Stevan, why not wait to criticise our new questionnaire until you have seen
it?
Your earlier question was about our attitude to OAI. Briefly, the problem
is this. While DISorganised self-archiving, or even institutional
archiving, need not threaten the survival of the journals on which (as you
agree) it parasitizes, organised cross-searchable archives are considerably
more alarming. Thus the development of OAI is actually making a number of
publishers, who were previously relatively relaxed, considerably more
concerned. If search tools in effect allow a user to emulate the original
journal without having to pay for it, then all the added value - which, as
we have shown, authors and readers do in fact value highly - will disappear
because it will no longer be paid for.
Hence our emphasis on developing robust new economic models (and a migration
path towards them) before, and not after, damaging or even destroying what
is valuable about traditional journals.
However, perhaps this will turn out to be a non-problem given the widespread
total ignorance of eprint and preprint archives which we have found outside
the very specific world of physics!
Sally
Sally Morris, Secretary-General
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Phone: 01903 871686 Fax: 01903 871457 E-mail: sec-gen_at_alpsp.org
ALPSP Website
http://www.alpsp.org
Learned Publishing is now online, free of charge, at
www.learned-publishing.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad_at_cogprints.soton.ac.uk>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: ALPSP statement on BOAI
> On Mon, 8 Apr 2002, Sally Morris wrote:
>
> > There have been various comments on our Association's reaction to the
> > Budapest Open Access Initiative. Our response seems to have been
> > somewhat misunderstood: we do not oppose initiatives which advocate the
> > widest possible access to information - far from it, since dissemination
> > is part of the mission of most of our member societies. However, we
> > believe that it is essential that a business model is first found which
> > will pay for all the elements which researchers value.
>
> I have twice tried to state the question that it would be very helpful
> if Sally would answer. I shall state again here:
>
> ALPSP says it is for the widest possible access to information.
>
> Open access (i.e., free online access to all) is the widest possible
> access. Open access can be achieved immediately by self-archiving.
> ALPSP's recommended copyright transfer statements seem to explicitly
> allow self-archiving. http://www.alpsp.org/grantli.pdf
>
> So what does Sally mean that "it is essential that a business model is
> first found"?
>
> Does she mean it has to be found BEFORE authors exercise the prerogative
> to self-archive that ALPSP specifically allows?
>
> (This the ambivalence or ambiguity I was asking Sally to resolve.)
>
> > Contrary to
> > Stevan's view, researchers - as authors and as readers - do value very
> > highly the whole spectrum of functions which publishers traditionally
> > perform, and not just peer review itself.
>
> That is, as I have likewise stated, not the way to put it. The way to put
> it is to make the possibilities clear, and let authors then rank them.
>
> Not "Do you value feature X," but "Do you value feature X higher than
> open access" (possibly without feature X, or possibly with feature X
> payable as an option)?
>
> In other words, the ALPSP questionnaires are, as stated several times
> before, self-serving, if not biassed. They do not present the options and
> their respective trade-offs. They are merely product-satisfaction
> questionnaires: "Do you like feature X?"
>
> The old Maine joke is the relevant one here:
>
> Jake: "How's yir woife?"
> Clem: "C'mpayured ti whot?"
>
> See: "ALPSP Research study on academic journal authors"
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0263.html
>
> In other words, peer-review is, by definition, an essential, if we are
> talking about open access to the peer-reviewed literature (and not
> something else). But all other features are options, and the right way
> to put the question is whether they should be offered as options or
> continue to be bundled in obligately, at the expense of open access,
> as they are now.
>
> > Our latest, recently
> > completed, research study established very high ratings for all of the
> > following (listed in order of importance): management (as distinct from
> > execution) of the peer review process;
>
> What on earth does that mean? The peers review for free, so
> management/implementation IS the process we are talking about paying for,
> as peer review.
>
> And what do "high ratings" mean, if the trade-offs (c'mpayured ti whot?)
> are not made explicit?
>
> > selection of relevant and quality-controlled content;
>
> Again sounds like 100% redundancy with peer review: Those are the quality
> labels. What further "selection" is meant here?
>
> (Sounds like asking about how high people rate having cops on the beat,
> and then further asking them how high they rate their doing their work,
> and how high they rate the results of having them do their work...)
