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Re: Certification and Dissemination

I disagree with both Stevan Harnad and Sandy here. The real point is that the academy lives inside the economy, not outside it.

Rather than call this thread "Certification and Dissemination," I would call it "Yesterday's Solutions, Tomorrow's Problems."

The problem with the vision of the future of scholarly communications promulgated here is that it is modeled on two few variables. What does the individual researcher (presumably in any field, though most of the examples apply primarily if not exclusively to the experimental sciences) need to get his or her work done? Well, obviously, access to the outputs of other researchers. Hence the need for open access. Case closed.

Similarly, one could argue (as a college instructor of mine did many years ago) that the spur gave rise to the political developments of the Middle Ages, that introducing a free market economy would put an end to despotism and terrorism in Iraq, and that in baseball, pitching wins the game. Whatever the virtues of technology, the principles of Milton Friedman, or a fastball, there is simply more going on than is dreamt of in Harnad's ideology.

A case in point is the policy decision by many institutions to create repositories (great idea), and then to insist that the content, which is open, cannot be used for commercial purposes. Now, what in heaven's name is the point of that? Why would anyone want to stand in the way of investment and the innovations that investment triggers? Better, in my view, for institutions to license the use of their content for commercial applications, bringing in revenue that could (for example) be used to sponsor other research programs or for financial aid. To advocate an end to restricted content is one thing, but to declare war on the economy?

The open access movement would benefit considerably if it saw itself not as an end in itself but as one facet of a broader academic enterprise. There are competing visions for OA, but one of them, what I would term "conventional OA," will increase costs, reduce investment, and stifle innovation in communications.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy Thatcher" <sgt3@psu.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 10:54 PM
Subject: RE: Certification and Dissemination

I agree with almost everything you say here, Stevan, but I do wonder how many current publishers using a subscription model will convert to Gold OA service-providers, mainly because I don't think the fees for these services will ever get high enough to provide the profit margins to which commercial publishers have become accustomed--and some will probably decide to invest their capital elsewhere where it will get a better ROI. University presses may be more likely to do so because they will charge less and have more of a mission-oriented focus anyway, being units of universities dedicated to the same values.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


On Tue, 29 Apr 2008, Ian.Russell [Chief Executive, ALPSP] wrote:
As I said, if both repository dissemination and peer review are being paid for by subscriptions, gold OA or some other method then I personally have no problem. I don't know how I could have been clearer on this.
A bit of mix-up there. Journals and their expenses (including the cost of administering peer review) are being paid for by institutional subscriptions today.

Institutional repositories pay their own IR and deposit expenses.

I certainly hope that Ian is not suggesting that the institutions and their authors should pay journals *extra* today in order to self-archive their own published output in their own IRs while all those journals' expenses are being paid by institutional subscriptions, for that would sound very much like double-dipping.

However, the Southampton University mandate (and by extension other similar mandates) is unfunded because the University has made no clear commitment to support the scholarly communication system by continuing to subscribe to journals; or to make a clear and unambiguous commitment to meet gold OA fees; or to come up with some other method of funding the system.
(We were talking about subscription journals, so let's leave Gold OA journals out of it for now; we'll get back to them in moment.)

Institutions are continuing to subscribe to journals, but this has nothing to do with institutions self-archiving: They self-archive their own refereed research output. Their subscriptions buy in the refereed research output of other institutions.

If and when Green OA self-archiving should ever make subscriptions unsustainable (as I have already pointed out several times), *then* journals can downsize to become peer-review service-providers alone (and institutions will have plenty of windfall subscription savings out of which to pay the much-reduced Gold OA fees for their own article output).

But right now, while subscriptions are still sustaining journals, there is no question of extracting additional fees from author-institutions (double-dipping).

I think that you made the point about subscription revenue providing compensation for peer review because you misread or misunderstood my first paragraph. If it is paid for by subscriptions as it has been for 350 years then, of course, no problem. If you have an unfunded mandate like Southampton University's where: 1) authors have to deposit a version of the article after publishers have added value, but 2) the University has not made a commitment to cover gold OA fees, and 3) the University expects to make 'subscription savings' through cancellations then Southampton becomes a free rider on the rest of the system and with enough free riders the system will break down.
I wonder where the connection between Southampton University's self-archiving mandate and Southampton University 'subscription savings' came from? How can an author-institution cancel journals just because it is making its own *article* output OA? The subscriptions don't buy in the institution's own article output: The institution already has that! Its subscriptions buy in the article output of other institutions.

But perhaps you are referring to what might eventually happened if all universities follow the cue from Southampton (and the 41 other universities [including Harvard] and research funders [including RCUK, ERC and NIH] that have mandated OA self-archiving, as the EUA has recommended for its 791 universities)?

But I have already answered that: If and when universal Green OA should ever make subscriptions unsustainable, then journals can downsize and convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model to cover the costs of administering and certifying the outcome of peer-review with their titles and track-records.

That's the natural remedy for free riding (not double-dipping).

This argument is really a side show though as we simply don't know how the subscription journal / repository relationship will work although we have both agreed in the past that it will most likely result in journals going out of business.
I don't recall agreeing about that! I am certain journal titles will continue to exist, along with their editorial boards, referees, authors, and track-records. Some titles may migrate to Gold OA publishers if their subscription-based publishers don't want to stay in business, but that's not *journals* (or peer review) going out of business.

As regards the output of publicly funded research: No, I am sorry you are quite wrong. If the output from the university was 'peer-reviewed journal articles' then the system would never have needed publishers to organize the peer review. I believe I answered in my original post why this is not 'free'.
And I believe I answered how peer review is being paid for today.

Incidentally, 'certification' is one of a number of areas where publishers add value and it really must be noted that certification is much more that simply running a peer review *process*.
Much more? It seems to me that once the peer review is done and the article is accepted, certification simply amounts to affixing the journal title (and with it its track record for quality).

Anyway, it seems to me that the issue would easily be solved if Southampton University makes a campus-wide commitment to meet gold OA fees. Why hasn't it?
Why should it? Most Southampton articles (like most articles everywhere) are being published in subscription journals today, not in Gold OA journals, and those subscriptions are being paid by the subscribing institutions today (and Southampton is subscribing to whatever journals it feels it needs and can afford today).

Stevan Harnad