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<p>Stevan's analysis of the way in which open access was developing alongside licensing is very important. We need to understand the way in which OA developed in order to avoid the kind of distortion of OA that emerges from time to time. I was also going through
a time of fluid thinking at the same time as Ann and Stevan. For me a combination of pragmatism and vision led me away from licensing to embrace OA. The pragmatism came as I realised that licensing was simply not working. The theory was that the big library
consortia could produce more access at less cost, but gradually it became clear that the increase in access was only in the number of journals online - not in the number of people having access - and that the cost was still increasing well above inflation.
So in my mind the question was if licensing is not working, what is the alternative? That is where the vision element entered my thinking, because the open access people definitely had a vision - read the text of the BOAI if you do not believe me. Vision is
different from ideology, and also different from the religious fervour we were accused of. Vision in the BOAI is essentially earthed in the reality that had to be changed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Fred Friend</p>
<p>Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL </p>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font color="#000000" face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"><b>From:</b> Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com><br>
<b>Sent:</b> 19 November 2013 17:44<br>
<b>To:</b> LibLicense-L Discussion Forum<br>
<b>Cc:</b> Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [SCHOLCOMM] Big Deals, Big Macs and Consortial Licensing</font>
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<div dir="ltr"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Ann Okerson (as </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/ann-okerson-on-state-of-open-access.html">interviewed</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> by
Richard Poynder) is committed to licensing. I am not sure whether the commitment is ideological or pragmatic, but it's clearly a lifelong ("asymptotic") commitment by now. </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 was surprised to see the direction Ann ultimately took because -- as I have admitted many times -- it was Ann who first opened my eyes to (what eventually
came to be called) "Open Access." </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;">In the mid and late 80's I was still just in the thrall of the scholarly and scientific potential of the revolutionarily new online medium itself (</span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/sky-writing-or-when-man-first-met-troll/239420/">"Scholarly
Skywriting"</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">), eager to get everything to be put online. It was Ann's work on the serials crisis that made me realize that it was not enough just to
get it all online: it also had to be made accessible (online) to all of its potential users, toll-free -- not just to those whose institutions could afford the access-tolls (licenses). </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;">And even that much I came to understand, sluggishly, only after I had first realized that what set apart the writings in question was not that they were
(as I had first naively dubbed them) "</span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subversive_Proposal">esoteric</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">"
(i.e., they had few users) but that they were </span><em style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">peer-reviewed research journal articles</em><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">,
written by researchers solely </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.1">for impact, not for income</a><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;">But I don't think the differences between Ann and me can be set down to ideology vs. pragmatics. I too am far too often busy trying to free the growth of
open access from the ideologues (publishing reformers, rights reformers (Ann's "open use" zealots), peer review reformers, freedom of information reformers) who are slowing the progress of access to peer-reviewed journal articles (from "now" to "better") by
insisting only and immediately on what they believe is the "best." Like Ann, I, too, am all pragmatics (repository software, analyses of the OA impact advantage, mandates, analyses of mandate effeciveness).</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 Ann just seems to have a different sense of what can (hence should) be done, now, to maximize access, and how (as well as how fast). And after her initial,
infectious inclination toward toll-free access (which I and others caught from her) she has apparently concluded that what is needed is to modify the terms of the tolls (i.e., licensing). </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;">This is well-illustrated by Ann's view on SCOAP3: "All it takes is for libraries to agree that what they’ve now paid as subscription fees for those journals
will be paid instead to CERN, who will in turn pay to the publishers as subsidy for APCs."</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 must alas disagree with this view, on entirely </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=scoap+OR+scoap3+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbas=0&tbm=blg">pragmatic
-- indeed logical -- grounds</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">: the transition from annual institutional subscription fees to annual consortial OA publication fees is an incoherent,
