** Cross-Posted **
The five points I shall list below are controversial, but I
am
quite confident that the points are valid. My confidence
comes
from having been involved in this for a very, very long
time,
having heard everything already many, many times over and
having
given it all a very great amount of thought (more thought
than it
deserved, because most of the misunderstandings are so
transparent and elementary!).
http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pag
e_en.cfm?id=3459
(1) I suggest that it would be a great strategic error on
the
part of the EC to allow itself to be brought back to further
talks and studies, instead of implementing the OA
self-archiving
mandate that was proposed in January 2006, and that has
since
been implemented by the ERC and reinforced by EURAB.
http://ec
.europa.eu/erc/pdf/open-access.pdf
http://ec.europa.eu/research/eurab
/pdf/eurab_scipub_report_recomm_dec06_en.pdf
The talks and studies have already taken place, for years
now,
many times over. The EC is basically stepping back to the
point
where the UK Parliamentary Select Committee was in 2003: It
too
conducted an extensive inquiry, with all interested parties,
and
made the same recommendation as EC A1: Mandate OA
self-archiving.
And the response was the same: publishing industry lobbying,
the
usual ominous warnings that mandating OA self-archiving will
destroy journals and will destroy a multi-billion dollar
industry, the usual conflation of Green OA and Gold OA
(author OA
self-archiving, Green, and journal OA publishing, Gold) and
the
usual attempt to delay, derail, filibuster in any way
possible.
And the publishing lobby was successful in the UK -- for a
while.
It successfully got the ear of Lord Sainsbury, the UK
Industry
minister (just as it did the EC Commissioner!), But in the
end,
reason prevailed, and now we have 5 out of the 8 UK Research
Councils plus the Wellcome Trust mandating Green OA
self-archiving after all, and more mandates planned.
The publishing lobby will *always* say we need more studies
and
consultations. They have to, because they have absolutely no
empirical evidence to support their Doomsday Scenario: There
is
not even evidence that self-archiving -- even where it has
reached 100% for years now -- causes cancellations at all,
let
alone destroys journals. In the complete absence of negative
evidence, and with all actual evidence positive -- for the
benefits of OA to research, researchers, and the R&D
industry --
the only thing the publishing lobby can do is to raise the
volume
on its dire but evidence-free predictions: and keep asking
for
more studies, for more evidence!
But what the EC should be asking itself is: What studies?
and
evidence of what? Surely the only way to test whether there
is
any truth at all to the hypothesis that mandating OA
self-archiving will generate cancellations is to mandate OA
self-archiving and see whether it generates cancellations!
The EC
does not fund all, most, or much of the contents of any
individual journal. Hence it is enormously improbable that
an EC
self-archiving mandate will have any significant effect on
any
journal's subscriptions. But the only way to see whether it
does,
is to go ahead and adopt the mandate. Its effects can be
reviewed
and reconsidered after 1, 2 3 years.
Instead doing nothing under the guise of "further
studies and
consultations" is of no use at all.
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digit
al_libraries/doc/scientific_information/communication_en.pdf
(2) The other aim of both the publishing lobby *and* the
Gold OA
publishing lobby is to focus the EC on the issue of funding
journals, instead of on the issue of providing access.
The EC meeting was dominated, appallingly, by discussion of
journal revenues and economics (to no effect whatsoever, as
all
that was said has already been said, countless times before,
for
nearly a decade now). There was next to no discussion of the
daily, weekly, monthly cumulative loss of research access
and
impact that is continuing as we continue to talk about the
same
things over and over.
Recall that publishers' warnings about future loss of
revenue are
hypothetical, whereas researchers' loss of current access
and
impact is actual, and cumulative, and also means loss of
revenue,
from lost R&D industrial applications: losses on the
public
investment in research. The cure for that loss of access and
impact, and of R&D industrial revenue, is to mandate OA
self-archiving. It has *nothing* to do with the the
economics of
funding Gold OA journals.
The focus on funding journals is a red herring. What the EC
needs
to do is to mandate OA self-archiving. That is Green OA. It
does
not require funding anything: just mandating
self-archiving.
Publishers are publishers, whether they are non-OA
publishers
lobbying against OA and self-archiving, or Gold OA
publishers
lobbying against Green OA self-archiving mandates. How and
why
did the EC manage to get diverted from the problem of
research
access (for which the solution is to mandate Green OA) to
the
problem of journal economics?
