[GOAL] Re: Jeffrey Beall Needlessly Compromises Credibility of Beall's List

[Graham Triggs]

On 14 December 2013 20:53, Jean-Claude Guédon <
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:

>  Regarding an earlier post of your that seemed to complain that OA
> advocates are using too narrow and too strict a definition of open access,
> you might consider that the publishing industry, for its part, has done its
> utmost to confuse issues by throwing all kinds of new terms.
>

Which terms have been introduced by the publishing industry? The majority
of the terms that I see regularly were introduced - or at least claimed to
have been - by scholars.

The publishing industry has been fairly quick to make use of the variety of
terms though - some in attempting to best engage with and understand the
needs and desires of the academic community; others to preserve their
business models for as long as possible.


> Finally, the focus of OA is not to destroy the publishing industry. Saying
> this amounts to some form of paranoia. Some OA advocates, including myself,
> are very angry at some members of the publishing industry, but these are
> individuals, not the OA movement. Some OA supporters try to imagine
> alternatives to the present publishing system.
>

It's kind of difficult to say that somebody outside of the publishing
industry is paranoid in stating that some sections of the OA movement are
attempting to destroy the publishing industry. You might say that it is
ignorant to believe that some OA supporters are merely speculating on
alternatives, without hoping - attempting, even - to engineer a situation
that destroys the publishing industry.


> Some os us strongly feel that research communication comes first, and the
> publishing industry a distant second, so that the publishing industry
> should not consider scholarly communication as if it were a gold mine ready
> to be pillaged at will (45% profit, to my mind, is pillaging, and pillaging
> a lot of public money, to boot). But perhaps I am a little too precise
> here... [image: :-)]
>

Profits alone are not a good measure of whether the public purse is being
pillaged or not. They are just the difference between revenue and costs. At
which point:

1) Publisher revenue does not just come from the public purse - sales to
privately funded institutions, personal subscriptions, reprints,
advertising...

2) For everything that they do (which may or may not be appropriate), the
publishing industry is very, very good at reducing costs.

Ultimately, the public purse is not necessarily disadvantaged by engaging
with for-profit industries; although it could benefit from ensuring there
are competitive markets. You can argue that the publishing industry could
stand to reduce it's profits by charging less - but there is no guarantee
that an alternative would take less money overall from the public purse.

Finally, I would like you to think seriously and deeply about what Jacinto
> Dávila wrote in response to you. Developing nations are hit in a number of
> nasty ways by a communication system that seems to think that knowledge is
> not fit for Third World brains, or that Third World brains are good enough
> only if they focus on problems defined by rich countries. Make no mistake
> about this: the anger in those parts of the world where 80% of humanity
> lives is rising and what the consequences of this anger will be, I cannot
> foretell, but they will likely be dire and profound. If I were in your
> shoes, I would be scared.
>

>From free and low cost access programmes, through APC waivers, and
charitable partnerships, the publishing industry does a lot more for
developing nations than the picture you are painting.

Is it perfect? No. Could more be done? Probably. Can the industry do it
alone? No.

If you want to see the situation improve, then it's going to take funders
and researchers to work with the publishing industry.

Or you could try and ignore the industry entirely. But simply depositing
research in institutional repositories does not necessarily solve
developing nation's access problems, and does not necessarily solve their
publishing problems.

G
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