[GOAL] Re: Quo vadere?

[Stevan Harnad]

Arthur, I think there is no substantive disagreement between us:

(1) Within the limits of their immediate institutional user* incoming
access* needs and their available institutional budgets, institutions can
and should (and do) try to work our whatever blend of toll-access S/P/V
expenditure (subscriptions, license, and pay-per-view) works best for them.
There is nothing new in this (and it has next to nothing to do with OA).

(2) Any additional Gold OA spend, over and above S/P/V, is not about
immediate institutional user incoming access needs. It is about
institutional author *outgoing publication* needs (as well as a financial
investment in a hypothesis about what might eventually reduce incoming
access tolls).

(3) Yes, the copy-request Button does not provide immediate incoming access
(though it can sometimes provide almost-immediate access), but, unlike PPV,
it is *cost-free*. And it is likewise an investment in a hypothesis about
what might eventually reduce incoming access tolls -- and reduce Gold OA
costs too (from today's arbitrary, inflated, double-paid and often
double-dipped Fools-Gold OA costs to post-Green, downsized, Fair-Gold
costs, paid out of a fraction of the S/P/V cancellations made possible by
mandatory Green OA)..

I would add only that the probability and promptness with which authors
will comply with Button-based copy-requests is a scholarly cultural matter,
and that culture is likely to evolve with time, with the scope of the
adoptions of Green OA immediate-deposit & Button mandates and with the fact
that users and authors are the same people wearing different hats.

The weather in Montreal is getting quite cold. That never used to bother
me. On the contrary, I just put on warmer clothing and celebrated the
change. But (stupid and thoughtless as I am, on balance) I did not realize
until last year that the onset of the Montreal freeze means that 80% of the
street cat population of Montreal dies a miserable death within 2 weeks.
Winter still comes, and I still put on warmer clothing, but I no longer
welcome or celebrate the change. I am also conscious that whether via
warming or freezing, similar tragedies are growing all over the planet. A
matter far, far more urgent and important (let alone tragic) than
OA/non-OA...

*Stevan Harnad*

On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 5:45 PM, Arthur Sale <ahjs at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> Stevan, I will accept one of your attempts to re-interpret what I thought
> I wrote pretty clearly. Cancelling all journal subscriptions and big
> bundles is premature. But one can move quite a way towards it, by
> countering big bundles with precise usage information by journal, and
> educate the researchers (whom you and I find so frustrating in their
> inaction) regarding quasi-instant access vs subscription models, via the
> transitional processes of PPV and the request-a-copy button.
>
>
>
> However, I cannot accept your second and longer re-interpretation. PPV was
> economic for the University of Tasmania when I introduced it in 1998.
> Accessing all useful articles in a journal for $37 is preferable to $500,
> where usage levels are low. We did the economics then, and continue to do
> so. We know that the average paper is assessed by say 100 people globally
> (based on the abstract and metadata), 5 of whom may actually read it
> carefully (these numbers are rough, according to memory, and apply to the
> print/subscription era). And yes, I have continued to support open access
> even in the clear presence of PPV. The OA movement is aimed at the
> end-point, not the transitional processes of technological change.
>
>
>
> Finally, let me end on another area of agreement. I agree that waiting a
> day or three for PPV access is not preferable to quasi-instant online open
> access. But it is preferable to the often longer delay and greater
> uncertainty of the request-a-copy button, for the researcher.  I write this
> despite being an advocate of the button (as I know you are), particularly
> for researchers who have even less access to the research literature (and
> funding) than I do. Most researchers, I assert, do not mind waiting a few
> days to read a paper they consider might be important. They are not so
> addicted to instant gratification, because research is a long-term process.
>
>
>
> One of the issues, I think on reflection, is that the open access movement
> is too disorganized. We don’t get behind the success stories (Google
> Scholar, BASE, DOAJ) in the way we should, allowing the big traditional
> publishers to dominate via Scopus and Thomson-Reuters. We don’t influence
> their development to become solid parts of the dissemination tail of the
> research dog. Why is ORCID not supported by the OA movement? Endless
> bickering about green and gold is also counter-productive and divisive.
>
>
>
> Best wishes, and hoping the Montreal weather is not too cold.
>
>
>
> Arthur (in currently sunny Tasmania)
>
>
>
> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Stevan Harnad
> *Sent:* Thursday, 7 January 2016 00:33 AM
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: Quo vadere?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 12:24 AM, Arthur Sale <ahjs at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
>
> Christian Gutknecht <christian.gutknecht at bluewin.ch> wrote:
>
> I really like the idea to let researchers feel that subscription is an
> outdated model. And an easy way to do that without upsetting them too much,
> is to cancel subscriptions and get rid of the Big Deals.
>
> I don’t have access to the raw data now apart from knowing that we fulfill
> 13,000+ requests a year, but the University of Tasmania has operated a free
> unlimited-quantity service for 15 years, funded pay-per-view centrally (ie
> in replacement for subscriptions).
>
> Let me make sure I understand this, Arthur: Are you saying UTas has
> cancelled all journal subscriptions, and has just just pay per view?
>
> *[ahjs] Of course not. That would be the height of stupidity until open
> access is 100%. *
>
>
>
> That seems to be your answer to the question raised by Christian.
>
>
>
>
>
> *But it has enabled us to reduce our subscriptions significantly to those
> that are economically justifiable, and to measure this against access
> rates. Freed up money can be used for pay per view, and the economics
> actually do stack up, Stevan. Nobody reads paper journals any more. For one
> thing by the time they get to Tasmania they are obsolete.*
>
>
>
> My own campaign for OA began, in 1998 with ritually repeating
> "subscription/license/PPV" to distinguish the hydra-headed forms of "toll
> access" from (what eventually became) "OA," meaning the opposite:
> "toll-free access."
>
>
>
> Eventually, to simplify, "subscriptions" became the shortened portmanteau
> for "subscription/license/PPV."
>
>
>
> If, in the 1990's, it had turned out that the growing institutional
> library budget crisis that prevented institutions from being able to afford
> toll-access to all (or most, or much, or enough) of the research their
> users needed could be solved by simply shifting subscription tolls and
> license tolls by PPV tolls, I rather doubt that that the subsequent decades
> of quest for OA (toll-free access) would have ensued.
>
>
>
> Perhaps it was all just a big miscalculation (or failure to do the right
> calculation)? (I must say that I rather doubt it, but I certainly have not
> done the calculations.)
>
>
>
> I would add, though, that not only has reading journals on paper become
> obsolete in the online era, but so has the idea of waiting days for PPV
> access instead of just clicking.
>
>
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>
>
>
>
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