[GOAL] [sparc-oaforum] Journal-flipping report open for public comments

[Stevan Harnad]

This is just a reminder that the preliminary draft of "Converting Scholarly
Journals to Open Access," by David Solomon, Bo-Christer Björk, and Mikael
Laakso, is open for public comments.

> https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/programs/journal-flipping/public-consultation/
>
> For more details, see the March 15 announcement.
>
> https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/programs/journal-flipping/call-for-public-comments/
>
> In about a month, we'll have to close the public comment period, or at
> least move on to the next phase of preparing the revised report for
> publication. If you have any comments to add, or if you want to share this
> draft with others who might have comments, please do so in the next few
> weeks.
> sparc-oaforum+unsubscribe at arl.org
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum


I've appended my (uncited) critique of 2007 to this report as a comment.

*Gold Conversion: A Prisoners' Dilemma?*
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/304-Gold-Conversion-A-Prisoners-Dilemma.html>


*SUMMARY: **Given the undeniable, irreversible and growing **clamour*
<http://www.ec-petition.eu/>* for Open Access (**OA*
<http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml>*) worldwide, journal
publishers face two **Prisoners' Dilemmas*
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma>*.*

*(1) The first concerns whether to continue business as usual, to mounting *
*opprobrium*
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445347a.html>* from
the academic community as well as the **tax-paying public*
<http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/>*, or to **convert directly*
<http://www.infotoday.com/it/nov03/hane2.shtml>* to **Gold OA*
<http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html>* now, at the risk
that institutional subscriptions at current prices for incoming journals
may not transmute stably into institutional "memberships" for outgoing
article publication costs at the same institutional price. If publishers
convert from institutional subscriptions to institutional Gold OA
"memberships" today, they counter the opprobrium and lock in current
subscription rates for a year (or whatever duration-deal is agreed with
institutions), but they risk institutional memberships defecting after the
duration elapses, with cost-recovery fragmented to an anarchic individual
author/article level that may not be enough to make ends meet.*


*(2) The second Prisoners' Dilemma facing publishers is that if they
instead counter the opprobrium by converting to **Green OA*
<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/>* now (as **62%*
<http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php>* of them already have done), **Green
OA Self-Archiving Mandates* <http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php>*
may still force their conversion to Gold eventually, but because
access-provision and archiving (and their costs) will by then be performed
by the distributed network of mandated Green OA **Institutional
Repositories* <http://roar.eprints.org/>*, the revenues (and expenses) of
journal publishing then may be **reduced*
<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm>*
from what they are now. (Perhaps this can all be integrated into just a
single Prisoners' Dilemma -- or perhaps it is not a Prisoners' Dilemma at
all: just the **optimal and inevitable* <http://cogprints.org/4841/>*
outcome of the powerful new potential unleashed by the online medium for
the communication of peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific research.)*



Although I no longer write much about it -- because there are strong
reasons for according priority to Green OA
<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/> Self-Archiving first, and I am ever
fretful about doing anything that might instead help get us bogged down,
yet again, in passive, pre-emptive speculation
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/217-guid.html> rather
than practical action -- I too expect and welcome an eventual
transition to Gold
OA <http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html> journal
publishing, and have done so from the very beginning
<http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/i-overture-the-subversive-proposal.shtml>.


The question, of course, is how we get there from here. My own expectation
(based on much-rehearsed <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/> reasons
and supporting evidence) is that it will be the eventual cancellation
pressure from mandated Green OA that both forces and funds the transition
<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm>
to Gold OA, with the institutional cancellation savings paying the
institutional Gold OA publication fees. But this scenario is predicated on
two necessary prior conditions: (a) universal Green OA and (b) universal
journal cancellations.


This scenario for converting to Gold OA does not work if it is not
universal; in particular, it cannot unfold "gradually" and piecemeal,
either journal by journal or institution by institution. The three reasons
for this are that (1) the true, fair costs of Gold OA publishing
<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0299.html> are not
known at this time, (2) nor is the money available to pay for them, (3) nor
(and this is perhaps the most important) would publishers be willing to
downsize to those asymptotic reduced costs at this time of their own
accord. Only (a) the cancellation pressure from universal Green OA,
together with (b) the distributed infrastructure provided by universal
Green OA -- allowing the functions (and costs) of access-provision and
archiving to be offloaded from journal publishers and libraries onto the
distributed network of Green OA Institutional Repositories -- will suffice
to force both the downsizing and the transition, while at the same time
freeing the funds to pay for it.


