<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Jean-Claude,<div><br></div><div>It is easy to accept that scientific communication is not an activity that is easily reconciled with commerce, share holders, and profit. Even though it evidently has been reconciled for a very long time, in the print era, before the internet and the web became available. In this day and age publishing is not about scientific communication anymore (though some traditionalist publishers may disagree). It is a peer-review organisation service combined with a career-enhancing service. And that can be reconciled with commerce, as it is a service governed by the forces of competition.</div><div><br></div><div>The communication itself can – and does – easily take place without the help of publishers nowadays. Although this is not yet universally the case, it easily can be. Posting one's research results on the web, ArXiv-like, is a possibility open to us all. At very little or no cost. The savings relative to the current system of involving journals would be phenomenal: <a href="http://theparachute.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/holy-cow-peer-review.html">http://theparachute.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/holy-cow-peer-review.html</a> </div><div><br></div><div>So what is happening? An analogy: Researchers can easily take the very short walk to their destination, but insist on taking a taxi, on the institution's account, and the institution then complains about the fact that the driver wants to be paid. "But we need the taxi", the researchers maintain, "because we have our finest clothes on and it might rain". So despite appearances, the service the taxi delivers is not one of transportation, but one of protecting researchers against the risk of spoiling their clothes. An umbrella might do the same.</div><div><br></div><div>Back to scholarly reality. We use journals not for conveying the information, but for protecting scientific reputations and for fostering career prospects. That's fine, but doing that using a system of subscriptions provides perverse incentives. To keep subscriptions alive in order to sap them until they die and only then build up a 'pay for a service' system is one way to change the system, possibly, but what I like about the Finch report (and yes, it has its flaws; a lot is written about that elsewhere) is its radical choice for a complete change of the system, and tie payment to services requested. The report is grossly pessimistic about the cost implications, and even about the difficulties of a transition and there are other flaws. But its radicalism is to be welcomed, as it gives support to already existing initiatives like PLoS One and to new ones like PeerJ. Similar initiatives will spring up in increasing numbers, and the Finch report can only be seen as encouraging for those forces of real progress. The fact that traditionalist publishers have also welcomed the Finch report (though on the wrong grounds, I think, and they will come a cropper) is no reason to denounce it. Hanging on to the old (subscriptions) in order to achieve the new (open access) may have been considered a suitable strategy ten years ago, but what it delivers is at best a form of open access that's likely to be merely 'ocular access' and of limited use to modern science, in contrast to the benefits that come with a radical change to full open access (no rights limitations, commercial or technical), not just to the equivalent of text on paper, but to all the potential that can be released from text, tables, graphs and images in electronic format.</div><div><br></div><div>Meanwhile, ArXiv-like self-publishing seems to me a good thing. Anything more that is needed or desired can be obtained from entities now commonly referred to as 'publishers' (even though in reality their role is a different one).</div><div><br></div><div>Jan Velterop</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div>On 20 Jun 2012, at 17:05, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">
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It is not a question of hating publishers; it is a question of placing them in their rightful place. David Prosser, very aptly, defined publishers as a "service industry". This is excellent. Let publishers behave like a service industry, while recognizing that other kinds of actors and financial schemes may render the same services as well, or even better, than they do.<br>
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Researchers "value" journals only because evaluation techniques in the universities narrowly rely on scientometric techniques that are themselves based on journals (and were designed to evaluate journals, not researchers). They have little choice in the matter. However, managers of research institutions, in particular universities, would do well to study how their evaluation procedures relate to the high prices libraries pay for subscriptions, and how poorly they relate to the quality of their researchers.<br>
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As for what is "added" to research articles, it is done by peers or by editors (and both categories qualify as researchers). Style, clarity, layout are valuable additions, but this is secondary: researchers want access to <b>content;</b> they will gladly accept and even encourage good style, clarity, etc., but content is what they want.<br>
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Finally, if publishers were really trying<b> only</b> to make scientific work accessible, there would be no quarrel. The real issue is that commercial publishers (and even some society publishers) are unable to imagine a financial scheme that could provide OA <b>and</b> also provide a satisfactory margin of profit. However, as OA is optimal for the communication of validated scientific research, it is the solution of choice for science (and scholarship more generally). If commercial publishers find it "impossible to continue", so be it! Science will go on, and commercial publishers will join manuscript copyists on the junk pile of history.<br>
