[GOAL] FW: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and open access

Wed Jul 19 20:11:54 BST 2017

From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:ghampson at nationalscience.org] 
Sent: 19 July 2017 18:31
To: 'Richard Poynder' <richard.poynder at btinternet.com>;
scholcomm-request at lists.ala.org; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative'
<osi2016-25 at googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing,
and open access

Hi Everyone,

I'd like to take this opportunity to invite everyone in the scholcomm
community to nominate individuals (self-nominations are welcome) to
participate in this year's efforts of the Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI).
Here's what we're about (from a draft version of our preamble, which is
being finalized this summer):

The principles and practices of scholarly communication are critical to the
advancement of research and research knowledge.  OSI's mission is to build a
robust framework for communication, coordination and cooperation among all
nations and stakeholders in order to improve scholarly communication,
beginning with scholarly publishing-to find common understanding and just,
achievable, sustainable, inclusive solutions, and to work toward these
solutions together in order to increase the amount of research information
available to the world, as well as the number of people everywhere who can
access this information. The guiding principles of OSI are to involve the
entire stakeholder community in a collaborative effort; to value all
stakeholder voices and perspectives; to thoughtfully consider the
consequences of all approaches; to coordinate and collaborate on developing
joint solutions and efforts; and to pursue and continue refining solutions
over time to ensure their implementation, effectiveness, and success.

OSI includes high-level decision makers from all stakeholder groups and many
different countries. We would particularly appreciate being able to add more
active researchers and authors to OSI this year, more university provosts,
and more industry leaders, policy makers, funder reps and journalists.
Increasing the number of voices from outside the US and EU is also a goal.
There are currently about 375 leaders on the OSI listserv, representing 18
different stakeholder groups, 23 countries and 250 institutions. Of these
individuals, about 50 represent research universities (in an official
capacity), 40 are library or library group leaders, 35 represent commercial
publishers, 30 represent government policy organizations, 30 represent open
knowledge groups and "born open" publishers, and 20 represent scholarly
societies. Nominations will be considered by the advisory group. OSI tries
to maintain a balance in terms of the number of representatives from each
stakeholder group.

I would also like to take this opportunity to correct the statement made by
Richard Poynder in his piece yesterday about the influence of funding from
scholarly publishers, at least with regard to OSI. Much as I don't want to
take up my time and yours by arguing these points, and much as I value
Richard's scholarship and analysis, I do have a responsibility to OSI and
its supporters and members to not allow misstatements like these to linger
(even if no one ends up reading this email, I have a responsibility to
correct the record). As a general point, it has certainly been
well-documented that research funding can influence research outcomes.
"Soft" sponsorships are a much murkier case, however. We're talking here
about everything from television commercials to billboards to the ads that
pop up alongside New York Times articles. Sponsors make it possible for
programs and events to happen---not just in scholcomm but in medicine,
sports, tech, news, on university campuses and in public parks. Right or
wrong, sponsorships are part of modern society and an important part at
that. As far as OSI is concerned, we are grateful for the interest and
support we've received from our sponsors to-date and we welcome support from
all interested sources. Indeed, we would ideally like to see universities
take over most of the funding responsibilities for this effort if only
because scholcomm reform is such a university-centric set of issues (spread
between 100 campuses, this wouldn't amount to much at all), but until/unless
this happens, UNESCO, foundations, publishers, and OSI members themselves
will carry the load.

Here are the specific corrections to Richard's article:

1.	"Membership of OSI is made up primarily of legacy publishers and US
librarians." This is incorrect. As noted above, about 10% of OSI members are
commercial publishing reps and another 10% are librarians. However, most OSI
reps wear several hats, so research university reps are often library heads
and scholarly society reps may come from their publishing division. This may
be a source of Richard's misinterpretation. Even counting this overlap,
though, the totals are far from "primarily."
2.	".as the funding provided for OSI by UNESCO has been falling, so the
contributions of legacy publishers have been increasing." OSI has an annual
operating budget of only about US$150,000 at the moment. We're not talking a
lot of money here. And there have only been two years of funding, which is
not enough to start drawing trendlines. In year one (for OSI2016),
commercial publishers supplied $27,500 of funding for a program that cost
$168,850. In year two they supplied $50,000 for a program that cost
$134,300---more money for a cheaper program. In the same period, foundation
support almost doubled from $25,000 to $45,000, UNESCO support fell by
almost half (a temporary situation), participant registration fees were
slashed from $58,000 to $13,500 and scholarship support grew from a few
thousand dollars to over $20,000 this year. So what kind of story you want
to write about these meager totals really depends on what kind of axe you're
looking to grind---UNESCO is down, foundations are up, etc. The bottom line
is that we did more with less in 2017 and these budget numbers will change
again next year when UNESCO will hopefully be able to contribute more. Also,
we've never hidden these raw figures so there's no need to interpret
secondary source material. These numbers are in the OSI reports and website,
and available on request:

OSI INCOME

OSI2016

OSI2017

UNESCO

$48,000

$25,000

Foundations

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

$0

$25,000

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

$20,000

$20,000

Laura & John Arnold Foundation

$5,000

$0

Commercial publishers

Elsevier

$7,500

$20,000

Taylor & Francis (Informa)