*(My profound ambivalence about again raising this speculative hypothesis
concerning the future of journal publishing at this time is that it risks
delaying universal Green OA, by increasing **publisher resistance*
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/full/445347a.html>* to the
**Green OA mandates* <http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php>* that are
needed to bring OA about. Yet I keep having to resurrect the hypothesis now
and again, as a counter-hypothesis, to answer equally speculative
hypotheses about a direct transition from non-OA to Gold OA, neglecting the
nonhypothetical, tried, tested, demonstrated and hence feasible,
intermediate step of universal mandated Green OA, which is, apart from all
else, an end in itself, being *eo ipso* 100% OA.)*


The trouble with the "flip-over
<http://www.infotoday.com/it/nov03/hane2.shtml>" hypothesis (the
aggregator's-eye view proposed by then-CEO of Ingenta, Mark Rowse in 2003
-- see Peter Suber's recent summary
<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-07.htm>) is the same
as the trouble with the "institutional membership
<http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind03&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&F=l&P=47532>"
strategy of BioMed Central as well as the "hybrid Gold
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/290-guid.html>" option
offered by a number of publishers today (the author/institution can choose
either conventional, no-fee non-OA publishing or fee-based OA publishing,
paid for per individual article published): The reality is that today most
of the potential institutional funds for paying for Gold OA (whatever the
price) are still committed to paying for institutional journal
subscriptions. Although the idea of locking this all in at current
subscription rates, using the very same money, and just "flipping" -- from
institutions as users, buying-in journals (i.e., annual collections of
articles published by other institutions), to institutions as providers,
paying-out for publishing their own individual articles -- sounds appealing
(especially to an aggregator, and as long as we forget for the moment that
the current subscription prices and publishing costs are arbitrary and
inflated, not reflecting the substantial economies to be made from
distributing the access-provision and archiving load across the network of
Green OA institutional repositories), there is a logical problem inherent
in the minutiae of this flip that make it into something of an Escher
drawing <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:DrawingHands.jpg>:


An institution can commit in advance to paying for the buy-in of a certain
yearly collection of journals for its users. But can it commit in advance
to publishing, in any particular journal, a certain yearly number of
articles by its authors? Are even the prior years' publication figures for
that journal from that institution a valid predictor of what will be
submitted by that institution to that journal the following year? And can a
peer-reviewed journal commit in advance to accepting a certain yearly quota
of papers from a given institution? (Is it not the referees who must
decide, article by article, journal by journal?)


Is it not more likely that the yearly institutional quota of articles
published in any particular journal will vary substantially from year to
year, and from institution to institution? And is it not the author who
must decide, in each case, where he wishes to submit his article (and for
the referees to decide whether they will accept it)?


The equation does balance out, even at current prices, if the "flip" is
universal. But as long as it is instead piecemeal and local to a journal or
institution, it contains certain internal contradictions. While there is no
universal OA, individual institutions will still need subscription access
to the individual journals their users require. (This is equally true if
the subscription access is transfered from the journal level to the
individual article level, through "pay-per-view.") As long as an
institution is paying for those annual institutional incoming content
access-fees, that money is not available to pay for outgoing article
publication-fees.


If an individual journal agrees to make all of an institution's outgoing
articles OA in exchange for the current subscription fee, that's fine -- so
far that's still just a bonus for renaming the "institutional subscription
fee" an "institutional publication fee." The institution continues to get
access to all the incoming articles in that journal, and, in addition, its
own outgoing articles in that journal become OA: What subscribing
institution would not happily agree to receiving that bonus as well, in
exchange for merely rebaptizing its current "subscription charges" as
"publication charges"?


But then (assuming this no-risk bonus is offered to *all* subscribing
institutions rather than just one, and they all accept this renaming), the
result would of course be that, next year, virtually all articles in that
particular journal become Gold OA, for all institutions, whether or not
they publish in or subscribe to that journal. So, the following year (or
whenever the "membership" deal elapses), why bother to subscribe to that
journal at all, especially for institutions that only publish the
occasional article in it every few years?


In evolutionary biology, this is what is called an "evolutionarily unstable
strategy". At the single-journal level, it is a recipe for inviting
cancellations, soon. It does not scale, either across time, or across
individual journals.


