[GOAL] Re: Is $99 per article realistic and compatible with, profits - or too high a price?

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Editor Living Reviews
<editorlr at aei.mpg.de>wrote:

>Therefore, our authors would object to Peter
Murray-Rust, who has

>> never met a scientist who has argued for CC-NC over CC-BY.

Now I have (assuming Frank Schulz is a practising scientist) . And I cannot
understand his/MPG's reasons. In fact I hope this mail may convince
him/them to change the strategy.


> I'd just like to add the point of view of the Living Reviews OA journals
> with an example why we currently argue in favor of CC-BY-NC.
>
>
Actually the journal is not  CC-BY-NC, it's CC-BY-NC-ND (no derivatives as
well).

First, since not only Marcin Wojnarski doubts that
>
> > anyone want to pay for a paper which is elsewhere available for free?
>
> Our long review articles would make perfect (text-)books if anyone could
> sell them without asking for publisher's or the author's permission.
> Example:
>
> The open access review "The Post-Newtonian Approximation for
> Relativistic Compact Binaries" (http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2007-2)
> was republished by Oxford UP as a major part of "Equations of Motion in
> General Relativity"
> (http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199584109.001.0001
> )
> in 2011.
>
> Original price at amazon.com: $98.50 for 156 pages!
>
> This figures seems quite good value to me.  I assume you get a bound paper
book. But many scientific publishers charge 50 USD for a 1-day rental of a
single article.

Of course, this example does not completely illustrate the possible
> misuse of CC-BY: here, the author agreed to the commercial reprint, and
> the original review was extended by other authors' contributions.
> However, they could have easily sold only the Futamase part as a book.
>
> They didn't. They added significant value by (a) format and (b)
aggregation.


> With CC-BY, the publisher would not even have to ask the authors or
> original OA publisher for reprint permission. Moreover, the authors (who
> usually write time-consuming reviews in addition to their publicly
> funded research) would not financially benefit from this commercial
> reuse in any way.


I'm assuming your authors don't benefit financially at present.


> Therefore, our authors would object to Peter
> Murray-Rust, who has
>
> > never met a scientist who has argued for CC-NC over CC-BY.
>
> Have you asked them in a controlled survey by an independent agent?


> In short, in a world where companies collate wikipedia articles and sell
> them on amazon, why wouldn't there be a marked for commercial OA reprints?
>
> (And, if someone wants to sell them, e.g., as book-on-demand, at least
> it should be the OA publishers and authors themselves...)
>
> First the MPG has stated:
http://oa.mpg.de/lang/en-uk/mpg-open-access-policy/
The Max Planck Society and Open Access

Financed by the national government and federal states, the Max Planck
Society <http://www.mpg.de/english/portal/index.html> engages in basic
research in the public interest. Making its scientists’ research findings
available for the benefit of the whole of humanity, free of charge whenever
possible (Open Access), is a key aspiration of the Society.
 In contrast you wish to restrict access to the science in your
publications. You wish it to be controlled by you, and you don't want
anyone else to receive money.  I see your position as:

* we have some form of ownership of the material and wish to control how it
is used after we've published it
* it is morally/ethically wrong for anyone to resell material which they
got for free.

I'll argue that you are actually *preventing* the dissemination of
scientific knowledge. A third party P takes your material and resells it.
The purchasers choose for whatever reason to buy from P rather than use
your website for free. I can make speculations why.
* they add value in the formatting
* they add value by aggregation
* they add value by enhanced discovery
* they add content value

In the current case I think it's all of these. But even if it wasn't it
means:
* more people will read and use the paper.
* the paper will be cited more
* your impact factor will increase.

Suppose you write to your authors:
"Publisher P is reselling you article for money. As a result our impact
factor has doubled and you have twice the number of citations. Do you wish
us to take legal action against publisher P?"
I wonder if they would agree with you?

Note also that publisher P is enhancing *your* market, not diminishing it.
They are doing free advertising. They make your role more essential. You
are not losing money by their activities - nor are your authors. If you
feel so strongly, create a rival product that is better or cheaper. If it
isn't worth your while, then they have justifiably created a new market.

Note, by the way that *I* might have been interested in republishing your
article (for free, but CC-BY) if you had not forbidden me. I am generally
interested in mathematics in the scientific literature. My software can
extract the equations from your article (this is not fantasy - I ran the
software over your article and the content is highly re-usable unlike most
other STM publishers who reset the author's content into lower quality.)
I'm interested in Newtonian dynamics (it is a fundamental tool in molecular
dynamics) and might wish to compare your approach (eqns 50-60). And I would
publish any results formally or informally as CC-BY

But you and your authors wish to restrict my ability to re-use your
scholarship so I won't.

One of the key points is that CC-NC is almost useless at controlling the
*type* of downstream use.

The ND is different. It effectively stops any re-use.

Please think again.

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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