Excerpts from the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
March 11, 2002
More press coverage for the Budapest Open Access Initiative
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
Anon., Cash boost for research access (for _The Scientist_)
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20020215/03
Anon., La revolte des savants pour la libre publication (for _Figaro_)
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/20020218.FIG0147.html
Charles W. Bailey, Jr., BOAI (for _Current Cites_)
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/2002/cc02.13.2.html
Roberto Casati, Soros Project: Articoli scientifici in rete per tutti (for
_Il Sole_)
http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art.jhtml?artid=93495&dnr=true
Caroline Davis, Soros gift for open access to journals (for the _Times
Higher Education Supplement_)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z1DE4307
* The Budapest Open Access Initiative
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
(Sign it, persuade your institution to sign it, take steps to implement it,
and spread the word.)
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Analogies and precedents for the FOS revolution
If asked for a precedent for the kind of revolution represented by FOS, we
might first mention the Gutenberg Press. But it isn't a very good
fit. It's a technological advance, and all the technology required for FOS
already exists. We're trying to bring about an economic change that will
take advantage of existing technology.
If we want an example of an economically sustainable industry which gives
away its product to end-users because the costs of production and
distribution are paid by others, then we need look no further than
television and radio. I've used these examples more than once recently to
argue that the long-term sustainability of FOS is not problematic.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=15022002-015414-4119r
http://makeashorterlink.com/?L5961238
But television and radio were "born free" (for end-users). From the start,
those wanting to make a profit in these businesses needed a funding model
compatible with open access for users. But most scholarly journals were
born priced. If future journals are to be free for end-users, then we must
transform their business model.
Are there precedents for this? Can you think of a product that was unfree
for end-users at one time, and became free at a later time, because an
intervening economic revolution shifted the costs from end-users to others?
Leave aside products now paid for by the governments (like roads), because
that isn't the only model we seek for FOS. Let's also put self-archiving
to one side, since it didn't exist in some pre-FOS form needing
transformation.
I've thought of one precedent: mail. The postage stamp allowed us to
change the funding model for letters, newspapers, and other mail, from
"recipient pays" to "sender pays".
When this example first occurred to me, I thought it minor and
stretched. But as I've learned more about the postal revolution, I've
changed my mind. It was an important social and economic transformation,
and its similarities to the FOS transformation are real, even if there are
important dissimilarities as well. Bear with me now.
Before stamps, writers sent letters free of charge. Recipients had to pay
to take their mail home from the post office. If they couldn't afford to
pay, they couldn't read their mail. Stamps were introduced precisely to
allow senders to pay in advance and lift the burden from recipients.
The revolution was launched by Rowland Hill (1795-1879), in his 1837
pamphlet, _Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practability_. The idea
of shifting costs to senders was instantly popular. A group of businessmen
interested in implementing the idea collected four million signatures
--more than 15% of the British population at the time. Parliament gave
Hill a temporary position in the Treasury so that he could put his theory
into practice. In 1840, England adopted the postage stamp and the "sender
pays" rule. Switzerland and Brazil made the change in 1843, and the U.S.
followed suit in 1847.
The primary similarity holding up the analogy is the switch from "access
fees" (paid by recipients) to "dissemination fees" (paid by
senders). That's precisely the change we need to make scholarly journals
free for readers and their institutions, and the internet makes it easier
by radically reducing the cost of dissemination. This suggests a secondary
similarity as well. Before stamps, postage rates depended on weight and
distance, which required separate calculations and record-keeping for every
letter. Hill realized that his reform would not only make access to mail
free for recipients, but would significantly lower the overall cost of
delivery. Likewise, providing open access to journals costs much less than
disseminating journals on paper or even disseminating them online through
DRM software that blocks access to non-subscribers.
There are limits to the analogy, of course, and exploring what they are
helps to illuminate the problems facing FOS. If universities agree to
support open-access journals by paying a dissemination fee for every
outgoing article, then during some indefinite transition period they will
still have to pay access fees for desirable journals using the older
business model. This forces them either to increase their overall serials
budgets or cancel subscriptions to cover their new costs at the other
end. (I sketched this dilemma in FOSN for 1/1/02, and pointed out several
possible solutions that make the situation more complex but also more
hopeful.) But when nations adopted Hill's funding model for mail, there
was no transition period in which users faced the dilemma of greater net
outlays or lost content. The only people who didn't save money from the
start were those who sent much more mail than they received.
This highlights another difference. With mail, essentially all senders are
receivers. Mail senders consented to the change, and even clamored for it,
not because they would be relieved of costs as receivers but because they
would pay less as senders than they were currently paying as
receivers. Libraries are similarly situated, and this explains why
librarians tend to support FOS. But libraries not the the most likely
sources of dissemination fees for FOS journals, and the more likely sources
tend to be senders who are not receivers, breaking the symmetry that
creates one incentive for the change. These are foundations and government
agencies, the funders of research who are not always readers or consumers
of research literature. These potential payors have been slower to show up
at the revolution and many still need persuading.
