[GOAL] Re: open access and monographs - ARC and wider

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

This is the reply to Stevan I gave on a more limited list.

Thank you for a clear and interesting answer, Stevan. I had long
suspected that your perspective on tactical points trumped (in your
view) more general issues. I am glad to see that, here, you openly admit
hypotheses. There is no proof that the projected outcry would take place
(OAPEN's work did not bring such an outcry) and there is even less
evidence that it would "infect" the article OA efforts. In fact, the
choice of words is interesting: infecting is like looking at anything
that moves away from a certain (pure?) vision of OA could contaminate
OA. Nothing supports a "pure" vision of OA. Nothing supports a
contamination theory of "pure" OA. etc. The term "handicap", equally
medical and biological in inspiration, simply pushes the same metaphor
further, but it does not add anything to the argument.

Once article OA is a done deal, worldwide, it's safe to try extending it
to further kinds of content. But we are still far from that; and what we
have is still shaky.

There is no question that this is true, but the "once" actually hides a
"if". The problem is that, under a number of circumstances, article OA
already coexists with other approaches to OA, and sometimes it is even
preceded by it. In Budapest, in 2001, we all, except Stevan, started
from the premise that the road to OA was through journals. Thank God for
Stevan's resistance since it brought out the Green Road into full bloom,
and what a potent weapon it is! But the Gold Road was first in peoples'
minds, and for reasons that were not simply the result of faulty
reasoning. In emerging countries, particularly Latin America, Gold
projects quickly dwarfed Green undertakings, even though the situation
is now being (happily) redressed with the repository consortium
organized on the LA academic network. 

In short, if we dealt with an ideal situation, Stevan would be right,
but such a vision requires a clean slate. History is much messier, and
we have to deal with all kinds of initiatives launched by various kinds
of actors that pursue agendas that are only roughly convergent. I go
back to the motto of the Internet, let us be happy with rough consensus
and working code. In other words, whatever works somewhere should be
seen as a form of progress unless it be demonstrably clear that the
progress is only apparent. Let us not decide in advance that it will
"infect" or "handicap" other projets.

That said, of course when publication itself is subsidized, the
subsidizer is always free to attach strings to that publication subsidy,
including, if they wish, OA, and the subsidized author can then take it
or leave it.

This is certainly an interesting opening, Stevan. When I was vp of the
Canadian Federations for the HSS (CFHSS) , I tried to have all Canadian
subsidized books that were "out of print" republished electronically in
Open Access (that covered about 5,000 monographic titles). I managed to
get about six books in OA, not because of authors' objections (they were
never consulted by publishers), but because of publishers' prior
contracts with commercial outlets that had promised them increased
revenues in exchange for partial or total transfer of rights for
electronic versions (eBrary in particular has been very active here). 

The main obstacle in this process is not authors; once again we face
publishers who simply will do whatever they can to derail the OA
movement. This is as true of articles as it is of scholarly monographs. 


> But that's a publication subsidy, not a research subsidy, and I
> thought we were talking about the strings funders could attach to
> their research subsidies.
> 

Publishing subsidies also come from funders. Sometimes they are the same
(as in the case of SSHRC in Canada, even though the programme is managed
by CFHSS. Sometimes, it comes from different kinds of funders. This is
the case in France, for example. But funders, once we understand where
they come from, are funders of some aspect of the
research-and-publication process and one can start studying how to
affect them best, according to their own agendas. In fact, later, in his
reaction to Colin, Stevan does admit that funders can subsidize both
research and publications.

I've had an intuitive guide that has never led me astray for 20
years: Always distinguish author give-aways (willing give-aways) from
all other forms of content. The world's grip on OA is still far too
frail to mix up the two forms of content just yet, and risk making
enemies of those who should be our allies.

I am glad about the use of the word "intuitive": the distinction you
bring forth, Stevan, is valuable, but it does not coincide with
royalties and actual situations on the ground. Many monographic authors
would gladly exchange the loss of (paltry) revenues for symbolic
capital. They need their monographs for tenure, for grants, etc., far
more than they need their books for income. I will agree that there is a
grey zone (the successful scholarly monograph), and I recognize your
desire to draw a sharp line between the two for arguments' sake.
However, in this case, your attempt to resolve a real world situation by
a simple clarification of vocabulary, however valuable (and I believe
you have helped us all see some things more clearly, more sharply) is
proving itself insufficient. 

