[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility ofBeall's List
Jean-Claude Guédon
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca
Tue Dec 10 15:25:48 GMT 2013
In response to Sally, I would remind her that re-use was part of the
original BOAI declaration. Scholars and teachers need more than
eye-contact with articles. So, this is not a secondary point.
The immediacy issue concerns deposit; it is simply a pragmatic and
obvious point: capturing an article at time of acceptance is optimal for
exposure and circulation of information. If the publisher does not allow
public exposure and imposes an embargo - thus slowing down the
circulation of knowledge -, the private request button allows for eye
contact, at least. This button solution is not optimal, but it will do
on a pragmatic scale so long as it is needed to circumvent publishers'
tactics.
Cost savings are not part of BOAI; it is a request by administrators of
research centres and their libraries. This said, costs of OA publishing
achieved by a platform such as Scielo are way beneath the prices
practised by commercial publishers (including non-profit ones). And it
should become obvious that if you avoid 45% profit rates, you should
benefit.
The distinction between "nice" and "nasty" publishers is of unknown
origin and I would not subscribe to it. More fundamentally, we should
ask and ask again whether scientific publishing is meant to help
scientific research, or the reverse. Seen from the former perspective,
embargoes appear downright absurd.
As for why OA has not been widely accepted now, the answer is not
difficult to find: researchers are evaluated; the evaluation, strangely
enough, rests on journal reputations rather than on the intrinsic
quality of articles. Researchers simply adapt to this weird competitive
environment as best they can, and do not want to endanger their career
prospects in any way. As a result, what counts for them is not how good
their work is, but rather where they can publish it. Open Access, by
stressing a return to intrinsic quality of work, implicitly challenges
the present competition rules. As such, it appears at best uncertain or
even threatening to researchers under career stress. So long as
evaluation rests on journal titles, the essential source of power within
scientific publishing will rest with the major international publishers.
They obviously believe research was invented to serve them!
The interesting point about mega journals, incidentally, is that they
are not really journals, but publishing platforms. Giving an impact
factor to PLoS One is stupid: citation cultures vary from discipline to
discipline, and the mix of disciplines within PLoS One varies with time.
Doing a simple average of the citations of the whole is methodologically
faulty: remember that scientists in biomed disciplines quote about four
times as much as mathematicians. What if, over a certain period of time,
the proportion of mathematical articles triples for whatever reason? The
raw impact factor will go down. Does this mean anything in terms of
quality? Of course not!
Jean-Claude Guédon
Le mardi 10 décembre 2013 à 13:36 +0000, Sally Morris a écrit :
> At the risk (nay, certainty) of being pilloried by OA conformists, let
> me say that – whatever ithe failings of his article – I thank Jeffrey
> Beall for raising some fundamental questions which are rarely, if
> ever, addressed.
>
>
>
> I would put them under two general headings:
>
>
>
> 1) What is the objective of OA?
>
>
>
> I originally understood the objective to be to make scholarly research
> articles, in some form, accessible to all those who needed to read
> them. Subsequent refinements such as 'immediately', 'published
> version' and 'free to reuse' may have acquired quasi-religious status,
> but are surely secondary to this main objective.
>
>
>
> However, two other, financial, objectives (linked to each other, but
> not to the above) have gained increasing prominence. The first is the
> alleged cost saving (or at least cost shifting). The second - more
> malicious, and originally (but no longer) denied by OA's main
> proponents - is the undermining of publishers' businesses. If this
> were to work, we may be sure the effects would not be choosy about
> 'nice' or 'nasty' publishers.
>
>
>
> 2) Why hasn't OA been widely adopted by now?
>
>
>
> If – as we have been repetitively assured over many years – OA is
> self-evidently the right thing for scholars to do, why have so few of
> them done so voluntarily? As Jeffrey Beall points out, it seems very
> curious that scholars have to be forced, by mandates, to adopt a model
> which is supposedly preferable to the existing one.
>
>
>
> Could it be that the monotonous rantings of the few and the tiresome
> debates about the fine detail are actually confusing scholars, and may
> even be putting them off? Just asking ;-)
>
>
>
> I don't disagree that the subscription model is not going to be able
> to address the problems we face in making the growing volume of
> research available to those who need it; but I'm not convinced that
> OA (whether Green, Gold or any combination) will either. I think the
> solution, if there is one, still eludes us.
>
>
>
> Merry Christmas!
>
>
>
> Sally
>
>
>
> Sally Morris
> South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU
> Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286
> Email: sally at morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On
> Behalf Of David Prosser
> Sent: 09 December 2013 22:10
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility
> ofBeall's List
>
>
>
>
> 'Lackeys'? This is going beyond parody.
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 9 Dec 2013, at 21:45, Beall, Jeffrey wrote:
>
>
>
> > Wouter,
> >
> > Hello, yes, I wrote the article, I stand by it, and I take
> > responsibility for it.
> >
> > I would ask Prof. Harnad to clarify one thing in his email below,
> > namely this statement, "OA is all an anti-capitlist plot."
> >
> > This statement's appearance in quotation marks makes it look like I
> > wrote it in the article. The fact is that this statement does not
> > appear in the article, and I have never written such a statement.
> >
> > Prof. Harnad and his lackeys are responding just as my article
> > predicts.
