RE: NYT on Cornyn-Lieberman

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

I sometimes think that Lisa's right - let authors post their 
manuscripts wherever they want. The only problem is that I think 
I've seen this future and from the feedback I've received from 
librarians, it doesn't seem to work very well.

Why do I think this? Let me tell you a story (for which, if 
you've heard it before, I apologise).

The story concerns the OECD's working papers. They are loaded, by 
authors, onto the OECD's website and are freely available. So, if 
this model is so great, why did a room full of about 200 
librarians tease me about how terrible it was to access them? In 
fact, the level of criticism we received from librarians and 
readers over a period of years prompted us to do something about 
it. This 'something' was a project that: firstly identified all 
OECD working papers (we initially thought there were five series, 
in fact we found 11 - and we work in the same organisation as the 
authors, no wonder librarians were finding it difficult); then 
captured each paper's metadata into a database (and tidied up a 
lot of inconsistences in the series numbering used by authors); 
then built a website (as part of our online library) into which 
all the metadata and papers were posted so they could be found 
easily. We added DOIs to each paper (so readers can cite them 
with confidence); we gave each series an ISSN so librarians can 
catalogue them. We also built an export engine to push all the 
papers onto Repec (an "ArXiv" for economists) - previously few of 
our authors were bothered to post their papers onto this site. In 
early 2007 we'll add new features: the references will link out 
via CrossRef and we'll provide a tool to allow readers to export 
citations to EndNotes and RefWorks. It has cost us around $80,000 
to do all this work (there are about 1,000 papers altogether), 
mainly because, as Lisa says, our staff need to be paid and get 
health care.

By the way, before anyone gets worried, this story does have some 
happy endings: the papers are still freely available, and they 
can remain so while we're earning sufficient revenues from our 
e-library to be able to absorb the ongoing costs; more papers are 
now being downloaded than before, so we feel justified in having 
made the investment; and, perhaps best of all from my personal 
persective, librarians are no longer teasing me about our working 
papers!

Toby Green
OECD Publishing

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Lisa Dittrich
Sent: 11 May, 2006 3:00 AM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: NYT on Cornyn-Lieberman

If the research should be free to all, then simply make it 
available, sans review, editing, etc., to the public on some 
publicly available Web site.  THAT is the solution.

What we "publishing hacks"--or, correction, this particular 
hack--objects to is having to give away work to which I and my 
staff have SUBSTANTIVELY contributed.  In essence, it no longer 
belongs solely to the researcher or his/her funder, and no one, 
including the public, has paid any of the costs of what I and my 
staff have contributed.  I am not being greedy--our journal is 
not a profit maker.

I simply want our work to be appropriately compensated (not to 
mention simply ACKNOWLEDGED--this proposed legislation, and its 
many proponents, act as if publishers add no value at all, or at 
least nothing that cannot be recouped in six months time).  The 
journal's staff, a fine group of people who require reasonable 
salaries, health care, etc., work hard to ensure that mss. are 
properly tracked, reviewed, and substantively edited (which means 
ensuring that authors' mistakes, bad writing, etc., are 
corrected).  Our authors pay us no fees.  Our subscription prices 
are low.

You could argue that we should cut most of our staff and do none 
of these things.  Fine.  Then you are back to my plan of simply 
posting results on a Web site.  Authors can't have it both ways. 
Either you want what publishers offer--for which you must 
compensate us--or you don't.

I actually hope that an opposite push comes, and journals stop 
accepting mss. from government funded authors (a dream, I know). 
Let Varmus's original plan be put in place, and let's have a 
non-vetted Web site of research results, free to all.  This seems 
really to be the goal.  I personally have no problem with 
it--let's just be honest about our intentions and real about the 
consequences of whatever approach we choose!

Lisa Dittrich
Managing Editor
Academic Medicine
Washington, D.C. 20037
www.academicmedicine.org