On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 7:30 AM, Sally Morris <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk" target="_blank">sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk</a>></span> wrote:<div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial">Stevan overlooks the difference between 'publishing' an
article in a repository and in a journal. As long as researchers
prefer the latter (and there are lots of reasons why they seem to, in addition
to peer review) then there will be a demand for journals in which to
publish: selection and collecting together of articles of particular
relevance to a given audience, and of a certain range of quality;
'findability'; kudos of the journal's title (and impact factor);
copy-editing; linking; quality of presentation; etc
etc...</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial">And peer review is in any case not a contextless
operation. The selection of articles for publication in journal X is a
relative matter; not just 'is the research soundly conducted and honestly
reported?' but 'is it of sufficient relevance, interest and value to
our readers in particular?'</font></span></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I completely agree with Sally about peer review (it is a decision by qualified specialists about whether a paper meets a journal's established standards for quality <i>as well as subject matter, </i>as certified by the journal's title and track-record), and I explicitly say so in the longer commentaries of which I only posted an excerpt.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But that, of course, does not change a thing about the fact that peer review is merely a service, that can be unbundled from the many other products and services with which it is currently co-bundled. It certainly does not imply that in order for referees or editors to make a decision about journal subject matter, there has to exist a set of articles co-bundled in a monthly or quarterly collection, sold together as a product, online or on-paper!</div>
<div><br></div><div>As to the rest of the co-bundled products and services Sally mentions: If she's right, then journals have nothing to fear from Green OA mandates, since those only apply to the author's peer-reviewed, revised, accepted final draft. That's what's self-archived in the author's institutional repository. If all those other products and services are so important, then reaching 100% Green OA globally will not make subscriptions unsustainable, because the need, and hence the market, for all those other co-bundled products and services Sally mentioned will still be there.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The only difference will be that all users -- not just subscribers -- will have access to all peer-reviewed, revised, accepted final drafts. (That's Green OA, and once we are there, I can stop wasting my time and energy trying to get us there, as I have been doing for nearly 20 years now!) </div>
<div><br></div><div>But then can I ask Sally, please, to call off her fellow publishers who have been relentlessly (and successfully) lobbying BIS not to mandate Green OA, and have been imposing embargoes on Green OA, on the (rather incoherent) argument that (1) Green OA is inadequate for researchers' needs and has already proved to be a failure and (2) that if Green OA succeeded it would destroy publishing, peer review, and research quality?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Otherwise this (incoherent) argument becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and we have the Finch/RCUK fiasco to show for it.</div><div><br></div><div>Stevan Harnad</div><div><br></div><div><br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="WORD-WRAP:break-word">
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial">Sally</font></span></div>
<div><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial"></font> </div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial">Sally Morris</font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial">South House, The Street, Clapham,
Worthing, West Sussex, UK BN13 3UU</font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial">Tel: +44 (0)1903
871286</font></div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial">Email:
<a href="mailto:sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk" target="_blank">sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk</a></font></div>
<div> </div><br>
<div dir="ltr" lang="en-us" align="left">
<hr>
<font face="Tahoma"><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org" target="_blank">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a>
[mailto:<a href="mailto:goal-bounces@eprints.org" target="_blank">goal-bounces@eprints.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Stevan
Harnad<br><b>Sent:</b> 06 October 2012 23:12<br><b>To:</b> Global Open Access
List (Successor of AmSci)<br><b>Cc:</b>
<a href="mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" target="_blank">JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK</a><br><b>Subject:</b> [GOAL] Re: Open Access in
the UK: Reinventing the Big Deal<br></font><br></div>
<div></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;MIN-HEIGHT:14px;FONT:12px Helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:Arial;FONT-SIZE:13px"><b>Publisher
Wheeling and Dealing: Open Access Via National and Global
McNopoly?</b></span></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>Excerpted from more extensive
comments on the Poynder/Velterop Interview <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/942-.html" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#783f0f">here</span></a> and <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/943-.html" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#783f0f">here</span></a>.<br>
<br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>Jan Velterop:</b><i> “a shift to
an author-side payment for the service of arranging peer review and
publication is a logical one”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>The service of arranging peer
review I understand. <br><br>But what’s the rest? What’s “Arranging
publication”? Once a paper has been peer-reviewed, revised and accepted, what’s
left for publishers to do (for a fee) that authors can’t do for free (by
depositing the peer-reviewed, revised, accepted paper in their institutional
repository)?<br><br>And how to get <i>there</i>, from <i>here</i> -- and at a
fair price for just peer review alone? Publishers won’t unbundle, downsize and
renounce revenue until there’s no more market for the extras and their costs –
and Green OA is what will put paid to that market. Pre-emptive Gold payment,
while subscriptions are still being paid, will not – and especially not hybrid
Gold.<br><br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>JV:</b><i> “‘Hybrid OA’ doesn’t
exist. It is just “gold” OA. OA in a hybrid journal is the same as OA in a
fully OA journal for any given article.”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>Gold OA is indeed Gold OA whether
the journal is hybrid or pure (and whether the Gold is Gratis or
CC-BY)<br><br>But “hybrid” does not refer to a kind of OA, it refers to a kind
of journal: the kind that charges both subscriptions and (optionally) Gold OA
fees. <br><br>That kind of journal certainly exists; and they certainly can and
do double-dip. And that’s certainly an expensive way to get (Gratis) Gold OA.
<br><br>And the Finch/RCUK policy will certainly encourage many if not all
journals to go hybrid Gold, and publishers, to maximize their chances of making
an extra 6% revenue from the UK, will in turn jack up their Green embargoes past
RCUK’s permissible limits.<br><br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>JV:</b><i> “The “double-dipping”
argument is a red herring. There's… a notion that subscription prices should
be proportional to the number of articles in a journal. How would that work?
