Green OA:
Cost: Negligible
Value: Doubles research impact
How: Mandate Green OA
When: Now
(Then, afterward, go back to debating and speculating about the future of
publishing and the Green, Gold and Other options; not now; not instead;
not while Green OA is already fully within reach and there is nothing to
lose and everything to gain -- and time is passing and passing and... )
Stevan Harnad
P.S. OA is not about publishing costs, it's about research access and
impact loss, needlessly continuing day upon week upon month upon year,
year in and year out, as we just keep on rehashing the same old
hypothetical conditionals instead of doing the obvious, practical,
doable, and grotesquely overdue...
> [Forwarding from Chris Armbruster.]
>
> Much debate about the value and cost of OA seems
> to rest on the shared assumption that the
> Oldenbourg model of scholarly communication
> (conjoining peer review and dissemination) was
> suitably transposed from to paper to electronic
> format and might now be switched to OA (free to readers).
>
> Will this assumption hold in the internet galaxy?
>
> Notions of ^ÑGold^Ò and ^ÑGreen^Ò OA seem to
> reinforce this assumption. Officially, Green OA
> is premised on the Oldenbourg model and merely
> aims to duplicate publications in open
> repositories (which would increase overall costs
> by the factor ^Ñgreen^Ò). Gold OA does away with
> duplication and will lead to a reallocation of
> funds to pay publication charges. Whether this
> will reduce overall cost depends on whether a)
> much Gold OA publishing might be not-for profit
> (as there is evidence that not-for-profit
> publishers charge less) and/or b) a more
> efficient market might emerge in which journal
> might be substitutes for each other (this is
> likely to be the case only for the B-list, but
> that is the vast majority of journals).
>
> One can understand the reluctance of ^Ñcontent
> holding^Ò publishers to consider Gold OA for
> their shareholders would surely not be pleased if
> profits were sacrificed voluntarily. As regards
> Green OA, the argument is whether this threatens
> the Oldenbourg model (in sense of enabling
> publishers to recoup their costs and/or make a
> profit). In detail, the argument is then about the length of the embargo.
>
> But, is this the only, or best, way to look at the issue?
>
> Take the argument about Green OA leading to
> cancellations. To claim that cancellations are
> likely in future is to make an argument about the
> logic of the internet galaxy. But if you do so,
> should you then not recognise that several large
> and important scholarly communication platforms
> are free to authors and readers? ArXiv, RePEc and
> SSRN do cost something, but their successful
> growth over the past ten years signals that a
> cost-efficient way of organising dissemination is
> available. Part of the logic of the internet
> galaxy is to make dissemination cheap and in
> this sense Green OA would indeed threaten those
> publishers that believe their mission to be to hold (or own) content.
>
> Yet, another part of the logic of the internet
> would seem to be that in scholarly communication
> ^Ñcontent holding^Ò is a shrinking business model.
> It is so, because toll-access reduces inclusion
> and impact in scholarly communication. Once Open
> Access is possible, then the toll-access
> publishers needlessly impede scholarly
> communication. That is why the argument against
> content holding publishers will never go away.
>
> Moreover, cyberscience (or eScience) and related
> developments make open access to research
> publications and data intrinsically desirable. In
> this case OA is not a matter of cost, but a
> prerequisite to the future advancement of science.
>
> Is Gold OA the best way forward?
>
> In the life sciences a good case can be made for
> releasing only peer-reviewed information. But
> ArXiv, RePEc and SSRN demonstrate that for other
> sciences this is not the case. The technological
> and economic logic of the internet galaxy favours
> the severance of certification from dissemination.
>
> Indeed, if we were utilise the internet to
> maximise savings for dissemination, then
> relatively large sums of money could be
> redirected to where most needed: improved
> certification, enhanced literature awareness
> tools and the development of overlay services
> such as text mining. Such services cost money and
> one possible business model might be to recoup
> costs through subscriptions (please note that BMC
> as OA publisher also has subscriptions to pay
> charges) that, depending on the service, charge
> funders, authors, readers or libraries.
>
> Indeed, if we follow through with the switch in
> vision from ^Ñcontent^Ò to ^Ñservice^Ò then we see
> that there is not a shrinking market (of higher
> prices, more cancellations) but much terrain for
> business development. In this context, early
> estimates of the impact of OA in terms of
> economic growth and market value indicate that
> certification and services for the readers and
> users of research articles and data in science,
> higher education, knowledge-based industries and
> so on will experience growth over the coming years.
>
> What to do?
>
> I think it is time to take another look at the
> technological and economic logic of the internet.
> What model of certification and publishing is
> complementary to the advancement of cyberscience?
> How can compatibility be ensured with the need of
> seamless integration of research articles and
> data with the digital workflow of scientists?
> What are the needs of authors, readers and users
> in the internet galaxy if they have to handle
> steadily increasing amounts of research
> publications and data? How to better enable the
> utilisation of scientific knowledge in higher
> education, industry and government?
>
> I would be happy to hear from anyone interested
> in pursuing these questions further.
>
>
> Chris Armbruster
>
> Rapporteur
> "Academic Publishing in Europe: Innovation &
> Publishing " - under the Patronage of Dr. Annette
> Schavan, Federal Minister of Education and
> Research in Germany and under the Auspices of the
> EU Research Directorate-General
> http://www.ape2007.eu/text/0702ape07_short_report1.pdf
>
>
> Research articles at http://ssrn.com/author=434782
>
> Open access in social and cultural science:
> Innovative moves to enhance access, inclusion and
> impact in scholarly communication
>
> Cyberscience and the knowledge-based economy,
> open access and trade publishing: from
> contradiction to compatibility with nonexclusive copyright licensing
Received on Sat Apr 14 2007 - 00:39:36 BST