[GOAL] Re: Fair Golf vs. Fools Gold
Jean-Claude Guédon
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca
Thu May 14 21:54:32 BST 2015
We are back here on an old debate between Stevan and myself.
My take on all this is:
1. Authors seek ways to obtain prestige and visibility; currently,
journals are about the only way to achieve this;
2. Prestige and visibility of researchers are linked to journals that
act as logos. The impact factor is the present method to evaluate the
visibility of a journal. This is madness, but it has some degree of
purchase socially and institutionally, however irrational the foundation
for this kind of evaluation may be;
3. The mandated green road provides access to some version (depending on
the publishing house and its whims) of published documents; as such it
is a useful first step to achieve open access. But it is only a first
step. Because it is a very incomplete and imperfect first step, a
significant fraction of researchers have difficulties in seeing the
value of this approach and practise inertia. This is what stands behind
the need for mandates;
4. Open access journals, provided that they are free for the reader
(free as in the BOAI of 2016), and gratis for the authors offer
alternative publishing vehicles that compete with existing journals. As
such they are useful. And if they are free and gratis as explained
above, they will not help the rise of rogue or hybrid journals. Bringing
prestige and visibility to these journals is very important. However, OA
journals that are prestigious tend to be based on APC's, while free and
gratis journals tend to be less visible and less prestigious. Note that
visibility and prestige are not to be confused with inherent quality of
the work published. Note that some parts of the world, particularly in
latin America, are moving in that direction (Scielo and Redalyc);
5. Repositories, to the extent that they add services similar to those
of journals (peer review in particular) begin to converge with OA
journals and they are also useful in helping configure the future
communication system of science in a healthy way. They too will not give
rise to rogue journals or hybrid journals. They will give rise to better
methods to evaluate the quality of work;
6. Far from insisting on a time-dependent series of steps, pushing
simultaneously for basic Green OA, enhanced Green (with more services)
and free and gratis-Gold is the optimal strategy. We need all these
pathways to make headway and achieve true OA;
7. Paying for APC's, particularly for hybrid journals makes no sense at
all. This practise has opened the door to rogue journals (in the case of
APC-Gold) and it has led to double-dipping and worse in the case of
hybrid journals;
8. Given all the money already available for acquisition of licences
and materials in academic libraries, there is more money than needed to
support a world system of scientific communication that is fully under
the control of the research world;
9. If Google Scholar (or another search engine) could quickly and
precisely index the documents in open access, be they in repositories,
or in OA journals, it would help the OA movement enormously.
Jean-Claude Guédon
--
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
Le jeudi 14 mai 2015 à 14:07 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
> The subject header should of course have read "Fair Gold vs...."
>
>
>
> Apologies for the typo. (Someone will surely find a punny in there...)
>
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Predictably, I won’t try to calculate how much a fair Gold OA
> fee should be because (as I have argued and tried to show many
> times before) I do not think there can be a Fair Gold OA fee
> until Green OA has been universally mandated and provided:
> Pre-Green Gold is Fools Gold.
>
>
> Before universal Green OA, there is no need for Gold OA at all
> — not, at least , if the purpose is to provide OA, rather
> than to spawn a pre-emptive fleet of Gold OA journals
> (indcluding many “predatory” ones), or a supplementary source
> of revenue for hybrid (subscription/gold) OA publishers.
>
>
> The reason is that today — i.e., prior to universally mandated
> Green OA — both subscription journals and Gold OA journals
> continue to perform (and fund) functions that will be obsolate
> after universal Green OA:
>
>
> Peers review for free. Apart from that non-expense, here is
> what has been mentioned “for a small journal publishing only
> 20 peer-reviewed articles per year”:
>
>
> (a) “top-of-the-line journal hosting”: Obsolete after
> universal Green OA.
>
>
> The worldwide distributed network of Green OA institutional
> repositories hosts its own paper output, both pre and post
> peer review and acceptance by the journal. Acceptance is just
> a tag. Refereeing is done on the repository version. Simple,
> standard software notifies referees and gives them access to
> the unrefereed draft.