This said, none of these differences threaten the OA movement
fundamentally. An alliance of conceptual "lumpers" and "splitters" can
be quite potent. Intellectual rigour is not incompatible with
pragmatism. In good spirits and with a smile on our face, let us be, as
Stevan likes to say, brothers in arms.

Jean-Claude

Le mardi 22 janvier 2013 à 07:25 -0500, Stevan Harnad a écrit :

> My reply below is not about the (undoubted) benefits of Open Access to
> books, both to the reader (always) and to the author (sometimes). 
> 
> 
> 
> It is about the very practical question of what can and should be
> mandated (required) by authors' institutions and funders (like ARC)
> vs. what should only be encouraged or supported. 
> 
> 
> The reason this matters is that OA is still being vastly
> under-provided by authors and under-mandated by their funders and
> institutions even today, when it has already been possible (and
> beneficial) for at least two decades. 
> 
> 
> It has to have something to do with motivation -- and primarily
> authors' (i.e., researchers') motivation. What do they all want to
> give away free online? and what do only some of them want to give away
> free online?
> 
> 
> If a mandate is to be successful, it better focus first on mandating
> what all authors want, not what some authors want and others do not.
> The objective is author compliance, not author resistance.
> 
> 
> And it seems evident that all authors, in all disciplines, want their
> articles to be freely accessible online to all their potential users,
> not just those who have subscription access, whereas it is not at all
> evident that all authors, in all disciplines, want their books to be
> freely accessible online to all their potential users, not just those
> who pay for it. (They consider library access to the print edition
> sufficient for the latter.)
> 
> 
> It may well be that book authors are wrong; it may well be that many,
> most, or all will eventually change their minds. But requiring them to
> make their books OA now can only create a backlash even against
> compliance with the requirement to make their articles OA, which all
> of them at least want to do already, even if they don't -- or daren't
> -- do it without a mandate from their institutions and funders.
> 
> 
> 
> On 2013-01-21, at 8:11 PM, Colin Steele <Colin.Steele at anu.edu.au>
> wrote:
> >         I checked with the ARC CEO yesterday and the ARC policy “ARC
> >         requires that any publications . . .”  does cover books.
> >         Open access should not be not simply confined to STM
> >         articles but rather to the publicly funded created knowledge
> >         of researchers. Academic books fall into that category.
> It's a slippery slope. Can every university author who writes a book
> while employed and funded be required to make the book OA? I
> profoundly doubt it. 
> 
> 
> And if that was attempted now, the scholarly backlash (from scholars
> who, despite its simplicity and despite how long and far and wide it's
> already been discussed, still barely understand OA) against attempts
> to oblige them to make their books OA will definitely infect and
> handicap efforts to get support and compliance for article OA.
> 
> 
> Once article OA is a done deal, worldwide, it's safe to try extending
> it to further kinds of content. But we are still far from that; and
> what we have is still shaky.
> 
> 
> I think it is a huge mistake to conflate articles and books in
> mandates, whether funder mandates or institutional mandates.
> 
> 
> That said, of course when publication itself is subsidized, the
> subsidizer is always free to attach strings to that publication
> subsidy, including, if they wish, OA; and the subsidized author can
> then take it or leave it.
> 
> 
> But that's a publication subsidy, not a research subsidy, and I
> thought we were talking about the strings funders (like ARC) could
> attach to their research subsidies.
> >         The focus here is meant to relate to HASS disciplines not
> >         science monographs, where they still exist. nor textbooks.
> >          In the context of subsidies, articles are also ‘subsidised’
> >         by academic free content and peer review to publishers. In
> >         any case, where book subsidies occur, they are low compared
> >         to the totality of journal subscriptions and ‘hidden’
> >         library processing costs.
> 
> I'm not sure what's meant by "academic free content" here: Does it
> mean the books that scholars write while they are professors? But the
> point is that some of them might be writing books for royalties (or at
> least the hope of them), not as "free content" for publishers to
> publish. (And peer review of books -- such as it is -- is often "paid"
> for, if not very generously).
> 
> 
> But things are getting somewhat conflated here: Funders subsidize
> research, and sometimes also publication costs. Researchers (and their
> institutions and salaries) sometimes "subsidize" journals with their