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Researchers want access, communication, evaluation; publishers want profits. The two, however much one may believe in the miracles of the invisible hand, are not equivalent, and do not even converge, as the last forty years of price increases amply demonstrate.<br>
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So, yes, let us have a more reasoned discussion. Let us do it, for example, by accepting that scientific communication is not an activity that is easily reconciled with commerce, share holders, and profit. Let us think a little bit out of the box of liberal economics. Perhaps a reading of Michael Sandel's book, "What Money can't buy" is in order here.<br>
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Jean-Claude Guédon<br>
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Le mercredi 20 juin 2012 à 15:22 +0100, Sally Morris a écrit :
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<font size="2"><font color="#0000ff">I find it very sad that the response on this list has been to denigrate both the Finch report's authors and publishers in general. It would seem that the (relatively small number of) primary contributors to this list take it as an article of faith that publishers are to be hated and destroyed; they do not want a balanced approach or a 'mixed economy' (e.g. of green, gold etc).</font></font>
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<font size="2"><font color="#0000ff">However, if researchers themselves, both as authors and as readers, didn't value what journals, and their publishers, add to research articles, they would long ago have ceased publishing in, or reading, journals, and contented themselves with placing their articles directly in, and reading from, repositories.</font></font>
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<font size="2"><font color="#0000ff">If that were to change, those that benefit from the proceeds of the current range of publishing models (not just shareholders, but also learned society members etc...) would indeed face a major challenge. But until it does, the challenge with which publishers are currently engaging is how to enable their authors' work to be as accessible as possible, without making it impossible to continue to do those things that authors and readers value in journals. I don't see how that makes publishers bad?</font></font>
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<font size="2"><font color="#0000ff">Can't we grow up and have a rather more reasoned discussion?</font></font>
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<font size="2"><font color="#0000ff">Sally</font></font>
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<font size="2">Sally Morris</font>
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<font size="2">South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU</font>
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<font size="2">Tel: +44 (0)1903 871286</font>
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<font size="2">Email: <a href="mailto:sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk">sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk</a></font>
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<b><font size="2">From:</font></b><font size="2"> <a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a> [mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org] </font><b><font size="2">On Behalf Of </font></b><font size="2">Jean-Claude Guédon</font><br>
<b><font size="2">Sent:</font></b><font size="2"> 20 June 2012 14:05</font><br>
<b><font size="2">To:</font></b><font size="2"> <a href="mailto:goal@eprints.org">goal@eprints.org</a></font><br>
<b><font size="2">Subject:</font></b><font size="2"> [GOAL] Re: Agreement on Green OA not needed from publishers but from institutions and funders</font><br>
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What I really, and I mean <b>*really*</b> like about this exchange is that priorities are finally being set up right. <b>The business of research is between researchers</b> and the institutions supporting research. Researchers ought to communicate among themselves as they choose, and not as external players (such as publishers) might desire. I really like what all my colleagues have been saying below, and they are all researchers. <br>
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As for Dr. Wise, her statements amount to reasserting or seeking a role for publishers, but she should understand that the point of research is not publishers, and what researchers need is some form of <b>publication</b>, not publishers. <br>
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The problem publishers have in this new digital world is that they have trouble justifying their role. To wit:<br>
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<li type="1" value="1">Peer review is performed by researchers, not publishers. Peer reviewers are selected by journal editors that are researchers, not publishers. Managing the flow of manuscripts in peer review often requires tools that publishers may or may not provide; however, free tools are available (e.g. OJS) and are evolving nicely all the time;
</li><li type="1" value="2">Linguistic and stylistic editing could provide a small role for publishers, except that they do it less and less for cost-cutting reasons (i.e. profit-seeking reasons).
</li><li type="1" value="3">Marketing of ideas is done wrong: it is done through journals and it is handled largely through the flawed notion of impact factors. More and more studies demonstrate a growing disconnect between impact factors and individual article impacts. Researchers do not need a marketing of journals; they need a marketing of their <b>articles</b> through some device that clearly and unambiguously reflects the quality of their visible (published) work.
</li><li type="1" value="4">To market their own articles, researchers should have recourse to OA repositories. Once better filled up through mandates, repositories can become platforms for the efficient promotion of articles. Such platforms are entirely independent of publishers.
