RE: Open Letter about OA to the Royal Society by Fellows of the Royal Society

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2005, Ward, Bob wrote:

> Dear Stevan,
>
> If this was "a rather disinterested contribution of BMC toward OA", why 
> was its involvement not openly declared in the letter, or in the 
> prominent piece that BioMed Central devoted to the letter on the home 
> page of its website? My understanding is that some of the signatories 
> did not even know about BMC's involvement when they signed.

Dear Bob,

For the very same reason that my own (minor) efforts to inform Fellows of 
the Royal Society about the Royal Society Statement and its implications 
were not openly declared: Because neither my efforts, nor those of Peter 
Suber, nor those of BMC, nor those of PLoS are of any consequence or 
relevance in this fundamental matter. (And they are already well-known.)

What is at stake is access to scientific research. We are not competing 
for revenues. There are no commercial interests involved. The only 
pertinent interests we are all representing are the interests of research, 
researchers, their institutions, their funders, and the tax-paying public 
that funds the funders and in whose ultimate interest research itself is 
being done.

And those interests are prominently declared in every word we say on 
behalf of Open Access -- which, to repeat, is not a competing economic 
model, serving commercial interests (as I am beginning to think that the 
publishing wing of the Royal Society might truly and innocently believe it 
to be!): Those interests are genuinely and solely in "the widest possible 
dissemination of research outputs" -- as you yourself put it, in 
describing the position of the Royal Society.

So I actually think the shoe is on the other foot. It is not BMC whose 
efforts on behalf of the RCUK proposal need to be openly declared. The 
RCUK proposes to require its fundees to self-archive their published 
research articles in their own institutional repositories for "the widest 
possible dissemination of research outputs" (by making them OA). That RCUK 
self-archiving policy is not in fact in BMC's commercial interest: If 
anything, it is contrary to it, for, as I noted in my posting, the 
incentive for publishing papers in an OA rather than a non-OA journal (and 
paying to do so) is that the journal provides OA: Yet the self-archiving 
of articles published in non-OA journals provides the very same benefit.

So the disinterested efforts of BMC and others on behalf of OA speak for 
themselves. What require a franker and more open declaration and 
examination are the interests and efforts of those in the Royal Society 
who influenced the drafting of the Royal Society statement on OA and the 
RCUK policy. For those interests are not only *not* those of the RS 
Fellowship as a whole (as the still growing number of FRS signatories to 
the Open Letter dissenting from the RS statement declares quite openly), 
but apparently the FRSs were not informed or consulted about the RS 
statement at all, or not nearly sufficiently.

     http://www.frsopenletter.org/

In sum, there is indeed a conflict of interest here. But it is not a 
conflict between the commercial interests of BMC and the competing 
financial interests of the publishing operations of the Royal Society. It 
is a conflict between what is in the best actual interests of research and 
what is in the best perceived interests of research publishers. The Royal 
Society needs to do some open soul-searching in order to sort out and 
declare openly where it stands.

> I think it would be best for contributors to the debate on open access 
> to openly declare their interests. The Royal Society has openly 
> acknowledged that, as a registered charity, it uses its surplus from the 
> publication of its journals to fund meetings, lectures and other 
> activities for the benefit of the science, engineering and technology 
> communities, and for the public.

And now the four questions that the Royal Society needs to face equally 
openly are these:

(1) Why is the RS trying to further delay the application of 15 years' 
worth of positive experimental results on the benefits of OA 
self-archiving to research and researchers in the absence of any evidence 
of negative effects on publishers and publishing? and to delay the 
application of those experimental results, and the further extension of 
this successful experiment, in the name of seeking still further 
"experimental results"? What further experiments? Experiments on what? And 
why?

(2) Why does the RS keep treating the RCUK proposal to require OA 
self-archiving of non-OA journal articles as if it were a proposal to 
require OA publishing? All evidence to date is that OA self-archiving 
leads neither to OA publishing nor to non-OA journal cancellations. Is the 
RS's advocacy of delaying the RCUK for further experimental evidence 
itself based on experimental evidence, or is it a delay based on 
speculation, and giving greater weight to imaginable risk to publishing 
revenues than to demonstrable and demonstrated benefits to research impact 
and progress?

And now the hardest and most soul-searching question of all:

(3) Even if the imaginable risks were eventually to prove to be real, and 
self-archiving were to lead to cancellations and a transition to the OA 
publishing model, would *that* be grounds for renouncing the demonstrated 
benefits to research impact and progress?

To put (3) still more graphically:

(4) Are the benefits currently funded by the RS's "surplus from the 
publication of its journals" -- i.e., "meetings, lectures and other 
activities for the benefit of the science, engineering and technology 
communities, and for the public" -- are those benefits to continue to be 
subsidised, at all costs, by researchers' lost impact and progress? Is 
there no other, more direct way to fund "meetings, lectures, and other 
activities for the benefit of the science, engineering and technology 
communities, and for the public" than at the cost of lost research access 
and impact? Are research reports a commodity whose main purpose is to 
subsidise something else through its sales revenue? Or is research an end 
in itself for the Royal Society?

