Thanks for all who have contributed to these recent discussions. I will cease
and desist since I do not have the luxury of a job that would allow me the
leisure to wade through a thicket of distinctions and counter-distinctions,
faqs, prior emailings and counter-emailngs, lemmae, and definitions. I've
stated my case in commonsensical terms and will leave it at that and, until
such time as I have anything new to say, will let others pick up the discussion
if they so choose.
Brian Simboli
Quoting Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>:
> Prior Amsci Topic Threads:
>
> "Self-Archiving vs. Self-Publishing FAQ" (Jan 2000)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0500.html
>
> "Self-Archiving Refereed Research
> vs. Self-Publishing Unrefereed Research" (Aug 2001)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1468.html
>
> 'Chronicle of Higher Education
> Article on "Self-Publication"' (Nov 2002)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2375.html
>
> "Don't Conflate Self-Archiving with Self-Publishing,
> or Buy-In with Buy-Back" (Apr 2003)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2818.html
>
> "Self-Archiving vs. Self-Publishing" (Dec 2003)
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3249.html
>
>
> On Thu, 7 Oct 2004, Brian Simboli wrote:
>
> > Responses to Stevan Harnad:
> >
> > 1. I've so far taken no positions on the merits of central as opposed
> > to institutional solutions. Why do you attribute, once again, a view to
> > me that I don't hold? Perhaps that explains the need of various people
> > to reiterate points.
>
> My inference was based on your own words:
>
> (1) Against (green) self-archiving:
>
> "Why is there this unspoken assumption that green is
> any more practicable than, say, the overlay concept?"
>
> (2) For (green) self-archiving:
>
> "Also, I am told that arxiv.org has been willing to expand its
> subject coverage. Why not use that as a repository for final,
> refereed versions articles?"
>
> Difference between (1) and (2)? (2) is central self-archiving.
>
> What to conclude (if this is not to be a flat contradiction:
> for-green, against-green)? That Brian is for central self-archiving
> and against institutional self-archiving.
>
> Why? Because institutional self-archiving looks as if it might cost
> some time and resources for institutional libraries/librarians, whereas
> central would offload the cost and time somewhere else. (Just a guess...)
>
> > 2. I think we're hitting definitional problems here. It depends on how
> > you define "green". Stevan takes it to be tied crucially to author's
> > depositing their output somewhere, ***including (or especially?) cases
> > where that output has already been published by toll access
> > publishers***.
>
> Not wanting to make any quixotic custodial claims on the English tongue,
> I would nevertheless suggest that as I coined the color-terms, I might
> have some clue as to what they refer to! There are two ways to provide
> Open Access (OA) to peer-reviewed journal articles (which is the target
> literature for the Budapest Open Access Initiative [BOAI], which
> coined the basic term "Open Access" itself):
>
> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
>
> BOAI-1 is defined by BOAI as providing open online access to an article
> by publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal and also self-archiving it so
> as to make it accessible to all would-be users webwide toll-free. (The
> self-archiving is preferably in an OAI-compliant OA archive, whether an
> institutional/departmental/personal OAI archive or a central/disciplinary
> OAI archive)
>
> BOAI-2 is defined by BOAI as providing open online access to an article
> by publishing it in an Open Access (OA) journal that makes it accessible
> to all would-be users webwide toll-free. (The access is preferably in
> an OAI-compliant OA Archive.)
>
> I simply coined the terms "green" and "golden" roads to OA for BOAI-1
> and BOAI-2 respectively, with the "gold" journals being the OA journals
> that provide OA directly, and the "green" journals being the journals
> that give their authors the "green light" to go ahead and self-archive.
>
> According to the sample to date, about 5% of the world's 24,000
> peer-reviewed journals are gold:
>
> http://www.doaj.org/
>
> According to the sample to date, about 92% of the world's 24,000
> peer-reviewed journals are green:
>
> http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
>
> > My point is that this practice of double-publishing
> > promotes a system beholden to the commercials for their largesse,
> > something that in the recent discussions he has not really addressed.
>
> This is not a practice of "double-publishing":
>
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#1.4
>
> 'Garfield: "Acknowledged Self-Archiving is Not Prior Publication"'
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2239.html
>
> The articles are published in a journal. The self-archived version is
> provided so that those would-be users who cannot afford the toll-access
> version can still access and use the article.
>
> On the subject of "largesse" I invite Brian, for the 3rd time, to have a
> look
> at:
>
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#32.Poisoned
>
> > What of the "pull the plug" argument? (i.e.., the commercials can at any
> > point overturn their extension of green self-archiving "rights").
>
> I invite Brian, for the 4th time, to look at:
>
> http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#32.Poisoned
>
> (I only refrain from reproducing the text in full here because others have
> already seen it reproduced in full.)
>
> > I'm all for OA preprint archiving, for those disciplines that rely upon
> > them.
>
> But the BOAI, and OA, are primarily about providing OA to the
> peer-reviewed article, not the unrefereed preprint. And I challenge Brian
> to name any discipline that will *not* be better off if no would-be user
> is denied access to any article because his institution cannot afford
> the access tolls. (Please don't reply about ILL [interlibrary loan],
> because that's just another form of toll-access, not to mention that it
> is not available for full-text online browsing and searching in advance.)
