It is surely clear that Andrew Adams has misunderstood Jan's
contribution. The 'worthless' was in inverted commas. Unfortunately
Andrew's characterisation of Jan's position is now being taken as fair
and accurate (see comments on the LibLicence list) ~***Jan's contempt
for the scientist as author an[d?] communicator***.
It really does not help the argument when reasonable positions are
unfairly misunderstood and characterised. I hope that Dr Adams does
accept that this is an unfair characterisation (and yes it is easy to
miss irony or 'scare quotes' in email contributions -- we have all
done that).
The substantial point I would like to make is this. Andrew Adams does
not mention the key contribution of the publisher to the historic
(Gutenberg-era) process of communication. This was a commitment not
just of organisational skills and entrepreneurship but also of
capital. The print process of publishing scientific research required
a substantial investment and lengthy commitment of capital (printing,
warehousing, dispatch etc). 'Genius' publishers (please note the scare
quotes) gradually figured out a way of getting paid in advance for
much of this by the process of annual subscriptions paid upfront; even
so, publishing scientific periodicals in the 20th C required
substantial capital commitment. Of course light-weight, web-enabled,
technologies require vastly less investment in the 21st Century. So it
is not just the changed organisational process which requires less of
a contribution from the publisher. The key economic shift is that the
capital requirements have changed. The bizarre fact is that the
largest capital investment that commercial publishers NOW make is the
investment in proprietary delivery platforms which have as a key
function the role of 'authenticating' paid for users and excluding the
rest. The infrastructure for authentication and cost recovery is
vastly more complex and expensive than the infrastructure needed for
dissemination through open access. Because the capital requirements
for simple dissemination are much lower, the costs (much reduced) of
OA publication through the web, including the administration of peer
review, can more reasonably be seen as subsumable within the overall
social investment in research.
But all this and, I suspect, all the valid points that Andrew Adams
makes about the self-organisation of science are I am sure common
grounds with Jan Velterop.
Adam
On 3/1/07, Andrew A. Adams <A.A.Adams_at_reading.ac.uk> wrote:
> Jan Verlterop wrote:
> >What publishers have provided has always been a 'service'. The service
> >consisted - and still consists - of arranging all that's necessary to make
> >a scientifically non-recognised piece of work (pretty much 'worthless' for
> >the scientific establishment), into a scientifically recognised addition
> >to the knowledge pool (a valuable piece of work, identifiable as such by
> >the fact that it is formally published in a peer-reviewed journal).
>
> And here we see Jan's contempt for the scientist as author an communicator.
> Scientific writing, unless turned into a worhwhile product by the work of a
> publisher is worthless, according to Jan.
>
> I refer Jan to:
>
> - The discussions on many usenet news groups such as math.sci.symbolic where
> detailed discussions of everything to do with comptuer algebra and related
> systems are discussed, from interchange formats to the fundamental "meaning"
> of mathematical symbols in computation;
> - The ArXiv, with its range of peer reviewed and non peer reviewed content;
> - The Workshop or Conference (terminology differs between subjects) where
> non-peer reviewed or very lightly peer reviewed work (particularly
> work-in-progress) is presented for discussion and debate amongst the
> scientific community and papers are published online or in institutional tech
> reports;
> - Fully Peer Reviewed conference proceedings in Computer Science where the
> peer review process is managed entirely by the conference committee and the
> publisher's input is solely in the production of physical copies - not such a
> difficult job for the LNCS series by Springer, where the submissions are in
> LaTeX form to start with - the initial investment of producing the latex
> style file has long ago been recouped and was pretty small to start with;
> - The reports submitted to the EU on European grants.
>
> There are many other examples of scientific communication that shows the
> skill and utility of scientists and their communications.
>
> The culmination of these communications is the peer-reviewed paper. The
> reviewing of which is performed by other scientist, who in most fields are
> not paid staff members of the publisher, nor even have their time funded by
> the publisher, but who are members of the community of scientists (one might
> even say scholars) around the world who recognise that for the system of
> peer-reviewed communication to work they must co-operate and not defect from
> the peer-review system.