Research is certainly an end in itself for RCUK. And what the RCUK is 
proposing to require is not a change in publishing model or practices at 
all. It is proposing to maximise the usage and impact of the research that 
it funds, for the benefit of the public that funds the research -- by 
self-archiving it.

RCUK is not requiring the RS or any publisher to become an OA publisher. 
RCUK is not requiring RCUK fundees to publish in OA journals (such as 
BMC's or PLoS's). RCUK is only requiring RCUK fundees to self-archive 
their own RCUK-funded research, for the sake of "the widest possible 
dissemination of research outputs" -- an objective to which the RS too 
declares itself to be dedicated.

Where is the concrete evidence of that abstract dedication in the RS's 
unflagging efforts to filibuster the RCUK policy?

> So how about everybody else declaring their interests? After all, it is 
> now standard practice for authors to declare any potential conflicts of 
> interest when they submit papers to journals. So perhaps you could start 
> a trend, Stevan, by declaring your interests.

I think there is not much mystery about mine, but I am happy to declare 
them: They are the very same as the RS's: "the widest possible 
dissemination of research outputs."

Best wishes, Stevan

Stevan Harnad
Professor of Cognitive Science
Department of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton
harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/

> Bob Ward
> Senior Manager
> Policy Communication
> Royal Society
> 6-9 Carlton House Terrace
> London
> SW1Y 5AG
>
> Tel: +44 (0) 20 7451 2516
> Fax: +44 (0) 20 7451 2615
> Mobile: +44 (0) 7811 320346
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk]
> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 21:28
> To: AmSci Forum
> Subject: Re: Open Letter about OA to the Royal Society by Fellows of the
> Royal Society
>
>      Re: "Science academy defends open access policy"
>      Donald MacLeod, Guardian: Education
>      Thursday December 8, 2005
>
> http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,10577,1662988,00.html
>
> On Thu, 8 Dec 2005 donald.macleod@guardian.co.uk wrote:
>
>> Dear Stevan
>>     Royal Society response to my website piece
>>
> http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/research/story/0,9865,1661107,00.
> html
>>     is this true?
>> best wishes Donald
>
> Dear Donald,
>
> You ask whether BMC coordinated the Open Letter from Fellows of the 
> Royal Society dissenting from the Royal Society statement. The answer is 
> yes, in part (and PLoS too).
>
> My understanding is that the negative reaction to the Royal Society 
> statement occurred, in part, among FRSs who were either editors or on 
> the editorial board of some BMC (and probably PLoS) journals. This 
> formed a point of focus for a collective action, which BMC helped 
> coordinate -- which is a very good thing, because otherwise it may have 
> taken longer to reach critical mass. (It would almost certainly have 
> happened anyway.)
>
> But before you make too much of the spin that the RS's publicist, Bob 
> Ward, is trying to put on it ("potential vested commercial interest"), 
> please note the following two facts:
>
>     (1) There are far more signatories than the small initial
>     seed-population of BMC Editors
>
> and
>
>    (2) This was a rather disinterested contribution of BMC toward OA,
>    because it is not OA publishing that the RCUK is proposing to
>    require, but OA self-archiving -- of articles published in *non-OA*
>    journals.
>
> This means that BMC (and PLoS) helped for the sake of OA, not for the 
> sake of BMC journals, which, from the financial point of view, are 
> actually in a kind of *competition* with OA self-archiving. For BMC's 
> and PLoS's primary appeal to authors is that they should publish in BMC 
> or PLoS in order to make their research OA. But the RCUK mandate will 
> make all RCUK-funded articles OA through self-archiving, making it 
> *unnecessary* to publish in an OA journal in order to make an article 
> OA.
>
> So Bob Ward sees a "potential vested commercial interest" only because 
> he and the RS continue to see this all (rather jadedly) as a competition 
> for money (in this case: money via subscription-charges vs. BMC's money 
> via author-charges). In reality, it is not about money or competition at 
> all: it is about OA.
>
> I will be responding publicly to the "RS"'s response (I have not yet 
> read it) and particularly to whatever they imply publicly about BMC's 
> very welcome and commendable help in rousing the growing FRS response. I 
> myself am drawing it to the attention of FRSs I know too, including Tim 
> Berners-Lee, who (I still hope) might agree to sign Friday.
>
> You might also note that BMC (unlike those who drafted the Royal Society 
> statement, which looks to have been largely the RS's publishing wing) at 
> least had the courtesy to actually inform and contact the FRSs about 
> what is going on! (This rather nullifies Bob Ward's plaint that the 
> signers of the Open Letter "did not offer the Society a chance to 
> respond." This sort of clumsy self-servingness will not wash well in 
> public. And I'll bet this is not really the voice of the RS at all: It's 
> just the pub-ops tail wagging the regal pooch...)
>
> Cheers, Stevan