[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster

[Stevan Harnad]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 10:53 AM, Jean-Claude Guédon <
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:

>  Most interesting dialogue.
>
> I will focus on two points:
>
> 1. *Using the Web of Science collection as a reference*: this generates
> all kinds of problems, particularly for disciplines that are not dominated
> and skewed by the impact factor folly. This is true, for example, of most
> of the social sciences and the humanities, especially when these
> publications are not in English.
>

The purpose of using WoS (or SCOPUS, or any other standardized index) as a*
baseline* for assessing OA repository success is to be able to estimate
(and compare) *what percentage of an institution's total annual refereed
journal article output has been self-archived. *

Raw total or annual deposit counts tell us neither (1) whether the deposits
are refereed journal articles nor (2) when the articles were published, nor
(most important of all) (3) what proportion of total annual refereed
journal article output is deposited.

Institutions do not know even know their total annual refereed journal
article output. (One of the (many) reasons for mandating self-archiving is
in order to get that information.)

The WoS (or SCOPUS, or other) standardized database provides the
denominator against which the deposits of those articles provide the
numerator.

Once that ratio is known (for WoS articles, for example), it provides an
estimate of the proportion of total institutional article output deposited.

Anyone can then "correct" the ratio for their institution and discipline,
if they wish, by simply taking a (large enough) sample of total
institutional journal article output for a recent year and seeing what
percentage of it is in WoS! (This would obviously have to be done
discipline by discipline; and indeed the institutional totals should also
be broken down and analyzed by discipline.)

So if  D/W, the WoS-deposit/total-WoS ratio = R, and w/s, the
WoS-indexed-portion/total-output-sample = c, then c can be used to upgrade
W to the estimate of total institutional article output, and the WoS
deposit ratio R can be compared to the deposit ratio for the non-WoS sample
(*which must not, of course, be derived from the repository, but some other
way!*) to get a non-WoS ratio of Rc.

My own prediction is that R and Rc will be quite similar, but if not, c can
also be used to correct R to better reflect both WoS and non-WoS output and
their relative sizes.

But R is still by far the easiest and fastest way to get an estimate of
institutional deposit percentages.

(As far as I can see, none of this has much to do with impact factor folly.
For non-English-language institutions, however, the non-WoS correction may
be more substantial.)

Stevan has also and long argued about limiting oneself to journal articles.
> I have my own difficulties with this limitation because book chapters and
> monographs are so important in the disciplines that I tend to work in.
> Also, I regularly write in French as well as English, while reading
> articles in a variety of languages. Most of the articles that are not in
> English are not in the Web of Science. A better way to proceed would be to
> check if the journals not in the WoS, and corresponding to deposited
> articles, are peer-reviewed. The same could be done with book chapters.
> Incidentally, if I limited myself to WoS publications for annual
> performance review, I would look rather bad. I suspect I am not the only
> one in such a situation, while leading a fairly honourable career in
> academe.
>

Authors are welcome to deposit as much as they like: articles, chapters,
books, data, software.

But OA's primary target (and also its primary obstacle) is journal
articles. Ditto for OA mandates.

All disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities, in all
languages, write journal articles. This discussion is about the means of
measuring the success of an OA self-archiving mandate. It applies to all
journal articles (and refereed conference articles) in all disciplines.

There are problems with mandating book deposit, or even book chapter
deposit, so that is being left for later.

Nothing is being said about performance review except that the way to
submit journal articles should be stipulated to be repository deposit.


> 2. *The issue of rules and regulations.* It is absolutely true that a
> procedure such as the one adopted at the Université de Liège and which
> Stevan aptly summarizes as (with a couple of minor modifications): "*henceforth
> the way to submit refereed* *journal article** publications for annual
> performance review is to deposit them in the [appropriate] IR "*.
>

Liège does not mandate the deposit of books.


> However, obtaining this change of behaviour from an administration is no
> small task. At the local, institutional, level, it corresponds to a
> politically charged effort that requires having a number of committed OA
> advocates working hard to push the idea. Stevan should know this from his
> own experience in Montreal; he should also know that, presently, the Open
> Access issue is not on the radar of most researchers. In scientific
> disciplines, they tend to be mesmerized by impact factors without making
> the link between this obsession and the OA advantage, partly because enough
> controversies have surrounded this issue to maintain a general feeling of
> uncertainty and doubt. In the social sciences and humanities where the
> citation rates are far less "meaningful" - I put quotation marks here to
> underscore the uncertainty surrounding the meaning of citation numbers:
> visibility, prestige, quality? - the benefits of self-archiving one's
> articles in open access are less obvious to researchers, especially if they
> do not adopt a global perspective on the importance of the "grand
> conversation" needed to produce knowledge in an optimal manner, but rather
> intend to manage and protect their career.
>

I am not sure what is the point of the above observations. I agree it has
been difficult to get authors to deposit. That's why the OA movement has
turned to mandates, and now to ways of optimizing mandates so as to
facilitate and maximize success (i.e. deposit rates). And here we are just
talking about how to measure and compare those deposit rates between
institutions, and between mandates.

