Re: Some initial thoughts on the Brussels Declaration on STM publishing

From: Velterop, Jan, Springer UK <Jan.Velterop_at_SPRINGER.COM>
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:31:57 +0100

What I called, with perhaps a bit of exaggeration, 'appeasement' is,
according to Steve Hitchcock, really 'responding to customers'. Fair
point. And I agree, actually. And appeasement is a response, of sorts. A
few questions arise. One question is, does this response of sorts make
the situation any better for anyone. And another question is, as much a
question to publishers as to authors themselves, are authors indeed
perceived as 'customers'? And if so, how does this square with the often
heard idea that authors 'give away' their articles to publishers? Or is
'customer' here the same as 'donor'?

It is not often that I hear authors described as customers of journals
and I'm pleased that Steve mentions it. Because authors are. Even though
the cheque is paid by librarians, because it somehow looks as if the
readers are the customers.

The point I wanted to illustrate (and I'm sorry if I used 'exclusive' so
liberally -- it was intended to make the point clearer, with limited
success, evidently) is precisely that one: authors require a service from
publishers and pay for that, in some form. Either by giving the publisher
some rights (with varying levels of exclusivity, granted), so that the
publisher can get his money by selling access, or, in the model I prefer
because it delivers open access, by paying in cash (well, credit card or
cheque will do, too).

Jan Velterop


-----Original Message-----
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Steve Hitchcock
Sent: Wed 2/21/2007 3:59 PM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Some further thoughts on the Brussels Declaration on STM
publishing: copyright

Jan liberally sprinkles the term 'exclusive' throughout the first half of
his posting hoping that nobody will question it. Well Charles has, and so
am I. Exclusivity may have been standard journals practice, but no
longer.
That is a key change, and an enabler for OA. Journal value-added can no
longer be based solely on exclusivity. So I suggest that in reading this
part you mentally omit that term (except where it is used for
definition),
and see what effect that has.

Second, on 'appeasement', who is being appeased? Is Jan suggesting that
authors are being appeased? If so, I would call this responding to your
customers. Or is Jan invoking another of those metaphors that have been
prevalent recently in which publishers, authors and others are pitted as
enemies? As for the rest, it doesn't really follow, but Jan can have the
chance to reconstruct his arguments on firmer foundations before
launching
into that.

Steve Hitchcock
IAM Group, School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK
Email: sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 7698    Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865

