tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post8316632804520678091..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: Public Library of Science’s Cameron Neylon on the state of Open Access: Where are we, what still needs to be done?Richard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-62021491126808414712013-09-10T09:01:34.187+00:002013-09-10T09:01:34.187+00:00Cameron and Richard seem to be afraid that the cur...Cameron and Richard seem to be afraid that the current system of Big Deals will be copied to the OA world. I don't think so.<br />Imagine that one day Elsevier would say to the academic world, "OK, as long as the libraries garantee our revenues we will make all articles open access. It's a win-win. We win because our profit margin will increase further as the distribution process in OA is cheaper than the same in the subscription world. You win, becaue you will have the OA you yearned for."<br />Then, an author who wants to publish her article in OA has two options. Either for free (from her point of view) in an Elsevier journal or for a price in say a BioMedCentral journal. Not so difficult to guess what her choice will be. But this situation is not sustainable. It would mean that an institute has two publication regimes, one for Elsevier and one for BioMedCentral. Authors wan't buy that. BioMedCentral might complain about a distortion of the market. <br />At that point, the institute has two options. (1) Pay the OA publication fees for all publishers from a central (library) budget. Indeed, that would mean an extension of the current Big Deals to all publishers as Cameron and Richard seem to fear. But that is totally unaffordable! So, my speculation is that (2) libraries will tell authors that they have negotiated a prepaid option with Elsevier resulting in a discounted publication fee. But that lower price must still be defrayed by the author. Obviously, BioMedCentral might also offer a cheaper prepaid solution. And so on. There you have your market.<br /><br />Leo Waaijers.leo waaijershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15313746974886824921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-25205768010772083942013-09-04T15:08:23.134+00:002013-09-04T15:08:23.134+00:00Green OA and its Repository Infrastructure are Per...<b>Green OA and its Repository Infrastructure are Permanent, not "Transitional"</b><br /><br />In his <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/public-library-of-sciences-cameron.html" rel="nofollow">interview with Richard Poynder</a>, Cameron Neylon, as always, makes many valid and astute points. But there is one thing about which I think he is quite profoundly mistaken:<br /><br /><strong>CN: </strong>"<em>While we can generate wider access with relatively little transitional costs through repository-mediated OA this won’t help to bring down subscriptions costs</em>."<br /><br />Apart from the fact that lowering subscription (or publication) costs and providing open access to publisher research are not the same thing at all (and that the urgent and overwhelming priority of <em>Open Access</em> is <em>Access</em>), I think Cameron underestimates the profound causal connection between them:<br /><br />No, the primary purpose of repository-mediated OA (Green OA) is not to serve as a transition to Gold OA publishing: it is to provide OA.<br /><br />But in providing the infrastructure for providing OA, the global network of Green OA repositories also provides the means of downsizing publishing to just the cost of managing peer review (which peers provide for free). All the rest of the costs of pre-Green-OA publishing (access-provision, archiving) are -- post-Green -- offloaded and distributed across the global network of Green OA repositories (while the print and online editions and their costs can be jettisoned completely).<br /><br />That is why the small residual cost of post-Green Gold OA will be affordable, sustainable "Fair Gold" OA whereas the current cost of pre-Green Gold OA is arbitrarily inflated "Fools Gold" OA. And that's not just because the global Green OA infrastructure is not yet in place and absorbing all the costs of access-provision and archiving, but because <a href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html" rel="nofollow">subscriptions are still in place</a> and have to keep being paid until those articles are made Green OA! <br /><br />Hence pre-Green Gold means not only inflated prices but double-payment (for (1) subscriptions to all the must-have journals that are non-OA plus (2) Fools-Gold fees for pre-Green Gold OA journals) -- not to mention the further possibility of (3) publisher double-dipping in the case of hybrid Fools Gold.<br /><br />So is it not at all the case that there is "<em>a role for Green OA and institutional repositories, although perhaps only a transitional one</em>": Green OA repositories can and will provide not only 100% OA, permanently, but they will thereby also make it possible (indeed necessary) for journal publishing to <a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/" rel="nofollow">downsize and convert</a> to Fair Gold -- and at the same time release the institutonal subscription funds, of which a fraction can then be used to pay (rather than double-pay) for Fair Gold.<br /><br />Cameron is completely right, however, that "<em>[t]he single most important task today is putting in place robust and transparent mechanisms to report on [Green OA mandatory] policy compliance… and monitor the growth of access</em>." That done, effectively, the transition to Fair Gold OA will then take care of itself.<br /><br />(I would close by emphasizing that just as providing OA itself is incomparably more important and urgent than publishing reform, so OA's provision of access to all users, rather than just to subscribers, is incomparably more important and urgent than providing further re-use rights, over and above online access free for all: Fair Gold and all the re-use rights that users need and authors want to provide will come, as surely as day follows night -- but Green OA must come first.)Stevan Harnadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14374474060972737847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-65661504225350626752013-09-04T10:40:19.232+00:002013-09-04T10:40:19.232+00:00Comment on the postscript:
On looking back throug...<b>Comment on the postscript:</b><br /><br />On looking back through the text I agree that I may have slightly misrepresented Cameron Neylon’s views on repositories. He does, after all, say: <br /><br /><i>In the longer term we will need publication infrastructures that are efficient, enable ongoing review, and support wide-ranging re-use. These could be run by institutions, by communities, or by third party providers. They will have some characteristics of repositories and some of journals and some of publishers but will also be quite different.</i><br /><br />However, my point was that I find it hard to believe that PLOS, certainly as it is currently conceived, would be likely to become a third-party provider of such a publishing infrastructure (which I assume would be far less profitable, than the current journal-based system) -- not just because PLOS is deeply wedded to the concept of “journal-mediated Open Access supported by direct author side charges”, but because, as a result of having adopted this business model so successfully (notably with PLOS ONE), PLOS has become (In Kent Anderson’s words) “just another publisher” – a publisher now heavily dependent on what many view as an overpriced service. Joe Esposito has <a href="http://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=LIBLICENSE-L;b0477d68.1301" rel="nofollow">put it</a> this way:<br /><br /><i>PLoS ONE is terribly overpriced. It is a hosting service; it makes not qualitative judgments. It is thus what is known as a “commodity business,” which means that competition takes place on price alone. The cost of Gold OA (better described as “author-pays”) services will continue to come down. This means that the services these organizations provide will be challenged in terms of their cost structure.</i><br /><br />Joe assumes, of course, that prices <i>will</i> come down. If they do, then PLOS will surely find itself in the same situation as legacy publishers – burdened with a high cost structure that can no longer be supported by the revenue it is able to earn.<br /><br />If, on the other hand, libraries allow publishers to recreate the Big Deal in the OA market, then APC prices will not fall, the author-side charging model will remain overpriced, and PLOS would presumably be able to carry on as it is. This would also make it less likely that the new publication infrastructures Cameron anticipates would develop – unless publishers managed to offer these services in such a way that the costs of the current journal-based system were locked into the new services. <br /><br />The future remains uncertain, but what I think everyone agrees on is that if prices are indeed to come down then it is vital that an efficient market is created. Is that going to happen?Richard Poynderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.com