Moreover, journal subscribers are always volunteers, while mail recipients
are not. While both revolutions want to put costs only on volunteers,
postal cost were previously borne by non-volunteers. So the postal
revolution had at least this one incentive missing from the FOS revolution.
Other differences are not essential to analogy. Open-access journal
articles won't need "stamps" to wend their way from authors to
readers. There won't be a series of offices in which each needs to see
proof of payment before it passes articles along to the next. Delivery
won't be made, and rates won't be set, by a government agency. But these
three dissimilarities hang together. Because paper mail must be physically
delivered, sometimes across long distances, each station along the way
needed an assurance of payment. The easy to make sure that paying one
station paid them all was to have all be branches of a central agency.
Only time will tell whether other aspects of the postal revolution will
resemble the FOS revolution. For example, the switch to the "sender pays"
rule greatly increased the amount of letter writing. Will it great
increase the number of journals?
For another, England loved Hill for his reform. This son of a
schoolteacher who painted landscapes and built scientific instruments was
knighted in 1860, commemorated with a statue outside the General Post
Office in London, buried in Westminster Abbey --and of course he had his
face on a postage stamp.
Dwight Rhodes, History of Postal Systems
http://www.aretek.com/POSTHISTORY.html
Biographies of Rowland Hill
http://members.tripod.com/~midgley/rowlandhill.html
http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/armada/367/hillrowl.htm
http://www.glassinesurfer.com/f/gsrowlandhill.shtml
* Postscript. I don't claim that the postal revolution is the best analogy
or precedent for the FOS revolution, only that it is good enough (in Robert
Nozick's words) to be worth surpassing. I hope you'll post your thoughts
to our discussion forum, especially proposals for better analogies and
precedents.
Here are some questions. Are there better analogies or precedents than
Hill's postal revolution for the transformation of scholarly journals
sought by the FOS movement? One reason to have a precedent is to show
that the transformation we seek for scholarly journals is economically
possible, even feasible and realistic. Does the postal transformation show
this for journals? If not, again, are there other precedents that might
show it better?
Another reason to have a good precedent is to study it and learn to learn
how the transition was managed. What were the obstacles and how were they
overcome? What were the opportunities and how were they seized? Are there
lessons in the postal revolution that the FOS movement should take to heart?
FOS discussion forum
http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum/read
(Anyone may read; only subscribers may post; subscription is free.)
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If it's taxpayer-funded, it should be free
For half a year now, OpenlyInformatics has had an online petition arguing
that government-funded software should be open source and free for all
users. The petition is designed to educate researchers to the issues,
stimulate discussion, and bring about a change of policy.
Open-source software is not open-access scientific and scholarly
literature. But on this point, the two have a common interest. Federal
funding agencies should require grant recipients to make the results of
their research freely available online. There are many reasons. One is
that taxpayers have already paid for this research, and should not have to
pay again to see its results. Another is that the mission of federal
funding agencies is to promote science, not to enrich private companies
especially in a way that hinders science.
These are excellent policy reasons. But if you're a stickler, there's also
a good legal reason (not mentioned at the petition site). Federal law
requires that works produced by the government be put into the public domain.
Section 105 of the federal copyright law (U.S. Code, Title 17) states that
"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the
United States Government...."
The legislative history interpreting this section is laid out in House
Report No. 94-1476: "The basic premise of section 105 of the bill
is...that works produced for the U.S. Government by its officers and
employees should not be subject to copyright." The House report notes that
works by grantees may be treated differently from works by employees. But
the law "deliberately avoids making any sort of outright, unqualified
prohibition against copyright in works prepared under Government contract
or grant" and the open texture of the law for grant recipients has yet to
be resolved by courts.
Nevertheless, the law lays down an important federal policy that should
guide any court looking at the question. "The effect of section 105 is
intended to place all works of the United States Government, published or
unpublished, in the public domain. This means that the individual
Government official or employee who wrote the work could not secure
copyright in it or restrain its dissemination by the Government or anyone
else, but it also means that, as far as the copyright law is concerned, the
Government could not restrain the employee or official from disseminating
the work if he or she chooses to do so."
OpenlyInformatics' online petition
http://www.openinformatics.org/petition.html
(Thanks to C-FIT.)
Petition FAQ
http://www.openinformatics.org/faq.html
Jason Stewart and Harry Mangalam, The Openly Informatics Petition
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/01/11/openinfo.html
(Stewart and Mangalam are two of the petitions's authors.)
Andrew Dalke, Why I'm Not Supporting the Open Informatics Petition
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/01/12/dalke.html
(Dalke is an advocate and author of open-source scientific software.)
