RE: Homer Simpson at the NIH

["Armbruster, Chris" <Chris.Armbruster@EUI.eu>]

I disagree with Joe Esposito's conclusion that the worst from the
NIH is yet to come. Also, I think that smaller publishers and
society publishers are not in danger. I have argued as much in
two recent papers to which I post the links below.

Joe Esposito is of course correct to observe that
"deposit-embargo-release" open access policies only duplicate the
publishers' system and in this sense are 'parasitic'. However,
publishers have brought this upon themselves by developing
digital policies of content holding and hoarding that are
detrimental to open science in the long run and therefore
principally unacceptable. That "content-hoarding" is not a
prerequisite of digital publishing has been demonstrated long
enough, e.g. by HighWire Press - hence I can see why research
funders are becoming impatient and opt for mandating open access.

The problem with mandatory open access policies is version
control. It is apparent that many of the "content-hoarding"
publishers are not really bothered by open access mandates - as
long as the deposited version is not identical with (or not an
exact copy of) the publishers' version. The reason is that for
all purposes that matter in the longer term - like citation,
research evaluation and archiving - only the original (or the
copy of the original) will do. This has inadvertently been
demonstrated by JISC UK, who are funding a piece of software that
is meant to validate repository content by certifying how "close"
repository content is to the publishers' version.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_rep_pres/tools/valrec.aspx.

My argument is that society publishers could well lead the way
out of the present impasse:

Armbruster, Chris, "Society Publishing, the Internet and Open
Access: Shifting Mission-Orientation from Content Holding to
Certification and Navigation Services?" (July 2007). Available at
SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=997819

"As publishers, learned and professional societies have done
exceptionally well in applying their knowledge networks and tools
to produce outstanding journals.  They stand to benefit from open
access because society publishers are embedded within their
specific community, which they serve in a number of ways. They
are ideally placed to utilise the rise of digital peer production
(e.g. e-Science, but also the textgrid for the humanities) and
global epistemic networks (researchers sharing a broadly defined
research programme and, for example, sharing pre-prints) to
deliver value-adding services to a global audience of users.
Society publishers may find that institutional repositories and,
more generally, digital libraries, could become partners in
publishing. If repositories and libraries collect, disseminate
and curate the content, then society publishers may concentrate
on providing what they do best: adding value through
certification and navigation services."

This paper has made the Top 10 for the following SSRN subject
matter journals: Cyberspace law Information systems and
e-business networks Legal education

This recent paper builds on an earlier paper

Armbruster, Chris, "Cyberscience and the Knowledge-Based Economy,
Open Access and Trade Publishing: from Contradiction to
Compatibility with Nonexclusive Copyright Licensing" (October
2006).

Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=938119

- which won the Yale Law Information Society "Access to
Knowledge" writing competition in 2007
http://research.yale.edu/isp/eventsa2k2.html

Together these papers of a view of the "alternate universe" that
Joe Esposito would like the NIH to create. I see the current
mandatory deposit and open access policies as a transitional step
on the way to that alternate universive which already today is
technically, legally and financially viable.

Chris Armbruster
Max Planck Digital Library
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=434782
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