[GOAL] Re: Fool's Gold vs. Fair Gold

[Graham Triggs]

On 7 October 2013 21:31, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> wrote:

>  *SH:* But with post-Green Fair Gold, the production and distribution and
>>> their costs are gone
>>> -- offloaded onto the global network of Green OA IRs. And the peer
>>> review costs are paid
>>> for as a service (most sensibly, a no-fault service for the review,
>>> regardless of outcome).
>>>
>>
>> *GT:* There would of course be no implications to the quality of
>> production, discoverability or usability of the research. It's as if you
>> are saying simply making a PDF is good enough, when PDFs are not all
>> created equal, and aren't always as portable as they should be.
>>
>
> Nothing of the sort. The only function of post-Green Fair-Gold OA is peer
> review: no type-setting, no print edition, no online edition, no PDFs, no
> access-provision, no archiving. -- All of that will be offloaded onto the
> global network of Green OA repositories.
>

You are very keen to have "the market" test your hypotheses on Green OA.
And yet you ignore all of the market testing of services that are currently
being provided.

[Major] Publishers are not in the habit of incurring costs unnecessarily.
If there was no desire for type-setting, print edition, online edition,
PDFs - then they would cut the costs of providing them, and make even
larger profits.

And so if (and it would be a very big if) publishers were not providing the
full range of services, then the global network of repositories would
*have* to do a lot more than they currently do. That's going to work out a
lot more expensive than you are bargaining for - especially when you fail
to cost or even acknowledge it at all.

 *GT:*
>> https://scholasticahq.com/innovations-in-scholarly-publishing/announcement/one-of-the-biggest-bottlenecks-in-open-access-publishing-is-typesetting-it-shouldn-t-be
>>
>
> No type-setting.
>

>From that very link - "Nonetheless, presentation absolutely still matters
to the scholarly community. A scholar writing a blog post about
DIY-typesetting says that, "I still prefer reading typeset PDFs of journal
articles to manuscripts.""

Despite your assertions, there is value to type-setting - people will pay
for it, whoever does it. And it's not necessarily going to be cheaper or
better for that to not be a "publisher".


>  *GT:* Based on what? Is that the cost, or the price? What margins are
>> you allowing for? How many rounds are there going to be (on average)?
>>
>
> Based on 25 years as editor-in-chief of a rigorously peer-reviewed journal.
>
Number of rounds depends on quality of paper.
>

OK, so how about answering the substantive questions?


> What costs (per paper)? And what costs for "providing access"? We're
> talking about a server, disk-space and clicks.
>

You have 25 years experience as editor-in-chief. I have 20 years experience
in providing infrastructure, and your description (and presumably cost
expectation) is woefully short.


>  *GT:* And that's without any provision for being able to innovate in the
>> delivery services provided - making things accessible from mobile devices,
>> or possibly even in just making them accessible at all (nobody wants to
>> fall foul of disability discrimination laws).
>>
>
> And sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry.
>
> Let's cross those bridges when we get to them. This is just about
> providing Green OA by depositing the refereed draft in the institutional
> repository immediately upon acceptance for publication...
>

We've already come to those bridges, which is why the publishers are
crossing them. Dumping files on an FTP server was revolutionary 20 years
ago, when scholarly communication was mainly print. The world has moved on,
and what you advocate as necessary is barely acceptable as a minimum
standard. In fact, it probably wouldn't even be legal. (Accessability acts,
data protection, etc.)


>   *SH: *If it's hybrid Fool's Gold, then their payments may even be
>> double-dipped.
>>
>> The only evidence I've seen - e.g. Wellcome Trust's presentation -
>> indicates the contrary.
>>
>
> Say what...?
>

http://de.slideshare.net/Wellcome/mandating-open-access-wellcome-trust-presentation

Slide 11. That's the closest I've seen to evidence regarding subscription
prices in hybrid journals - collected by a funder (and so for whom
monitoring such things is quite important).

As I've said before - if you have *any* substantive evidence of even one
publisher double-dipping, then go ahead and post / link to it.


>  *GT:* And besides - if you are paying an APC for an article to be made
>> open access, then you have entered into a contract with the publisher
>> whereby they have to make it available openly, in accordance with the terms
>> in that contract. They are only double-dipping if they are making it closed
>> access and charging for it - in which case they are in breach of contract.
>>
>
> No, that's not what double-dipping means.
>
Subscription revenue + Gold OA revenue = double-dipping: Charging twice for
> the publication of the same article.
>

No. It's *exactly* what it means.