The same offer may sound less risky at the publisher "big-deal" level, in
which it is a joint subscription to a whole fleet of journals that is at
issue, rather than a single journal. But, first, if that is viable at all,
it is only viable for publishers with fleets of journals. And even there,
it is still the authors (not their institutions) who decide, individually,
each year, in what journal they should publish. Libraries can consult
annual user statistics to decide what journals to subscribe to next year,
but it is not clear that this also translates coherently into author
publication statistics. Again, libraries may be happy to take the Gold OA
bonus in exchange for just renaming their fleet-subscription fees
"publication fees" today, but what happens in subsequent years, when it is
author statistics that are consulted on which fleets of publishing fee
"memberships" to "renew"?


The system may stay stable for a while, if there is wholesale transition by
most journals at a fleet level. In fact, initially, the ones most at risk
for cancellation might then be the journals that do *not* offer the OA
bonus in exchange for renaming their subscription fees publication fees; so
this would in fact act to further universalize the transition to Gold (a
good thing). But we should be clear on the fact that this exercise would
have been a name-game, alongside a wholesale voluntary transition to Gold
OA publishing *on the part of publishers*, with libraries ready to commit
to pay for it at current rates, for now, as "membership fees."


(For the subscribing institution, the fee-based "product" was incoming
journals or fleets of journals; but for the publishing institution, the
fee-based "service" is based on individual outgoing articles, each in its
own author's chosen journal. A "flip" here would be rather like all
countries agreeing to pay McDonalds, Burger King, etc. a flat annual rate
out of taxes for all the burgers their tax-payers eat annually, based on
their running national averages for the latest N years: Fine for the fixed
big-mac-eating tax-payer, perhaps, but not for the ones who never touch the
stuff, or prefer more wholesome fare for their money. And that's without
taking into account that this would also lock in current prices in a way
that is impervious to supply and demand; or the possibility that it could
prove a lot cheaper to produce burgers some other way, some day. McDonalds'
promise to "pass on" any future economies to the consumer would sound
pretty hollow in this captive-market "membership" arrangement.)


Nevertheless, I'd certainly be happy if this could all be agreed quickly
and amicably, between publishers and institutional libraries: But can it?
Or would publishers, in a kind of prisoner's dilemma
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma>, worry that institutions
might then defect on some of their journals -- the ones they currently
subscribe to and use, but in which their authors do not publish much? The
prospect of such selective "cancellations" might well be enough to keep
publishers from making the first move, preferring instead to stick with
subscriptions and just offer hybrid OA (as many already do) as an option,
at an extra institutional fee per article, with no risk to the publisher,
rather than as an unconditional freebie in exchange for the current
subscription fee (simply renamed), relying on faith that "memberships" will
stay loyal in the long term even after everything becomes OA.


I can't second-guess the outcome of this prisoner's dilemma concerning
voluntary publisher conversion to Gold OA, but I can already say
confidently that the current option of hybrid Gold OA won't scale, because
there isn't the extra money to pay the extra OA fees while the potential
money for paying them is still paying for subscriptions. So hybrid Gold OA
fees will remain just an occasional extra bonus to publishers (and an extra
expense to institutions).


The one thing that just might encourage publishers to make the full
transition to Gold OA voluntarily, however, is the worry that if they wait
to make the transition under the anarchic pressure of Green OA
self-archiving and self-archiving mandates at the article level, then the
transition may indeed come with a forced downsizing and loss of income, as
I have hypothesized, whereas if they convert voluntarily now, at the
journal level, then they might hope to "lock in" current prices for a while
longer yet. This is in fact a *second* prisoner's dilemma, and I certainly
can't second-guess its outcome either, except to say that if it does drive
the transition, then it will have been the *prospect* of Green OA mandates
that induced the transition, rather than the actual *practice* of Green OA
mandates -- but the cause will still have been the Green OA mandates!


What the research community must not do in the meanwhile, however, is to
just sit passively, waiting to see whether or not the publisher and library
community resolve their Prisoners' Dilemma(s) in favour of Gold OA. Rather
than "waiting for Gold
<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#31.Waiting>," I hope we will
continue pushing full-speed for 100% Green OA by mandating it. That way we
win, regardless of how the Prisoners' Dilemmas are resolved. The Gold OA
dilemma, after all, is between the publishing community and the library
community, whereas Green OA is entirely between the research community and
itself.


Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition
<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/>. In: Anna Gacs. *The Culture of
Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age*. L'Harmattan.
99-106.
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