Nothing about impact factors, performance evaluation criteria, metrics,
discipline criteria or language differences. Just ways to induce journal
article authors to deposit them in their institutional repositories.

Saying all this is not saying that we should not remain committed to OA,
> far from it; is is simply saying that the chances of success in reaching OA
> will not be significantly improved by simply referring to "huge" benefits
> at the cost of only a few extra keystrokes. This is rhetoric. The last time
> I deposited an article of mine, given the procedure used in the depository
> I was using, it took me close to half an hour to enter all the details
> required by that depository - a depository organized by librarians, mainly
> for information science specialists. All these details were legitimate and
> potentially useful.  However, while I was absolutely sure I was doing the
> right thing, I could well understand why a colleague less sanguine about OA
> than I am might push this task to the back burner. In fact, I did so myself
> for several months. Shame on me, probably, but this is the reality of the
> quotidian.
>

I invite Jean-Claude to time me depositing an article in my institutional
repository (and I am not a fast typist)! It takes about two minutes.

In conclusion, i suspect that if Stevan focuses on such a narrowly-defined
> target - journal articles in the STM disciplines - this is because he
> gambles on the fact that making these disciplines fully OA would force the
> other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to follow suit
> sooner or later. Perhaps, it is so, but perhaps it is not. Meanwhile,
> arguing in this fashion tends to alienate practitioners of the humanities
> and the social sciences, so that the alleged advantages of narrowly
> focusing on a well-defined target are perhaps more than negatively
> compensated by the neglect of SSH disciplines. yet, the latter constitute
> about half, if not more, of the researchers in the world.
>

The target is journal articles in all disciplines. Not clear why SSH
journal article authors would be any more or less compliant with
self-archiving mandates than any other discipline. It has nothing to do
with books, yet.

Yes, once journal articles are being self-archived universally, many other
things will follow.

I suggest that it may be more constructive to practice deposit keystrokes
to provide OA than to cite a-priori rationales for the status quo,
Jean-Claude. I bet you'll be up to speed after depositing just a few
articles!

