Stevan,
Gold OA isn't popular and, I suspect, never will be.
> Correct. But I think you are making a logical error on causality: It is
> Green OA that will eventually cause the downsizing and conversion to
> Gold OA and peer review alone, not vice versa. Hence you are mistaken
> both about practicality, probability and priority: Green OA must come
> first, and the only way to get universal Green OA before the heat death
> of the universe is for universities and funders to mandate it.
On "downsizing" to Gold OA, I'm afraid that I agree with the original point in the article to which N. Miradon posted a link recently. The developing world doesn't want it. Neither, I submit, does anybody in the developed world want to pay for it. In terms of diverting currently subscription funds progressively to OA, any librarian such as myself will tell you that getting management agreement for what looks *to them* like a hypothetical new publishing model is going to be complex and very possibly unworkable, leaving only the few universities that have created funds for the purpose. None to my knowledge has agreed to allocate money on a yearly basis, as the costs are currently unknown.
Why will Gold OA not catch on? Because it is unjust! Only those academics whose institutions can afford to pay will be able to publish, unlike the present situation where anybody can. As I am presently a librarian, not an academic, I would be very likely unable to publish in my field of research on the basis of these centrally allocated funds, like retired academics and those in the developing world. Nobody will want this model, quite simply. They don't want it now!
> You, instead, Talat, are imagining a direct conversion to peer-review
> only, administered by inter-university consortia; there is no plausible
> direct path from here to there. But there *is* a plausible direct path
> from here to universal Green OA.
As I also said, there was no "plausible path" for print to electronic publishing, yet it happened. If people as well placed as yourself were advocating it, I am sure it might have a strong chance of catching on.
> But none of that is the slightest bit relevant to what we are discussing
> here, which is what the true costs of peer review are *to journals*
> today.
The cost of a few emails, letters and phone calls, self-evidently. Good copy editing and page setting costs much more, and shouldn't be as underestimated as it is.
> If you mean disseminating the submissions to the referees, that is part
> of peer review costs; so is the (little) copy editing that is done and
> needed.
I don't mean that, obviously.
> If you mean disseminating the published article to users, then that most
> definitely is *not* part of the cost of peer review. (It is one of the
> main costs of publishing of which IRs will *relieve* journals in the OA
> era.)
Of course it isn't a cost of peer review! I repeat, "relieving" journals of costs also "relieves" them of profits, which they won't want. It's myopic, to use your word, to suggest that this won't cause problems fairly soon.
> I think you are referring to the fact that 62% of journals (including
> Springer and Elsevier) have given their Green light to author
> self-archiving of the refereed postprint immediately upon acceptance for
> publication, 29% only after an embargo delay period, or only for the
> preprint, and 9% don't endorse self-archiving at all?
As I believe I said to you once before, a comment you brushed aside, this is currently the case *under licence* which they remain free to withdraw, if that should be in their interests. Don't fool yourself that they couldn't if need be. At present it doesn't serve publishers to do so, so they don't. This is no basis on which to plan.
> I happen to personally think it is probable that universal mandated OA
> will eventually generate cancellations, cost-cutting, downsizing to peer
> review only, and a conversion to Gold OA.
I happen to believe that nobody wants Gold OA in the future, as they don't appear to want it now.
> accessible online for all potential users. That is what is optimal for
> science and scholarship. The Green OA mandates will assure that that
> happens. And publishers will adapt.
Herein lies a point always ignored. Arts departments have not co-operated with the Green OA revolution, as has recently been brought home to me here by our English Department. This is because we haven't understood their needs and continue to talk only about the most recent cutting edge science departments. Arts subjects are much more concerned with what you dismiss as "legacy" literature, preservation, book publishing, without which OA means little to them. We have sought no answers for any of these areas and so have no solutions for these academics.
>> We would
>> be over a barrel because we currently hold so much OA material on licence
>> from these very same publishers. Perhaps that is indeed their tactic,
>> to develop a lever that they can use against us later to assure revenue
>> levels in some way.
>
> Who is "we"? Do you mean libraries? And the legacy literature? I'd say
> that by the time universal Green OA has taken over the access load, the
> problem of providing access to the legacy literature will have shrunk
> to tractable size. (It would certainly be a case of throwing good money
> after bad to let *that* hold us back from providing universal Green OA
> for the forward-going literature!)
"We" here means repository managers, their libraries and therefore their institutions, who may not be so eager to follow your predictions as you hope, given that you have such a poor view of their "legacy" holdings and given the comments I have made on the failure to address the needs of all disciplines. I'm not sure we even have a solution for sciences and social sciences.