>
>
> (b) “a senior academic to devote just a little less than one
> full day per article”: This is a genuine function and
> expense:
>
>
> The referees have to be selected, the reports have to be
> adjudicated, the author has to be informed what to do, and the
> revised final draft has to be adjudicated — all by a competent
> editor. The real-time estimate sounds right for ultimately
> accepted articles — but ultimately rejected articles take time
> too (and for a 20-accepted-articles-per-year journal there
> will need to be a no-fault submission fee so that accepted
> authors don’t have to pay for the rejected ones. (Journals
> with higher quality standards will have higher rejection
> rates.)
>
>
> “(c) a part-time senior support staff at a nice hourly rate to
> provide over 2 days' support per peer-reviewed article”:
> Copy-editing is either obsolete or needs to be made a
> separate, optional service. For managing paper submissions and
> referee correspondence, much of this can be done with
> form-letters using simple, standard software. Someone other
> than the editor may be needed to manage that, but at nowhere
> near 2 days of real time per accepted article.
>
>
> But perhaps the biggest difference between post-Green Fair
> Gold and pre-Green Fools Gold is the fact that Gold OA fees
> will be paid out of a small portion institutional subscription
> cancellation savings post-Green, whereas pre-Green they have
> to be paid out of extra funds from somewhere else, over and
> above subscription expenses.
>
>
> That, and the fact that there is no need for pre-Green Gold OA
> and its costs, since Green OA can provide OA at no extra cost.
>
>
> To summarize: pre-Green Fools Gold is (1) overpriced and (2)
> unnecessary, whereas post-Green Fair Gold will (3) fund
> itself, because Green will have made subscriptions
> unsustainable.
>
>
> And, no, there is no coherent gradual transition from here to
> there other than mandating Green…
>
>
> Harnad, S (2014) The only way to make inflated journal
> subscriptions unsustainable: Mandate Green Open Access. LSE
> Impact of Social Sciences Blog 4/28
> http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Reckling, Falk
> <Falk.Reckling at fwf.ac.at> wrote:
>
> That data are supported by an initial funding
> programme of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for OA
> journals in HSS, see:
> http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16462
>
> best falk
> ________________________________________________
> Falk Reckling, PhD
> Strategic Analysis
> Department Head
> Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
> Sensengasse 1
> A-1090 Vienna
> Tel: +43-1-5056740-8861
> Mobile: +43-664-5307368
> Email: falk.reckling at fwf.ac.at
>
> Web: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en
> Twitter: @FWFOpenAccess
> ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1326-1766
>
> ________________________________________
> Von: goal-bounces at eprints.org
> [goal-bounces at eprints.org]" im Auftrag von
> "Heather Morrison [Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca]
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 14. Mai 2015 15:43
> An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> Betreff: [GOAL] $1, 300 per article or $25, 000
> annual subsidy can generously support small
> scholar-led OA journal publishing
>
> Drawing from interviews and focus groups with editors
> of small scholar-led journals, I've developed one
> generous model that illustrates how $1,300 per article
> or a $25,000 / year journal subsidy can generously a
> support small open access journal. In brief, for a
> small journal publishing only 20 peer-reviewed
> articles per year, this amount could fund
> top-of-the-line journal hosting, free up the time of a
> senior academic to devote just a little less than one
> full day per article, hire a part-time senior support
> staff at a nice hourly rate to provide over 2 days'
> support per peer-reviewed article, with an annual
> budget of $2,500 for extra costs.
>
> Calculations here:
> http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2015/05/14/1300-per-article-or-25k-year-in-subsidy-can-generously-support-quality-scholar-led-oa-journal-publishing/
>
> best,
>
> --
> Dr. Heather Morrison
> Assistant Professor
> École des sciences de l'information / School of
> Information Studies
> University of Ottawa
> http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
> Sustaining the Knowledge Commons
> http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
>
>
>
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