[GOAL] Re : Re: SSRN Sellout to Elsevier

[William Gunn]

On the infrastructure point, I think we need to be clear what we consider
to be infrastructure, and also what we think must be a public good vs.
something which we are ok with business models being developed around. Not
to make too much of the "roads and bridges" analogy, but I do fear we'll
just end up talking past one another and not make the progress that is
needed on this critical topic of infrastructure if we don't actually mean
the same thing when we say the word.

Right now, the way I think about it is that the identifiers and resolvers
and standards that allow you to point from one object to another and to
reuse an object in another place are infrastructure, but the things and
places themselves aren't infrastructure. A road is infrastructure but a
shop on the side of the road isn't, likewise a DOI is infrastructure, but
the repository which holds the document identified by the DOI isn't. The
pipes which deliver the water to your home are infrastructure, but the
water itself isn't. Water is considered a public good, but it's also sold
for a obscene markup by massive corporations, precisely because consumers
feel value has been added through distribution, filtering, and marketing.
Hmm... sound familiar? Open source software is a public good, but IDEs and
hosting and SLAs and support and stuff are may not be.

This is just the way I'm currently thinking about it - not any sort of
official company position - but if someone has a different idea about
infrastructure, let's hear it, please, so we can mean the same thing and
move this important conversation forward.




(ps: it's worth thinking about how user communities fit in with this. For
example, even if you could fork Mendeley, you couldn't fork our community
of users. This shows to me the value of a healthy ecosystem of apps and why
commercial players shouldn't be feared in the services space - if Mendeley
starts doing bad stuff, people will go use Zotero or Papers or whatever
other tool they like. Different economics entirely from selling access to
unique content.)


William Gunn
+1 (650) 614-1749
http://synthesis.williamgunn.org/about/

On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 4:34 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 11:22 PM, Éric Archambault <
> eric.archambault at science-metrix.com> wrote:
>
>> Isidro
>>
>> Not so sure. Two weeks ago while visiting university libraries in Europe
>> I saw that many of them are switching/considering to switch to their CRIS
>> instead of continuing to rely on their traditional repositories and the
>> mostly open source software. We'll have to see how far it goes but the rise
>> of national research assessment exercises and national OA mandates, there
>> is growing pressure to consolidate research data and expect Elsevier,
>> Holtzbrinck (->Digital Science->Symplectic), and Thomson Reuters (and
>> whomever acquires the IP & Science unit - which the rumor mill suggests
>> could be acquired by BC Partners, itself Holtzbrinck's partner in Springer
>> Nature - thus possibly more consolidation on the way) to increase their
>> stronghold on research data and research intelligence.
>>
>> Only fools think we are witnessing an opening of research knowledge
>> dissemination. The winners of open data and open access will be large
>> corporates concerns. Research is big business and there are huge economies
>> of scale in that industry, just as in so many others. Consolidation is the
>> name of the game, and amateur bricolage solutions are giving way to
>> corporate professional solutions, whether we like it or not.
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>> Eric Archambault, Ph.D.
>> President and CEO | Président-directeur général
>> Science-Metrix & 1science
>>
>> T. 1.514.495.6505 x.111
>> C. 1.514.518.0823
>> F. 1.514.495.6523
>>
>>
>>
> Completely agree with Eric. It's the increasing privatizing of academic
> Infrastructure that terrifies me. Geoff Bilder has also cogently argued
> this.
>
> Open (whether Green or Gold) is almost irrelevant if the material is held
> in non-discoverable fragmented repos. A commercial "solution" - TR,
> Elsevier, DigitalScience will effectively lock in discovery and access. The
> primary value of CC-BY open is that you can fork it. You can't fork Green.
> You can't fork academia.edu or Researchgate. You can't fork Mendeley
> (whose contents are "open" in name but not forkable in practice).
>
> My prediction is that DigitalScience and Elsevier will compete to manage
> university repos. What do repos cost? Peter Suber said 1.5 - 5 FTE/year.
> Multiply across UK (*150) and you get ca 400 FTEs. cost this at 100K real
> costs (e.g. RC costing) and you get 40 Million GBP. And that's for 5% of
> output. Suppose Digisevier goes to VCs or HEFCE or JISC and offers to do it
> for half and allow those valuable library staff to be "repurposed".
>
> We must build our own Open infrastructure. It's a matter of crisis. If we
> don't do it in the next 12 months it will be too late.
>
> There is enough Open technology to do it. If Universities, Funders,
> Libraries scholars and citizens get up and shout for Open infrastructure we
> can pool resources and do it. If we out-source our thinking and planning to
> Digisevier we shall be sidelined within 5 years.
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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