>> My view is that publishers and universities alike need to find different
>> funding models now, ahead of time, in order to see off the potential
>> for conflict that I hypothesise above.
>
> Ahead of time before what? Before mandating Green OA? I think that would
> be an exceedingly myopic and dysfunctional thing to do.
No, as I have agreed, we are stuck with the necessity for mandates asap. I mean before conflict arises with the publishers, as it must inevitably do if we simply eyeball them from the trenches waving our mandates. (Same "we".)
> In parallel with mandating Green OA? Go ahead and do it, but it takes
> two to tango. And beware of locking yourself into journals' current
> asking prices in some new kind of "really big deal," carrying over to
> Gold OA, with "memberships" replacing subscriptions at current asking
> prices. That's a Trojan Horse.
I was not suggesting this.
> But it doesn't much matter what interim arrangements libraries make with
> journals today. That's not where the action is. The action is with
> researchers, their institutions and their funders, mandating and
> providing Green OA. The libraries are sometimes (not always) the IR
> managers. But this is a different ball game, a new one for librarians;
> it will need some new ways of thinking, more from the providers' than
> the users' viewpoint.
The relationship between library (i.e. those who acquire both resource and locus of deposit) and researcher is key to the solution, as any good subject librarian will tell you. I fear that you don't understand how libraries form a key part of the way in which the institutions who they serve, and who you mention as players in this, actually change policy in the interests of the researchers. This is the main point of contact in the institution.
> There are, I don't doubt, many motivated, streamlined publishers and
> consortia, willing and able to take over the existing journal titles and
> and to continue to provide peer review only on the Gold OA cost recovery
> model. But those titles are still in the hands of publishers who are not
> yet inclined to do that downsizing and conversion, because they are
> still making ends meet handily with subscriptions; and there is still a
> demand for the print edition.
As Green OA grows, this situation will change. (Some demand for the print edition, I suspect, will stay: a side point.)
>> I would instead hope to hear direct
>> answers to the points raised, as well as a reasoned argument against
>> "consortia" journals rather than merely waving them aside as a foolish
>> repository manager's fancy.
Sadly it appears this point has been side-stepped deliberately, as I confess that I anticipated. Core Green OA forecasts, however speculative, are to be supported. Others are to be rejected as mere speculations, a double standard.
> demonstrably delivering the goods at long last. Nor is it particularly
> helpful to opine they are "coercive" and hence somehow distasteful: Green
> OA self-archiving mandates are no more nor less distasteful than the
> universal publish or perish mandates we already have; they are natural
> extensions of them, and potentially just as beneficial to research,
> researchers, their institutions, their funders, the R&D industry, and
> the tax-paying public that funds research: OA mandates are "coercive"
> in the same sense taxes are, except that they don't cost us anything
> but a few keystrokes).
Well I agree in so far as research reporting and, as you put it rather more starkly than I suspect is the reality, "publish or perish" has required academics to do anyway. But one must seek to see if from the academics' expressed point of view. This, to them, is a new obligation that impinges on, as they see it, what they do with their copyright. Hence it looks like coercion. Taking heed of this reaction is the only way to get true co-operation.
> You are making plans for new publishers to take over or compete with
> existing journal titles on an OA basis: Go ahead. But be aware that you
> are betting on a long shot strategy, and the winning strategy is already
> in sight.
I'm not in a position to make such plans! But I suggest that someone whose advocacy on the subject will be heard, such as yourself, might be in a position to popularise the idea speedily, if you wished to put your efforts into it.
Simply, what we don't have is an answer to how peer review, copy editing and so forth will actually be provided after the Green OA revolution. If there is no way forward, the revolution cannot happen. I support Green OA but I do not believe at all that it will, or should, lead to Gold OA. There is no natural progression in this whatsoever, as nobody wants Gold OA anyway. If you destroy the publishers, as you suggest, who will then do the peer review? All this talk about costs is a whitewash: they are relatively insignificant anyway compared to the research process. Universities could easily shoulder them, especially given savings from subscriptions, which are exorbitant.
Find a solution to the future source of peer review (that isn't merely Gold OA) and you solve the whole thing. This peer review problem is all that is holding back Green OA. Forget Gold OA, it simply isn't part of the solution.
Talat
-----
Dr Talat Chaudhri, Ymgynghorydd Cadwrfa / Repository Advisor
Tîm Cynorthwywyr Pwnc ac E-Lyfrgell / Subject Support and E-Library Team
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Received on Fri May 23 2008 - 18:52:58 BST