>
> If some other form of selection is meant here, other than the selection
> inherent in peer review itself, say so explicitly, and ask them to rate
> it relative to open access (from both the reader's point of view, i.e.,
> your own potential access to everything, and from the author's point of
> view, i.e., potential impact to your work when there are no more
> toll-barriers).
>
> "Would you rather (as author and reader) do without open access in
> exchange for X, or would you rather have open access, with X sold as an
> option for those who want it (and their institutions can afford it)?"
>
> It is hard to set up an unbiassed questionnaire like this, and even
> then the results are of limited value, because often respondents cannot
> weigh how they would actually value options that they have never
> actually had a chance to try. (We will return for this below, with the
> nonphysicists.)
>
> > gathering articles together to enable
> > browsing of relevant and quality-controlled content;
>
> Same as above.
>
> > content editing and improvement of articles; language or copy-editing;
>
> Editing and copy-editing need to be considered in their own right, apart
> from peer review, to see how much value they add, as weighed against open
> access. To the extent it is judged essential, editing can be added into
the
> peer-review price, but this will vary greatly from field to field, and
> again is hard for a user to judge hypothetically.
>
> > checking of citations/adding citation links;
>
> This is becoming a separable module if ever there was one (and an
> increasingly automatable one). Again, needs to be weighed, alone or in
> combination, against open access, rather than in isolation. See wording
> for feature "X" above.
>
> > and (even) marketing (maximising visibility of journal).
>
> I'd love to see how much of their research impact authors think
> actually comes from journal marketing! and how highly they would weight
> that, relative to open online access, in today's online age. -- But it
> wouldn't hurt if the respondents supplemented their intuitions with
> some actual data on this too...:
>
> "Online or Invisible"
> http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/
>
> > Respondents predominantly believe that
> > libraries should continue to pay for these processes in some way,
>
> And they would rather themselves (and their would-be readers) have no
> access at all to whatever their libraries cannot afford, then? For the
> sake of the citation-checking, perhaps, or the citation-checking plus
> the "marketing"?
>
> You see what I mean?
>
> > and
> > clearly more thinking and experimentation is urgently needed both on
> > viable alternative business models, and on the potential migration path
> > towards these.
>
> Indeed, but in the meanwhile, while all this urgent thinking and
> experimentation is going on, should they or should they not generate
> immediate open access by self-archiving (or publishing in open-access
> journals)? (In other words, how urgent is open access? to authors? to
> readers? how important is lost potential impact?)
>
> Open-ended positive ratings, not weighted or informed by the trade-offs,
> are merely recipes for reaffirming the status quo.
>
> > Interestingly, other than in physics, respondents mostly
> > had little or no idea what we meant by preprint or eprint archives.
>
> And was there perhaps a difference between the pattern of preferences
> expressed by the physicists, who have direct experience with open
> access, and the rest of your respondents? Objectivity would make one
> curious to examine this more informed sub-population...
>
> > The full results of the study, Authors and Electronic Publishing, will
> > be available for sale very shortly and details will appear on our
> > website, http://www.alpsp.org
>
> Here's another survey, on users and nonusers of archives. And the full
> results are available free...:
>
> http://www.eprints.org/results/
>
> > One small clarification - Bernard Lang was under the impression that
> > members only permitted free archival access to authors. This is not
> > what I meant; a growing number of our member publishers make their
> > online archival volumes freely accessible to all after a certain period.
>
> Research is not conducted and published in order to be embargoed for "a
> certain period" so as to keep paying for features that are no longer
> needed. Open access to peer-reviewed research means open access from the
> moment of acceptance (and indeed before it, for the pre-peer-review
> preprints):
>
> Harnad, S. (2001) AAAS's Response: Too Little, Too Late. Science
dEbates
> [online] 2 April 2001.
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/eletters/291/5512/2318b
> Fuller version:
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/science2.htm
> http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/41/index.html
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing free
> access to the refereed journal literature online is available at the
> American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01):
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> or
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
>
> Discussion can be posted to:
> american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
>
> See also the Budapest Open Access Initiative:
> http://www.soros.org/openaccess
>
> and the Free Online Scholarship Movement:
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
Received on Wed Apr 10 2002 - 21:59:52 BST