> >
> > Jeffrey Beall
> >
> > From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On
> > Behalf Of Gerritsma, Wouter
> > Sent: Monday, December 09, 2013 2:14 PM
> > To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> > Subject: [GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility
> > of Beall's List
> >
> > Dear all.
> >
> > Has this article really been written by Jeffrey Beall?
> > He has been victim of a smear campaign before!
> >
> > I don’t see he has claimed this article on his
> > blog http://scholarlyoa.com/ or his tweet stream @Jeffrey_Beall
> > (which actually functions as his RSS feed).
> >
> > I really like to hear from the man himself on his own turf.
> >
> > Wouter
> >
> >
> >
> > From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On
> > Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
> > Sent: maandag 9 december 2013 16:04
> > To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> > Subject: [GOAL] Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of
> > Beall's List
> >
> > Beall, Jeffrey (2013) The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about
> > Open Access. TripleC Communication, Capitalism & Critique Journal.
> > 11(2):
> > 589-597 http://triplec.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/525/514
> >
> > This wacky article is going to be fun to review. I still think Jeff
> > Beall is doing something useful with his naming and shaming of junk
> > OA journals, but I now realize that he is driven by some sort of
> > fanciful conspiracy theory! "OA is all an anti-capitlist
> > plot." (Even on a quick skim it is evident that Jeff's article is
> > rife with half-truths, errors and downright nonsense. Pity. It will
> > diminish the credibility of his valid exposés, but maybe this is a
> > good thing, if the judgment and motivation behind Beall's list is as
> > kooky as this article! But alas it will now also give the genuine
> > "predatory" junk-journals some specious arguments for discrediting
> > Jeff's work altogether. Of course it will also give the publishing
> > lobby some good sound-bites, but they use them at their peril,
> > because of all the other nonsense in which they are nested!)
> >
> > Before I do a critique later today), I want to post some tidbits to
> > set the stage:
> >
> > JB: "ABSTRACT: While the open-access (OA) movement purports
> > to be about making scholarly content open-access, its true
> > motives are much different. The OA movement is an
> > anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom of
> > the press to companies it disagrees with. The movement is
> > also actively imposing onerous mandates on researchers,
> > mandates that restrict individual freedom. To boost the
> > open-access movement, its leaders sacrifice the academic
> > futures of young scholars and those from developing
> > countries, pressuring them to publish in lower-quality
> > open-access journals. The open-access movement has fostered
> > the creation of numerous predatory publishers and standalone
> > journals, increasing the amount of research misconduct in
> > scholarly publications and the amount of pseudo-science that
> > is published as if it were authentic science."
> >
> > JB: "[F]rom their high-salaried comfortable positions…OA
> > advocates... demand that for-profit, scholarly journal
> > publishers not be involved in scholarly publishing and
> > devise ways (such as green open-access) to defeat and
> > eliminate them...
> >
> > JB: "OA advocates use specious arguments to lobby for
> > mandates, focusing only on the supposed economic benefits of
> > open access and ignoring the value additions provided by
> > professional publishers. The arguments imply that publishers
> > are not really needed; all researchers need to do is upload
> > their work, an action that constitutes publishing, and that
> > this act results in a product that is somehow similar to the
> > products that professional publishers produce….
> >
> > JB: "The open-access movement isn't really about open
> > access. Instead, it is about collectivizing production and
> > denying the freedom of the press from those who prefer the
> > subscription model of scholarly publishing. It is an
> > anti-corporatist, oppressive and negative movement, one that
> > uses young researchers and researchers from developing
> > countries as pawns to artificially force the make-believe
> > gold and green open-access models to work. The movement
> > relies on unnatural mandates that take free choice away from
> > individual researchers, mandates set and enforced by an
> > onerous cadre of Soros-funded European autocrats...
> >
> > JB: "The open-access movement is a failed social movement
> > and a false messiah, but its promoters refuse to admit this.
> > The emergence of numerous predatory publishers – a product
> > of the open-access movement – has poisoned scholarly
> > communication, fostering research misconduct and the
> > publishing of pseudo-science, but OA advocates refuse to
> > recognize the growing problem. By instituting a policy of
> > exchanging funds between researchers and publishers, the
> > movement has fostered corruption on a grand scale. Instead
> > of arguing for openaccess, we must determine and settle on
> > the best model for the distribution of scholarly research,
> > and it's clear that neither green nor gold open-access is
> > that model...
> >
> > And then, my own personal favourites:
> >
> > JB: "Open access advocates think they know better than
> > everyone else and want to impose their policies on others.
> > Thus, the open access movement has the serious side-effect
> > of taking away other's freedom from them. We observe this
> > tendency in institutional mandates. Harnad (2013) goes so
> > far as to propose [an]…Orwellian system of mandates…
> > documented [in a] table of mandate strength, with the most
> > restrictive pegged at level 12, with the designation
> > "immediate deposit + performance evaluation (no waiver
> > option)". This Orwellian system of mandates is documented in
> > Table 1...
> >
> > JB: "A social movement that needs mandates to work is doomed
> > to fail. A social movement that uses mandates is abusive and
> > tantamount to academic slavery. Researchers need more
> > freedom in their decisions not less. How can we expect and
> > demand academic freedom from our universities when we impose
> > oppressive mandates upon ourselves?..."
> >
> > Stay tuned!…
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > GOAL mailing list
> > GOAL at eprints.org
> > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
> >
>
>
>
>
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--
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
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