>
> The publisher provided three things in the past:
>
> - The administration of receipt of manuscripts (sometimes including
> allocation of manuscripts to referees, sometimes not);
> - type-setting and presentation expertise;
> - physical production and distribution.
>
> Type-setting is now done principally by the authors with a small input (in my
> experience) by the paid staff at the publisher.
>
> Physical production and distribution is no longer the only way to achieve
> distribution and in many ways is a poorer method than newer ways, for most
> purposes.
>
> We are left with the administrative role. This, and only this, is what is
> necessary for the peer-review process to be maintained. Yes, we must find as
> a community of scholars, a way of ensuring that this administration
> continues. However, to claim that this administration is the major labour in
> producing a strong scientific publishing community is arrogant beyond belief
> to the working scholar.
>
>
> --
> *E-mail*a.a.adams_at_rdg.ac.uk******** Dr Andrew A Adams
> **snail*27 Westerham Walk********** School of Systems Engineering
> ***mail*Reading RG2 0BA, UK******** The University of Reading
> ****Tel*+44-118-378-6997*********** Reading, United Kingdom
>
ahjs_at_ozemail.com.au Sat Mar 3 13:11:01 2007
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0501010613260.20735-100000_at_login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2007 17:25:27 +1100
From: Arthur Sale <ahjs_at_ozemail.com.au>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Jan Velterop's Misconception
Status: O
Adam
I hope you are joking. I make no comment on whether the characterisation is
unfair, but really to say that some genius publisher discovered
subscriptions, and that a lot of capital was needed is absurd.
An examination of the early history of the scientific journal will show that
the capital involved was modest, since all services (printing, delivery)
were outsourced or provided free. The only question was whether the venture
would succeed or not and whether the venture capital was sufficient to
maintain it until it did. If not, the journal went out of business, for that
is what it was. Subscription was a bleedingly obvious model for those
wanting to read what the real geniuses (the researchers) had to say. The
researchers had nothing to gain, except recognition. These publishers did
not do it for love, unless they were an arm of a professional society, but
for profits.
As time went on the publishers of scientific journals began to add more
fancy services to survive financially (for example I am pretty sure that
Darwin and Newton were not copy-edited), added to costs, discriminated
against readers, and aggregated. The situation we now find ourselves in,
post Gutenberg era, calls for yet more change by publishers.
To re-examine your prime point - publishers did not make a great
contribution to scientific communication. Rather they realized a
profit-making opportunity, and seized it. The research community (at that
time) heaved a sigh of relief and left them to it, going back to do what it
prefers to do.
Publishers are still in it for the money alone. Witness their comments about
open access.
Arthur Sale
University of Tasmania
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-
> ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On Behalf Of adam hodgkin
> Sent: Saturday, 3 March 2007 2:07 PM
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: [AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM] Jan Velterop's
> (supposed) Misconception
>
> It is surely clear that Andrew Adams has misunderstood Jan's
> contribution. The 'worthless' was in inverted commas. Unfortunately
> Andrew's characterisation of Jan's position is now being taken as fair
> and accurate (see comments on the LibLicence list) ~***Jan's contempt
> for the scientist as author an[d?] communicator***.
>
> It really does not help the argument when reasonable positions are
> unfairly misunderstood and characterised. I hope that Dr Adams does
> accept that this is an unfair characterisation (and yes it is easy to
> miss irony or 'scare quotes' in email contributions -- we have all
> done that).
>
> The substantial point I would like to make is this. Andrew Adams does
> not mention the key contribution of the publisher to the historic
> (Gutenberg-era) process of communication. This was a commitment not
> just of organisational skills and entrepreneurship but also of
> capital. The print process of publishing scientific research required
> a substantial investment and lengthy commitment of capital (printing,
> warehousing, dispatch etc). 'Genius' publishers (please note the scare
> quotes) gradually figured out a way of getting paid in advance for
> much of this by the process of annual subscriptions paid upfront; even
> so, publishing scientific periodicals in the 20th C required
> substantial capital commitment. Of course light-weight, web-enabled,
> technologies require vastly less investment in the 21st Century. So it
> is not just the changed organisational process which requires less of
> a contribution from the publisher. The key economic shift is that the
> capital requirements have changed. The bizarre fact is that the
> largest capital investment that commercial publishers NOW make is the
> investment in proprietary delivery platforms which have as a key
> function the role of 'authenticating' paid for users and excluding the
> rest. The infrastructure for authentication and cost recovery is
> vastly more complex and expensive than the infrastructure needed for
> dissemination through open access. Because the capital requirements
> for simple dissemination are much lower, the costs (much reduced) of
> OA publication through the web, including the administration of peer
> review, can more reasonably be seen as subsumable within the overall
> social investment in research.
