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Christian, and other readers of this list,<br>
<br>
It seems to me that many researchers are unhappy with any kind of
requirement or imposition, resorting to the 'academic freedom'
argument rather (all too?) quickly and easily. But librarians are in
a bind. They can't really cancel most subscriptions or BigDeal
licences without invoking the ire of faculty, which makes it
impossible for them to have meaningful negotiations with publishers,
because there is no way for them to have a 'walk-away point', so
important when negotiating. Publishers know, of course, that
librarians are not in a position to negotiate, and even if
negotiations are escalated up to the level of university leaders,
such as we found in The Netherlands recently, their position is also
fairly weak as they face pressure from both the publishers and their
faculty, not to risk reducing access to subscription journals.
Complaining is cheap for faculty: they don't pay for subscriptions
and often are not even fully aware of the cost.<br>
<br>
My proposal to make members of the faculty pay for articles they
publish in subscription journals was meant to address this lack of
awareness. If charging them for publishing in subscription journals
doesn't work — and I recognise the difficult position librarians are
in regarding such charges — then at least it shouldn't be beyond the
possibility of librarians to do more to make authors aware of the
cost of their decision to publish in subscription journals, short of
actually charging them. Making them aware of the cost may perhaps
not immediately result in changed behaviour, but it could be a very
useful nudge in the somewhat longer run (after decades of advocating
open access, who notices a year or two?). Does it ever happen? I'd
be most interested to hear about instances where it does.<br>
<br>
I don't know why you think that cancelling subscriptions and getting
rid of BigDeal licences would not upset researchers much. I am very
skeptical of that idea. However, if you would cancel and replace all
subscriptions by a 'pay-by-the-drink' approach, whereby individual
articles are bought upon request, from any journal, you may be on to
something. You would ensure access for researchers (and potentially
to a much wider range of journals than you can possibly subscribe
to). You would simply be substituting the 'just-in-case' model by an
actual usage-based one.<br>
<br>
There are no-doubt risks involved, such as researchers 'buying' far
more articles than the budget would allow for, and inconveniences,
such as needing a transaction for every article, and there will
no-doubt be objections from faculty, too, but if done transparently,
it would make them more aware of the costs and the anachronisms of
the pay-wall system of scholarly publishing.<br>
<br>
I am certain that people will protest at this and other proposals as
'bad', 'not workable' et cetera, but the fact is that if other, new,
ways of dealing with scholarly literature are not experimented with,
nothing will change, and even where it does change, it does so
painfully slowly. The idea of open access has been around for
decades now, and yet the proportion of articles being available and
re-usable barrier-free is still very small, and though growing in
number, hardly growing in proportion to everything that is being
published (it is my impression that the growth in the total number
of articles published is hardly smaller than the number of open
access articles every year).<br>
<br>
To believe that change will come from publishers is most
unrealistic. They have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders,
and not to academia, which militates against the sort of change the
scholarly community needs. And even where some changes do occur on
the part of publishers — hybrid journals, for instance — they are
almost universally denigrated (I'm not saying that is wrong, but
it's always done on the basis of 'double-dipping', which is a red
herring and masking the real reasons why hybrid journals are an
unwelcome development). The optimism with which I, and other members
of the original BOAI group of participants insofar as I know,
embarked on advocating open access has, at least in my view, mainly
been frustrated by deeply held conservatism in academic circles.
Most of what I hear and read about open access discussions, is
complaints about publishers. All too rarely do I hear or read
proposed — or better still, implemented — attempts at solutions.
There are very few around. Stevan keeps banging on about
self-archiving mandates. Admirable tenacity; poor results, so far.
And there are a few new style journal initiatives, such as PeerJ and
ScienceOpen and the like, which don't, unfortunately, account for
many articles yet, and the so far rather more successful PLOS-One.