>
> > The fact remains that most disciplines rely on publishing in
> > toll-access, peer reviewed venues. To think that double-publishing that
> > material is going to handle the infrastructural problems of
> > affordability, preservation, etc is, I think, quixotic, at least for the
> > foreseeable future.
>
> It is not double-publishing, it is self-archiving the published article to
> provide OA to it. And it is not provided for the sake of affordability,
> preservation, etc., but for the sake of access and impact.
>
> (Universities' and research funders' existing mandate to publish-or-perish
> does not refer to vanity self-publishing, it refers to peer-reviewed
> journal publication. The mandate may well be extended to self-archiving
> the publication too, but not as a substitute for publication, but as
> a supplement to it, for the sake of maximizing access and impact. For
> academic research, CV and promotion purposes, "publish" means "publish
> in a peer-reviewed journal" [at least for articles, if not books].)
>
> >sh> 3. "overlay journals have nothing in principle to do with OA".
> >
> > I have in mind by overlay journals, a vague term I admit, the following.
> > You may want to disagree with my definition, in which case we can find
> > another term. Shall we call it the "x-journal"?
> >
> > a. institutionally funded editorial processes resulting in deposit of
> > refereed materials in an established institutional or central archive or
> > archives, where the traditional model of peer-review is full retained,
> > and where the access is toll access. [Institutional is ambiguous--I can
> > see a variety of institutions supporting one central archive].
>
> I'm afraid I could not follow this: Who administers the refereeing
> and certifies its outcome? Let us call that a "journal." There are already
> 24,000 of those , refereeing and publishing 2,5 million articles per year.
>
> What does "institutionally funded editorial processes" mean? An
> institution paying the peer-review costs for its author's articles? That's
> called BOAI-2 (gold). An institution doing its own peer-review? That's
> called vanity publishing.
>
> And if all of this is toll-access, I'm not sure why are we discussing it
> here
> at all, in a forum dedicated to open access!
>
> > or
> > b." ", where the access is open access.
>
> You mean an OA (gold) journal, again?
>
> > Option (b) holds a great deal of promise for facilitating OA of
> > traditionally peer-reviewed materials, which is what researchers want in
> > most disciplines. It is in this sense that overlay journals have a whole
> > lot to do with OA. Option (a), if prices are kept low, also promotes
> > access, though not open access. Why? More institutions can buy journals.
>
> As already discussed at length in my prior reply, the online medium offers
> many ways to make peer review faster, more efficient, and more economical.
> But that has nothing to do with OA either.
>
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/peerev.ppt
>
> > 4. What is option (b) any more hypothetical than the quixotic goal of
> > 100 per cent green self-archiving of already published material?
>
> Unfortunately I am now lost completely. Brian is speculating about
> alternative systems that I have trouble even verbalizing in such a way
> as to make them make sense -- except if all they mean is cheaper and
> more efficient online peer-review and/or OA (gold) journal publication
> -- in which case there is nothing new or relevant to discuss here.
>
> > 5. Self-archiving involves "no dollars"? Perhaps for researchers. I
> > speak from a librarian's perspective, however.
>
> This may be a very important point, not considered before. If librarians
> are reluctant (quite understandably and justifiably) to support
> self-archiving with their time and resources it might be best to assign
> the all-important institutional self-archiving function somewhere
> else. Librarians, after all, are not traditionally interested in,
> responsible for or beneficiaries of institutional research impact. (Their
> only involvement with research impact is in connection with journal
> impact factors, in making acquisition/cancellation decisions.)
>
> So rather than having the self-archiving function automatically assigned
> to the library by default, only to have it rejected or minimized in
> an understandable desire to protect library budgets, it may be better
> to assign it elsewhere -- perhaps to computer services, perhaps devolved
> departmentally (something OAI-interoperability and modularity makes
> easy to do), perhaps somewhere else; it's not a big expense in any
> case. No need to saddle librarians with a nontraditional function
> that they would rather not perform -- especially if it keeps getting
> confused with other, traditional library functions (such as acquisition,
> preservation, cataloguing, permissions) with which it does not fit,
> and from which only the wrong conclusions can be drawn.
>
> > But good luck in getting the majority, or even a small minority, of
> > researchers on board with your strategy.
>
> The biggest help will of course be the self-archiving mandate that some
> institutions are already implementing, and that the UK and US and other
> nations may soon be introducing at the national level.
>
> http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
>
> > So too librarians, who find your condescension toward them demeaning.
>
> I am sorry if it sounds like condescension; it is just an attempt to
> put in words what increasingly looks like an attempt to put a round peg
> in a square hole. Librarians were among the historic heroes of the OA
> movement for having rallied us to the access problem as a spin-off of
> the affordability problem. But having alerted us all to the problem,
> it simply seems to be transpiring that the solution may lie elsewhere.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS 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 or leave the Forum or change your subscription address:
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-
Forum.html
> Post discussion to:
> american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
>
> 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
>
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Received on Fri Oct 08 2004 - 00:22:56 BST