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

[Jan Velterop]

It should be no surprise that I'm strongly in favour of CC-BY, whether gold or green. For gold nothing less than CC-BY should be acceptable in my view. As for green, CC-BY if possible; if not possible, Ocular Access only is still better than no OA. 

What I don't understand, Steve, is your apparent hostility to OA articles in hybrid journals. Whence this hostility? Why 'gold-only' journals? Why not 'gold-only' publishers? As long as the OA articles in question are CC-BY, then what's the problem?

Discoverability? Well, CC-BY articles, including those published in hybrid journals, can be deposited in institutional archives without the slightest hesitation (remember, gold *includes* green), if that helps. In fact, if the reasoning is that all of an institute's output should be in that institute's repository, all gold articles should be deposited in any event (and the advantage is even that any FUD has no bearing on gold CC-BY articles).

Double-dipping? This is an old chestnut and somehow based on presuming that there is an objective way of determining if a subscription price is 'fair' (or too low or too high). Anybody who has ever looked at journal subscription prices per article published in the journal in question, has found that there is an enormously wide range of such prices. And that is because setting subscription prices is an art, not a mathematical formula, and informed by elements such as the wish to achieve a certain profit level (or surplus level in the case of not-for-profits), efficiency of the publishing operation (overhead costs, scale), acceptance/rejection rates, etc. It's essentially based on "what can we get away with", given the perceived quality, the quantity of articles published, the quantity of articles downloaded, the width of the journal's scope, the inclusion in bundles, the number of subscribers, etcetera. Or, rather, estimates of all these things, as subscription prices are determined before any of the 'promise-ware' that a subscription essentially is, can be fulfilled.

In the Bethesda Statement on Open Access (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm#definition) a note was included saying that "Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers." That seems to me an entirely logical and reasonable stipulation.

An OA policy should be as simple as "OA mandatory; CC-BY preferred; if CC-BY not possible, then minimally Ocular Access" (Ocular Access: read-only, 'Gratis' Open Access, human-readable OA, or whatever similar description of the idea.)

Jan Velterop


On 16 May 2012, at 10:46, Steve Hitchcock wrote:

> Lots of valid viewpoints. We can agree, we can disagree. But somewhere there needs to be some action. My suggestion is aimed at top-level OA policy-making, at updated advice from BOAI, and from governments and funders agitating for open access, such as in the UK. 
> 
> Broad policy should be set to allow two specific routes to OA:
> 
> 1 Gold-only journals, CC-BY only
> 2 Green (best model policy to be specified, no publisher fudges allowed)
> 
> Do NOT allow
> 
> 3 Hybrid journals.
> 
> Hybrid journals are 'experiments'; it's time to decide green or gold, or call the publishers' bluff. Without this the advisory committees will be mired.
> 
> I believe the political will is there. Now is the moment for clear decisive action.
> 
> The objective is clear - open access. We should not let the common desire for open access to divide. Remove non-OA from the equation and the two routes will take care of themselves. 
> 
> Steve Hitchcock
> WAIS Group, Building 32
> School of Electronics and Computer Science
> University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
> Email: sh94r at ecs.soton.ac.uk
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit
> Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit
> Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379    Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379
> 
> 
> On 15 May 2012, at 21:28, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 8:41 PM, Eric F. Van de Velde <eric.f.vandevelde at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> It is also clear that Green OA fixes our view of publishing in the last century. It does not encourage change. It holds the "paper" (sic) as the element of value and the publisher as an essential component and legislates for the continuance of both. It also builds in inefficiency into the system. 
>> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> I completely agree. The tensions in the earthquake zone are palpable. Among the most obvious ones are:
>> * the increasing failure of the academic-publisher system to follow the rapid development of technology. Sending manuscripts off to be retyped must be one of the most inefficient activities on the planet.
>> * no evidence of the social web revolution
>> * the impatience of the younger generation with the closed minds of the present.
>> 
>> These are additional to the other tensions of:
>> * financial strain in the system
>> * the mismatch between traditional citation analysis and more modern forms of assessment
>> * the voice of the scholarly poor
>> 
>> There are more, but that's enough. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> This disruption (or one similar to it) is inevitable. The only question is when it will happen, and the precise path it will take.
>> 
>> Yes - anyone getting it right and backing it stands to become rich and famous. There is a huge opportunity for well-directed investment.
>> 
>> P.
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> 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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