<div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">In his </span><a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/public-library-of-sciences-cameron.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">interview with Richard Poynder</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">, Cameron Neylon, as always, makes many valid and astute points. But there is one thing about which I think he is quite profoundly mistaken:</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><strong style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">CN: </strong><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">"</span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">While we can generate wider access with relatively little transitional costs through repository-mediated OA this won’t help to bring down subscriptions costs</em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">."</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Apart from the fact that lowering subscription (or publication) costs and providing open access to publisher research are not the same thing at all (and that the urgent and overwhelming priority of </span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Open Access</em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> is </span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Access</em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">), I think Cameron underestimates the profound causal connection between them:</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">No, the primary purpose of repository-mediated OA (Green OA) is not to serve as a transition to Gold OA publishing: it is to provide OA.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">But in providing the infrastructure for providing OA, the global network of Green OA repositories also provides the means of downsizing publishing to just the cost of managing peer review (which peers provide for free). All the rest of the costs of pre-Green-OA publishing (access-provision, archiving) are -- post-Green -- offloaded and distributed across the global network of Green OA repositories (while the print and online editions and their costs can be jettisoned completely).</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">That is why the small residual cost of post-Green Gold OA will be affordable, sustainable "Fair Gold" OA whereas the current cost of pre-Green Gold OA is arbitrarily inflated "Fools Gold" OA. And that's not just because the global Green OA infrastructure is not yet in place and absorbing all the costs of access-provision and archiving, but because </span><a href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">subscriptions are still in place</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"> and have to keep being paid until those articles are made Green OA! </span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Hence pre-Green Gold means not only inflated prices but double-payment (for (1) subscriptions to all the must-have journals that are non-OA plus (2) Fools-Gold fees for pre-Green Gold OA journals) -- not to mention the further possibility of (3) publisher double-dipping in the case of hybrid Fools Gold.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">So is it not at all the case that there is "</span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">a role for Green OA and institutional repositories, although perhaps only a transitional one</em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">": Green OA repositories can and will provide not only 100% OA, permanently, but they will thereby also make it possible (indeed necessary) for journal publishing to </span><a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">downsize and convert</a><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">to Fair Gold -- and at the same time release the institutonal subscription funds, of which a fraction can then be used to pay (rather than double-pay) for Fair Gold.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Cameron is completely right, however, that "</span><em style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">[t]he single most important task today is putting in place robust and transparent mechanisms to report on [Green OA mandatory] policy compliance… and monitor the growth of access</em><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">." That done, effectively, the transition to Fair Gold OA will then take care of itself.</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">(I would close by emphasizing that just as providing OA itself is incomparably more important and urgent than publishing reform, so OA's provision of access to all users, rather than just to subscribers, is incomparably more important and urgent than providing further re-use rights, over and above online access free for all: Fair Gold and all the re-use rights that users need and authors want to provide will come, as surely as day follows night -- but Green OA must come first.)</span><br style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 8:56 AM, Richard Poynder <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:richard.poynder@btinternet.com" target="_blank">richard.poynder@btinternet.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-GB" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">A new Q&A in a series exploring the current state of Open Access has been published. This one is with Cameron Neylon, Advocacy Director for the non-profit OA publisher Public Library of Science (PLOS). <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">*Some excerpts from Cameron Neylon’s answers*:<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“</span><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">I think the biggest achievement [of the OA movement since 2001] is actual adoption: the scale and growth of accessible research content today is both large and growing far faster than any other segment of research publishing. <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“By some estimates we already have public access to half of new literature in the biomedical sciences. This is a huge achievement, even though everyone at PLOS and in the wider OA movement would wish it to move faster. <u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“Successful repositories are burgeoning, pure Open Access publishers are growing at an unbelievable pace, and driven by an increasing pace of policy change from funders and governments our more traditional competitors in the legacy publishing industry are scrambling to catch up.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">~~<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“From my perspective there are strong advantages to journal-mediated Open Access supported by direct author side charges. When we buy a publication service we can and should set the requirements on immediate access and enabling re-use. But more importantly from my perspective it also creates an explicit market in substitutable goods, and this ultimately will bring the price of those services down — assuming that we can create an effective market.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“Alongside this, repositories are a critical means of increasing access at relatively low costs where journal-mediated access is not available or appropriate. There are transitional paths for different communities that rely to different extents on repositories and journals but neither in their current form offers a long-term solution.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“In the longer term we will need publication infrastructures that are efficient, enable ongoing review, and support wide-ranging re-use. These could be run by institutions, by communities, or by third party providers. They will have some characteristics of repositories and some of journals and some of publishers but will also be quite different.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">~~<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“Hybrid OA might be, or perhaps might have been, a viable transitional strategy to support a fully engaged effort of legacy publishers to move towards an Open Access footing. What we’re getting though is the use of hybrid approaches to lock in the existing inefficiencies of big deals.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“The scary thing is that libraries seem to be jumping to create big APC deals, which will have exactly the same problems as the big subscription deals. Alongside the problems of double-dipping by receiving both subscription and APC revenue for the same journal, and perhaps worse some publishers charging colour and page charges *on top* of APCs this isn’t an effective way to deliver a properly functioning market that brings prices down.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">~~<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“The single most important task today is putting in place robust and transparent mechanisms to report on policy compliance, pricing, and monitor the growth of access.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">“This may seem rather prosaic but we have wildly different estimates of the proportion and quantity of OA. Much of the fragmentation in today’s debate is caused by people building arguments on contradictory data. And it has been too easy for institutions and funders to announce mandates without systems to monitor their success, let alone enforce them.”<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal">
<span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"">The Q&A can be read here:<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:"Trebuchet MS","sans-serif""><a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/public-library-of-sciences-cameron.html" target="_blank">http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/public-library-of-sciences-cameron.html</a><u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
GOAL mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:GOAL@eprints.org">GOAL@eprints.org</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal" target="_blank">http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>