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What I find striking about Adam Tickell's comments in the THE
article is his suggestion that funds for publishing will have to be
"managed" and that "Quite a large number of people publish a huge
volume of papers. If they were to reduce that, it may not make any
significant difference to the integrity of the science base."<br>
<br>
It reminds me that when I spoke to David Sweeney, HEFCE’s directorof
research, innovation,and skills, (<a
href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/big-deal-not-price-but-cost.html"
target="_blank">http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk<wbr>/2011/09/big-deal-not-price-bu<wbr>t-cost.html</a>)
last year he said that it was not obvious to HEFCE "that a
constraint on the volume of material published through the current
scholarly system would be a bad thing and that is why, in our
research assessment system, we only look at up to four outputs per
academic."<br>
<br>
He added, "The amount of research deserving publication 'for the
record' is much less than the amount deserving publication 'for
immediate debate within the community' and whereas print journals
have met both needs in the past the internet offers the prospect of
decoupling the two, leading to a drop in the amount of material
requiring/meriting the full peer review and professional editing
service."<br>
<br>
This suggests to me a scenario in which universities and research
funders follow the Finch Committee's advice: opt for Gold OA and
agree to pay to publish papers, but then severely restrict the
number of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Researchers
who want to publish more than, say, one paper a year might be told
to either pay the publication fees themselves, or to use services
like arXiv (or perhaps their institutional repository, or even a
blog) for any they wish to publish beyond their ration.<br>
<br>
As Sweeney put it, "[T]here is a question about the point of
publishing material using the full panoply of quality-assured
journal publication. Our view is that we should look at research
quality as an issue of excellence rather than an issue of volume of
publications. I can't speak for the [UK] Research Councils on this
but, for us, one publication which is ground-breaking and
world-leading is worth more than any number of publications which
would be recognised internationally but not as excellent or as
world-leading."<br>
<br>
And indeed, that is what the title of the THE article implies: "Open
access may require funds to be rationed."<br>
<br>
Richard Poynder<br>
<br>
Stevan Harnad writes:<br>
<br>
<br>
These are comments on Paul Jump's article in today's Times Higher
Ed.,<br>
quoting Adam Tickel on the Finch Report, Green OA and Peer Review
Costs<br>
<a
href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=420326&c=1"
target="_blank">http://www.timeshighereducatio<wbr>n.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=<wbr>26&storycode=420326&c=1</a>
<<a
href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=420326&c=1"
target="_blank">http://www.timeshighereducat<wbr>ion.co.uk/story.asp?<wbr>sectioncode=26&storycode=<wbr>420326&c=1</a>><br>
<br>
THE COST OF PEER REVIEW: PRE-EMPTIVE GOLD VS. POST-GREEN-OA GOLD<br>
<br>
Professor Tickell is quite right that peer review has a cost that
must be<br>
paid. But what he seems to have forgotten is that that price is
already<br>
being paid *in full* today, handsomely, by institutional
subscriptions,<br>
worldwide.<br>
<br>
The Green Open Access self-archiving mandates in which the UK leads<br>
worldwide (a lead which the Finch Report, if heeded, would squander)<br>
require the author's peer-reviewed final draft to be made freely
accessible<br>
online so that the peer-reviewed research findings are accessible
not only<br>
to those users whose institutions can afford to subscribe to the
journal in<br>
which they were published, but to all would-be users.<br>
<br>
The Finch Report instead proposes to pay publishers even more money
than<br>
they are already paid today. This is obviously not because the peer
review<br>
is not being paid for already today, but in order to ensure that
Green OA<br>
itself does not make subscriptions unsustainable as the means of
covering<br>
the costs of publication.<br>
<br>
To repeat: the Finch Report (at the behest of the publishing lobby)
is<br>
proposing to continue denying access-denied users access to paid-up,<br>
peer-reviewed research, conducted with public funding, and instead
pay<br>
publishers 50-60 million pounds a year more, gradually, to make that<br>
research Gold OA. The Finch Report proposes doing this instead of
extending<br>
the Green OA mandates that already make twice as much UK research OA
(40%)<br>
accessible as the worldwide average (20%) at no extra cost, because
of the<br>
UK's worldwide lead in mandating Green OA.<br>
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