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And Stevan is absolutely right: OA policy is not the publishers' business, but the business of institutions carrying on research.<br>
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Fundamentally, the publishers' problem is that they claim to know the publication needs of researchers better than researchers themselves; they also claim a degree of control over the "grand conversation" of science. Obviously, both propositions are unacceptable.<br>
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Jean-Claude Guédon<br>
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Le mercredi 20 juin 2012 à 07:41 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :<br>
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On 2012-06-20, at 7:15 AM, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) wrote: <br>
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...perhaps time to explore opportunities to work <i>with</i> publishers?<br>
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No, precisely the opposite, I think: It's time for institutions to realize that institutional <br>
Green OA self-archiving policy is (and always has been) exclusively their own <br>
business, and not publishers' (who have a rather different business...) <br>
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Negotiate subscription prices with publishers. <br>
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But do not even discuss institutional OA policy with publishers. <br>
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(And advise institutional researchers to ignore incoherent clauses <br>
in their copyright agreements: Anything of the form "P but not-P" -- e.g. <br>
"you retain the right to self-archive, but not if you are required to <br>
exercise the right to self-archive" -- implies anything at all, as well as the <br>
opposite of anything at all. Don't give it another thought: just self-archive. <br>
And institutions should set policy -- mandate immediate deposit, specify <br>
maximum allowable OA-embargo-length, the shorter the better, and <br>
keep publisher mumbo-jumbo out of the loop altogether. Ditto for <br>
funders, but, to avoid gratuitous extra problems as a 3rd-party site, <br>
stipulate institutional rather than institution-external deposit.) <br>
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Stevan Harnad <br>
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Dr Alicia Wise<br>
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Director of Universal Access<br>
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ElsevierI The Boulevard I Langford Lane I Kidlington I Oxford I OX5 1GB<br>
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M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: <a href="mailto:a.wise@elsevier.com">a.wise@elsevier.com</a><br>
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<b>Twitter: @wisealic</b><br>
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<b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a> [mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>David Prosser<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:31 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [GOAL] Re: Why should publishers agree to Green OA?<br>
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Laurent makes an important point. OA policies are between the funders or institutions and the researchers. These agreements come before any agreement regarding copyright assignment between authors and publishers. So, it is the job of publishers to decide if they are willing to live with the deposit agreement between the funder/institution and researchers, not the job of funders and institutions to limit their policies to match the needs of publishers.<br>
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On 20 Jun 2012, at 11:04, Laurent Romary wrote:<br>
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Not that I know. I think the French Research Performing Organizations are not planning to put negotiation with editors as a premise to defining their own OA policy. <br>
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Le 20 juin 2012 à 11:45, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) a écrit :<br>
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Hi Laurent,<br>
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Institutions already do have agreements with publishers via their libraries and/or library consortia.. This is certainly the case for INRIA. <br>
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With kind wishes,<br>
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Alicia<br>
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<b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a> <a href="mailto:[mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org]">[mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org]</a> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Laurent Romary<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, June 20, 2012 9:11 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [GOAL] Re: Why should publishers agree to Green OA?<br>
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This definitely makes no sense. Institutions are not going to start negotiating agreements with all publishers one by one. Does Elsevier have so much man power left to start negotiating with all institutions one by one as well. The corresponding budget could then probably used to reduce subscriptions prices ;-)<br>
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Le 20 juin 2012 à 09:53, Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF) a écrit :<br>
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Hi all,<br>
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Just a quick point of clarification…. Elsevier doesn’t forbid posting if there is a mandate. We ask for an agreement with the institution that has the mandate, and there is no cost for these agreements. The purpose of these agreements is to work out a win-win solution to find a way for the underlying journals in which academics choose to publish to be sustainable even if there are high posting rates.<br>
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With kind wishes,<br>
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Alicia<br>
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Dr Alicia Wise<br>
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M: +44 (0) 7823 536 826 I E: <a href="mailto:a.wise@elsevier.com">a.wise@elsevier.com</a><br>
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<b>Twitter: @wisealic</b><br>
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<b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a> <a href="mailto:[mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org]">[mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org]</a> <b>On Behalf Of </b>Peter Murray-Rust<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Tuesday, June 19, 2012 7:23 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [GOAL] Why should publishers agree to Green OA?<br>
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I have some simple questions about Green OA. I don't know the answers.<br>
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* is there any *contractual* relationship between a Green-publisher and any legal body? Or is Green simply a permission granted unilaterally by publishers when they feel like it, and withdrawable when they don't.<br>
* if Green starts impacting on publishers' revenues (and I understand this is part of the Green strategy - when we have 100% Green then publishers will have to change) what stops them simply withdrawing the permission? Or rationing it? Or any other anti-Green measure<br>
* Do publishers receive any funding from anywhere for allowing Green? Green is extra work for them - why should they increase the amount they do?<br>
* Is there any body which regularly "negotiates" with publishers such as ACS, who categorically forbid Green for now and for ever.<br>
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Various publishers seem to indicate that they will allow Green as long as it's a relatively small percentage. But, as Stevan has noted, if your institution mandates Green, then Elsevier forbids it. So I cannot see why, if Green were to reach - say - 50%, the publishers wouldn't simply ration it and prevent 100%. <br>
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-- <br>
Peter Murray-Rust<br>
Reader in Molecular Informatics<br>
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry<br>
University of Cambridge<br>
CB2 1EW, UK<br>
+44-1223-763069<br>
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