And that's it. Altogether very small fry in the scheme of things. In
fact, 'hybrid' seems to be able to claim the most success. Quite
possibly because it preserves most of the old order, including the
unnecessarily high cost of the system (doesn't academia just lurve
throwing money away?) and the journal pecking order.<br>
<br>
Happy New Year! I am still hoping for real changes. Probably being
naive.<br>
<br>
Jan Velterop<br>
PS. I would agree with 'flipping' now, to get open access, and then
sort out cost reduction. I don't see it happening in a hurry,
unfortunately.<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 04/01/2016 00:15, Christian
Gutknecht wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:9F30116C-C894-4C47-BEC9-356C94BFB05C@bluewin.ch"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=windows-1252">
<div class="">Stevan, </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">I guess the record in RoarMap about the policy of
the University of Zurich is not correct at that point. The
deposition of at least the metadata of a publication in the IR
is required to get included in the annual report, which is the
foundation of research evaluation. It’s however correct that the
distinction of of the accessibility on ZORA (Fulltext freely
available or not) is not part of the research evaluation. But I
do not know any university that only counts publications that
are freely available at the repository.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Also counting records where the full text is
restricted but only available with a request-a-copy button as
Almost-OA on the same level as OA is not valid for me. With
„Request a copy“ there’s always a certain chance that you never
will get the full text. Especially for older records you cannot
expect the author to answer your request, because he/she may
already have left the university.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Regarding the suggested approach of Jan to charge
authors publishing in subscription journals, I think this would
be a bad option. Any requirement that tells authors where to
publish (even indirectly by imposing charges) will be rejected
as a not tolerable influence of the academic freedom. I mean
some academics already protesting with this argument, if the
university requires them to make their full text available on
the IR.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">But I really like the idea to let researchers feel
that subscription is an outdated model. And an easy way to do
that without upsetting them too much, is to cancel subscriptions
and get rid of the Big Deals. With the free money the library
then can create two kind of funds: One is the Gold OA fund
(incl. hybrid options but with a cap) and one is the fund for
costs resulting getting access to documents that are not longer
available via subscription (like costs for pay-per-view,
document delivery, individual subscription of a really important
journal). I think most libraries would find out that researchers
would get along quite well with this option. Because librarians
constantly overestimate the importance of their subscriptions
and especially the Big Deals where they buy/rent a lot of stuff
that is never used by their community. As Thomas mentioned it’s
really easy these days to get to the papers by simply asking the
author. Also Researchgate and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://academia.edu" class="">academia.edu</a> close the
gap where IRs fail to provide access. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">The advantage in this approach is that libraries
clearly set the incentive to Gold OA without the need of
additional budget. It doesn’t say, don’t publish in subscription
journals, it’s just says that subscription is something that
isn't supported by default anymore. And changing the default
really can make the difference, as there will immediate (Hybrid)
Gold OA. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">To be honest, I rather have a flip RIGHT NOW with
the existing "grotesquely inflated total expenditure“, then
going on like this for years where we spend the money anyway to
the Closed Access publishers and get nothing in return. It’s not
that I’m not concerned about the costs in the Gold OA world. But
the current situation is with the subscription business is
already so bad, it can’t get worse.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Best regards</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Christian</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">PS: Okay, it can get worse: Paying for Hybrid Gold
and keeping the subscriptions like it’s currently done in UK is
really not sustainable. But that was clear from the beginning.
Maybe it becomes better when offsetting agreements are set in
place. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">Am 03.01.2016 um 18:31 schrieb Stevan Harnad
<<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:amsciforum@gmail.com" class="">amsciforum@GMAIL.COM</a>>:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">Penalizing an institution's <i
class="">authors</i> for publishing their own articles
in subscription journals will not help that institution's
<i class="">users</i> gain access to the subscription
journal articles of authors <i class="">from all other
institutions</i>, hence it will not reduce the
institution's subscription budget, just increase the total
institutional spend by the author spend. (Hence Jan's is
yet another unstable, unscalable solution, the only
stable, coherent one being for all authors, at all
institutions, to be mandated to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/"
class="">provide Green OA</a>.)
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">To assess the effectiveness of the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/329/" class="">University
of Zürich</a> Green OA mandate (which has only one of
the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/370203/" class="">two
conditions</a> for the most <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/375854/" class="">effective
mandates</a>: immediate deposit is required, but
deposit is not a precondition for research evaluation)
what needs to be counted is not the annual proportion of
OA deposits but the annual proportion of
immediate-deposits -- because <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.zora.uzh.ch/" class="">Zora</a>
implements the automated <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.zora.uzh.ch/117835/" class="">Request-a-Copy
Button</a> to provide <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=MUCJVraTOuiM8Qf8hrn4Cw&gws_rd=ssl#q=button+%22almost-OA%22"
class="">Almost-OA</a> for embargoed deposits.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Once (effective) immediate-deposit mandates
are universal (or almost-universal), it will be
universal (or almost-universal) Green OA plus Almost-OA
that will make journal subscriptions cancellable at
last, thereby not only forcing the publisher downsizing,
cost-cutting and conversion to <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=MUCJVraTOuiM8Qf8hrn4Cw&gws_rd=ssl#q=harnad+%22fair+gold%22"
class="">Fair-Gold OA</a>, but also providing
institutions and their authors with the windfall
subscription cancelation savings out of which to pay the
small remaining fair-gold costs (i.e., just peer review
alone) many times over.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">A "<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=MUCJVraTOuiM8Qf8hrn4Cw&gws_rd=ssl#q=harnad+flip+OA"
class="">flip</a>" to today's Fools-Gold, even if it
had been possible (which it is not) would simply have
flipped today's grotesquely inflated total expenditure
from subscription fees to publication fees (before it
all flopped the very next day).</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">(But I have reconciled myself to merely keep
pointing the way to the optimal and inevitable outcome
without fretting about how long it will take the
research community to do the only sensible thing.)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Your Zen Archivangelist<br class="">
<div class="gmail_extra"><br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 8:27
AM, Velterop <span dir="ltr" class=""><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:velterop@gmail.com" target="_blank"
class=""><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:velterop@gmail.com">velterop@gmail.com</a></a>></span>
wrote:<br class="">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" class=""> I
have advocated this for a while now (but am not
aware of any university or library that's taken
it up):<br class="">
Charge authors of your university who insist on
publishing in a subscription journal either<br
class="">
<ul class="">
<li class="">a nominal amount that is based on
an estimate of the average per-article
revenue of subscription journals/publishers
(about $5000), or </li>
<li class="">the actual subscription amount
paid by the university to a publisher,
divided by the number of articles by authors
from the university, published in the
journals of that publisher.</li>
</ul>
These charges should be collected from the
authors' grants, be put in an open access fund,
and then be used by the university/library to
support authors willing to publish in
APC-supported open access journals.<br class="">
<br class="">
(For those who really don't like the 'gold'
strategy and favour the 'green' one above all:
you could use the open access fund to defray the
cost of your open repositories and of all the
effort needed to ensure that every single paper
from your university or institution is properly
and 'findably' deposited.)<br class="">
<br class="">
There will no-doubt be practical difficulties
with this, but perhaps it can be considered as
the seed of an approach?<br class="">
<br class="">
Jan Velterop<br class="">
<br class="">
<div class="">On 03/01/2016 12:39, Christian
Gutknecht wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">Well, I think Thomas is right.
