On Thu, 19 Aug 2004 Walt_Crawford_at_notes.rlg.org wrote:
> you'd think that if [the access/impact problem] was "the primary
> interest" of the whole research community, there would *be* 100% OA,
> or at least 85% (or whatever the so-called green number is these days).
Fair point. One could also add that if access/impact were the primary
interest of the research community then there would be no need for
the US and UK's recommended self-archiving mandate:
100% of researchers would already be self-archiving of their own accord.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/congress.html
But human nature being what it is, we don't always know what is
in our best interests, and even when we know, we don't always do it.
That is why we design incentive and reward systems. That is why
we have the "publish-or-perish" mandate: Most scholars know publishing is
in their own best interests (and in those of scholarship itself), but
without the carrot/stick of publish-or-perish many of them still
would not do it.
And regarding Open Access provision, what better authority can I cite
than the one I keep citing: the non-self-archiving authors themselves,
from Swan and Brown's (2004) JISC/OSI survey, in which they asked authors:
"how they would feel if their employer or funding body required
them to deposit copies of their published articles in... [OA
archives]. The vast majority... said they would do so willingly..."
Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey
Report.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3628.html
Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) Authors and open access
publishing. Learned Publishing 2004:17(3) 219-224.
http://www.ingentaselect.com/rpsv/cw/alpsp/09531513/v17n3/s7/
So if we want authors to act 100% in their own interests, their
employers and funders are going to have to require them to do it!
> 2. Is it plausible to believe a commercial publisher might abandon a
> journal (or go out of business!) and, in the process, cause all archival
> issues to disappear? Look no further than the same essay, where I cite
> George Porter's STLQ commentary on Springer Verlag and Nonlinear Science
> Today. The causes of abandonment may have been different, but the effect
> was the same: The back-issue archives were gone.
The back-issue archives problem -- a continuing risk until the
preservation problem for *all* journals is reliably and permanently
solved -- was with us in paper days and continues to be with us in online
days and has absolutely *nothing* to do with OA self-archiving, which
merely provides a supplementary version, over and above the official
publisher's version: The publisher's and library's proprietary version
is and always has been the one that needed to be preserved.
Yes, publishers sometimes go out of business; that risk has always been
there. Frequently their titles migrate to another publisher. Sometimes
they do not. In paper days all that was left then was the paper edition in
the libraries that had purchased it, plus whatever backlists were still
available. In online days the paper edition is left, plus the online
edition. None of this has anything at all to do with OA or self-archiving.
WC speculated that 100% OA provision through author self-archiving would
cause publishers to go out of business; the obvious counter-speculation is
that if it did, the titles would migrate to OA publishers. What exactly
is WC's point in citing the discontinuation of Nonlinear Science (not
the first discontinued journal, not the last)?
> Is it plausible to believe that some (not all) proprietary publishers will,
> indeed, "squeeze the remaining stones"
WC insists on wanting to speculate, to which the only answer is, of
course, to counter-speculate, if anyone finds this useful:
If 100% OA did cause cancellation pressure (because everyone can access
everything for free) then it is hard to imagine how raising the price
would increase anyone's inclination to keep subscribing! Downsizing,
cost-cutting and price reduction would seem a better way to try to hold
onto a shrinking market.
But to test this hypothesis, we need 100% OA, not pre-emptive guesses.
> until that strategy fails, then fold
> the journals or disappear as publishers? I believe so. That belief is
> precisely as subjective and speculative as Harnad's own string of
> predictions and "optimal and inevitable" futures.
I completely agree that all speculations are equally speculative,
and that we should hence stop speculating and stick with the actual
facts and evidence. The fact is that OA self-archiving is growing (the
optimal/inevitable is getting closer), research impact is growing,
publishers are not going out of business, and OA publishers are
standing by, eager to take over any migrating titles.
The rest is pure speculation, which does not do anyone any good,
and certainly does not bring us more OA.
> Or maybe not: Stevan Harnad himself has said (repeatedly, of course), in
> the late 1990s, that journals (and publishers) would disappear if the
> publishers failed to shift to OA
Yes, I used to speculate too, and regret it. I have learned, though, and
no longer speculate. When will WC learn?
> --but he didn't note that publisher-hosted
> archives typically disappear at the same time as journals and publishers
> do. That's not a necessary outcome (LOCKSS and dark-archive agreements
> could prevent it), but it's a likely one for smaller and less
> well-capitalized publishers.