Justin Hibbard, The Open-Source Debate Enters the Genomics Arena
http://www.redherring.com/insider/2002/0225/1805.html
U.S. Code, Title 17, Section 105
http://makeashorterlink.com/?S1E33248
Legislative history of 17 USC 105
http://www.title17.com/contentLegMat/houseReport/chpt01/sec105.html
(Thanks to Mike Eisen.)
----------
Timeline
My Timeline of the FOS Movement has improved again this week, thanks to
suggestions and details from Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Matt Cockerill, and
Rune Dalgaard. I'm still looking for answers to these questions. Let me
know if you can help.
--When did Perseus move from CD's to the web?
--When was NCSTRL laid down before it was relaunched in 2001?
--Are there important FOS "firsts" not already on the timeline? Are there
other landmarks in the evolution of FOS not already on the timeline?
Timeline of the FOS Movement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
----------
Developments
* The Digital Library Federation (DLF) has endorsed a set of principles for
digital collections and a set of technical specs for digitization fidelity
and interoperability. The principles were enunciated by the Institute of
Museum and Library Services (FOSN for 2/6/02), and the technical specs are
homegrown by the DLF.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/press/DLFendorses2.html
* MedLine will now include TheScientificWorldJournal.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd020311.htm
* Carnegie Mellon researchers have released two search engines covering
full-text research papers. Cora covers computer science, and Sara covers
statistics.
Cora
http://cora.whizbang.com/
Sara
http://cora.whizbang.com/sara/
(Thanks to the LANL Research Library Newsletter.)
* In February, the Text Encoding Initiative launched its newsletter, TEI News.
http://www.tei-c.org/News/Letter/
* The DELOS Network of Excellence for Digital Libraries is looking for
applications to retrieve XML documents and evaluate their relevance to
search queries. It will test the submitted applications against one
another, looking for successful approaches and giving developers useful
feedback. The deadline for submitting an application is April 15.
http://qmir.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/XMLEval.html
* The March/April issue of _Science Editor_ has an interview with Paul
Ginsparg talking about arXiv. The interview is not online.
http://63.70.211.210/cfdocs/CSEviews2.cfm?volume=25&issue=2
* In the March 1 _U-Wire_, Nicole Usher describes the disenchantment of
three Harvard professors with BioMed Central and the Public Library of
Science, two FOS initiatives in which they actively participated. They are
frustrated that the PLoS petition didn't change journal access policies,
and they are frustrated that the BMC journals aren't (yet) prestigious
enough to give contemporary researchers an incentive to submit their papers
to them. It's as if the prestigious journals aren't free and the free
journals aren't prestigious --and as if prestige trumps all other
considerations. (PS: Prestige and pricelessness are entirely compatible
but sufficiently far apart today that some frustration is understandable,
provided we don't oversimplify. Some journals are both free and
prestigious, such as BMJ; the situation is fluid and expectations are
currently undergoing deep change; BMC is still young; major new initiatives
emerge with increasing frequency, such as the ISCA and BOAI; and for many
authors, enlarging audience and impact override initial prestige.)
http://www.uwiretoday.com/topnews030102007.html
(Thanks to Paul Pival.)
* The latest (undated) issue of _The New Review of Information Networking_
is devoted to interoperability. Only the table of contents is free online.
http://www.taylorgraham.com/journals/nrinvol7.html
* The February issue of _Applied Signal Processing_ is devoted to digital
watermarks. (PS: Yes, these are usually used for DRM. But they could
also be used to authenticate journal articles.)
http://asp.hindawi.com/volume-2002/issue-2.html
(Thanks to El.pub Weekly.)
* The Open Database Project is a portal organizing and searching free
online databases. If you manage a database of useful content, you can
participate in the ODP without charge. It welcomes databases on any topic,
including scientific and scholarly topics.
http://www.opendatabase.info/Default.asp
(Thanks to the Internet Resources Newsletter.)
* Six years ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill launched
Documenting the American South, a free online archive of primary sources on
southern history, literature, and culture. The site now contains more than
1,000 full-text books and manuscripts, and continues to grow.
Documenting the American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/
Brock Read's recent story on it for the _Chronicle of Higher Education_
http://chronicle.com/free/2002/03/2002030801t.htm
----------
Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum.
