Yes, indeed, my use of inverted commas indicated irony. That is why I
put the word in quotes and added the parenthetical remark "(please
note the scare
quotes)".
But surely Arthur Sale does not mean to suggest that the publishers'
role is worthless, no longer needed, or inevitably opposed to the
interests of scientific progress and research? This comment struck me:
> Publishers are still in it for the money alone. Witness their comments about
> open access.
>
I do not see how Arthur can be so sure about this.
After 30 years in the business I still find it difficult to generalise
about the motives of publishers. The motives and personal qualities of
publishers are probably as varied and unpredictable as those of any
other profession -- eg academics. Some are energetic, some are not.
Some are farsighted, some are not. Some listen to the other side of
the argument, some do not. As it happens some publishers are in favour
of OA for primary research (count me among them). Jan Velterop has
clearly stuck his neck out there -- as have the admirable PLoS
publishers (BMC/Hindawi and others). But that does not mean that we
are so, because we are only interested in money, or even because we
are NOT interested in money or profit. Publishers like any
professional group engaged in the knowledge economy can recognise the
simple point that the changes wrought by the internet (especially the
web) change the requirements for science and research. One obvious
change is that the *marginal* cost of disseminating a publication
diminishes pretty much to zero when we use the web. The marginal cost
measures the cost of providing additional copies, or of providing open
access.
The point I was making about captial relates to that issue of marginal
costs. With print the marginal cost of additional copies never
disappears. It was easy to make mistakes when judging print runs.
Large-scale scientific publishing in the 20C necessitated access to
reasonably large amounts of capital (not enormous sums but the kind of
5 year investment that would give pause to a university or a learned
society). Journals needed to maintain physical copies of back issues
if new subscribers were to be attracted. A new periodical might take
5-7 years to reach break-even. This will be less true in the
21stC.Though Velterop makes a good point about the 'brands' involved
and the capital which has been expended on making them.
No need to feel sorry for publishers. They are only trying to do a
useful job, and even in the 20thC, the capital required for publishing
was not so enormous. As it happens libraries made an even larger
capital commitment in the 19th and 20th C (much larger than the
publishers). The capital requirements for building the libraries
needed for 21st C science are much lower. The physical libraries
(buildings, plant, stacks etc) will surely be much smaller, or at
least much 'lighter'. Someone is now planning the library system for
the Indian/Chinese university science-base for the next generation. It
will look more like Google Scholar or Google BookSearch than the
Cambridge University Library where I studied 30 years ago. It will
surely be predicated on OA for research publications. This will
probably be good for the planet. It will certainly be good for
science, and I suspect that it will be good for publishers and
librarians. But I am an optimist....
I will risk one generalistion about publishers -- the fruit of 30
years worth of mistakes -- it is best to be an optimist to be a
publisher, but it is wise to pay attention to all the twinges of
pessimism that may hedge your decisions. Perhaps this will be the
right emotional profile for publshers in the OA age.
Adam
On 3/3/07, Arthur Sale <ahjs_at_ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> 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 Mon Mar 05 2007 - 13:07:03 GMT