Publisher-hosted journal archives and their disappearance or
non-disappearance have absolutely *nothing* to do with OA (or
self-archiving, or Institutional OA Archives! See above.
> In arguing for some mediated orderly transition, Harnad himself projected
> that, without such a planned orderly transition, "mounting de facto free
> use will simply subvert the present system with no escape route in place to
> a new stable system, and a possibly chaotic inter-regnum, to the detriment
> of us all."
"Re: Nature 10 September on Public Archiving" (1998)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0104.html
"The Urgent Need to Plan a Stable Transition" (1998)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0076.html
I plead guilty to having made that free-floating, arbitrary speculation
at an earlier and more naive time, and regret it. I have learned, though,
and no longer speculate. When will WC learn?
I do feel somewhat heartened though -- and I am saying this seriously
now, not sarcastically -- that someone has actually read something I have
written, and carefully enough to quote it against me when the time came! I
had become convinced -- by the endless resurgence of the same old
arguments, year after year after year, without even a hint of awareness
of the fact that they had ever been answered -- that no one was reading
or paying any attention to anything I said or wrote on this subject. WC
has paid some attention here, and that's not nothing (even if he has not
yet learned!).
> Apparently Harnad now finds that possibility so unlikely as to be
> offensively subjective speculation. Times do change.
They do, and with the changing times come new events and evidence, and
sometimes even new ideas, to which we should be ready to hew, instead
of cleaving dogmatically to what we believed and said before. My prior
speculations (not my practical propopsals) were gratuitous; worse,
they were unnecessary and counterproductive. Since then my motto is
"Hypotheses non fingo."
I have done a 10th-anniversary analytical critique of what of my original
1994 "Subversive Proposal" has since proved right and what proved wrong.
(It's a healthy exercise. I recommend it to everyone.)
"June 27 2004: The 1994 'Subversive Proposal' at 10"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3809.html
> I'm delighted to see that Harnad now agrees that it's ludicrous to assert
> that libraries won't/can't cancel expensive journals as long as they still
> carry some important articles. In fact, libraries (including some of the
> supposedly wealthiest) are doing precisely that--and have been for years.
> They have no choice.
I am saying nothing of the sort, one way or the other! I am simply
abstaining from any further groundless and needless speculation!
Hypotheses non fingo. And I recommend the practise. It is much better
to provide OA than to provide conjectures. (I still say 100% OA is
optimal and inevitable, of course, but I never answer when asked to
predict when it will become actual!)
> [And could we let up on the certain 2.5 million journal articles per year?
> Other sources say 1.2 million. I will assert that the true number is as
> unknowable as the future landscape of scholarly communications.]
Call it N then. Absolutely *nothing* hangs on the exact number, one way
or the other. We need 100% of it to be OA, and it isn't, yet.
(And if the future landscape of scholarly communications is unknowable,
why speculate about it? We know OA through self-archiving is beneficial,
desirable, and feasible, because it is being done -- hence it's feasible --
and it enhances access and impact -- which is beneficial, hence desirable.
No hypotheses there: just objective data.)
> I devoted a column in the largest-circulation library periodical
> in the world [to the posting on which Harnad commented]... I have no
> way of knowing how many other lists Harnad's response was sent to,
> although I'm aware of at least two. Those who wish to are certainly
> welcome to forward this reply.
Not having direct access to WC's largest-circulation library periodical
in the world, I cross-posted to some of the lists to which I do have
access. Those who wish to are certainly welcome to forward this reply too.
Stevan Harnad
> On Wed, 18 Aug 2004, Sloan, Bernie wrote:
>
> > Walt Crawford of the Research Libraries Group has an essay on Open Access
> > in the latest issue of his Cites & Insights:
> >
> > Crawford, Walt. Library access to scholarship. Cites & Insights, 4(11),
> > 4-16. September 2004.
>
> Here is a long passage from that article. I will first quote it in full,
> then comment on it point by point:
> http://cites.boisestate.edu/civ4i11.pdf
>
> My primary interest in this section is freeing up library funds
> so academic libraries can maintain humanities subscriptions, buy
> monographs, other books, and media, provide access to gray literature,
> maintain technical services and reference librarianship, and in other
> ways preserve the record of the civilization and maintain themselves
> as libraries.
>
> OA journals can help? if they're represented in library catalogs
> and when they replace overpriced commercial journals or force those
> journal publishers to reduce prices.
>
> As for OA archives, as far as I can tell, these are likely to have
> either no effect on library costs or? when they have an effect? a
> potentially disruptive effect on scholarly communication.
