On Tue, 13 Jul 2004, David Goodman wrote:
> Stevan, I do not think it possible to "disentangle the serials budget
> problem from the access/impact problem."
It is most definitely possible -- and necessary -- to disentangle
them. What is linking them inextricably in what you write below is only
your very own speculations! You are reading out what you yourself
have read in. Leave speculation and theory aside, deal with the here
and now, and it will be obvious that the serials budget problem and
the access/impact problem are distinct problems, and that the latter
can be solved, 100%, through self-archiving, without addressing the
former at all.
> The number of subscriptions to many ISI-level scientific serials is at a
> critically low point.
Irrelevant to the access/impact problem. All researchers should self-archive all
their articles, now, and that will provide a 100% solution to the access/impact
problem. This has nothing to do with current subscription levels one way or the
other.
> The funding at many independent scholarly societies is at a critically low point.
Irrelevant. All researchers should self-archive all their articles and
that will provide a 100% solution to the access/impact problem. Nothing
to do with society funding.
> Both paths to OA depend to a considerable extent on the continued
> existence of the journals.
Irrelevant. All researchers should self-archive all their articles and
that will provide a 100% solution to the access/impact problem. The
continued existence of journals is not the problem today; continued,
cumulating access/impact loss is.
> The "green" repositories path relies on them for arranging peer review,
> copy editing, and permanent archiving.
Correct: The green path to OA is the self-archiving of the author's own
peer-reviewed journal articles. And your point is...?
We are talking about self-archiving supplementary OA drafts of journal
articles, for all those would-be users webwide whose institutions cannot
afford the journal's proprietary version. No one is talking about doing
away with peer-review or with journals. And it is the journal's proprietary
version, purchased by the subscribing institutions, that has the archiving
burden today, not the author's self-archived supplements.
> The gold "OA journals" path relies on having journals there to change
> to OA. Any viable plan for OA must at the very least not undercut the
> existing journals, or must propose an alternative.
Incorrect. Any viable plan for OA must provide a way to provide 100% OA,
that's all. Talk of "undercutting" journals is pure speculation, with no
evidence in its support. (A decade and a half's evidence instead suggests
exactly the opposite: that OA self-archiving takes place alongside the
toll-access journal system.)
And as to proposing an alternative: An alternative to what? To
OA? Self-archiving is today providing OA for the c. 20% of articles that
are being self-archived annually so far. It can and will provide OA for
all 100%, as soon as they are being self-archived.
So what sort of alternative needs to be proposed? We are not talking
about serials budgets; we are not talking about reforming the serials
publication system; we are not talking about OA journal publishing. We
are talking about providing OA, 100% OA.
Does every speculation (e.g., about "undercutting," for which there is zero
evidence) require an "alternative" counter-speculation? Well, if you want one,
here it is, yet again:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
But it is an empty exercise. What is needed is OA, not another decade
of paralytic speculation and counter-speculation.
> There are alternatives. For OA journals, it is possible to create new
> journals to replace those that can not or will not convert. This will
> obviously be slower than converting existing titles--and neither of them
> will be very rapid.
This golden road to OA is and continues to be one of the two roads to OA,
but it is the narrower, slower, and more uncertain road. The green road
is the one that can bear 100% of the traffic, right now, providing 100%
OA immediately. Taking only the slow road is almost as bad as just
just speculating paralytically, and providing no OA at all.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0026.gif
> For repositories, it would be possible to convert
> them into permanent structures, capable of supporting the functions now
> done by journals. It would be possible, but again, very difficult. I
> accept that your arguments for not doing this immediately are probably
> correct.
David, you are speculating again. There is no need for institutional OA
Archives to "support the functions now done by journals"! OA Archives' function
is to provide OA! It is journals themselves that support the functions
now done by journals. And we are talking about OA provision (via either
green or gold), not only, or mainly, about OA journal publishing (gold).
> For individual archives in a supplemental role, there must be something to
> supplement. Some journals are strong enough to survive alongside the
> archives, like the APS, Many are not.
Pure speculation again, based on zero evidence.
There are about 24,000 journals today, most of them (especially the most
important ones) doing just fine. The problem today is hence not that
journals are tottering but that access and impact are being needlessly
lost daily.
> It will be a very difficult argument to continue subscribing to extremely
> expensive or little-used titles, once a large part of the contents is OA.
Can we please wait to cross that bridge when and if we come to it?
Right now, you are racing ahead with evidence-free (and
inaction-encouraging) speculations while the real, immediately remediable
problem -- which is needless daily, weekly, monthly access/impact-loss
-- continues.
> How expensive or little-used a title must be, or how large a part must
> be OA, is open only to conjecture on our part and funding decisions on
> others'. As a minimum, one can safely say that just as some journals
> will easily survive, some will not, and it is disingenuous to suggest
> otherwise.
It is open to conjecture, but I suggest that we rather open access and close
conjecturing: We have already done far too much of that, far too long.
> There may be some scientists who care only about the exposure of their
> work the year after publication. Most citations studies show much longer
> half-lives, and most scholars hope to have a permanent influence.
One gets out of these speculations exactly what one puts into them: The
proposal is to self-archive the annual 2,500,000 articles published in
the planet's 24,000 journals, so as to maximise their usage and impact.
You conjecture that this will undercut journals, and permanence, and having
conjectured that, you read off the consequences as if you were predicting
outcomes from evidence.
The evidence is that the journal system that is currently in place, and providing
the access, impact and permanence that it already provides, can be *supplemented*
with further access and impact, through OA self-archiving. That is all. The rest
is just counterfactual conjecture. Hypothesis non fingo.
> Fortunately, many others are interested in sustainability, will discuss
> it, and will plan for it. Librarians in particular are quite accustomed to
> being left to deal with the practical details of maintaining and
> preserving the scholarly communications system.
Let those who are concerned with (1) the sustainability of the current
journal publication system occupy themselves with that. Let those who
are concerned with (2) the preservation of proprietary digital content
(including subscribed/licensed journal content) occupy themselves with
that. And let those who are concerned with (3) the preservation of
supplementary self-archived OA versions of that same proprietary digital
content occupy themselves with that, if you wish.
But let those who are concerned with (4) putting an end to needless
access/impact loss by *providing* the supplementary self-archived OA
versions (with which the supplement-preservationsts, (3), can then
concern themselves) go ahead and do what it takes to generate that
100% OA, unencumbered by all these other irrelevant agendas, and the
speculations that drive them (or hold them back).
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#31-worries
Stevan Harnad
UNIVERSITIES:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing
Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your
policy at:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
UNIFIED DUAL OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
journal whenever one exists.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESSS FORUM:
A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing
open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
is available at:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
To join the Forum:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Post discussion to:
american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Received on Tue Jul 13 2004 - 17:24:54 BST