> free content, office space, employee time and refereeing services. And
> institutional libraries subscribsidize journals and buysidize library
> books. 
> 
> 
> But this all has to be sorted out; the whole jumble has no
> implications for the question of whether scholars can or should be
> forced to make their books OA if they don't want to (and ARC is not
> paying publishing costs for authors that can't find a non-OA publisher
> -- in which case the OA would of course be voluntary, not mandatory).
> 
> 
> I've had an intuitive guide that has never led me astray for 20
> years: Always distinguish author give-aways (willing give-aways) from
> all other forms of content. The world's grip on OA is still far too
> frail to mix up the two forms of content just yet, and risk making
> enemies of those who should be OA's allies.
> > 
> >         
> >         Most academic print books currently only sell between 250 to
> >         350 print copies globally, mostly to libraries, which means
> >         access to their embedded knowledge is limited. Niko Pfund,
> >         President of Oxford University Press USA, commented at the
> >         American Historical Association’s January meeting, that
> >         historians, more than any other group of scholars, remain
> >         “absolutely imprisoned in the format of the printed book,” a
> >         situation, he believed, was “borderline catastrophic ”. As
> >         an aside, the ANU E Press had almost 700,000 complete PDF
> >         downloads last year.
> 
> All true. But whereas you can get all article authors to agree to
> their articles being OA, you can't get all (or even most, maybe not
> even many) authors to agree to their books being made OA. 
> 
> 
> So whereas Green OA mandates for articles have already been a huge
> battle, in countless ways, authors feeling they did not want their
> articles to be OA was not one of them. 
> 
> 
> (I am of course not talking about the authors who don't want it solely
> because they are afraid of their publishers, and their publishers
> don't want it. Backing from funder and institutional mandates help
> those authors do what they want to do anyway.)
> > 
> >         
> >         There are examples in the past where major ARC funded HASS
> >         research could not easily find a monograph publisher because
> >         it was not deemed commercial by the then university ‘trade’
> >         publishers and the geographic subject content had little
> >         appeal to northern hemisphere publishers.
> 
> Again, this is orthogonal to the problem: An author who can't find a
> paper publisher, and is happy to go with an OA publisher, is not the
> obstacle -- and doesn't need an ARC mandate (only maybe an ARC
> publishing subsidy!)
> >         The UK  Finch committee acknowledged that it did not have
> >         time to cover either books or research data, both important
> >         issues in terms of scholarly output.
> 
> Thank goodness, given what a right mess they made of what they did
> cover!
> 
> 
> But if this discussion is about OA publishing subsidies (which is what
> the UK Gold OA journal publishing policy is) I rather wish Finch had
> just stuck to subsidies (whether for articles or books) and stayed out
> of mandates altogether…
> >         In the UK, according to RIN, library print book purchasing
> >         expenditure has declined from 11.9% of their overall budgets
> >         in 1999 to 8.4% in 2009. It also means that many esoteric
> >         subject monographs become economically unviable, leading to
> >         the fact that publishers increasingly select titles based
> >         primarily upon the potential for sales rather than scholarly
> >         worth.
> 
> OA books definitely have a potential niche there -- but again, nothing
> to do with OA mandates.
> 
> >         Universities and funding agencies now need to look
> >         holistically at all scholarly communication costs. There is
> >         surely no point in institutions supporting the huge costs of
> >         academic research if there is no means of distributing and
> >         accessing monographic content effectively. Many academics
> >         spend years researching and writing a scholarly book, but
> >         then find themselves either without a publishing outlet or
> >         with relatively few sales, and commensurate low exposure for
> >         their research. Relatively few get substantial royalties.
> 
> If so, then academics will flock to OA book publishing opportunities
> in droves, especially subsidized ones. (But that has nothing to do
> with article OA mandates…)
> 
> 
> Colin is right though, that this is all "wide of the ARC." 
> 
> 
> I'm still focussed on the basic question of what ARC can and should
> mandate, as a condition of receiving research funding…
> 
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 
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-- 



Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal

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