I have, belatedly, read two of Chris Armbruster's papers in
which he
elaborates the view underling his comments below:
*Cyberscience and the Knowledge-Based Economy, Open Access
and
Trade Publishing: from Contradiction to Compatibility with
Nonexclusive Copyright Licensing
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=8493
05
*Society Publishing, the Internet and Open Access: Shifting
Mission-Orientation from Content Holding to Certification
and
Navigation Services?
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=9978
19
These indeed offer a very different perspective from what
one
usually hears on this list, questioning whether Green OA and
Gold
OA really make any sense and suggesting a new use for
existing
copyright law rather than arguing for its reform. The gist
of
Chris's argument, as I understand it, is that the logic of
scholarly communication recommends an approach that supports
the
natural tendency of scholars to use disciplinary or
subject-specific channels for exchanging ideas. So, in his
terms,
"guild publishing" makes the most sense, in
contrast, say, with
larger aggregations of disparate materials collected in most
institutional repositories. His models are arXiv, the
Research
Papers in Economics (RePEc), and the Social Science Research
Network (SSRN), which has recently added a Humanities
counterpart.
His argument turns on separating dissemination from
certification. Dissemination would occur immediately upon
the
submission of a paper to such a guild-supported repository
whose
contents would be openly available to everyone in the world.
The
basic functions of such a repository would be to register a
work
(which is important for establishing priority claims),
archive
it, and disseminate it "open access." The process
of
certification would extend over a considerable period of
time and
involve a variety of different modes of validating quality
and
value: "not just publication in prestigious journals,
but also
keynote speeches, research grants, scholarly awards and,
ultimately, the Festschrift, the lifetime achievement award
and
the Nobel Prize (or its substitutes)."
This system would require that nonexclusive licenses be used
instead of outright transfers of copyright as under the
present
system. In this way, value-adding businesses could be built
to
provide a variety of types of certification and to bundle
certified materials for use by other audiences outside the
guild.
Chris calls this "layered certification." It
would provide an
avenue for publishers, both commercial and nonprofit, to
continue
offering services that would be valued in the marketplace
and
therefore could be the basis for a viable business. Current
societies might, I suppose, do both: provide the basic
"guild"
repository and support that cost from either membership dues
or
value-added certifying services.
I think this approach makes a lot of sense, and it certainly
provides an interesting alternative to the other
alternatives
that have dominated the debates. But I do have a few
questions:
First, I am puzzled by Chris's use of the phrase "trade
publishing" to designate the value-adding type of
business that
he foresees arising from a regime of guild publishing and
nonexclusive licensing. In the U.S. "trade"
publishing has a
specific meaning, and it would appear not to be the kind of
business Chris really has in mind. Perhaps he can provide a
definition or use a different term that would not involve
this
potential confusion.
Second, while I see this as an excellent model for the
publishing
of articles, I am wondering how it applies to books. Chris
at
various points seems to place book publishing outside of
this
model, treating it as a realm where exclusive copyright
transfers
still make sense. But then we end up with the bifurcation of
knowledge between books and journals that, ultimately, I do
not
believe to be viable and runs counter to the very logic of
scholarly discourse that Chris has used to justify his
preferred
model. What we would have here is another version of C.P.
Snow's
"two cultures"--instead of the sciences and the
humanities, the
divide would be between book-based and journal-based
knowledge.
Third, I would be interested in Chris's views of how
certification for books might, or might not, differ from
certification for journal articles. I see a danger in
relying
exclusively on peer review for the former as carried out by
"experts" within any given scholarly society, as
it would tend to
bias certification in favor of established
paradigm-supporting as
opposed to paradigm-challenging knowledge. The system of
certification that is employed by university presses employs
peer
review as only one among several components; others include
the
roles of the acquiring editor and the faculty editorial
board,
which both bring distinctive "value added" to the
process. This
cannot be replicated solely from within the confines of a
scholarly society. But I do applaud Chris's wide vision of
what
can count as certification, and perhaps it could readily
incorporate this particular kind of value added as a unique
service that university presses perform (unique in that,.
even
though some commercial academic publishers may employ peer
reviewers as part of their decision-making process, they do
not
have faculty editorial boards advising them).
I apologize for this lengthy post, but it reflects my
genuine
enthusiasm for Chris's special contribution to our debates,
which
I am only now finally coming to appreciate fully.
Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press
>Much debate about the value and cost of OA seems to rest
on the
>shared assumption that the Oldenbourg model of scholarly
>communication (conjoining peer review and dissemination)
was
>suitably transposed from to paper to electronic format
and might
>now be switched to OA (free to readers).
>
>Will this assumption hold in the internet galaxy?
>
>Notions of "Gold" and "Green" OA
seem to reinforce this
>assumption. Officially, Green OA is premised on the
Oldenbourg
>model and merely aims to duplicate publications in open
>repositories (which would increase overall costs by the
factor
>"green"). Gold OA does away with duplication
and will lead to a
>reallocation of funds to pay publication charges.
Whether this
>will reduce overall cost depends on whether a) much Gold
OA
>publishing might be not-for profit (as there is evidence
that
>not-for-profit publishers charge less) and/or b) a more
>efficient market might emerge in which journal might be
>substitutes for each other (this is likely to be the
case only
>for the B-list, but that is the vast majority of
journals).
>
>One can understand the reluctance of "content
holding"
>publishers to consider Gold OA - for their shareholders
would
>surely not be pleased if profits were sacrificed
voluntarily. As
>regards Green OA, the argument is whether this threatens
the
>Oldenbourg model (in sense of enabling publishers to
recoup
>their costs and/or make a profit). In detail, the
argument is
>then about the length of the embargo.
>
>But, is this the only, or best, way to look at the
issue?
>
>Take the argument about Green OA leading to
cancellations. To
>claim that cancellations are likely in future is to make
an
>argument about the logic of the internet galaxy. But if
you do
>so, should you then not recognise that several large and
>important scholarly communication platforms are free to
authors
>and readers? ArXiv, RePEc and SSRN do cost something,
but their
>successful growth over the past ten years signals that a
>cost-efficient way of organising dissemination is
available.
>Part of the logic of the internet galaxy is to make
>dissemination cheap -- and in this sense Green OA would
indeed
>threaten those publishers that believe their mission to
be to
>hold (or own) content
>
>Yet, another part of the logic of the internet would
seem to be
>that in scholarly communication "content
holding" is a shrinking
>business model. It is so, because toll-access reduces
inclusion
>and impact in scholarly communication. Once Open Access
is
>possible, then the toll-access publishers needlessly
impede
>scholarly communication. That is why the argument
against
>content holding publishers will never go away.
>
>Moreover, cyberscience (or eScience) and related
developments
>make open access to research publications and data
intrinsically
>desirable. In this case OA is not a matter of cost, but
a
>prerequisite to the future advancement of science.
>
>Is Gold OA the best way forward?
>
>In the life sciences a good case can be made for
releasing only
>peer-reviewed information. But ArXiv, RePEc and SSRN
demonstrate
>that for other sciences this is not the case. The
technological
>and economic logic of the internet galaxy favours the
severance
>of certification from dissemination.
>
>Indeed, if we were utilise the internet to maximise
savings for
>dissemination, then relatively large sums of money could
be
>redirected to where most needed: improved certification,
>enhanced literature awareness tools and the development
of
>overlay services such as text mining. Such services cost
money
>and one possible business model might be to recoup costs
through
>subscriptions (please note that BMC as OA publisher also
has
>subscriptions to pay charges) that, depending on the
service,
>charge funders, authors, readers or libraries.
>
>Indeed, if we follow through with the switch in vision
from
>"content" to "service" then we see
that there is not a shrinking
>market (of higher prices, more cancellations) but much
terrain
>for business development. In this context, early
estimates of
>the impact of OA in terms of economic growth and market
value
>indicate that certification and services for the readers
and
>users of research articles and data -- in science,
higher
>education, knowledge-based industries and so on -- will
>experience growth over the coming years.
>
>What to do?
>
>I think it is time to take another look at the
technological and
>economic logic of the internet. What model of
certification and
>publishing is complementary to the advancement of
cyberscience?
>How can compatibility be ensured with the need of
seamless
>integration of research articles and data with the
digital
>workflow of scientists? What are the needs of authors,
readers
>and users in the internet galaxy if they have to handle
steadily
>increasing amounts of research publications and data?
How to
>better enable the utilisation of scientific knowledge in
higher
>education, industry and government?
>
>I would be happy to hear from anyone interested in
pursuing these
>questions further.
>
>
>Chris Armbruster
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