At 13:52 21/02/2007, C.Oppenheim wrote:
>Jan,  lots of publishers are prepared to offer a simple "licence to
>publish in a journal", with the author retaining ALL other rights.  The
>publisher does not get "all the dissemination rights", just the right to
>disseminate within the vehicle of the journal, leaving the author free
to
>disseminate using, e.g., web pages, repositories and so on.  The
publisher
>usually requires a cross-reference to the journal bibliographic
citation,
>which is fair enough.
>
>Charles
>
>Professor Charles Oppenheim
>Head
>Department of Information Science
>Loughborough University
>Loughborough
>Leics LE11 3TU
>
>Tel 01509-223065
>Fax 01509-223053
>e mail <mailto:C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk>C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:Jan.Velterop_at_SPRINGER.COM>Velterop, Jan, Springer UK
>To:
><mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>AMERICAN-S
IENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2007 1:29 PM
>Subject: Some further thoughts on the Brussels Declaration on STM
>publishing: copyright
>
>Copyright is widely misunderstood. Particularly the role of copyright in
>science publishing. First of all, there is this idea that some journals
>and publishers don't require copyright transfer, but 'just' the
exclusive
>dissemination and exploitation rights. To all practical intents and
>purposes, that is exactly the same, and 'copyright' is just shorthand
for
>'exclusive dissemination and exploitation rights'! So if it helps to
drop
>the word 'copyright' then that should, and easily can, be done.
>Secondly, transfer of exclusive rights to a publisher is a form of
>'payment'. Payment for the services of a publisher. The publisher
>subsequently uses these exclusive rights to sell subscriptions and
>licences in order to recoup his costs, in a rather roundabout way. This
>form of payment - as opposed to cash - has advantages and disadvantages.
>The advantage is seemingly for the author, who (mistakenly) has the
>feeling that he doesn't have to pay for the services of formal
publication
>of his article, but who seldom realises why he is asked to transfer
>exclusive rights. The disadvantage is that payment in the form of
>exclusive rights limits access, because it needs a subscription/licence
>model to convert this form of 'payment' into money. And
>subscriptions/licences are by definition restrictive in terms of
>dissemination. Article fee supported open access publishing, where the
>transfer of exclusive rights is replaced by the transfer of money,
>consequently doesn't have the need for subscriptions and can therefore
>abolish all restrictions on dissemination.
>
>Stevan Harnad c.s. will argue that none of this matters, because there
is
>'green', meaning that whatever 'exclusive' rights have been transferred,
>authors can still disseminate their articles via self-archiving in open
>repositories. In that model, having transferred 'exclusive' rights is
>meaningless, and that implies that the 'payment' that exclusive rights
>transfer actually is, has become worthless. In mandates with embargos,
the
>'payment' may not be completely worthless (depending on the length of
the
>embargo) but is at least severely devalued.
>I am a great fan of open access, but not a great fan of 'green'. 'Green'
>is a kind of appeasement by publishers (some of who, it must be said,
>themselves didn't - sometimes still don't - realise the 'payment' nature
>of exclusive rights transfer). Appeasement is often regretted with
>hindsight. Instead of allowing the nature of exclusive rights transfer
to
>be compromised, publishers should much earlier have offered authors the
>choice of payment - either transfer of exclusive rights, or cash. The
>appeasement, the 'green', now acts as a hurdle to structural open
access,
>perhaps even an impediment.
>Harnadian orthodoxy will dismiss this. It holds that subscription
journals
>will survive, that they will be paid for by librarians even if the
content
>is freely disseminated in parallel via open repositories, and that it
>doesn't matter anyway (the guru is tentatively beginning to admit that
>large scale uptake of self-archiving, for instance as the result of
>mandates, may indeed destroy journals) because a new order will only
come
>about after the complete destruction of the old order. After all,
morphing
>the old order into the new, without complete destruction, entails a cost
>in terms of money, which "isn't there", and anyway, the cost that comes
>with complete destruction of the old order is preferred to spending
money
>on any transition, in that school of thought.
>I doubt that a complete wipe-out will come. But there are quite a large
>number of vulnerable journals and a partial wipe-out as a result of
>mandated self-archiving is entirely plausible. Although there seems to
be
>a myth that journals are very, even extremely, profitable, the fact is
>that a great many journals are not profitable or 'surplus-able' (in
>not-for-profit parlance). In my estimate it is the majority. Within the
>portfolio of larger publishers these journals are often absorbed and
>cross-subsidised by the journals that are profitable. Smaller (e.g.
>society-) publishers cannot do that. Marginal journals do not have to
>suffer a lot of subscription loss before they go under. Some of these,
>especially society ones, will be 'salvaged' by being given the
opportunity
>to shelter under the umbrella of the portfolio of one of the larger
>independent publishers. Others will just perish if they lose
>subscriptions. They could of course convert to open access journals with
>article processing fees, but setting those up is no sinecure, and
requires
>a substantial financial commitment, as the experience of PLoS and BMC
has
>shown. Journals that are run for the love of it, by the commendable
>voluntary efforts of academics, are mostly very small, and are the first
>to be affected, unless, of course, they do not need any income because
>they are crypto-subsidised by the institutions with which their editors
>are affiliated. Such journals have always been there and there are
>probably more now than ever (and some are very good indeed, or so I'm
>told), but to imagine scaling them up to deal with the million plus
>articles per year published as a result of global research efforts seems
>far-fetched, indeed.
>
>Open access is the inevitable future, and it is worth working on a truly
>robust and sustainable way to achieve it.
>Jan Velterop
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Leslie Carr
>Sent: Wed 2/21/2007 1:32 AM
>To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
>Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts on the Brussels Declaration on STM
>publishing
>On 20 Feb 2007, at 20:37, Eamon Fensessy wrote:
> > It is true researchers do transfer copyright of their works to
> > publishers for wider distribution but they do this knowing full
> > well the works will be peer-reviewed and included in Journals which
> > are respected in the STM community.
>Researchers could know full well exactly the same thing WITHOUT
>transferring copyright.
>This is done becaue the researchers know it will benefit them.
>I beg to differ: it is done BECAUSE the publishers issue contracts in
>which it is demanded. Can you explain how copyright transfer benefits
>researchers, because I think that it harms them.
> > If one were to go out and establish their own journals using
> > today's technology, they could do that too.
>We seem to be agreed that technology may assist those wishing to
>establish an independent journal.
> > But, there are "journals" and there are "JOURNALS."
>ie there are journals which are highly rated, perhaps with higher
>impact factors than their "competitors".
> > Publishers provide a necessary service to their readers
>It sounds as if I am splitting hairs if I point out that "publishers
>don't have readers", but I want to emphasise the roles that
>publishers undertake. Otherwise we end up making sentences (like the
>Brussels Declaration) that sound as if publishing companies are
>entirely responsible for journal output, peer review and scholarly
>communication. The sentence "I am going to read this publisher" is
>nonsense. (Although the sentence "I am going to read Elsevier" could
>be the basis of a dreadful pun.)
>Publishers have customers. Journals have subscribers. Articles have
>readers. What service do publishers provide? They manage the business
>aspects of journals (investment, sales, marketing) and they help
>administer the workflow for journal content.
>In an indirect sense publishers provide a service to readers, but so
>do funding councils and governments.
>--
>Les
Received on Thu Feb 22 2007 - 12:10:20 GMT