There are journals with 100 subscribers… and… with thousands of subscribers
[and] & 25 articles a year & 25 or more articles a
week.”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>Double-dipping is not about the
number articles or subscribers a journal has, but about charging subscriptions
and, in addition, charging, per article, for Gold OA. That has nothing to do
with number of articles, journals or subscribers: It’s simply double-charging.
<br><br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>JV:</b><i> “The cost, and…
revenue, of an individual article can only usefully… be expressed as an
average, and then probably company-wide. What would otherwise be the situation
for a loss-making hybrid journal that receives in one year 10% of its articles
as gold, and the next year only 2%? Impossible to work out. A subscription
system is inherently lacking in transparency”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>Nothing of the sort, and
extremely simple, for a publisher who really does not want to double-dip, but to
give all excess back as a rebate: <br><br>Count the total number of articles, N,
and the total subscription revenue, S. <br><br>From that you get the revenue per
article: S/N. <br><br>Hybrid Gold OA income is than added to that total revenue
(say, at a fee of S/N per article). <br><br>That means that for k Gold OA
articles, total hybrid journal revenue is S + kS/N.<br><br>And if the journal
really wants to reduce subscriptions proportionately, at the end of the year, it
simply sends a rebate to each subscribing institution:<br><br>Suppose there are
U subscribing institutions. Each one gets a year-end rebate of kS/UN (regardless
of the yearly value of k, S, U or N).<br><br>(Alternatively, if the journal
wants to give back all of the rebate only to the institutions that actually paid
for the extra Gold, don’t charge subscribing institutions for Gold OA at all:
But that approach shows most clearly why and how this pre-emptive morphing
scheme for a transition from subscriptions to hybrid Gold to pure Gold is
unscaleable and unsustainable, hence incoherent. It is an Escher impossible
figure, either way, because collective subscriptions/“memberships” – including
McNopolies -- only make sense for co-bundled incoming content; for individual
pieces of outgoing content the peer-review service costs must be paid by the
individual piece. There are at least 20,000 research-active institutions on the
planet and at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals, publishing several million
individual articles per year. No basis – or need --for a pre-emptive
cartel/consortium McNopoly.)<br><br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>JV:</b><i> “If journals should
reduce their subscription price when they get a percentage of papers paid for
as gold, what should happen if they lose the same percentage (for completely
different reasons) of subscriptions?”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>Less Gold – the value of the
year-end institutional rebate -- kS/UN – is less that year.<br><br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>JV:</b><i> “What if a journal
which decided to go hybrid has published a steady amount of 50 articles a year
for ages and all of a sudden attracts an extra 10 gold OA articles? By how
much should it reduce its subscription price?”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>By exactly10S/50U per subscribing
institution U.<br><br></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>JV:</b><i> “If an article is
worth £2,000 to have published with OA in a full-OA journal, why is it not
worth the same £2,000 if published in a hybrid journal?”</i></div></blockquote>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br>Simple answer: it’s not worth the
price either way. Both prices are grotesquely inflated. No-fault peer review
should cost about $100-200 per round…</div>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><br></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:13px Arial"><b>Stevan
Harnad</b><br><br><b><i>Excerpted from more extensive comments on the
Poynder/Velterop Interview </i></b><a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/942-.html" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#783f0f"><b><i>here</i></b></span></a><b><i> and </i></b><a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/943-.html" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#783f0f"><b><i>here</i></b></span></a><b><i>.</i></b></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>
<div>On 2012-10-02, at 5:00 AM, Richard Poynder wrote:</div><br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div lang="EN-GB" vlink="purple" link="blue">
<div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">Love
it or loathe it, the recently announced Open Access policy from Research
Councils UK has certainly divided the OA movement. Despite considerable
criticism, however, RCUK has refused to amend its policy.<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">So
what will be its long-term impact?<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">Critics
fear that RCUK has opened the door to the reinvention of the Big Deal.
Pioneered by Academic Press in 1996, the Big Deal involves publishers selling
large bundles of electronic journals on multi-year contracts. Initially
embraced with enthusiasm, the Big Deal is widely loathed
today.<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">However,
currently drowned out by the hubbub of criticism, there are voices that
support the RCUK policy. Jan Velterop, for instance, believes it will be good
for Open Access.<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">Velterop
also believes that the time is ripe for the creation of a New Big Deal (NBD).
The NBD would consist of “a national licensing agreement” that provided
researchers with free-at-the-point-of-use access to all the papers sitting
behind subscription paywalls, *plus* a “national procurement service” that
provided free-at-the-point-of-use OA publishing services for researchers,
allowing them to publish in OA journals without having to foot the bill
themselves. <u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">Velterop’s
views are not to be dismissed lightly. Former employee of Elsevier, Springer
and Nature, Velterop was one of the small group of people who attended the
2001 Budapest meeting that saw the birth of the Open Access movement, and he
was instrumental in the early success of OA publisher BioMed
Central.<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">Moreover,
during his time at Academic Press, Velterop was a co-architect of the original
Big Deal.<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt">More
on this, and a Q&A with Velterop, can be read here:<u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><a style="COLOR:blue;TEXT-DECORATION:underline" href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/open-access-in-uk-reinventing-big-deal.html" target="_blank">http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/open-access-in-uk-reinventing-big-deal.html</a><u></u><u></u></div>
<div style="MARGIN:0cm 0cm 0pt;FONT-FAMILY:Calibri,sans-serif;FONT-SIZE:11pt"><u></u><u></u></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>
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