>
> But all this and, I suspect, all the valid points that Andrew Adams
> makes about the self-organisation of science are I am sure common
> grounds with Jan Velterop.
>
> Adam
>
> On 3/1/07, Andrew A. Adams <A.A.Adams_at_reading.ac.uk> wrote:
> > Jan Verlterop wrote:
> > >What publishers have provided has always been a 'service'. The service
> > >consisted - and still consists - of arranging all that's necessary to
make
> > >a scientifically non-recognised piece of work (pretty much 'worthless'
for
> > >the scientific establishment), into a scientifically recognised
addition
> > >to the knowledge pool (a valuable piece of work, identifiable as such
by
> > >the fact that it is formally published in a peer-reviewed journal).
> >
> > And here we see Jan's contempt for the scientist as author an
communicator.
> > Scientific writing, unless turned into a worhwhile product by the work
of a
> > publisher is worthless, according to Jan.
> >
> > I refer Jan to:
> >
> > - The discussions on many usenet news groups such as math.sci.symbolic
where
> > detailed discussions of everything to do with comptuer algebra and
related
> > systems are discussed, from interchange formats to the fundamental
"meaning"
> > of mathematical symbols in computation;
> > - The ArXiv, with its range of peer reviewed and non peer reviewed
content;
> > - The Workshop or Conference (terminology differs between subjects)
where
> > non-peer reviewed or very lightly peer reviewed work (particularly
> > work-in-progress) is presented for discussion and debate amongst the
> > scientific community and papers are published online or in institutional
tech
> > reports;
> > - Fully Peer Reviewed conference proceedings in Computer Science where
the
> > peer review process is managed entirely by the conference committee and
the
> > publisher's input is solely in the production of physical copies - not
such a
> > difficult job for the LNCS series by Springer, where the submissions are
in
> > LaTeX form to start with - the initial investment of producing the latex
> > style file has long ago been recouped and was pretty small to start
with;
> > - The reports submitted to the EU on European grants.
> >
> > There are many other examples of scientific communication that shows the
> > skill and utility of scientists and their communications.
> >
> > The culmination of these communications is the peer-reviewed paper. The
> > reviewing of which is performed by other scientist, who in most fields
are
> > not paid staff members of the publisher, nor even have their time funded
by
> > the publisher, but who are members of the community of scientists (one
might
> > even say scholars) around the world who recognise that for the system of
> > peer-reviewed communication to work they must co-operate and not defect
from
> > the peer-review system.
> >
> > The publisher provided three things in the past:
> >
> > - The administration of receipt of manuscripts (sometimes including
> > allocation of manuscripts to referees, sometimes not);
> > - type-setting and presentation expertise;
> > - physical production and distribution.
> >
> > Type-setting is now done principally by the authors with a small input
(in my
> > experience) by the paid staff at the publisher.
> >
> > Physical production and distribution is no longer the only way to
achieve
> > distribution and in many ways is a poorer method than newer ways, for
most
> > purposes.
> >
> > We are left with the administrative role. This, and only this, is what
is
> > necessary for the peer-review process to be maintained. Yes, we must
find as
> > a community of scholars, a way of ensuring that this administration
> > continues. However, to claim that this administration is the major
labour in
> > producing a strong scientific publishing community is arrogant beyond
belief
> > to the working scholar.
> >
> >
> > --
> > *E-mail*a.a.adams_at_rdg.ac.uk******** Dr Andrew A Adams
> > **snail*27 Westerham Walk********** School of Systems Engineering
> > ***mail*Reading RG2 0BA, UK******** The University of Reading
> > ****Tel*+44-118-378-6997*********** Reading, United Kingdom
> >
Received on Sat Mar 03 2007 - 03:20:19 GMT