Re: Institutional Mandates and Institutional OA Repository Growth

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2007, Sandy Thatcher wrote:

> You make it all sound so simple, Stevan, but there is nothing 
> simple about a transition from Green OA to Gold OA, including 
> the redirection of savings from journal subscriptions to 
> funding Gold OA journals, because as many wise people like Jim 
> O'Donnell have pointed out on this list, universities don't 
> work that way.
I make no wishes, wise or unwise. And I make no conjectures -- 
only, when forced, counter-conjectures, to counter others' 
conjectures.

The actual empirical evidence (neither wish nor conjecture) is 
that self-archiving is (1) feasible, (2) being done, (3) 
beneficial, and (4) being mandated. Whether and when it ever goes 
on to generate cancellations and transitions and redirections is 
all pure speculation, based on no empirical evidence one way or 
the other (except that it hasn't happened yet, even in fields 
that reached 100% OA years ago). But if you insist on asking a 
hypothetical "what if?" question just the same, I respond with an 
equally hypothetical "then..." answer.

The factual part is fact. If wise men have privileged access to 
the future, so be it. I have none. I have only the available 
evidence, and logic. (And logic tells me that where there's a 
will, there's a way, especially if/when the hypothetical 
cancellation windfall savings that no one has yet seen should 
ever materialize. Till then, I'll just go with the evidence-based 
four -- self-archiving, self-archiving mandates, OA, and their 
already demonstrated feasibility and benefits -- leaving the 
speculation to those who prefer that sort of thing.)

> Wishing it were so does not make it so. And by talking about 
> peer review only, you oversimplify what is involved in journal 
> publishing, which requires skills that go beyond simply 
> conducting peer review and that are not most economically 
> carried out by faculty, who are not trained for such tasks and 
> whose dedication of time to them detracts from the exercise of 
> their main talents as researchers.
Well, I could invoke my quarter century as founder and editor in 
chief of a major peer-reviewed journal as evidence that I know 
what I am talking about.

But I'd rather just point out that the conjecture about journal 
publishing downsizing to just peer-review service-provision is 
part of the hypothetical conditional that I only invoke if 
someone insists on playing the speculation game. It is neither a 
wish nor a whim. I am content with 100% Green OA. Full stop.

Apart from that, I'll stick with the empirical facts of 
self-archiving, self-archiving mandates, OA, and their benefits, 
and abstain from the hypothesizing.

> You are also wrong in interpreting PRISM as just another 
> repetition of the same old tired anti-OA rhetoric. As a member 
> of the publishing community whose press is a member of the PSP 
> (but not an endorser of PRISM), I can tell you that this is not 
> just more of the same.
If PRISM is making any new points -- empirical or logical -- I 
would be very grateful if you point out to me exactly what those 
new points are. For all I have seen has been a repetition of the 
very few and very familiar old points I and others have rebutted 
many, many times before.

(You seem to have overlooked the linked list if 21 references I 
included as evidence that these points have all been voiced, and 
rebutted, many times before. If you send me a list of new ones, 
it would be helpful if you first check that list to see whether 
they are indeed new. The list is also archived at: 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/297-guid.html )

> Whether we are getting close to a "tipping point" is of course 
> a matter of conjecture, but then so is the overall benefit from 
> Green OA, which you always state as though it were an 
> established fact rather than a hypothesis with some evidence in 
> support of it yet hardly overwhelming evidence at this point in 
> time.
Since we are talking about wishful thinking, I know full well 
that the OA self-archiving advantage in terms of citations and 
downloads is something that the publishing lobby dearly wish were 
nonexistent, or merely a methodological artifact of some kind.

I'm quite happy to continue conducting actual empirical studies 
and analyses confirming the OA advantage, and demonstrating that 
it is not just an artifact (of either early access or 
self-selection bias for quality). That ongoing question is at 
least substantive and empirical, hence new (especially when the 
challenges come from those with no vested interests in the 
outcome). The doomsday prophecies and the hype about government 
control and censorship are not.

     "Where There's No Access Problem There's No Open Access
     Advantage"
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/289-guid.html

(I expect that the tobacco industry did more than its share of 
wishing that the health benefits of not smoking would turn out to 
be nonexistent or a self-selection artifact too: When money is at 
stake, interpretations become self-selective, if not 
self-serving, too!)

Stevan Harnad