The subscription revenue would only be a second charge for the publication
of the OA article, if the article was not actually made available OA. If
the article is OA, then you still have access to it, regardless of whether
you subscribe or not.


>  *GT:* What do you normally do when vendors are in breach of contract?
>>
>
> I have no idea what you are thinking about here, Graham. Hybrid Gold
> vendors are not in breach of contract unless they promise not to
> double-dip, and then do it anyway.
>

They don't have to promise not to double-dip - it is *impossible* to double
dip without breaching the contract that was agreed in accepting the APC.


> Not double-dipping would mean lowering subscription prices (for all
> institutions) by their fraction of the revenue from any Gold OA fee.
> In this sort of Fool's Gold (double-paid but not double-dipped) the victim
> is the foolish payer for the Fool's Gold -- a  payment from which all
> subscribing institutions get a rebate, the foolish payer's institution
> receiving exactly the same rebate as every other institution...
>

Author-pays means that you pay so that others don't have to. Not that
everyone else pays so that you don't have to (which is what you've
described).

That's because Springer (which, like Elsevier, has endorsed immediate,
> unembargoed Green for a decade) still endorses immediate unembargoed Green
> (as does Elsevier). The rest is just some new options plus some incoherent
> double-talk: Springer and Elsevier authors can still provide immediate,
> unembargoed Green, with Springer's and Elsevier's blessing.
>

No, they don't. Not unless you employ some incoherent double-talk in what
you call your repository (sorry, personal web space), and cross your
fingers whilst swearing you had no idea that either the institution or
Hefce had a deposit mandate and that you were really doing it under your
own volition and surely none of that other stuff matters.

If Springer or Elsevier had indeed adopted an embargo as a consequence of
> Finch Folly, then that would have been an example of the perverse effects I
> described.
>
> Emerald did, and hence it is an example of the perverse effects I
> described.
>

Except you've failed to apply any critical analysis of how the embargoes
impact/intersect with the requirements the policy. Instead of coming to the
correct conclusion that they are result of the *green* mandate of Finch,
you've taken an overemphasized and misunderstood statement on gold and
combined it with an OA embargo to fit your pre-existing narrative.

If Finch/RCUK had never happened, would Springer and Emerald not have done
exactly the same thing if the current HEFCE/REF proposals were to come into
force? We'll never know empirically, but lets see how quickly the embargoes
are rescinded if government policy was to go in the way you are campaigning
for.


>  *GT:* Clearly, they can't have been introduced to force authors into
>> choosing Gold.
>>
>
> They can't? Why not?
>

As was originally in my previous line: "their adoption has no material
effect on the choice made to go Green or Gold.". The embargo makes no
difference as to whether the author should choose gold or green and remain
compliant.

*GT*: So if not that, what? The obvious reason is not to force authors into
>> choosing Gold, but in anticipation of a large number of articles now being
>> made publicly available via Green.
>>
>
> The embargo is to forestall Green. The hybrid Gold offer is to cash in on
> the UK's fatuous subsidy for Fool's Gold. The RCUK "flow chart" said:
> prefer Gold over Green. What more evidence or incentives do you want?
>

Actually, the RCUK "flow chart" said "Are funds available from your funder
to pay for APCs". Nothing about embargoes affects that decision, or
disallows either of the resulting options. And it's left in the funders
hands to determine how best to allocate funding to maximise research and
maximise the availability of that research.


> *GT:* The only incentive for publishers to downsize the services they
>> provide is if they can increase their profits by doing so.
>>
>
> Or their subscriptions have become unsustainable because of global Green
> OA...
>

No - that just means they will convert from being subscription or hybrid
gold to being solely gold. They'll continue to offer all of the same
services that they already do. Because authors will still pay for them.

I mean, why wouldn't they? For a start, you can't afford not to publish. So
you have to find somebody willing to peer review and accept your paper. And
if you want the prestige of publishing in The Lancet, then you aren't going
to publish in some lesser journal for the sake of a few hundred pounds and
a few "unnecessary" services.

Not that people actually see those services as unnecessary.

G

>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20131009/28854183/attachment-0001.html