[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: UK scholarly journals: An evidence-based analysis (by RIN/EPS)

In commenting on this Report we need to remember its purpose, as described in the title. The Report attempts to set out the facts about the current factors in scholarly publishing. It is not about open access or about how to achieve open access (although it is a sign of the impact of the open access movement that any report on publishing today has to cover some aspects of new research dissemination opportunities).

The main conclusion I found in the Report was that we know so few facts about either the traditional publishing market or about the emerging dissemination models, whether self-archiving or OA journals. The lack of relevant evidence about the traditional publishing market appears to be partly because of the size and disparate nature of the market, and partly because so much data is "commercial in confidence". The Report recommends further research but I doubt whether we can know much more about the current situation while these two factors apply, although we could learn more about the value of the contribution by the academic community to "supply-side" economics in authoring, reviewing and editing.

For more evidence about self-archiving the problem is not "commercial in confidence", as evidence is usually in the public domain, but the problem is simply one of time, until repository content grows and we are able to monitor the effects. For more evidence about OA journals time is again a major factor, and as long as OA publishers continue to be open about their business models we shall learn more and more about the impact of this form of open access.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 8:08 PM
Subject: UK scholarly journals: An evidence-based analysis (by RIN/EPS)


Critique of:
       UK scholarly journals: 2006 baseline report
         An evidence-based analysis of data concerning
         scholarly journal publishing.
         http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-scholarly-journals

         Prepared on behalf of the Research Information Network,
         Research Councils UK and the Department of Trade & Industry
         By Electronic Publishing Services Ltd http://www.epsltd.com
         In association with Professor Charles Oppenheim and LISU at
         Loughborough University Department of Information Science

Summary only. Full hyperlinked version of this critique is available at:
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/142-guid.html

     ---------------------

SUMMARY: The above Report on UK Scholarly Journals was commissioned by
RIN, RCUK and DTI, and conducted by ELS, but its questions, answers and
interpretations are clearly far more concerned with the interests of the
publishing lobby than with those of the research community. The Report's
two relevant overall findings are correct and stated very fairly in their
summary form:

        [1] "Overall, [self-archiving] of articles in open access
        repositories seems to be associated with both a larger
 number of citations, and earlier citations for the items
 deposited....The reasons for this [association] have not
 been clearly established - there are many factors that
 influence citation rates... Consistent longitudinal data
 over a period of years... would fill this gap."

 [2] "There is no evidence as yet to demonstrate any
 relationship (or lack of relationship) between
 subscription cancellations and repositories... Proving or
 disproving a [causal] link between availability in
 self-archived repositories and cancellations will be
 difficult without long and rigorous research."

 The obvious empirical and practical conclusion to draw
 from the finding that (1) all the self-archiving evidence
 to date is positive for research and that (2) none of the
 self-archiving evidence to date is negative for
 publishing) would have been that the research community
 should now apply and extend these findings -- by applying
 and extending self-archiving (through self-archiving mandates)
 to all UK research output, along with consistent,
 rigorous longtitudinal studies over a period of years, to
 test (1) whether the positive effect on citations
 continues to be present (and why) and (2) whether the
 negative effect on subscriptions continues to be absent.

 But instead, the two overall findings are hedged with volumes
 of special pleading, based mostly on wishful thinking, to
 the effect that (1') the observed relationship between
 self-archiving and citations may not be causal, and that
 (2') there may exist an as-yet-unobserved causal
 relationship between self-archiving and cancellations
 after all.

     Even that would be alright, if this Report's conclusions
 were coupled with a clear endorsement of the proposed
 self-archiving mandates, so that the competing hypotheses
 can be put to a rigorous long-term test.  But the only
 test the commissioners of this Report seem to be
 interested in conducting is "Open Option" publishing,
 i.e., authors paying publishers to make their article OA
 for them, instead of self-archiving it for themselves.
 This would certainly be a nice way to hold author
 self-archiving and institution/funder self-archiving
 mandates at bay for a few years more, while at the same
 time protecting publishers from undemonstrated risk of
 revenue loss. But it would also leave global unmandated
 self-archiving to continue to languish at the current
 spontaneous 15% rate that the self-archiving mandates had
 been meant to drive up to 100%. And it would leave
 research unprotected from its demonstrated risk of
 impact loss. The option of having to pay to provide OA is
 certainly not likely to enhance the unmandated rate of
 uptake by authors (though I'm sure publishers would have
 no quarrel with funder mandates to provide OA coupled
 with the funds to pay publishers' asking price for paid
 OA, as provided by the Wellcome Trust).

 The longterm test will nevertheless be conducted,
 because four out of eight UK Research Councils have
 already mandated self-archiving. Their citation rates and
 their cancellation rates can then be compared with those
 for the four that have not mandated self-archiving (and
 whose authors hence do it spontaneously by
 "self-selection"). Alas this will be mostly comparing
 apples and oranges (e.g. MRC vs AHRC), and it will
 needlessly be depriving the oranges of several more
 years of potential growth enhancement. My guess is that
 all the other councils -- except possibly the paradoxical
 EPSRC (which evidently thinks, with the publishing lobby,
 that there's still some sort of pertinent pretesting to
 be done for a few more years here) -- will come to their
 senses long before that, unpersuaded by Reports like this
 one.

#####