(3) The research publishing industry is not the industrial
dimension of research: The R&D industry is. And the
R&D industry
and its revenues are orders of magnitude bigger than those
of the
publishing industry. And the R&D industry shares in the
current,
actual loss of research access and impact that OA is meant
to
cure -- and that the publishing industry lobby is
(successfully)
endeavouring to prevent.
Why is the EC inviting and listening so intently to the
views of
the publishing industry regarding access to research,
instead of
listening to the views of the R&D industry (along with
the views
of the research community itself)? As I have said many times
before, this is worse than the tail wagging the dog: It is
the
flea on the tail of the dog, wagging the dog.
(4) The substance of the recommendation of the EC petition
and
its 22,000+ signatories (so far), including 1000+ official
organisation signatories -- universities, research
institutes,
scientific academies, R&D industries, etc. -- is that OA
self-archiving (Green OA) should be mandated. The voices
raised
for OA were not about funding Gold OA, and certainly not
about
diverting scarce research funds from research to paying
publishers for Gold OA.
Gold OA cannot be mandated. There seems to be some profound
confusion about that, even among the proponents of the EC
Recommendation: The only ones who can be mandated to do
anything
by a funder are the fundees: the researchers funded to do
the
research.
There seems to be an incoherent idea afoot that, somehow, it
is
*publishers* who are to be mandated to do something.
Publishers
know very well that they cannot be mandated to do anything,
but
they are quite happy to draw out the consultations and
"studies"
on topics like embargoes and PDFs in order to give the
impression
that that is what this is all about.
What this is about is mandating OA by mandating that
*authors*
self-archive their own final drafts of journal articles
immediately upon acceptance for publication. The embargo
question
is only about the date at which those deposits should be
made
Open Access. (Till then, the deposits can be made Closed
Access,
but their metadata are still visible webwide, and individual
eprints can be requested by users via email.)
But the all-important thing now is not the allowable length
of
this embargo, but about mandating the deposit. The EC has
allowed
itself to be distracted from what this is all about, in
order to
focus instead on embargoes and on funding Gold OA! That can
go on
forever; meanwhile, daily, weekly cumulative loss of EU
research
access and impact continues, and with it loss in EU research
productivity, progress, R&D applications, and R&D
revenue.
Mandate Green OA self-archiving and *then* return to the
endless
consultations on embargo lengths and Gold OA funding! But
don't
allow Green mandates and OA to be filibustered still longer
with
these studies and consultation that lead nowhere but to more
studies and consultations, as EU research access and impact
keep
hemorrhaging needlessly.
Last point:
(5) One genuine (and valid) point of resistance on the part
of
the research community (rather than the publishing
community)
against OA Mandates concerns their being coupled in any way
with
the redirection of scarce research funds, away from research
and
toward the payment of Gold OA publishing fees. There is no
need
at all to couple the EC OA mandate with the diversion of any
funds from research to pay Gold OA fees. There is no reason
for
the mandate to make any reference to Gold OA fees at all.
The
mandate should be a Green OA self-archiving mandate. That is
all.
(In this respect, the Wellcome Trust mandate is a bad model
to
follow. The Wellcome Trust is a private charity and can do
whatever it chooses with its funds. But diverting public
research
funds to pay needlessly for Gold OA publishing charges when
it is
not at all necessary -- because subscriptions are still
paying
for publication and Green self-archiving can be mandated to
provide OA -- is an arbitrary and ill-thought-out step that
can
only generate research community resistance.)
The need for and benefits of OA are a certainty, as is the
ability of Green OA self-archiving mandates to make all
funded
research OA. In contrast, all hypotheses about the way this
will
or should affect the future of research publication are mere
speculation.
The publishing industry has been freely speculating -- with
zero
evidence -- that mandating Green OA will destroy journals
and
peer review. The way to counter such speculations is not to
be
frightened by them into inaction, simply because they are
fierce
speculations. The way to counter them is with plausible
counterspeculations. So here is one: If and when mandated
Green
OA makes subscriptions unsustainable -- because all articles
are
OA and subscriptions are cancelled -- all the subscribing
institutions will have vast windfall savings from their
cancelled
subscriptions: Those same institutional windfall savings
will
then be available for redirection to pay for institutional
Gold
OA fees for publishing their outgoing articles, without
diverting
a penny from research..
That will be the time to make the transition to Gold OA
publishing, not now, when most journals are not OA, when
subscriptions are paying for all publishing costs, when
scarce
research funds would need to be diverted to pay for any Gold
OA
publishing costs, and when what is urgently needed is not
funds
to pay for Gold OA: what is urgently needed is OA. And it is
already attainable, via Green. All that needs to be done is
to
mandate it.
Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/arch
ives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
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