$0

$5,000

Nature Publishing Group (Macmillan)

$5,000

$10,000

Wiley

$7,500

$10,000

Sage Publications

$5,000

$5,000

Copyright Clearance Center

$2,000

$0

ResearchMedia

$500

$0

Universities

PressForward Institute (via Sloan)

$5,500

$0

George Mason University

$4,500

$0

Participant fees (@ $500 ea)

$58,000

$13,500

Private donations

$350

$800

Total income

$168,850

$134,300

3.	"the [OSI listserv] discussion frequently gets bogged down in
bad-tempered, unproductive conversations (see here for instance). But since
they hold the purse strings it is publishers who will likely determine the
outcomes (as Prosser fears)." We haven't surveyed OSI members about the
list. Almost all of the feedback I receive is very positive but we do need
to get a handle on what everyone thinks. What I can say is that there are
2,500 messages shared per year on this list and the vast majority of these
are very thoughtful and informative. Also, we have heard from members who
would like to see other ways to drive conversations off-list, and we're
looking into these solutions this year. It is true that there are occasions
when some OSI members (including Richard) will occasionally protest the
concept of OSI or including publishers in this conversation, and this
results in a frustrating period of a few days when I need to remind folks
that OSI is a diverse and inclusive group and that it's important to treat
each other with respect. But this is all part of the challenge of this
diverse group. As far as determining outcomes, commercial publishers do very
little speaking on the OSI list at the moment relative to much more vocal
anti-publisher voices. They are not driving conversations on-list. As for
off-list influence, there are no sponsorship quid pro quos from any OSI
funders. Indeed, we are beholden to our foundation and UNESCO supporters to
keep this effort open and balanced; our commercial publisher supporters have
never requested anything (other than poster space). I assure you that there
would never be a situation where we would accept any amount from any funder
in exchange for twisting the truth---I don't even know what that kind of
scenario would look like Richard ("Hello, OSI? We'll give you $100k if you
promote Product X as the new solution to peer review?" Really? Can I keep
$99k of that for my legal bills?)
4.	"Sponsored conversations can also lead to censorship. When in 2016,
for instance, someone criticised a publisher on the OSI mailing list the
moderator promptly deleted his comments, inaccurately portraying them as a
"personal dispute". In fact, as an advisor to the criticised publisher later
pointed out, the criticism was justified and appropriate." Correct. If I
recall correctly, I thought this conversation had to do with someone's sour
grapes about their publishing contract and was therefore inappropriate for
the OSI listserv (or any listserv for that matter). I was wrong, I
apologized to the group, and I corrected my mistake. Indeed, the ensuing
conversation helped clarify that there would never be any censorship on the
OSI list, so this wasn't a negative outcome but a positive. Censorship comes
about in many ways Richard---take intolerance or social media bubbles, for
instance---as I'm sure you'll agree. Having someone you disagree with in a
group conversation doesn't lead to censorship. Shouting down that person's
right to speak or claiming their perspective isn't legitimate are, however,
both very powerful forms of censorship. Indeed, I would argue that in this
particular context, the fear of getting ridiculed on social media by people
who are unwilling to see your point of view or even acknowledge your right
to co-exist in the scholcomm marketplace is a much more corrosive, much more
pervasive influence in the scholcomm conversation than the soft power of
sponsorships by people and organizations who are willing and able to help
promote this dialogue.

I think those are the main points. As always, if you have any questions you
are welcome to email me any time.

Thank you and best regards,

Glenn

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
 <tel:(206)%20417-3607> (206) 417-3607 |
<mailto:ghampson at nationalscience.org> ghampson at nationalscience.org |
<http://nationalscience.org/> nationalscience.org

From: scholcomm-request at lists.ala.org
<mailto:scholcomm-request at lists.ala.org>
[mailto:scholcomm-request at lists.ala.org] On Behalf Of "Richard Poynder" (via
scholcomm Mailing List)
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2017 5:43 AM
To: scholcomm at lists.ala.org <mailto:scholcomm at lists.ala.org> 
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] On sponsorship, transparency, scholarly publishing, and
open access

Sponsorship in the research and library communities is pervasive today, and
scholarly publishers are some of the most generous providers of it. While
the benefits of this sponsorship to the research community at large are
debatable, publishers gain a great deal of soft power from dispensing money
in this way. And they use this soft power to help them contain, control and
shape the changes scholarly communication is undergoing, often in ways that
meet their needs more than the needs of science and of scientists. 

This sponsorship also often takes place without adequate transparency. 

These are the kinds of issues explored in this (pdf) document
<http://bit.ly/2taOuoL> http://bit.ly/2taOuoL, which includes some examples
of publisher sponsorship, and the associated problems of non-transparency
that often go with it. In particular, there is a detailed case study of a
series of interviews conducted by Library Journal with leading OA advocates
that was sponsored by Dove Medical Press.

Amongst those interviewed was the de facto leader of the OA movement Peter
Suber. Suber gave three separate interviews to LJ, but not once was he
informed when invited that the interviews were sponsored, or that they would
be flanked with ads for Dove - even though he made it clear after the first
interview that he was not happy to be associated with the publisher in this
way.

 <http://bit.ly/2taOuoL> http://bit.ly/2taOuoL

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