at eprints.org
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: [BOAI10] Re: Elsevier's query re: "positive things
> from publishers that should be encouraged, celebrated, recognized"****
>
> ** **
>
> With due respect to Eric, I will disagree with at least the devolution of
> the first two tasks
>
> 1. The selection of editors should come from scientific communities
> themselves, not from commercial publishers. This is a good instance where
> commercial concerns (maximizing profits, etc.) can pollute research
> concerns. There is also something weird in having commercial publishers
> holding the key to what may amount to the ultimate academic promotion:
> being part of an editorial board means power over colleagues; being
> editor-in-chief even more so. At least, when journals were in the hands of
> scientific associations, the editorial choice remained inside the community
> of researchers. What criteria, beyond scientific competence and prestige,
> may enter into the calculations of a commercial publisher while choosing an
> editor-in-chief, God knows...
>
> 2. Effective peer review should be organized by peers themselves, by
> scholars and scientists, not by publishers. Tools to organize this process
> should ideally be based on free software and available to all in a way that
> allows disciplinary or speciality tweaking. The Open Journal System, for
> example, is a good, free, tool to organize peer review and manuscript
> handling in the editorial phase. Such a tool should be favoured over
> proprietary tools offered to editors as a way to convince them to join a
> particular journal stable, and as a way to make them dependent on that tool
> - yet another way to ensure growing stables of journals.
>
> Professional "looks" can indeed be given away to commercial publishers.
> Layout, spelling, perhaps some syntaxic and stylistic help would be nice.
> But I would stop there.
>
> As for the "archivable" historic record, I would have to see more details
> to give my personal blessing to this. Remember how Elsevier pitted Yale
> against the Royal Dutch Library when the issue of digital preservation
> began to emerge a dozen or so years ago. I am not sure about the
> distinction between archived and archivable.
>
> For searchability, remember what Clifford Lynch declared years ago in the
> OA book edited by Neil Jacobs: no real open access without open
> computation. Elsevier and other publishers do code their articles in XML,
> but provide only impoverished, eye-ball limited, pdf or html files. When
> one uses Science Direct, all kinds of links pop up to guide us toward other
> articles, presumably from Elsevier journals. This is part of driving a
> competition based on impact factors. That is not the kind of searchability
> we want, even though it is of some value.
>
> 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.
>
> Finally, I am not blaming companies for trying to make money, except when
> they pollute their environment. Most do so in the physical environment, and
> they are regulated, or should be. The commercial publishers do it in their
> virtual environment by driving research competition through tools that also
> favour their commercial goals. The intense competition around publishing in
> "prestigious journals" - prestige being defined here as impact factors,
> although impact factors are a crazy way to measure or compare almost
> anything - leads to all kinds of practices that go against the grain of
> scientific research. The rise in retracted papers in the most prestigious
> journals - prestige being again measured here by IF - is a symptom of this
> "pollution.
>
> The rise in journal prices was tentatively explained in my old article,
> "In Oldenburg's Long Shadow" that came out eleven years ago. It tries at
> least to account for the artificial creation of an inelastic market around
> "core journals", the latter being the consequence of the methods used to
> design the Science Citation Index. Incidentally, the invention of the "core
> journal" myth - myth because it arbitrarily transforms an operational
> truncation needed for the practical handling of large numbers of citations
> into an elite-building club of journals - has been one of the most grievous
> obstacle to the healthy globalization of science publishing in the whole
> world. Speak to Brazilians like Abel Packer about this, and he will tell
> you tons of stories related to this situation. Scientific quality grows
> along a continuous gradient, not according to a two-tier division between
> core science, so-called, and the rest.
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
>
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> -- ****
>
> 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****
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> _______________________________________________****
>
> GOAL mailing list****
>
> GOAL at eprints.org****
>
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal****
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20120515/81149ba7/attachment-0001.html 