Stevan Harnad

>
>   Le mercredi 17 septembre 2014 à 07:07 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
>
>
>  Begin forwarded message:
>
>   *From: *Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
>
>   *Subject: *Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
>
>   *Date: *September 16, 2014 at 5:28:48 PM GMT-4
>
>   *To: *JISC-REPOSITORIES at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>
>
>
>   On Sep 16, 2014, at 2:46 PM, Paul Royster <proyster2 at UNL.EDU> wrote:
>
>
>  At the risk of stirring up more sediment and further muddying the waters
> of scholarly communications,
>
>    but in response to direct questions posed in this venue earlier this
> month, I shall venture the following …
>
> Answers for Dr. Harnad
>
> (1) What percentage of Nebraska-Lincoln output of peer-revewed journal
> articles (only) per year is
>
>    deposited in the N-L Repository? About 3 months ago I furnished your
> graduate student (at least he
>
>    said he was your student) with 5 years of deposit data so he could
> compare it to Web of Science
>
>    publication dates and arrive at some data-based figure for this. I
> cautioned him that I felt Web of
>
>    Science to be a narrow and commercially skewed comparison sample, but
> I sent the data anyway.
>
>    So I expect you will have an answer to this query before I do. If the
> news is good, I hope you will
>
>    share it with this list; if not, then let your conscience be your
> guide. As for benchmarking, I don’t believe
>
>    it is a competition, and every step in the direction of free
> scholarship is a positive one. I hope when
>
>    they hand out the medals we at least get a ribbon for participation.
>
>
>
>   Thanks for reminding me! It was my post-doc, Yassine Gargouri, and I
> just called him to ask about
>
>   the UNL results. He said he has the UNL data and will have the results
> of the analysis in 2-3 weeks!
>
>
>
>   So the jury is still out. But many thanks for sending the data.
> Apparently Sue was not aware that UNL
>
>   had provided those data (and I too had forgotten!).
>
>
>  (2) Why doesn’t N-L adopt a self-archiving mandate?
> I do not even attempt to explain the conduct of the black box that is my
> university’s administration;
>
>    so in short, I cannot say why or why not. I can only say why I have
> not campaigned for adoption of
>
>    such a mandate.  My reasons have been purely personal and
> idiosyncratic, and I do not hold them
>
>    up as a model for anyone else or as representing the thinking or
> attitude of this university. Bluntly,
>
>    I have not sought to create a mandate because I feel there are enough
> regulations and requirements
>
>    in effect here already. Instituting more rules brings further problems
> of enforcement or compliance,
>
>    and it creates new categories of deviance. There are already too many
> rules: we have to park in
>
>    designated areas; we have to drink Pepsi rather than Coke products; we
> have to wear red on game
>
>    days; we can’t enter the building through the freight dock; etc. etc.
> etc. I simply do not believe in
>
>    creating more rules and requirements, even if they are for our own
> good. The Faculty Senate
>
>    voted to “endorse and recommend” our repository; I have not desired
> more than that. But I am
>
>    concerned mainly with 1600 faculty on two campuses in one medium-sized
> university town—not
>
>    with a universal solution to the worldwide scholarly communications
> crisis. I see discussions lately
>
>    about “putting teeth” into mandated deposit rules, and I wonder—who is
> intended to be bitten?
>
>    Apparently, the already-beleaguered faculty.
>
>
>
>   I agree that we are over-regulated! But I think that doing a few extra
> keystrokes when a refereed
>
>   final draft is accepted for publication is really very little, and the
> potential benefits are huge. Also,
>
>   there is some evidence as to how authors comply with a self-archiving
> mandate — if it’s the right
>
>   self-archiving mandate, i.e., If the mandate simply indicates that*
> henceforth the way to submit refereed*
>
>   *journal article publications for annual performance review is to
> deposit them in UNL’s IR* (rather than
>
>   however they are being submitted currently) then UNL faculty will
> comply as naturally as they did
>
>   when it was mandaed that submissions should be online rather than in
> hard copy. It’s just a technological upgrade.
>
>
>
>    (3) Why do you lump together author-pays with author-self-archives?
> I was not aware that I did this, so perhaps you are responding to Sue’s
> catalog of various proposed
>
>    solutions—“author-pays OA, mandated self-archiving of manuscripts,
> CHORUS, SHARE, and others”—as
>
>    all being “ineffectual or unsustainable initiatives to varying
> degrees.” I feel we are strong believers and
>
>    even advocates for author self-archiving (so-called), and disdainful
> non-advocates for author-pays models.
>
>    But I think we have become aware of the divergence of interests
> between the global theoretics of the
>
>    open access “movements” on the one hand and the “boots-on-the-ground”
> practicalities of managing
>
>    a local repository, even one with global reach, on the other. Crusades
> for and controversies about
>
>    “open access” have come to seem far removed from what we actually do,
> and now seem more of a
>
>    distraction than a help or guide.
>
>
>
>   I can understand that, from the library’s perspective: The library
> can’t mandate self-archiving,  can’t fund
>
>   author-pays, and can’t do anything about authors’ rights. But maybe, if
> you look at the evidence that
>
>   mandates work, and become convinced, then the library could encourage
> the administration… And
>
>   of course if self-archiving is mandated at UNL, then the library can
> help with mediated self-archiving,
>
>   at least initially, as I pointed out to Sue (though it’s hardly
> necessary, for a few keystrokes — certainly
>
>   a much smaller task than UNL’s current mediated deposit: tracking down
> the PDF. checking the rights. etc.).
>
>
>  We have been (and continue to be) constant supporters of “green” open
> access; and we have appreciated
>
>    Dr. Harnad’s reliably indefatigable defenses of that cause against
> innumerable critics, nay-sayers, and
>
>    “holier-than-thou” evangelists of competing approaches. I sympathize
> with his weariness, I applaud his tirelessness,
>
>    and I do not wish to tax his patience further. I hope no part of this
> response will be interpreted as attempting
>
>    to dispute, contradict, or diminish any of his points. I regret if
> these answers are unsatisfactory or incomplete,
>
>    but that is all I can manage at this time.
>
>
>
>   Much appreciated, Paul!
>
>
>
>   Hope to have the UNL data for you soon, with a comparison with other
> IRs, mandated and unmandated.
>
>
>
>   Best wishes,
>
>
>
>   Stevan
>
>
>
> Paul Royster
> Coordinator of Scholarly Communications
> University of Nebraska–Lincoln
> proyster at unl.edu
> http://digitalcommons.unl.edu
>
>
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