Re: OA - What cost? What value?

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

I have, belatedly, read two of Chris Armbruster's papers in which he
elaborates the view underling his comments below:

*Cyberscience and the Knowledge-Based Economy, Open Access and 
Trade Publishing: from Contradiction to Compatibility with 
Nonexclusive Copyright Licensing 
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=849305

*Society Publishing, the Internet and Open Access: Shifting
Mission-Orientation from Content Holding to Certification and
Navigation Services?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=997819

These indeed offer a very different perspective from what one 
usually hears on this list, questioning whether Green OA and Gold 
OA really make any sense and suggesting a new use for existing 
copyright law rather than arguing for its reform. The gist of 
Chris's argument, as I understand it, is that the logic of 
scholarly communication recommends an approach that supports the 
natural tendency of scholars to use disciplinary or 
subject-specific channels for exchanging ideas. So, in his terms, 
"guild publishing" makes the most sense, in contrast, say, with 
larger aggregations of disparate materials collected in most 
institutional repositories.  His models are arXiv, the Research 
Papers in Economics (RePEc), and the Social Science Research 
Network (SSRN), which has recently added a Humanities 
counterpart.

His argument turns on separating dissemination from 
certification. Dissemination would occur immediately upon the 
submission of a paper to such a guild-supported repository whose 
contents would be openly available to everyone in the world. The 
basic functions of such a repository would be to register a work 
(which is important for establishing priority claims), archive 
it, and disseminate it "open access." The process of 
certification would extend over a considerable period of time and 
involve a variety of different modes of validating quality and 
value: "not just publication in prestigious journals, but also 
keynote speeches, research grants, scholarly awards and, 
ultimately, the Festschrift, the lifetime achievement award and 
the Nobel Prize (or its substitutes)."

This system would require that nonexclusive licenses be used 
instead of outright transfers of copyright as under the present 
system. In this way, value-adding businesses could be built to 
provide a variety of types of certification and to bundle 
certified materials for use by other audiences outside the guild. 
Chris calls this "layered certification."  It would provide an 
avenue for publishers, both commercial and nonprofit, to continue 
offering services that would be valued in the marketplace and 
therefore could be the basis for a viable business. Current 
societies might, I suppose, do both: provide the basic "guild" 
repository and support that cost from either membership dues or 
value-added certifying services.

I think this approach makes a lot of sense, and it certainly 
provides an interesting alternative to the other alternatives 
that have dominated the debates.  But I do have a few questions:

First, I am puzzled by Chris's use of the phrase "trade 
publishing" to designate the value-adding type of business that 
he foresees arising from a regime of guild publishing and 
nonexclusive licensing. In the U.S. "trade" publishing has a 
specific meaning, and it would appear not to be the kind of 
business Chris really has in mind. Perhaps he can provide a 
definition or use a different term that would not involve this 
potential confusion.

Second, while I see this as an excellent model for the publishing 
of articles, I am wondering how it applies to books. Chris at 
various points seems to place book publishing outside of this 
model, treating it as a realm where exclusive copyright transfers 
still make sense. But then we end up with the bifurcation of 
knowledge between books and journals that, ultimately, I do not 
believe to be viable and runs counter to the very logic of 
scholarly discourse that Chris has used to justify his preferred 
model. What we would have here is another version of C.P. Snow's 
"two cultures"--instead of the sciences and the humanities, the 
divide would be between book-based and journal-based knowledge.

Third, I would be interested in Chris's views of how 
certification for books might, or might not, differ from 
certification for journal articles. I see a danger in relying 
exclusively on peer review for the former as carried out by 
"experts" within any given scholarly society, as it would tend to 
bias certification in favor of established paradigm-supporting as 
opposed to paradigm-challenging knowledge. The system of 
certification that is employed by university presses employs peer 
review as only one among several components; others include the 
roles of the acquiring editor and the faculty editorial board, 
which both bring distinctive "value added" to the process. This 
cannot be replicated solely from within the confines of a 
scholarly society. But I do applaud Chris's wide vision of what 
can count as certification, and perhaps it could readily 
incorporate this particular kind of value added as a unique 
service that university presses perform (unique in that,. even 
though some commercial academic publishers may employ peer 
reviewers as part of their decision-making process, they do not 
have faculty editorial boards advising them).

I apologize for this lengthy post, but it reflects my genuine 
enthusiasm for Chris's special contribution to our debates, which 
I am only now finally coming to appreciate fully.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press

>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 "Gold" and "Green" 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 
>"green"). 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 "content holding" 
>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 "content holding" 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 
>"content" to "service" 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