As long libraries do not shift money from
the subscription side to the Gold OA side,
the transformation will be very very slow.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Take the University of Zurich
for example. I’ve just disclosed for the
first time ever what they are paying for
Elsevier, Springer and Wiley and put that in
relation with the institutional publication
behavior in this blog post: <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wisspub.net/2016/01/03/zahlungen-der-universitaet-zuerich/"
target="_blank" class=""><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wisspub.net/2016/01/03/zahlungen-der-universitaet-zuerich/">http://wisspub.net/2016/01/03/zahlungen-der-universitaet-zuerich/</a></a></div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">The University of Zurich has a
strong mandate since 2008 with probably one
of the best staffed OA team (7 persons) in
Europe. But regarding publications from
2014, only 23% (242 out of 1062) from all
articles published articles within journals
from Elsevier, Wiley and Springer Journals
are freely accessible via the IR. In 2014
too, the University of Zurich paid 3.4 Mio
CHF/USD to Elsevier, Springer and Wiley only
for Journal subscriptions. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">The situation becomes even more
absurd, when you learn that in 2014 there
were 176 publications authored by the
University of Zurich that were published by
PLOS (which by the way already is the half
of what the University of Zurich publishes
with Wiley!). But there is only little
institutional funding for APCs explicitly
limited to humanities. So all authors who
wish publish with PLOS have to throw in
additional money by their own research
budget, because the library claims to have
no additional money for large scale Gold OA
funding. Fortunately for the sake of OA,
Swiss authors are willing to pay with the
own budget that because the financial
situation isn’t that bad. But think about
the chance and the boost for OA, if the
University of Zurich would shift all or at
least a part of the money from the journal
subscriptions and create a publisher neutral
Open Access funds.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">So I think we can and should
promote more Green OA and care about a
better compliance. But if we really want to
speed up the transition to Gold OA we really
should consider to give the subscription
money a new purpose and use it in a
coordinated way to force the publishers to
change their business model. And as I heard
this was Berlin 12 about.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Best regards</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Christian Gutknecht</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">Am 31.12.2015 um 19:15
schrieb Stevan Harnad <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk"
target="_blank" class=""><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk">harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk</a></a>>:</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"
class=""><br class="">
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On Dec 31, 2015, at
10:59 AM, Thomas Krichel <<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:krichel@openlib.org"
target="_blank" class=""><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:krichel@openlib.org">krichel@openlib.org</a></a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div class=""> Stevan Harnad
writes<br class="">
<br class="">
<blockquote type="cite"
class="">1. Actually, no one
really knows why it is
taking so long to reach the<br
class="">
optimal and inevitable
outcome -- universal OA --<br
class="">
</blockquote>
<br class="">
oh I know. It's because
libraries are spending money
on subscriptions.<br class="">
And as long as they do, OA
remains evitable.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br class="">
</div>
<div class="">That’s about as useful
as saying that "I know why there is
poverty:</div>
<div class="">because the rich are
rich and the poor are poor."</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Not only is it not
possible to treat “libraries” as if
they were a monolith</div>
<div class="">any more than it is
possible to treat “authors” as a
monolith, </div>
<div class="">but it is completely out
of the question for a university
library</div>
<div class="">to cancel subscriptions
while its users have no other means
to</div>
<div class="">access that content. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">(Please don’t reply that
they do cancel what they cannot
afford: that is </div>
<div class="">not relevant. Libraries
subscribe to as much content that
their users need </div>
<div class="">as they can afford to
subscribe to.)</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">The only way to make
subscriptions cancellable is to
first mandate </div>
<div class="">and provide (universal —
not just local) <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/"
target="_blank" class="">Green OA</a>.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">SH</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
</div>
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