>
> As long as OA archives represent such a small percentage of the
> papers in a given subscription journal that libraries must retain
> their existing subscriptions, then the OA archives don't help the
> financial problem at all.
>
> When a large enough percentage of the papers in a given journal
> are represented in OA archives, and the OA archives are harvested
> so that libraries can reasonably expect to find those papers via
> OpenURL or otherwise, then a growing number of libraries can, will,
> and must cancel their subscriptions to those journals.
>
> That has one effect in the short term, another in the slightly longer
> term. In the short term, profit-oriented publishers will raise prices
> for remaining subscribers, squeezing the biggest stones for as much
> blood as possible.
>
> In the slightly longer term, the subscription journal will
> fail? taking with it the full-text archives and the peer-review
> mechanisms.
>
> The peer review mechanisms will be replaced, of course, as researchers
> migrate to OA journals.
>
> Full text archives may or may not be so easy to replace, unless LOCKSS
> and national-library archival agreements take care of the situation.
>
> The concept that libraries must and will retain expensive
> subscriptions as long as any significant papers are being published
> in those journals that are not available via other means is ludicrous
> in a world of limited library resources.
>
> Now my quote/commentary:
>
> > My primary interest in this section is freeing up library funds
> > so academic libraries can maintain humanities subscriptions, buy
> > monographs, other books, and media, provide access to gray literature,
> > maintain technical services and reference librarianship, and in other
> > ways preserve the record of the civilization and maintain themselves
> > as libraries.
>
> This frank declaration immediately brings to the fore a fundamental
> fact about Open Access (OA) that systematically escapes Walt Crawford
> (WC): WC's primary interest may be freeing up library funds, but the
> primary interest of the research community is in freeing access to
> their peer-reviewed journal articles, so that their research impact can
> be maximized.
>
> WC weighs the pro's and con's of OA in terms of his own interest (freeing
> library funds) but he assigns no weight at all to the research community's
> interest, which is freeing access and and maximizing impact. This is
> unfortunate, because in the end it is authors' needs and wishes that
> will determine whether or not their writings are made OA.
>
> The primary task now is to reach 100% OA, as soon as possible.
>
> > OA journals can help -- if they're represented in library catalogs
> > and when they replace overpriced commercial journals or force those
> > journal publishers to reduce prices.
>
> 5% of journals are OA. That helps 5% for OA. What about the other 95%?
>
> And what about if the solution for providing OA to that other 95% --
> OA self-archiving -- does *not* "replace overpriced commercial journals
> or force those journal publishers to reduce prices? That is indeed a
> solution, but to a different problem! (The journal pricing/affordability
> problem and the journal-article access/impact problem are not the same
> problem!)
>
> Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S.,
> Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004)
> The green and the gold roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus.
> http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
>
> OA journals can help on both counts: They can help free up library
> funds (WC's interest) and they can also help free access and maximize
> impact. The only trouble is that there are only about 1200 of OA
> journals, and that is only 5% of the total number of the 24,000
> peer-reviewed journals published today. And converting the remaining
> 22,800 journals (95%) is neither easy, nor quick; nor is it probable
> for the forseeable future, because most journals do not appear to be
> interested in taking the risk of adopting the as yet untested OA journal
> cost-recovery model.
>
> So not much freeing of either library funds or access/impact is to
> be expected from OA journals for the foreseeable future.
>
> But research access is being denied and research impact is in the mean
> time being lost daily, and cumulatively.
>
> The primary task now is to reach 100% OA, as soon as possible.
>
> But this is not WC's primary interest, on the contrary:
>
> > As for OA archives, as far as I can tell, these are likely to have
> > either no effect on library costs or -- when they have an effect -- a
> > potentially disruptive effect on scholarly communication.
>
> The purpose of OA self-archiving is to make 100% of the annual 2,500,000
> journal articles published in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals
> Open Access. If this has no effect on library costs, does that make it
> any less desirable or necessary?
>
> As to "potentially disruptive effects on scholarly communication":
>
> What WC writes about this is 100% subjective speculation. All the
> objective evidence to date is precisely the contrary. Self-archiving
> actually has highly positive effects on scholarly communication:
>
> Harnad, S. & Brody, T. (2004) Comparing the Impact of Open Access
> (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals, D-Lib Magazine 10
> (6) June http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html
>
> The primary task now is to reach 100% OA, as soon as possible.
>
> > As long as OA archives represent such a small percentage of the
> > papers in a given subscription journal that libraries must retain
> > their existing subscriptions, then the OA archives don't help the
> > financial problem at all.