* EUSDIC Spring Meeting. E-Content: Divide or Rule
http://www.eusidic.org/Paris2002Spring%20Meeting.htm
Paris, March 11-12
* Open Publish 2001
http://www.open-publish.com/openpublish/
Seattle, March 11-14
* ARL Workshop on Interactive Publishing of Data on the Web
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/arl/index.html
Charlottesville, Virginia, March 11-15
* Computers in Libraries 2002
http://www.infotoday.com/cil2002/default.htm
Washington D.C., March 13-15
* International Conference on the Statistical Analysis of Textual Data
http://www.irisa.fr/manifestations/2002/JADT/welcome.htm
St. Malo, March 13-15
* The Electronic Publishers Coalition (EPC) conference on ebooks and
epublishing (obscurely titled, Electronically Published Internet
Connection, or EPIC)
http://www.epccentral.org/epic.html
Seattle, March 14-16
* Licensing and Digital Content: A Symposium
http://www.nfais.org/EventDetails.asp?EventID=9
Philadelphia, March 15
* Digital Resources and International Information Exchange: East-West
http://www.iliac.org/seminar/sem1.html
March 15 (Washington DC), 18 (Flushing NY), 20 (Stamford CT)
* Internet Librarian International 2002
http://www.internet-librarian.com/index.html
London, March 18-20
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Institute of Mueum and Library Services. Building Digital Communities
http://webwise.mse.jhu.edu/
Baltimore, March 20-22
* Advanced Licensing Workshop
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/advlic.html
Dallas, March 20-22
* Electronic Publishing Strategy
http://www.alpsp.org/tEPS220302.htm
London, March 22
* Association of Information and Dissemination Centers (ASDIC) Spring 2002
Meeting
http://www.asidic.org/s02program.html
St. Augustine, Florida, March 24-26
* OCLC Institute. Steering by Standards. (A series of satellite
videoconferences.)
http://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm
Cyberspace. OAI, March 26. OAIS, April 19. Metadata standards in the
future, May 29.
* WebSearch University
http://www.websearchu.com/
San Francisco, March 25-26; Stamford CT, April 30 - May 1; Washington DC,
September 23-24; Chicago, Octeober 22-23; Dallas, November 19-20.
* European Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/ECIR02/
Glasgow, March 25-27
* e-Content: Discovering and Delivering Value
http://www.informationhighways.net/conf/cindex.html
Toronto, March 25-27
* New Developments in Digital Libraries
http://www.iceis.org/workshops/nddl/nddl-cfp.htm
Ciudad Real, Spain, April 2-3
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Copyright Management in Higher Education: Ownership, Access and Control
http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/copy_manage2002/
Adelphi, Maryland, April 4-5
* Global Knowledge Partnership Annual Meeting
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F21C3456
Addis Ababa, April 4-5
* What Scholars Need to Know to Publish Today: Digital Writing and Access
for Readers
http://library.albany.edu/symposium/
Albany, New York, April 8
* International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~srimani/itcc2002/cfp.html
Las Vegas, April 8-10
* NetLab and Friends: 10 Years of Digital Library Development
http://www.lub.lu.se/netlab/conf/
Lund, April 10-12
* E-Content 2002 (on ebooks)
http://litc.sbu.ac.uk/econtent/index.html
London, April 11
* Censorship and Free Access to Information in Libraries and on the Internet
http://www.db.dk/kon/temadag/Censurogytringsfrihed_eng.htm
Copenhagen, April 11
* International Learned Journals Seminar: We Can't Go On Like This: The
Future of Journals
http://www.alpsp.org/s120402.htm
London, April 12
* SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm02/
Arlington, Virginia, April 11-13
* Creating access to information: EBLIDA workshop on getting a better deal
from your information licences
http://www.eblida.org/conferences/licensing/licensing.htm
The Hague, April 12
* Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html
Philadelphia, April 15
* United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference and Exhibition
http://www.uksg.org/conference.htm
University of Warwick, April 15- 17
* Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
http://www.cfp2002.org/
San Francisco, April 16-19
* EDUCAUSE Networking 2002
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/
Washington, D.C., April 17-18
* Museums and the Web 2002
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/
Boston, April 17-20
* Legal Guidelines for Use of Intellectual Property in Higher Education
http://www.oneonta.edu/conference/copyright/
Oneonta, NY, April 19
* Information, Knowledges and Society: Challenges of A New Era
http://www.congreso-info.cu/venglish.htm
Havana, April 22-26
* DAI Institute on The State of Digital Preservation: An International
Perspective
http://www.clir.org/agenda-digpres.html
Washington, D.C., April 24-25
* CLIR Sponsors' Symposium: New Challenges, New Solutions: Libraries for
the Future
http://www.clir.org/agenda_sponsorsymp.html
Washington, D.C., April 26
* The European Library: The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Frankfurt am Main, April 29-30
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The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter is supported by a grant from the
Open Society Institute.
http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/
==========
This is the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (ISSN 1535-7848).
Please feel free to forward any issue of the newsletter to interested
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FOS home page, general information, subscriptions, editorial position
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Guide to the FOS Movement
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm
Sources for the FOS Newsletter
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/sources.htm
Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/copyrite.htm
Received on Mon Mar 11 2002 - 18:57:10 GMT