unscalable, unsustainable Escherian scheme that contains the seeds of its own dissolution, rather than a pragmatic means of reaching a stable "asymptote": Worldwide, across all disciplines, there are P institutions, Q journals, and R authors, publishing S
articles per year. The only relevant item is the article. The annual consortial licensing model -- reminiscent of the Big Deal -- is tantamount to a global oligopoly and does not scale (beyond CERN!).</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 if SCOAP3 is the pragmatic basis for Ann's "predict[ion that] we’ll see such journals evolve into something more like 'full traditional OA' before too
much longer" then one has some practical basis for scepticism -- a scepticism Ann shares when it comes to "hybrid Gold" OA journals -- unless of course such a transition to Fool's Gold is both mandated and funded by governments, as the UK and Netherlands governments
have </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1073-The-Journal-Publisher-Lobby-in-the-UK-Netherlands-Part-I.html">lately proposed</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">,
under the influence of their publishing lobbies! But the globalization of such profligate folly seems unlikely on the most pragmatic grounds of all: affordability. (The scope for remedying world hunger, disease or injustice that way are marginally better --
and McDonalds would no doubt be interested in such a </span><a style="color: rgb(0, 51, 102); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" href="https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=oI6LUpG8LPLCyAHT5IHQDg#q=McNopoly+harnad">yearly global
consortial pre-payment deal</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> for their Big Macs too…)</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 also disagree (pragmatically) with Ann's apparent conflation of the access problem for journal articles with the access problem for books. (It's the inadequacy
of the "esoteric" criterion again. Many book authors -- hardly pragmatists -- still dream of sales & riches, and fear that free online access would thwart these dreams, driving away the prestigious publishers whose imprimaturs distinguish their work from vanity
press.) </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;">Pragmatically speaking, OA to articles has already proved slow enough in coming, and has turned out to require mandates to induce and embolden authors to
make their articles OA. But for articles, at least, there is author consensus that OA is desirable, hence there is the motivation to comply with OA mandates from authors' institutions and funders. Books, still a mixed bag, will have to wait. Meanwhile, no
one is stopping those book authors who want to make their books free online from picking publishers who agree…</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;">And there are plenty of pragmatic reasons why the librarian-obsession -- perhaps not ideological, but something along the same lines -- with the Version-of-Record
is misplaced when it comes to access to journal articles: The author's final, peer-reviewed, accepted draft means the difference between night and day for would-be users whose institutions cannot afford toll-access to the publisher's proprietary VoR. </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;">And for the time being the toll-access VoR is safe [modulo the general digital-preservation problem, which is not an OA problem], while subscription licenses
are being paid by those who can afford them. CHORUS and SHARE have plenty of pragmatic advantages for publishers (and ideological ones for librarians), but they are vastly outweighed by their practical disadvantages for research and researchers -- of which
the biggest is that they leave access-provision in the hands of publishers (and their licensing conditions).</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;">About the Marie-Antoinette option for the developing world -- R4L -- the less said, the better. The pragmatics really boil down to time: the access needs
of both the developing and the developed world are pressing. Partial and makeshift solutions are better than nothing, now. But it's been "now" for an awfully long time; and time is not an ideological but a pragmatic matter; so is lost research usage and impact.</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;">Ann says: "Here’s the fondest hope of the pragmatic OA advocate: that we settle on a series of business practices that truly make the greatest possible collection
of high-value material accessible to the broadest possible audience at the lowest possible cost — not just lowest cost to end users, but lowest cost to all of us."</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;">Here's a slight variant, by another pragmatic OA advocate: "that we settle on a series of research community policies that truly make the greatest possible
collection of peer-reviewed journal articles accessible online free for all users, to the practical benefit of all of us." </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;">The online medium has made this practically possible. The publishing industry -- pragmatists rather than ideologists -- will adapt to this new practical
reality. Necessity is the Mother of Invention.</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;">Let me close by suggesting that perhaps something Richard Poynder wrote is not quite correct either: He wrote "It was [the] affordability problem that created
the accessibility problem that OA was intended to solve."</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, it was the creation of the online medium that made OA not only practically feasible (and optimal) for research and researchers, but inevitable.</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;">Stevan Harnad</strong><br>
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