>
> The objective is to raise the percentage OA from its present
> level of about 20% to 100% OA, via self-archiving (as well as OA
> publishing), with the help of a mandate from authors' funders
> and employers: extending their already-existing publish-or-perish
> mandate to: publish-and-make-OA.
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
> http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
>
> But even today's 20% OA is far better (for researchers) than nothing. If
> it is not better for the financial problem of libraries, is self-archiving
> then not to be, or not to be favored by WC?
>
> The primary task now is to reach 100% OA, as soon as possible.
>
> > When a large enough percentage of the papers in a given journal
> > are represented in OA archives, and the OA archives are harvested
> > so that libraries can reasonably expect to find those papers via
> > OpenURL or otherwise, then a growing number of libraries can, will,
> > and must cancel their subscriptions to those journals.
>
> Please let us cross that bridge if/when we get to it! This is pure
> speculation right now, and counting one's chickens before the eggs
> are even laid (and diminishing the probability that they will be
> laid!)
>
> Speculations can be countered by counter-speculations, but it is all
> just air either way!
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
>
> What research and researchers need now is 100% OA, not economic
> speculations.
>
> > That has one effect in the short term, another in the slightly longer
> > term. In the short term, profit-oriented publishers will raise prices
> > for remaining subscribers, squeezing the biggest stones for as much
> > blood as possible.
>
> Counter-speculation: If/when cancellation pressure is felt, there will be
> cost-cutting and downsizing to the essentials:
>
> "Savings from Converting to On-Line-Only: 30%- or 70%+ ?"
> (Started Aug 27 1998)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0002.html
>
> "Online Self-Archiving: Distinguishing the Optimal from the Optional"
> (Started May 11 1999)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0248.html
>
> The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)"
> (Started July 5 1999)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0303.html
>
> "Separating Quality-Control Service-Providing from Document-Providing"
> (Started November 30 1999)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0466.html
>
> "Distinguishing the Essentials from the Optional Add-Ons"
> (Started July 2001)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1437.html
>
> "Journal expenses and publication costs"
> (Started January 10 2003)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2589.html
>
> "The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition"
> (Started January 7 2004)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html
>
> But the primary task now is to first reach 100% OA, as soon as possible,
> not to speculate on what it might or might not do to journal prices.
>
> > In the slightly longer term, the subscription journal will
> > fail? taking with it the full-text archives and the peer-review
> > mechanisms.
>
> Counter-speculation: If/when there is no longer a subscription-based
> market for journals because of 100% OA, they will adopt the OA (gold)
> cost-recovery model and become pure peer-review service-providers and
> certifiers, offloading all access-provision on the OA Archive network
> that is already providing 100% of the access.
>
> But the primary task now is to first reach 100% OA, as soon as possible,
> not to speculate about the effect it might or might not have on journal
> subscriptions.
>
> > The peer review mechanisms will be replaced, of course, as researchers
> > migrate to OA journals.
>
> Peer-review is peer-review and has nothing whatsoever to do with
> cost-recovery models. If the speculation about migration to the OA (gold)
> cost-recovery model should one day prove correct, then that is the way
> journals' peer-review costs will continue to be recovered.
>
> But the primary task now is to first reach 100% OA, as soon as possible,
> not to speculate about how it may or may not influence journals'
> cost-recovery models.
>
> > Full text archives may or may not be so easy to replace, unless LOCKSS
> > and national-library archival agreements take care of the situation.
>
> For the time being, self-archiving is merely an OA *supplement* to the
> current subscription-based proprietary archives of subscription-based
> journal publishers and their library subscribers, not a *substitute*
> for them. If/when the task of access-provision is offloaded onto the
> OA archives completely and exclusively, they will also easily be able to
> upgrade to perform the permanent storage and preservation function too.
>
> But the primary task now is to first reach 100% OA, as soon as possible,
> not to speculate about whether or not this may lead to offloading all
> access-provision on the OA Archives.
>
> > The concept that libraries must and will retain expensive
> > subscriptions as long as any significant papers are being published
> > in those journals that are not available via other means is ludicrous
> > in a world of limited library resources.
>
> Agreed.
>
> But the primary task now is to first reach 100% OA, as soon as possible,
> not to speculate about whether or when libraries may or may not
> ever be in a position and inclined to do something non-ludicrous as
> a consequence of that 100% OA.
>
> Stevan Harnad
Received on Fri Aug 20 2004 - 03:46:07 BST