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RE: Certification and Dissemination

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008, Ian.Russell wrote:
But in order to have BOTH, you have to pay for BOTH and that means paying both for repository dissemination and for peer review either using the established subscription model, author side payment (gold) open access or some other method...
And both *are* being paid for: About $3000 per paper published (through institutional journal subscriptions) plus about $10 per paper archived.

I don't quite understand what you are alluding to here.

You don't get both by imposing unfunded mandates like that announced by Southampton University.
Subscribing institutions pay for journals by subscribing to them.

Institutions pay (the little they cost) for their Institutional Repositories for the benefits they confer on the institution: Inventorying, showcasing, archiving, monitoring and assessing its own research output, as well as maximizing its visibility, accessibility, usage and impact.

The authors' 6 minutes of extra keystrokes per paper deposited cost nothing. They are an investment in their research, just as all the preceding keystrokes were.

And here is what Southampton University has to say about its "unfunded" mandate:

"The University of Southampton is to make all its academic and
scientific research output freely available. A decision by the
University to provide core funding for its Institutional Repository
establishes it as a central part of its research infrastructure..."
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=University%20of%20Southampton%20

And this is my point: Whilst I agree with the argument that the output of publicly funded research (or from a research institution) - which is the author's original article - should be freely available to the public, I do not believe that the 'refereed postprint' (to use your terminology, I prefer 'accepted manuscript') should necessarily be freely given away. That decision should be up to the organization that added the value by peer reviewing it and associating it with its brand.
The output of publicly funded research is peer-reviewed journal articles -- which the peers review for free for publishers, and the authors give their publishers for free to sell for subscription, in exchange for having administered the peer review.

If and when subscriptions become unsustainable, institutions can publishers pay for the peer review of their own article output out of a small portion of their annual windfall savings from the cancelled journal subscriptions.

Maximizing the usage and impact of their own peer-reviewed research output is certainly not a decision institutions and funders need to leave up to publishers, and that is what the growing wave of Green OA self-archiving mandates is about. http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

What right, exactly, do those imposing unfunded mandates have to stipulate that the value added in this way be given up for no compensation?
Would you say that subscription revenue was no compensation?
Of course, the authors have the right to choose where to publish and long may that continue.

In anticipation of arguments that peer review is done 'for free' I hasten to add that (i) this isn't the only value added (ii) operating peer review processes are very expensive and that (iii) referees have the choice whether or not to give their time and expertise to peer review articles (those investing in peer review are given no choice regarding whether or not to give away the fruits of their labours by unfunded mandates).
The operating costs of administering peer review (and much more) are paid for today by institutional subscription revenue. If and when Green OA should ever make subscriptions unsustainable, publishing will convert to Gold OA and institutions will pay for the costs or administering peer review (and no more) out of a portion of their subscription savings.

Publishers today have a choice: They can wait to see whether universal Green OA eventually makes subscriptions unsustainable, or they can convert to Gold OA right now, or they can let their titles migrate to publishers that are happy to wait, or convert, right now. Only one choice is not open to publishers: To prevent authors and institutions from making the choice to maximize the impact of their refereed research output by self-archiving it.

Stevan Harnad

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu [mailto:owner-liblicense-
l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 25 April 2008 14:44
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Certification and Dissemination

It's not that the author must choose (1) (journal)
certification OR (2) (OA repository) dissemination: The right
choice is of course BOTH (1) journal certification (peer
review) AND (2) repository dissemination (OA self-archiving).

Joseph Esposito seems to keep wanting to imagine that what is
being self-archived is only or mostly unrefereed preprints
(and, he goes on to imagine: preprints never even destined to
go on to become refereed postprints).

It would be a good idea to look at what it is that the 41
self-archiving mandates in ROARMAP are actually stipulating
must be deposited. (Without a single exception, it is the
refereed postprint.) http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php

Stevan Harnad

On Thu, 24 Apr 2008, Joseph J. Esposito wrote:


It seems to me that what Paul Ginsparg did in one stroke was
separate, or at least begin to separate, the publishing
functions of certification (what Ian addresses) from
dissemination.  Prior to arXiv, these two functions were bound
up with each other.  I am not saying that Ginsparg set out to
do this (How would I know?), but that is the effect of his
innovation.  Ian (rightly) notes that publishers still control
the certification function, but there is another point to be
made here, that in some instances the dissemination and
certification functions compete with each other.

For example, a poorly distributed journal or a journal
published in such a way as to make it difficult for readers to
find it (e.g., not indexed by Google) may nonetheless certify
an article and, by extension, its author; but the author may
still yearn for broader dissemination.  Such an author may, the
next time around, opt for a well-designed open access
repository that has been optimized for search engine indexing
and other Internet marketing techniques, with the hope that
open dissemination will ultimately lead to certification.  We
can call this the principle of certification through
acclamation; it is intended to supplant certification through
deliberation.

Publishers that stress the certification function alone are, in
my view, making a very big mistake.  Yes, publishers add
enormous value in the editorial process, more than most authors
could ever bring themselves to admit, but the real game is to
stroke an author's ego through dissemination. In other words,
the safe zone for a publisher is not the editorial fortress of
careful selection, peer review, copy editing, and the like, but
the sound of trumpets declaring that, yes, our magnificent
author has arrived.

The future of toll-access or traditional publishing lies with
marketing.  If an author comes to believe that an open access
service could lead to wider dissemination of his or her work,
publishers should fold their tents and go home, and no amount of
shrewd editorial practices can prevent this.

Joe Esposito